The Messiah of Shangri-La: A Novel

By Randy Rosenthal

After a year traveling around Asia, American author Joshua Parousios just wants to find a mountain cottage where he can write a novel about the Messiah. In Kathmandu he meets Maria, a bold Polish woman who attracts and repels him, and together they stay with a Bhutia family in Sosing, a picturesque Himalayan village in the Indian state of Sikkim.

With a backdrop of snow-capped mountains and golden Buddhist temples in every direction, Sosing seems like a real-life Shangri-La. But Sikkim is known for human rights abuse, and Joshua learns that Indian soldiers are committing ethnic cleansing against the indigenous Lepcha people, pagans who missionaries have converted to Christianity.

Struggling with writer's block and his passion for Maria, plagued by Dionysian dreams and enchanted by a Lepcha woman he glimpses in the forest, Joshua has increasingly bizarre experiences: time slows down, the dead appear as living, and a dense black fog just won't lift. As myth mixes with reality, a series of surreal events funnel to a wild, bacchanal finale.

A deep physical and spiritual journey into the Himalayas, The Messiah of Shangri-La is a uniquely profound exploration of the mythologies that lie at the heart of the human experience.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Release date: Jul 7, 2023
• ISBN: 9781666778496

Randy Rosenthal

Randy Rosenthal is the author of the novels Dear Burma and The Messiah of Shangri-La. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Review of Books, The Boston Globe, The Jerusalem Post, The American Scholar, Lion’s Roar, Buddhadharma, Tricycle, Harvard Divinity Bulletin, and several other publications. He teaches writing courses for Harvard University and lives in Boston.

Book preview

The Messiah of Shangri-La

A Novel

Randy Rosenthal

The Messiah of Shangri-La

A Novel

Copyright ©

2023

Randy Rosenthal. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers,

199

W.

8

th Ave., Suite

3

, Eugene, OR

97401

.

Resource Publications

An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers

199

W.

8

th Ave., Suite

3

Eugene, OR

97401

www.wipfandstock.com

paperback isbn: 978-1-6667-7847-2

hardcover isbn: 978-1-6667-7848-9

ebook isbn: 978-1-6667-7849-6

05/12/23

Table of Contents

Title Page

∞ Part One ∞

∞ Part Two ∞

∞ Part Three ∞

To Felicia Bonaparte,

who taught me how to read beneath the surface.

Although I thought these signs accidental at first and did not pay attention, I was finally able, by blending the voice of the visible world and my hidden inner voices, to penetrate the primordial darkness beneath the mind, lift up the trap door, and see.

—Nikos Kazantzakis

∞ Part One ∞

W

e’d been trying to

leave Kathmandu for days, but the Maoists had organized a bandha and shut down the city. The strike was to protest rising gas prices, and they called it off for Dashain, a holiday that must have involved the sacrifice of goats, because goats were everywhere. Goats tied on top of cars and vans. Goats led through the streets with ropes, and goats carried on shoulders. The goats were quiet and submissive, ignorant they’d soon be slaughtered. The strike would start again after Dashain was over. By then, I hoped we’d be out of the country.

It was my birthday. Thirty-three and waiting at a bus-station in Boudhanath, where Maria and I’d been sharing an apartment. From the balcony you could see the famous big stupa with the half-closed Buddha eyes and all those colorful prayer flags. For three dollars a day, we rented the place from a long-haired lama—a faux-monk who lived next door and often invited young Western women over for teachings. But we’d given back the keys and now sat on our bags, drinking sweet milk tea and reading newspapers. Our bus was supposed to leave at noon, and it was already three. I closed The Himalayan and looked toward the tallest mountains in the world. But it was the end of the monsoon, and they wore a shroud of gloom.

We are where evil is, I told Maria. She had The Kathmandu Post, which I’d already read. Two bombs killed a dozen tourists at a restaurant in Thamel. The police broke up a citywide march, the protestors started a riot, and eight people died. Maoists kidnapped and killed a group of trekkers up in the Annapurna. Ethnic violence erupted down in the Terai—one gang invaded the village of their rival, and hacked the people to pieces. Mutilated bodies were found, hands and feet chopped off, decapitated. A few miles away, bandits stopped a bus on the highway that crossed the southern plains. They burned the bus and robbed the passengers. Elections were coming up next week, and the newspapers predicted the violence would increase. That’s why we were trying to leave.

