Maya's Aura: Goa to Nepal

by Smith, Skye

  How cruel was life. Her last cookie gone and here she was with a fresh glass of chai. She walked into the kitchen to see if they had some more. She showed them the packet, and they pointed up to a shelf, where there were ... none left. Youngest didi took her hand and led her to the far side of the dining room and unlocked the storeroom door, and led her into the storeroom.

  What she had expected was a storeroom slightly larger than a closet. What she didn't expect was a room built to close off a statue, a giant bronze statue of the Buddha. There he sat in a meditational pose with cardboard boxes of supplies piled around him, leaning on him, and resting on his knees and in his lap. Didi closed the door behind them and lifted her storm lantern high so she could see.

  "Biscuits up there or behind," Didi said. She saw that Maya had pulled her mini flashlight out of her pocket so she pushed her along to go and find them.

  Slowly Maya shone her light on box label after box label. Some were from India, some from China, some from Nepal. "Why Buddha here?" she asked as she searched.

  "This old monastery. When build new monastery, he too big to move."

  Old monastery. Old Monastery. The thought rattled around in her sleepy head until the light went on. The traveler who had hidden the other half of the ancient book. He would have hidden it here. This was the statue she had been searching for. She calmed herself and thought for a moment, getting her bearings. Then she climbed over some boxes of canned goods on the floor, and around the side of statue.

  Slowly bending down with the light, she brushed at the base. Brushed the dust and looked closely, searching for cracks. She pulled out her tiny knife and poked it into a likely crack. It went in easily. It was putty made to look like mortar. Her heart was thumping. A voice interrupted her.

  "I find biscuits," said didi.

  Maya stood and leaned around the statue until she could see young sister. "May I stay here a while and pray?" she asked.

  "You Dakini, of course you stay. Knock, knock when you finished and I will open door," didi said and left her alone with the statue. Alone to discover the missing half of the ancient book.

  She smiled to herself and then she was asleep again.

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  MAYA'S AURA - Goa to Nepal by Skye Smith

  Chapter 21 - Pokhara Lakeside, Nepal

  A small body of determined spirits fired by an unquenchable faith in their mission can alter the course of history - Mahatma Gandhi

  Maya finished her tea, and finished addressing her last envelope. Three weeks she had been living with Marique and Will in their little house beside the lake in the lakeside resort near to the city of Pokhara. Marique and Will were always up and out at first light, helping to run the tourist business owned by Will's two ex-forces buddies. They did most of their business in the morning before the clouds obscured the view of the Annapurna mountain range, and before the winds became too strong.

  She, on the other hand, had spent the weeks translating and interpreting the two parts of the ancient Vedic book about auras, with, of course, the kind help of a young scholar from the local Tibetan refugee camp. Will's business office had computer equipment, including printers and scanners, and she had scanned and made electronic copies of the originals and the translations, and then created CDs of the files.

  Now it was time to send the CDs off to various places in America and Canada for safe keeping, just in case her original book and her paper translations were lost, stolen or otherwise disappeared. The only paper copy she was sending was addressed to Vidu in Sri Lanka. The elderly ascetic would not know how to use a computer. He would however, know how to use the knowledge contained in the photocopies.

  The most exciting knowledge in the translations was about how to disable a psycho without killing him. It was so easy. Instead of going for the throat, go for the forehead. She hadn't tried it. She may never try it. There was no such thing as practicing. She would have to be brave enough not to kill an attacker. Brave enough to try this new method.

  There were side effects, of course, there were always side effects. Her Tibetan scholar, in his best translation, told her that the forehead method would make the psycho faint, but not die. That was the good part. The side effect was that when he awoke his mind may have been damaged. The ancient texts and the pictures portrayed the victim as becoming meek and a bit stupid.

  She looked up at the sound of a motorbike. A family buzzed by. Dad was driving while holding onto eldest child who sat on the gas tank. Behind him was youngest child sandwiched in front of Mom who was riding side saddle in her multicolored sari. She loved watching this street. It turned a simple breakfast into a feast of the surreal.

  A bus rumbled by. Inside were women and children. Men were all on the roof. It had to swerve to miss a string of riding ponies that was racing down the street led by a young man who had seen too many American cowboy movies. No one fell off the roof. It was all good.

  The street scene was the reason it had taken her so long to address a few envelopes. Write one word, look up, watch something surreal, look down, and write another word. It was all good. She waved at two school girls in blue skirts and white socks that were riding on the back of a tractor cart.

  The ever so personable young waiter at the Happy Restaurant where she was enjoying her breakfast, brought her the bill, and she signed for it but gave him his tip in cash. Will's tourist company had an account here, since it brought them lots of business.

