Who cares about Marina?

Marina* is our 'Cleaning lady,' an attractive, dark, late thirtyish Muslim woman, with a sweet and humble smile,  who glides around the place keeping things clean and silently goes away dressed in black. She is the only person in office who doesn't have her clique, dosnt eat with us at the lunch table, the usual office rules don't apply perhaps since she is considered  a 'menial', or uneducated...but she's used to that. She never fails to make a delicious wattalappan on Ramzan day, for the whole staff.

​

She is in her late thirties I imagine, and has a son​, who is the most important person in her life​

. The main people in her life are her son and her sister, who is the only sibling. This sister has a son, and this tiny family have only each other.  14 years ago, her husband and her sister's husband were caught in a train accident, while going in her husbands three-wheeler, to distribute wattalapan on Ramzan day, I assume. Since then they have been widows, and in typical traditional style, they have lived to bring up their sons, without thinking about themselves. They live on two sides of a road, but at dinner time Marinas sister and son come to her dwelling and have dinner and watch TV, and they do their homework together. That wont happen anymore.

Some mahattayas from the government are asking  Marina and her sister to leave their homes and say they are giving them "high rise apartments" instead. This sounds nice on the surface of it. Except that…Marina has to give up her home, for which she has deeds, and go to some strange place, and live on the third floor of a cramped apartment, and pay rent for it- for twenty years. A rent which will be about a fifth of her income. And her sister has to go and live in some other apartment in some other block, with strange neighbors and won't be able to walk over again to meet the only family she has.

And these apartments have rules. You cant hang clothes to dry, you cant keep rubbish outside the door, you cant make noises, you cant put the TV loudly, you cant put your kids outside, they have to be inside. Its not clear what happens if you break those rules. Its not clear what happens if you cant pay the rent

​, they were told they woud have to pay interest.

There are 35 houses to one floor, in the building Marina's sister has been sent to. You have to pay a deposit of 50,000/=  and you have to pay rent for 20 years, and only then will you get the deeds to these flats. Marina along with a number of other residents in her area have objected and filed a case against this.

"Why do we have to pay rent, this house is mine. I worked hard for this, for years in the Middle East. I don't want to go to a flat. I want my son to have a place to stay, what if something happens to me?  20 years is a long time. We have never asked anything from this government, not even a bag of rice, why are they making trouble for us?" asks Marina. Her sister has had to go, because she didn't have clear deeds to her house. She has borrowed the downpayment from loan sharks and has to pay a large interest for that too, on a monthly basis.

​According to Marina, a Chinese national visited the group of her neighbours in behalf of the donors ​and told them that they dont have to pay any money, the new flats have been a gift of a foreign government. However after the man went away, the government mahattayas again returned to talk about the payments. Marina's sister is not only terrified about the large loan she has to take and interest and rent she will have to pay, she worries about losing the only family she has.

"My sister dosnt even live at home, she works till late and she just comes home to sleep only. Now who will look after her son, when she is out?" Marina asks. Marina's sister has spent the last few days with her belongings  packed into cardboard boxes and plastic bags, crying almost continuously. Her teenage son will be torn from his familiar surroundings and left unsupervised in a high rise slum with every potential for trouble in future, while his widowed mother slaves at two jobs daily to pay rent and interest, for almost a third of a life time,  in the name of the beautification of Colombo.​

read more about forced evictions here 

http://www.cpalanka.org/forced-evictions-in-colombo-the-ugly-price-of-beautification/

​http://jdsrilanka.blogspot.com/2010/08/sri-lankan-government-to-evict-66000.html 

http://www.nation.lk/edition/breaking-news/item/24262-nation-expose-on-wanathamulla-residents-prompts-action.html​

http://jdsrilanka.blogspot.com/2010/08/sri-lanka-securing-city-by-evicting.html

​* Not her real name ​

Update February 20th 2015
I spoke to Marina this afternoon.
Unfortunately the change in Government was too late to save her sisters house. They have to live in a high rise building where 4 elevators service almost 400 apartments (the smell in the elevator is terrible she says, what with all the garbage too having to be brought down through it) There is no turning back as her house has been demolished and she did not get any compensation or rights to the land.

