Soul Heist - The Missing Mentor

Chapter 21 - Mystic Paintings

Indira was still panting when Kurna rang the bell next to the monastery's archaic wooden door. She looked at Danian, who'd slumped against the stone wall, his face matching his crimson backpack. Their guide had suggested a quick detour to drop off the kids, Dote and Diki, at a friend's place who could look after them until someone found their parents. The ensuing several-hours-long trek had culminated in scaling a skyscraper made of granite. Kurna, self-proclaimed highlander, nimbly sprinted up the steep trail to a monastery that had been built a long time ago into the vertical cliff just under the looming ice-capped peak. At this isolated location, high up in the Himalayan mountains, Indira would have expected a monk or a farmer, maybe even a Gurkha soldier left behind from the spats with the English in the early 19th century, answering the door. Instead, an intercom hidden behind a copper doorbell screeched, and a female voice spoke in slightly accented English.

"Sorry, not interested in any more yak milk subscriptions. But thank you for making the journey."

Indira looked at Kurna, who returned her sceptical glance at first but couldn't hold his composure for long. It turned out his friend Maya hadn't lost her particular sense of humour despite her reverent age.

"Open the door for a friend almost as old as you," he shouted back through the intercom, then admitted to his fellow travellers that his math was likely far off—Maya was rumoured to be a shade short of 110 years.

"Not possible." Danian looked doubtful.

The next moment, red-faced as he was, Danian nevertheless managed to blush as a woman of an undiscernible age but certainly old, probably even ancient, and hardly taller than Dote, opened the door. She was smiling; her eyes were sharp, surrounded by more wrinkles than Indira had ever seen before. Kurna and Maya hugged each other for a lifetime before everyone else received the same heart-warming reception.

Indira, Danian, Kurna and the kids were sitting in Maya's cosy warm tearoom, which resembled any other tea house they'd stayed before with one notable exception: the catchy paintings. Their host rushed back and forth between them and the kitchen at speeds that stood in total contradiction to her biblical age. She whizzed past the pictures that hung on all three walls apart from the window front with tea and biscuits in her hands. Some displayed strangely familiar biological forms; others resembled Indian deities Indira vaguely remembered from bedtime stories her mother had read her as a child. A few were made up of strictly geometrical patterns. What all had in common was the palette of striking, exclusively neon colours. In the warm room light, they seemed to glow.

After some probing, Maya revealed the artist behind the mystic art was no one else but hers truly. "I'm painting next door."

"And you live here all by yourself?" Indira asked. 

Maya nodded with barely concealed delight. "I only use a handful of the rooms. The monks that had once lived here left about fifty years ago." With a cheeky smile, she proclaimed, "I've been squatting ever since."

"And the paintings? They're beautiful." Indira tilted her head.

"Thank you, honey. I've only started painting a few years ago. Getting the paint is a bit of a nightmare. And so expensive." Maya made a show of rubbing her thumb and index finger together. "That is why I have started renting out a room to visitors."

She pointed to a shelf with a variety of memorabilia that her guests had left behind, either as gifts for their caring hostess or simply forgotten. Maya's favourite was a small guitar, known as the charango in the Andean mountains, which a young trekker from Bolivia had brought halfway around the world.

Danian, however, seemed to have no eyes for the diminutive instrument. His gaze was glued to a painting that showed a woman in a lotus pose, her hands clasped above her head, with long orange hair like flames draped over her slender, naked body. The goddess had two perfectly cone-shaped breasts, a violet third eye in the centre of her forehead, and a near-hypnotic grip on her friend. Indira laughed inwardly. Boys will be boys!