Buddhas, Bombs and the Babu. Kerry Tolson

      Prologue

      A cold chill drowns me, sucking away breath, sweeping me into an abyss so deep, its ending too shocking to contemplate.

      Recklessly I run along the street, blinded by fear, consumed with madness, stumbling and careening, turning this way, spinning that way, frantically yelling, screaming his name.

      Where is he? Oh God, where is he?

      Onlookers stare, a bewildered glaze in their eyes. Some whisper, others laugh, a few point, many glance nervously.

      She’s possessed, they’re probably thinking. No one seems to comprehend the enormity of the situation. Why can’t I make them understand?

      Stumbling into a pothole, I grab the arm of a man to stop myself from falling face first into the dust. Elderly and bent from the weight of time, he recoils in horror as if a red-hot poker has seared his skin and scowls at me with piercingly dark eyes.

      ‘Have you seen a little boy?’ I ask, my voice wavering on the brink of hysteria. Roughly pulling his arm from my grasp, he lets forth a barrage of words, gobble-de-gook babble, meaningless to me. Throwing a dismissive hand at me, he hobbles off, leaning heavily on a thick crooked walking stick. Momentarily he stops and looks back. My heart skips, maybe he did understand. Does he know?

      ‘A little boy,’ I yell back to him. ‘Please, please, a little boy.’

      He shakes his head and waves, as if shooing me away. No, he hasn’t understood me at all.

      Spinning around, I narrowly miss colliding with a small blue motorbike. Its shrill horn penetrates my senses, wheeling me into a group of people grazing through a street stall filled with jewellery. I apologise and begin to say something about looking for a boy, but they ignore me. The trinkets are more important. More people come to the stall. There are people everywhere. The street is so crowded, it’s as if all twenty-two million who live in this country are here in this street, along with every single foreign tourist currently visiting. Masses and masses of people, and lost somewhere amongst them all is my little boy.

      Where has he gone? Who is he with? Which way should I go?

      I run to the end of the street, crowds become sparser, traffic less, and the noise dissipates. Behind me, the glow of trinket shops and café lights spills out to the street. Ahead, there is nothing but darkness. And silence. Somewhere beyond lay unforgiving mountains, plunging ravines and raging rivers. Had he come here? Had he gone out there?

      How had it come to this?

      Chapter One

      Shades of auburn, henna and caramel stretch across a parched terrain desperate for revitalising monsoonal rains, its contours scribbled with black ribbon roads, pitted by hillocks and drab woodland thickets. Cutting deeply through the bleakness, coursing towards the Bay of Bengal is the Ganges River, its dark mahogany waters feeding life-giving blood to the villages and townships that straddle its wide banks. A graffitied landscape peppered with clouds of factory smog, fusing into a dull brown haze that covers India. In the distance, shimmering against dusky blue skies emerges a band of the earth’s most precious gems, the Himalayas. Clouds bundle beneath the startling white peaks, shrouding their landmass, hiding our destination, building the anticipation of our first glimpse into an eternal kingdom: Nepal.

      Ding!

      ‘This is your captain speaking.’ A strong, clear voice comes over the loud speaker. I instantly picture the stereotypical pilot – dashing, chiselled jaw, thick black hair, long lashes – just like the chap from the Flight Centre ad, only younger.

      ‘I trust you are having a pleasant flight. We are making good time and will be landing five minutes early. If you look out to the right side, you will see a very clear view of the Himalayas. Feel free to get up and look across for the next ten minutes. We are flying at an altitude of…’

      Poof. The rest of the announcement disappears as a rush of blood and pounding heartbeat echoes in my ears. Horrified, I watch passengers on the left of the plane scramble across seats to catch a glimpse of the mountains.

      ‘Ohmigod! We’re gonna flip,’ I shriek. Forget dashing, the pilot’s a brainless dolt! Where’d he get his licence, from a packet of Aeroplane Jelly? Visions of the plane plunging, crashing wing first into the ground dance across my eyes. It’s taken a lot to physically place myself into this piece of flimsy aluminium tubing. The last thing I need is this.

      Necks craning, hands trying to get a steady hold, they lean across, all wanting to see the band’s crowning jewel, Mt Everest. There’s not enough room and in the pushing and shoving fray, I feel my hair caught in somebody’s

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