  She loved this old lakeside resort town. If you sat along the one main road long enough, like on the patio of the Happy, you eventually saw absolutely everything being carried on the back of a motorbike, or a bicycle, or a motorized rickshaw. As she thought about it, a motorbike roared by with a woman in a long red bridal sari on the back sitting side saddle in her golden slippers.

  Time to go to the post office. Before she had gathered her envelopes, a motorbike went by with two giant carp suspended by ropes, their tails dragging in the dust, followed by a motorbike with a man driving with a six foot wide coil of black plumbing pipe tied to his back.

  She crossed the main road carefully. The safest way was to wait until a string of casually wandering water buffalo decided to cross, and then to cross with them. None of the traffic, not even the buses would argue with a water buff. They were big and heavy and holy.

  The sun was glaring, hotter every day, and the afternoon clouds were more threatening every day. Walking in off the street into the dim, cool post office made you blink and be blind until your eyes adjusted. It helped if you remembered to take off your sunglasses.

  Damn, the queue was to the door. This would take hours. Then she took off her sunglasses and realized that half of the queue was a Brahma bull who had decided to wait in queue with the people, probably because it was cool. As a child one of her mother's boyfriend 'uncles' had taken her to a rodeo in the central valley of California. It was hard to imagine that the bull in this postal queue was the same breed that raised fear in the hearts of cowboys.

  After the envelopes were mailed, airmail, the thought came to her that she shouldn't try to leave Nepal until she had an email from one of her friends saying that one of the copies had arrived safely. It was an easy decision. She was loving her life here. She could put the studio off for another couple of weeks. They were anxious for her to return to Hollywood for the start of the filming of the sequel to Karen's movie.

  She walked slowly down a side street that would take her to the lake shore. The muddy path along the lake's edge was delightful at this time of day. The clouds had not yet obscured mount Machapuchare and it was fantastic to look at. Will's friends had told her that it was a horn, carved by glaciers in the last ice age. The most famous horn in the world was the Matterhorn in Switzerland, but this horn was over twice as high.

  There were boys playing soccer on one of the flood plain fields, mostly in bare feet or misfitting old runners. She lingered to watch them play. An old bull waterbuff started across the playing field, fo
llowed by two females and a calf. The ref blew his whistle and halted the game until they were across.

  She walked a little further, but the buff bull now took exception to her presence, and turned and headed back across the playing field, with of course, his women in tow. This time the ref did not whistle the play down, and signaled the teams to play on.

  When a defender running backwards, ran into a female buff, and bounced off, the attacker took the advantage and took his shot on goal. The ball ricochet off the legs of a cow, and it was just enough to take it out of reach of the outstretched keeper, and went in. Score. There was an argument about the offside rule, but of course, FIFA rules didn't make allowances for buffs.

  Just ahead was a cafe right on the lakeshore. It was beside the planks that served as a dock where canoes from all over the lake would put in, delivering the little children that went to school here. Each day that she didn't go up the hill to the high, ridge straddling, village of Sarang Kot with Will and Marique and their clients, she would sit here and translate Sanskrit. That task was finished now, but it was still a nice place to drink coffee and wait for Marique to arrive back.

  She sighed and smiled at the children, young and old, hurrying up from the boats, late as usual for school. The boat trip was always a valid excuse for tardiness, what with the sudden winds on this lake. Two of the older boys lingered back, sharing the end of a cheap cigarette. They nodded to her and smiled. More than once she had bought the children apple pies to share, but only after school. This cafe made the best deep dish apple pie in the world.

  A pot of coffee arrived at her favorite shady table without her ordering it. The magazine photographer was here again today. He joined her and immediately began complaining, as usual, about there being too many clouds around the mountains. He had been commissioned to do a photo spread about a new exclusive golf club in the next valley. Oh, darn, he had been waiting a week here in paradise waiting for the skies to be clear enough.

  She closed her ears to him, and watched a haystack float by, straddled on two boats. The coffee was tasty, and the warm shade was oh so comfortable. It felt strange not to be sitting at this table writing. Gosh, now there was nothing to do but look at the scenery.

  The two school boys waved to her and pointed up to the sky. She knew what to expect. She ran out of the cafe without paying. The waiters didn't care. She was a regular and tipped, actually tipped. She looked up to see how high they were, to judge where along the lakeside flats they would land. There were eight today. Eight paragliders, mostly paying customers from all over the world, flying down from the high cliffsides of Sarang Kot. She waved to the pilot of the one with the pink eagle emblazed on the nylon wings. Marique saw her and rocked her wings to wave back.

  THE END of the Fourth Book in the Maya’s Aura Series

  Be sure to watch for the further adventures of Maya, this time adventuring in New England and in Olde England.

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  MAYA'S AURA - Goa to Nepal by Skye Smith