The human
imagination has many different doors that open in various ways. I got the idea
for the the story under discussion here from a library book, Last River: The
Tragic Race for Shangri-La by Todd Balf, the tale of a group of American
explorers who raft down the Yarlung Tsangpo, known in paddling circles as the
"Everest of rivers." It was a fascinating book, especially because
the territory through which they move is rumored to be the location of Shangri-La,
the legendary land of spiritual magic and enchantment. My story took a little
bit of a different direction. It did not turn out to be a story on rafting or
on exploration, but rather a story on spiritual enlightenment and one of the
few stories I’ve written where there is a major disaster that changes the course
of human history.
I don’t like
“dystopian” fiction. Novels that trace the history of the human race after a
war, plague, or natural disaster kills almost everyone don’t appeal to me that
much, though this story ended up being about a nuclear war—not between the
major powers in the Western World but between India and China. Both of those
nations are in the infamous “nuclear club,” they share disputed borders, and
they have fought each other before (in ancient times and as recently as 1962).
“The Way to
Shangri-La” centers around a young Indian woman, Jeevitha Mitra. From an early
age, she has sought spiritual enlightenment and ends up living in an ashram (a
sort of Hindu convent). She is devoted to this way of life and plans to live in
celibacy (she sees sex as something that distracts from spiritual pursuits).
Her devotion causes her to excel as an ashram girl. As she enters her late teen
years she began to have frightening visions. They are “of fire … desolate,
charred ground, and poisoned air, water, and soil … burned corpses and
landscapes silent because the life on them had been stilled by poisonous air.”
She confides what she has seen to the Abbess of the Ashram, who suggests she go
to Pemakö an area on the border of China
and India and considered to be a sacred place.
Jeevitha
walks for a month. Her level of spirituality protects her from wild animals and
other harms. And as she goes along, her notions of the spiritual begin to
change. She arrives at a village and eventually begins a relationship the Abbot
of a Buddhist monastery and bears a child by him. She leaves the child with a
friend and continues on until she comes to a cave high in the mountains near
the border of China and India, who, she is told, are now at war. She journeys
to the falls of the Tsangpo River and finds a cave to live in.
The
magnificence of the setting stuns her:
Beauty lay
all about her, stunning and magnificent, like nothing she had ever seen.
Mountains rose toward the sky, stretching granite peaks into the blue where
clouds brushed the summits. Thick jungles spread out in valleys. Patches of
rhododendrons filled sunny vales, their red vivid against the grey and green.
The Tsangpo River rushed madly down to the plains, cutting through narrow stone
channels. Huge flocks of pigeons, solitary white herons and golden eagles flew
through the sky. She saw takin, tigers, blood pheasant, and, once, a snow
leopard. The beauty of the land awakened her to its sacred promises. She resolved
to enter to the beauty.
This is
another phase of her spiritual enlightenment. And a new revelation come to
her. She must begin to live as the Hindu holy woman Madaeviyakka, who, hundreds
of years ago, traveled the land as a wandering sage and teacher and wore no
clothing.
Jeevitha
thinks she must have gone mad but obeys the vision. Soon she is know as a holy
teacher. People come to her to know wisdom and for healing. The people to whom
she ministers tell her the war has spread and the Chinese have entered the
province. She meets refugees. People advise her to leave the area but she
stays.
One day she
finds a young man, an American, wandering deliriously near her cave. She takes
him in (and puts on a garment), heals his frostbite, and gives him what little
food she has (Jeevitha hardly eats because her spiritual energy renews her
body). The young man tells her the war has worsened: there has been a nuclear exchange. Millions
have died and several near-by cities had been hit. The nuclear fallout, he says,
will settle there soon.
Her views
change once more. She begins a relationship with the young America. She also is
compelled to seek the place where the Goddess Dorje Drolo lives. She is,
Jeevitha knows, a dangerous goddess, but feels compelled to go. Eventually she
finds the pool of Dorje and her cave which is rumored to be the entrance to
Shangri-La. She goes to fetch her boyfriend Alastair. There is an earthquake.
The steep path to the cave is covered with debris that forms a ramp to the
entrance.
The two of
them go there. Soon they see refugees: tribal peoples, the mixture of peoples
who live in the area, but soon Europeans, Africans, an endless procession of
people and animals. She realizes they will go into the cave and into paradise. The poisoned
radiation will not harm them there. They will be the beginning of a new race.
She and Alastair, she knows as she watches all people enter, will be the last
ones in. After that, the door will close.
The story
appeared in Black Denim Review, a journal that is no longer published (this
seems to be a trend for me). They do not maintain an archive.
You can,
however, read my stories. I maintain links on my Facebook Page; and my latest
novella, Sinfonia: A Painted Lady,
a vampire story, is available on Amazon with other of my books. Get it here.
Happy
reading.
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