Who is Mango Chutney?

Bo Gregner

Description

The year 2001: at a Swedish summer resort, a young female journalist enters an exhibition with Tibetan relics. The visit triggers what appears to be an epileptic seizure. A monk present discovers a hidden language in her outbursts. Some messages are enigmatic, others down to Earth to prove authenticity. The two are Eva-Anna and Tashi.Some 32 years earlier in the Indian Himalayas: a Tibetan is on a secret mission under the alias of a monk. He too suffers from a seizure. A Western woman who wants to become a Buddhist monk likewise finds a meaning in the alleged epilepsy. They are Dorje and Jill.Rumours of the incidents reach a shady part of our world where too many economic strings are held by some faceless individuals.To them the idea of access to realms beyond the normal is tempting, to say the least. Or devastating. The same goes for an eccentric Tibetan lama who tries to undermine the rules of evolution.Caught by situations so contrary to common sense and science, where do Eva-Anna, Tashi, Dorje and Jill put their loyalties? It's about love, greed and a rip in the illusion of time and space.

Sujets

• Thriller

Informations

• Publié par: Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd
• Date de parution: 30 novembre 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781398458321
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

W ho i s M ango C hutney?
Bo Gregner
Austin Macauley Publishers
2022-11-30
Who is Mango Chutney? About the Author Dedication Copyright Information © Acknowledgement Chapter 1: Summer 2001, Bohuslän, Swedish West Coast Chapter 2: Summer 1969, Himachal Pradesh, India Chapter 3: Year 1969, India Chapter 4: Year 1969, India Chapter 5: Back to Summer 2001 in Bohuslän, Sweden Chapter 6: Back to the Year 1969, India Chapter 7: Year 1969, India Chapter 8: Year 1969, India Chapter 9: Year 2001, Bohuslän, Swedish West Coast Chapter 10: Year 2001, Bohuslän Chapter 11: Year 1969, India Chapter 12: Year 1969, India Chapter 13: Year 1969, India Chapter 14: Forward to year 2001, Bohuslän, Sweden Chapter 15: Year 2001, Bohuslän, Sweden Chapter 16: Still Year 2001 Chapter 17: Year 1969, India Chapter 18: Year 2001, Bohuslän Chapter 19: Same Summer 2001 but in North India Chapter 20: Still Year 2001, Strand Chapter 21: Year 1969, India Chapter 22: Year 2001, Sweden Epilogue
About the Author
Born in Sweden, Bo Gregner has travelled Asia and the Middle East as a journalist, photographer and filmmaker. With a background in national news media, his stories have stretched from security issues to human touch. Though, while covering politics and economics, he discovered that issues were sometimes influenced by less obvious energies. In order to stay true, he decided to abandon the news stage in favour of fiction. Bo shares his time between Sweden and the UK.
Dedication
For Penny
Copyright Information ©
Bo Gregner 2022
The right of Bo Gregner to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.
Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
ISBN 9781398458314 (Paperback)
ISBN 9781398458321 (ePub e-book)
www.austinmacauley.com
First Published 2022
Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd ®
1 Canada Square
Canary Wharf
London
E14 5AA
Acknowledgement
I want to thank all people who have been instrumental in bringing this book to publication, among them the late Lama Lobsang Dharjy, who put me on track, and above all, my dear Penny, who helped me to stay on track.
Any similarities with now living or deceased individuals and their actions might be a coincidence.
Not based upon a true story but upon a myriad of true story fragments.
Chapter 1