What is evil? Maria sipped her tea and looked at me. She wore her blue blouse and her big Tibetan jewelry, turquoise and jade and coral all clattering together.

Red sickles and hammers were spray-painted on the wall behind me. I leaned against it and watched the parade of goats. The vibration of impending death pervaded the air like the sound of singing bowls. A gaunt sadhu stopped before us, dressed in orange fatigues. A yellow turban was wrapped around his head, and he carried an aluminum container. His beard was shaped like smoke billowing from fire, long and yellowy gray. A thick red tika ran between his brows, his eyes bloodshot from the ritual bhang. He gestured for a donation and I said, You can just forget about it.

He wobbled his head, spoke words I didn’t understand.

He in fact does not understand you, Maria said with her Polish accent.

She handed him rupees, called him baba. Gave me a smirk.

The sadhu shook his container in my face, mumbled more gibberish.

I swiped the air, said, "Chalo."

The holy man waved a hand over my head and walked away.

Maria glared at me. You do not have to be so mean. And anyway he could make you a curse.

Give me a break, a curse. It’s all the time with these guys.

She tucked dirty-blond hair behind her ears. And in fact that is not very compassionate from you. For a meditator.

I ignored her. Maybe I still wanted her then. Or I was becoming afraid of her. I’m not sure, after all the crazy shit that’s happened.

There was some bustling around the bus. People standing up and gathering bags. The driver opened the door and everyone crowded around, incapable of forming a line. Maria and I’d bought the last two tickets and sat squished in the back row. It took half an hour before the bus began to move, and then we got stuck a few streets away, because a woman got hit by a truck. It happened right next to us, dark blood pooling outside our window. The woman’s body sprawled like a broken, oversized doll.

Maria covered her mouth and held my hand. Do you think she will be okay?

She’s dead, I said. She won’t be okay.

Maria squeezed my fingers and someone covered the body with a white sheet. But the blood spread further under the bus, like chocolate melting in the sun. It was right below our feet. A crowd circled around the truck driver. There was pushing and shouting and I thought they’d beat him to death. But the police came and the body was taken away and traffic started to move again, as life always does.

∞

I met Maria on the last day of our meditation course, the day students were allowed to talk to other students. She was looking at the display of dhamma books, and I stood next to her, flipping through pages and trying to get her attention. But she ignored me. I pointed to the book in her hand and said, That one’s really good. I’d just about read them all, spending the better part of the year at these centers.

Ah, yes. Maria spoke decisively. In fact, I will buy it.

Her eyes were a fierce flame-blue, and I had to look away. I hadn’t made eye contact with anyone for ten days, and the energy was too much to take.

But I had noticed her during the course. During the evening discourses, we sat in the same row. Maria glanced over at me once or twice, and I knew she was interested.

I’m Joshua, I told her, she told me her name, and that was it.

The next morning, the course let out and we took the same van from the center up in the hills back to Thamel, the touristy area of Kathmandu where she was staying. The van was packed and we sat close, shoulders and thighs touching. I asked what she was doing here and she told me.

"You bicycled from Lhasa to Kathmandu? That’s crazy."

Yes, I’m crazy. Her smile was playful. Full lips over a cut of straight white teeth.

You got to Lhasa how?

By train from Beijing, she said.

What’s in Beijing?

I went on Trans-Siberian railroad. From Moscow to Beijing. I’ve been gone from Poland seven months.

I’ve always wanted to go on the Trans-Siberian railroad. What were you doing there?

I was staying with shamans.

You mean stay with shamans like real shamans? Shaman shamans?

Siberian shamans, Maria said. I’m writing a book on them. They like me because I’m crazy.

She smiled again and I thought she was happy. I found her interesting. I trusted her. Looking back, I probably found her interesting and trusted her because she was cute. That’s always been my problem—I’d been girl crazy since nursery school. I told Maria about the apartment I rented in Boudhanath near the stupa, and asked if she wanted to split it with me, as there was an extra room. She said she would, and then I was stuck with her.

