Chapter 9
Vendors populated the streets now. Dozens of people selling fruit, herbs, and clothing eked out their existence each day this way. The prayer wheels seemed to be spinning more vigorously and the prayer flags flapping more powerfully as the mystery team walked down the street toward Tar-chin’s house. A crowd of about twenty people, mostly black-haired older women with strands of gray, sat or stood in front of the door. It appeared to be a spontaneous type of prayer meeting. They said hello to the group and walked in unencumbered. The door was still partially open, just as they had left it.
The simple apartment was nicely kept. It was clean and orderly. In addition to the living room where the sick woman was found, there was a small kitchen and two bedrooms. Each room contained the basics for life in Nepal. This included a lamp, a chair, a bed in each of the two bedrooms, and colorful rugs worn thin by the passage of time and many feet. The tiny bathroom was neat with the exception of a crooked towel on the towel rack and a few splashes of water on the perimeter of the sink as well as on the floor.
Brother Francis went into the smaller of the two bedrooms, presumably the one in which Ang stayed when his visited his mother. He had borrowed a cell phone from Flo and began dialing the number that had been scribbled on the scrap of paper back in Los Angeles. After a few rings a young man’s voice responded with a ‘Hello.’ In the background the clattering of dishes could be heard.
“Ang, this is Brother Francis, I’m calling you from Nepal.”
“Oh, hello sir, it is so nice to hear from you but I am fearful that your phone call is bringing some bad news to me.”
“I’m afraid so Ang and I wish I could tell you this in person but it is, of course, about your mother.”
“Please tell me, Brother, what is it about my mother?”
“Ang, we found her semi-conscious in her apartment, stretched out on the floor in front of the couch.”
“ May the Medicine Buddha protect her and you. I will make plans to get to Nepal as soon as possible.”
“We have taken her to the clinic near her apartment. The doctor and staff there are doing everything to help her. She is presently on an IV for re-hydration and some laboratory studies are being run at Kathmandu Hospital.”
“But, Brother, what is it that has caused this state to come upon my mother?”
“Ang, we do not know yet. That is why the studies are being run. It is theorized that she ingested something that did not agree with her.”
“Do you mean she may have been poisoned, Brother Francis?”
“No one is saying that for certain, Ang, and I certainly don’t know what to think. My best advice is for you to try to remain at peace and to get here when it is reasonably possible to do so.”
“Thank you and the others for your help, Brother. I will be there in the next day or so. I will take a leave of absence from school and, hopefully, from my job as well.”
“In the meanwhile Ang, we will be holding you and your dear mother in our prayers. I very much hope to see you when you get over here but may not be in Nepal when you arrive. I’m sure we will meet again.”
“I am also sure my Brother. Thank you. Good-bye.”
Francis had barely hung up when the cell phone rang again.
“Brother Francis, it’s Ang again. Please forgive me. I did some electronic wizardry and was able to call you right back. Can you tell me, please, what about the Dorje?”
Francis paused for a moment and then responded. “I’m sorry Ang, I had almost forgotten about that. It may be of interest for us more now than ever. I will make sure we look for it and we will certainly keep you informed.”
“Thank you, Brother. Good-bye.”
Francis returned to the living room to find the other members of his group scouring the little dwelling. They were reverently opening and closing doors and drawers and looking under pillows and furniture.
Mani exclaimed, “I really don’t know what we’re looking for but I think we’ll know it when we find it.”
Francis was about to ask them if they had found a Dorje when David came in from the larger of the two bedrooms with a small wooden box with dimensions of about twelve inches by 5 inches and lined in red velvet.
“I found this opened and empty on the bureau in the larger bedroom. From the bar bell like shape of the red velvet it looks very much like it would hold a Dorje. Anyone see a Dorje?”
Chantal lightened the atmosphere, “Never did I think I’d be looking for a missing Dorje--much less even know what one is!”
They continued searching the apartment and found nothing that appeared to be out of place and nothing else which appeared to be suspicious. David made copious notes and the group left the dwelling with bows back and forth to the people praying outside the apartment.
Krishna asked the group if they might stop at Kathmandu Hospital so that he could check it out and compare it with Western standards. The group was in complete agreement and, upon walking back to the hotel, they got into battered but reliable van.
Before long Karma had them at the front door of the hospital. He dropped the group off and went to park the van, saying that he would meet them in the parking lot whenever they were ready to return.
Upon seeing five Westerners and one Indian-looking man enter the building in a group, the woman behind the reception desk gave them her complete attention. Krishna explained who they were and asked to speak with the Director of the hospital. The travelers were escorted down the hall to a suite of offices and asked to wait in an anteroom.
After about fifteen minutes the Director of the hospital welcomed them to his hospital and shared with them everything he could about Kathmandu Hospital. It was founded in 1933 as an eighteen-bed facility and had now grown to a fifty-bed hospital. “Kathmandu has all the departments of a typical Western hospital. It also provides traditional Chinese medicine to patients. TCM, as it is called, is certainly not native to Nepal but has infiltrated the healthcare system and is widely accepted in Kathmandu.”
“We are not cutting edge,” the Director continued, “but we certainly are a respectable and well run institution. He appeared to feel a little threatened and seemed to be trying to state his case as strongly as possible without offending anyone.”
Krishna felt relieved and responded for the group. “We can see that very clearly and I am grateful for your time and explanation. We have a sick friend who has had lab work sent over here to your lab and we wanted to understand just a little bit about your facility before we leave this country—or this Kingdom actually. Her son is soon to arrive and we want to have everything in place as best we can. Thank you again for giving us your time.”