Summer 2001, Bohuslän, Swedish West Coast
A rhythm from somewhere was the first Eva-Anna Strid noted when she came to consciousness in a free fall from one reality into another. It was like reluctantly returning from a refuge. Memory of a vague rhythm had nothing to do with her heart rate.
Her next observation was floor. Hard and hot. A strong scent of detergent. And then again, there was the rhythm, though dissolving as her consciousness registered it. She had been surrounded by music, words and letters.
The air was stagnant. She didn’t want to be trapped in this straitjacket of the present holding her in a grip of senses. It was with great hesitation that she opened her eyes. Something red and yellow appeared under a blurry face.
“Hello? You! OK? Are you in pain? Hello! OK?”
She realised that everything unfolded from a floor perspective. The voice behind the flickering face expressed concern.
“You! What happened? Should I call for an ambulance? Are you OK? Hello!”
The face came nearer. It changed from an aquarelle display to contours. A young man about her own age but with dulled features and what appeared as a tan. Short black hair. Or a beard depending on what was up and down. Rough white teeth. Almond-shaped eyes looking into her own. An orange-coloured shirt and a burgundy something jacket. She remembered. He was a Tibetan monk. Relief. No matter what had happened; her brain was able to think that it could think. She was functioning and suddenly didn’t want to go back to that-whatever-else or to the rhythm or the music or the letters or what-it-was. Her journalistic instinct instead came up with two questions:
1) What had happened?
2) When, how and why?
The monk’s face hung over her as if held by an invisible thread. He continued to ask.
“You. Has this happened before? Have you ever had any seizure like this before? Epilepsy? Any memory of what happened? Any memory of what you said?”
Where were her glasses? A hand picked them up. She received them, pressed the stems behind her ears and saw lama Tashi Phuntsok in all his sharpness. A few curious bystanders left. Kind of a context became clear.
As a journalist she sometimes experimented with the motto, “Check out something that you are the least interested in!” Exactly! To kill time, she had entered the summer resort’s Culture Centre and ended up in a rather unlikely exhibition, Tibetan relics! How about that? The discovery had cheered her up because the idea was so absurd.
The hand lowered. A beautiful hand, she thought and took it.
“Thanks.”
Eva-Anna Strid got on her feet and brushed the dust off. So, what had happened? It was clear that she had fainted. But why then? She recalled an aimless roaming between the showcases. She had been surprised that they didn’t contain skeletal parts as expected. Instead, the visitors were confronted with a series of tiny objects reminding of pearls. She had strolled randomly and stopped in front of the text, “Unknown lama”; two beads on a pillow of burgundy velvet.
For some reason she had remained on that spot. Then a diffuse fatigue had overwhelmed her. Well, not so strange considering days of partying, the long journey and last but not the least a vibrating heat in this non-ventilated room. But then? What the heck had occurred?
She had lost all perception of reality as if one of the pearls had kidnapped the senses and shrunk her beyond its glimmering surface. The outside world had been replaced by an increasing white light. She recollected LSD trips, some years before, when fiction and reality had merged and turned out the same.
“You! Are you really OK? Remember anything? Nothing?”
The monk found himself a bit too close to the woman and backed-off with a shy smile. During the silence that followed, she could hear her voice utter two words without knowing from where they came.
“Mango chutney?”
“Pardon?”
“Mango chutney?”
Eva-Anna was as surprised herself as was Tashi. The words had appeared from nowhere in the shape of a question. She didn’t have a clue how it happened.
“Just something that showed up. Sorry. Simply not myself. A bit giddy or so, everything dizzy and so.”
She laughed.
“Mango chutney? A jam, isn’t it? Or?”
The monk nodded. He studied her intensively. She didn’t mind. Kind of relaxing. But what was wrong with his eyes or rather one of them? A shift? Well, the left eye was definitely as brown as one would expect, but the other one? A shimmering of blue within the brown? The man’s lips moved.
“Why did you say those words, mango chutney?”
“Forget it! I don’t know. Just happened.”
He switched tracks. “I’m Tashi, a Tibetan monk as you may have figured out.”
“Eva-Anna. Journalist.”
She was in Strand to cover the Swiss Watch Manufacturers’ conference “Purchase Triggering Sales Measures”, a workshop set to take off the next day at the Conference Hotel. She assumed that the clock guys had a different view on time than the monk in front of her. The thought caused a jolt on her lips. The monk gestured.
“You, Eva-Anna! Can I offer you a cup of tea or something? In the kitchenette here behind. I’ll close the exhibition anyhow. Sure you feel OK?”
“Oh, yes. I’m fine now.”
Which was generally speaking true. Here she was on the Swedish west coast, in an alleged tourist Paradise. After tomorrow’s gig with the clock people, she would enjoy a week or two of freedom to catch up with life. To help out awaited her best friend Tara who had a summer job at the resort. The plan was to relive mutual wild memories. Like before, the two 31-year-old women would drink themselves insanely intoxicated and dance with Godly men until the sun rose. About every night.
“Did you say yes to a cup of tea?”
Hell, she liked him! What was his version of the events?
The last visitors left the room. Tashi put up a sign “closed” and locked the door.
“You! Tea?” he asked a third time.
“Yeah! OK! Please!”
She looked around. The exhibition was rather modest. It was composed of a dozen white-coloured glassed cubes on stands arranged in a ring in the middle of the room. Behind glass were small, dark blue velvet pillows. On them rested the pearl-shaped relics that everything was all about.
Very neat. At some distance one could imagine the beads floating on light. Some shimmered in turquoise and pink, others were sparkling white. A few indicated enigmatic curved shapes. Others were pear-shaped or twisted as if they were in some sort of an ongoing process.
On their way to the galley, they passed the text “Shakyamuni Buddha”. She simply had to ask.
“Is this Buddha. I mean the real Buddha? From him so to say?”
“So says the tradition.”
Those relics, Tashi told, had been found 2,500 years ago right after Buddha’s cremation. Weird, she thought, recalling stories about the cross where Jesus was crucified. The alleged chips from that wood would be enough for a small forest in mankind’s insatiable need of myths.