The Rozabal Line (Revised Edition) (2007) (edit title/settings)

India Today, India's most widely read weekly news magazine ranked The Rozabal Line among the top five fiction bestsellers in India <2> According to Tehelka , The Rozabal Line is "a thriller that inquires into the controversial claim that Jesus Christ travelled to India and was buried in Kashmir’s Roza Bal tomb"<3>. The Hindu, one of India's National dailies, says that "The book deals in greater depth with the issue of Christ’s union with Mary Magdalene touched upon by The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown as well as incorporating postulates of several other books including Jesus Lived in India: Life Before and After the Crucifixion by Holger Kersten and Jesus Died In Kashmir: Jesus, Moses and The Ten Lost Tribes Of Israel by Andreas Kaiser"<4>.

The book also covers ground regarding the fact that Jesus sent St. Thomas, one of the 12 apostles to Kerala to preach there <5> The Rozabal Line kicks off with the theory that Yesu (or Jesus) may have fled Judea to study under Buddhist masters in India (the three wise men were Buddhist elders searching for a reincarnation in the manner that Dalai Lamas are searched for). It then goes one step further by building on Holger Kersten’s theory that Jesus did not die on the cross and that he was spirited away to safety by Essene monks. This foundation is used to build the storyline which goes something like this: Jesus returned to his spiritual home, India, and possibly married.

Fast-forward to the present day and we find a group of thirteen jihadis who are working under the protective umbrella of the Lashkar-e-Taiba. Although never stated directly, there are enough similarities between this group in the present day and Jesus and his 12 apostles two thousand years ago. One keeps wondering whether this group could possibly be the present-day descendant Jesus bloodline. While this group is working towards Armageddon, there is another group that is assisting them and, surprisingly, this is a Opus Dei inspired group called the Crux Decussata Permuta. Apparently, the two largest religions of the world, Christianity and Islam, had found it easier to cooperate with one another rather than to fight each other.

The logic for this is traced back to the first crusades in which Richard the Lionheart was defeated by Saladin the Great. Add to this cauldron, a Japanese assassin, America’s first woman President and a New York based Spiritual Healer, and you have the final twist in the tale, an unexpected ending that reveals the final answer at Vaishno Devi, one of the holiest shrines of the Hindus.