Good-byes being made, Francis led the group down the hall and out of the building.
Karma’s bright smile could be seen many yards away in the parking lot as the six journeyers, like a small gaggle of geese, made their way to the battered van.
“Well,” mused Chantal, “we didn’t get to see the temple of the living goddess or Dubar Square, or,” she continued reading from the itinerary, “Swayambunath--a two hundred year old Buddhist shrine overlooking the city and known as the ‘monkey temple.’”
Mani, exercising her dry humor joked, “I have wanted to visit the monkey temple all of my life!” The weary travelers burst into laughter once again.
Flo contributed to the conversation. “After the experience with that monkey stealing the fruit from the lady worshipper yesterday--at the height of a cremation--I think I’ve had my fill of monkeys for a while.”
Karma turned slightly and hollered back to the crowd, “Dubar Square is the central square of the city and we will ride through it often during our travels. You will not miss much. We can go to all the things that you would have gone to this afternoon tomorrow, or we can pick up our journey as listed on your itinerary for tomorrow.”
Flo read for the group: “Early breakfast at the hotel before driving to Kopan Monastery on the outskirts of Kathmandu. Meditation instruction will be given by one of the monastics. Overnight dormitory accommodations and shared bathroom facilities are provided for the group.”
The van rumbled to a stop in front of the Kathmandu Hotel. As the group walked into the lobby they joked good-naturedly about how different their day was from what was on the itinerary that they had so carefully planned.
“Well,” Mani stated, “there certainly was a strong interest in looking into medicine on this side of the world. It appears we got a very up close and friendly look, even to the point of interviewing the Director of the largest hospital here in the capital city of Nepal.”
“Not only that,” David contributed, “we have a patient on our hands. I wonder if it has something to do with our karma.” Everybody laughed, including Karma the tour guide.
Each headed to his or her room for a time of quiet and opportunity to digest the events of the day. They dined as they wished, alone or with one or another companion. Krishna and Brother Francis wandered the streets near the hotel for a while, stopping into a little teashop for some Napalese food and a hot beverage. There was a chill in the air--especially in the unheated hotel rooms.
Later that evening, Krishna sat upright in the lotus position on his bed while scratching away in his journal. He was completely absorbed in recounting all that had gone on during the day in and the trip thus far. Francis took what was for him a more comfortable position--lying down in bed--and listened to the tapes on Chinese medicine that he had studied some years ago when he took his years of training in Chinese herbal medicine. This five thousand year old practice seemed to be bottomless in it intricacies and wisdom. Although he had long ago achieved his Certificate of Completion from the Institute of Chinese Herbology, Francis continued to listen to the tapes regularly so as to pick up finer points of information that he may have missed the first or second time. He was finally able to skip some of the tapes, suggesting that perhaps he had mastered the material to some degree.
The alarm clock beeped at Francis and Krishna. Francis tried to take some thought about the Resurrection and new life on rising, as the Rule of his monastery counseled him to do. Today, however, he succumbed to mumbling a stream of something about it being dark and cold and not wanting to move even if he was in Tibet--the other side of the world--and would probably never be here again, and most people never get here at all, and this land is filled with mystery, intrigue and all sorts of things to learn. “So there.”
“Ditto,” groaned Krishna.
Surfacing back up from the Netherworld, Francis heard someone banging on the door.
“Go away,” both he and his roommate shouted.
“ Not on your life!” Flo yelled back through the door. “We are here to have the most profound experience we can, even if it means getting up at four fifteen in the morning to go to the local temple and pray with our Tibetan Buddhist brothers and sisters.”
“Can’t we just say Morning Prayer later?” hollered Krishna.
“You can do that too,” Flo yelled back, “but get up now or we’ll break the door down.”
Francis threw back the covers with a shutter, even though he had a sweatshirt and sweat pants on for pajamas, and hollered, “Alright, I surrender. I’ll be there shortly.”
When Francis returned from his shower, Krishna was seated in a chair in a corner of the room devoutly chanting Bhajans, Hindu devotional chants. Krishna cleaned up and the two of them met the other four pilgrims in the lobby. They opened the door of the hotel and walked out into a street filled with people dressed in Nepalese garb, some in Buddhist monastic robes, and a few in Western clothing. Two blocks away was a Buddhist temple where a pujah, or Hindu worship service, was about to begin. Nepal is such a mix of Hindu and Buddhist cultures and spirituality that one can find both of them anywhere in the Kingdom of Nepal.
They watched the white-robed Hindu priest chant, ring bells, light incense, and offer fruit and flower petals before an image of a Deity for about half an hour. There were orange-robed people in the group as well.
Krishna explained that the three men and one woman who were swaddled in orange sheets were swamis, or in the case of the woman, a swamini. The swamis are very similar to Christian monks. Their life is vowed to seeking the sacred, they are celibate, and they can live alone or in community. The white-robed priest was almost certainly married.
After the pujah, the mystery team walked up the street and wandered into a Tibetan Buddhist temple, complete with a myriad of Buddhas sitting serenely throughout the temple. Monks were chanting in a droning sort of sound, singing the praises of Buddha consciousness and seeking enlightenment. Bowls of water were lined up in front of the Buddhas as an offering, and devout people from the neighborhood sat on the floor or on cushions mesmerized by the experience.
The six friends made their way back to the hotel, on fire with devotion. Even though everyone did not completely understand the rituals they had just experienced, they certainly created a common bond for all who seek what it good and holy. This resonated deeply with all six of the travelers, each in his or her own way.