∞

The sun had sunk beneath the mountains before we made it out of Kathmandu. Tinny Indian music full of violins and high-pitched vocals blasted from the bus radio. A crescent moon like a clipped fingernail glowed in the dusky sky. The bus wove down the twisting Himalayan road, and I bubbled with a sense of adventure. Then we came to the Terai and went east on the Manhendra Highway. I rolled off the bracelet of prayer beads that Maria had given me the night before. Tibetan Buddhists thumbed the beads to keep track of their mantra Om Mani Padme Hum, but I used them to occupy anxious fingers. And my fingers were really anxious, because with all the massacres and robberies going on, that highway was like a gauntlet. The ethnic gangs had declared a temporary truce for the Dashain holiday, but at each stop in the night I expected a roadblock. That bandits would board, take us out. Rob us, set the bus on fire. Cut off our heads. But the lavender light of dawn arrived without incident. And no one knew my birthday had come and gone.

∞

I woke up with a crick in my neck and Maria asleep on my lap, drooling on my pants. The sun rose with the heat and she sat up and wiped her mouth. In the late morning, the bus driver dropped us at the border and told us to load our bags on a rickshaw. The rickshaw driver pulled us a hundred feet to the Nepali border station, where we got an exit visa. Then the rickshaw took us another hundred feet to the Indian border station, where they checked our entry visas. My passport was stamped and I breathed relief. Relief to be back in India where everything was shanti shanti, serenity underneath the disorder. The rickshaw driver pulled us another hundred feet into the town, and we paid him, the whole process absurd.

The only way to get to Sikkim was by jeep, and the next wasn’t leaving for another hour. We were tired and hungry and when Maria asked if I’d carry her bag I told her, You can carry your own bag. I didn’t like myself for saying it, but I didn’t want things to go too far. If I carried her stuff, next I’d be buying her meals. She sat on her bag and pouted, her face streaked with dusty sweat. I walked away to get some samosas and chai from a little roadside stand, where I ate and drank alone. I felt bad for being mean and bought an extra samosa for Maria. When I handed it to her, she was standing next to the jeep, smiling because a man had helped put her bag on top. He’s a gentleman, she said.

We shared the jeep to Gangtok with four other people. One was an attractive woman who looked about forty, her hair reddened with henna. She sat in the front and turned around to talk to us, her back against the dashboard. She said she was going to Gangtok to spend Dashain with her family. I’m from Sikkim but live in Kathmandu, she explained, and I enjoyed talking with her, partly because it annoyed Maria.

Joshua and I were in fact living together in Kathmandu, Maria said.

The woman smiled at us and said we made a nice couple.

We’re just friends, I said, and Maria scowled at me.

We skirted around the foothills below Darjeeling, and then headed back up into the mountains. The plains turned into thick forest, and the road curved along the Tista River, which separated the states of Sikkim and West Bengal. We spent thirty minutes at the border between the states, because foreigners need a special visa to travel in Sikkim. Maria planned to stay there a week before flying back to Poland, and I had no plans. Everyone waited while we got the visa, and then we were back in the jeep and driving.

We were deep into the Tista Valley when the driver stopped at a roadside restaurant and said we had fifteen minutes for lunch. The henna-haired woman, who said her name was Durga, invited us to eat with her—though I could be confused, because Durga is the name of the goddess worshipped during Dashain. She’s the original Mother Goddess and symbolizes the victory of good over evil. I could be mixing things up, but I’ll call the woman Durga anyway.

Maria and I followed Durga into the restaurant and sat across from her at a table. We ordered chai and thalis—the cheap, all-you-can-eat dishes of dal, curry, and rice—and then waited a long time for the food to arrive. It was a Nepali-owned place and there were posters of Hindu gods on the wall.

Shiva is the best god, Maria said, looking at one of the posters.

It’s not a popularity contest, I said. They’re gods.

Durga laughed. "The gods themselves are not the important thing. Anyone or anything can be a god to be worshipped. The important thing—what I learned from my mother—is that we are reminded to worship god in all its forms. The