A complex Asian funeral rite...and death in Sri Lanka

 

C Gadiewasam.

 

Death is a great leveller, they do say. Meaning that whether you are rich or poor, ugly or beautiful, good or nasty everyone gets to die at some point in their lives. Oddly enough that's just when people start being honestly religious, including the dying person invariably and their friends, relations and neighbors. Your author just recently got to know the extent of some religosity by analysing the amount of sheer drinking and serious gambling that goes on at latterday Sinhala "Buddhist" funerals in a more  recent development of tradition, but that is just too unsavory to go into here even on this undead page. Instead we will just talk about bodies and spirits and dead things, as per custom with your friendly book-of-the-undead.

In some countries in Asia would you believe it, water buffaloes really get the bad end of the deal,  and depending on how rich the dying person was a lot of buffaloes get sacrificed, so as to help that person go to the after life ie"Puya"– that's what they claim, but Im not sure how that would help me, Id just be uncomfortable with the sheer size of these creatures and prefer if they were allowed to live in peace and muck about, since they seem to enjoy it and harm no one. Plus I hear they are actually quite expensive. This water buffalo slaughter is a practice carried out by about  650,000 members of the "Toraja nation" living in the mountains of south Sulawesi, an island located in Indonesia. The Toraja really know how to make festivities last, and a good sized funeral which begins with a large scale buffalo slaughter, out on the fields, can actually last for MONTHs if not years. I hope Sri Lankans don't get any ideas,  because I know some of my neighbors did try to come close last year, with practically more than a week of noisy overnight chatting, drinking and playing carrom and booruwa, plus they blocked the road to our houses which seems like another of those traditions about death that is calmly accepted. In fact, in most places if you are dead, it appears you really can get away with murder and other general breaches of peace which should need police permission in other cases…

Coming back to the Taroja, they start the dead ceremony in a large field where they have actually arranged camping out, and there the buffaloes are going to be killed, camping makes sense I guess since this ritual is going to take time and its great that they select some far away field to do this in;  unlike my neighbours who have their rituals in the house nextdoor and don't let us sleep for the better part of a week.  The Taroja ritual also involves killing lots of  pigs, not necessarily because they would as in the case of the buffaloe, help the deceased reach a place called puya, but more because they are tasty I suspect. Puya is the ideal place to be for a dead Tarojan, if you don't reach this place and you get lost along the way , tough luck; although I personally wonder how some dumb buffaloes who have their necks sliced can possibly help you get there. Read more about the Taroja at http://www.tourismjournal.net/toraja-land.html or at Wikipedia which says: Torajans believe that the deceased will need the buffalo to make the journey and that they will be quicker to arrive at Puya if they have many buffalo. Slaughtering many waterbuffalo and hundreds of pigs using a machete is the climax of the elaborate death feast, with dancing and music and young boys who catch spurting blood in long bamboo tubes. Some of the slaughtered animals are given by guests as "gifts", which are carefully noted because they will be considered debts of the deceased's family.However, a cockfight, known as bulangan londong, is an integral part of the ceremony.

Well, Im an animal rights supporter and I don't like these ideas one bit.

Oh yes, a final gruesome bit of information I found "the dead are removed from their tombs to replace their clothing each year" just freaky. I wonder how family members get selected to carry out this scary and smelly task. So the next time you feel annoyed at being asked to take out the trash, please think about this ritual.

 

Sri Lankan death rituals involve, thankfully, no obvious slaughter (and no fraternizing with dead bodies after they are hygenically disposed of). High ranking Buddhist monks are invited and given meals, and clothing, and are supposed to chant a lot of prayers so that the deceased can feel comforted and everyone else can meditate on how impermanent life is. The dead body, or person, is not left alone but someone has to sit with the corpse throughout the night every day, until it is buried or more likely cremated. All the photographs of people on the walls are turned away from us and made to face the wall so that the dead persons spirit cant posses anyone. The body or dead person is also called kili which means unclean. Well, I agree since it is decomposing. Kili attracts more undead spirits[1] who hang around making a funeral house a really undead-infested place to stay. Im not sure how that last corpse-minding person feels like in this case, but at the same time hardly ever are any real manifestations of ghosts or undead noticed at funeral houses. This could be because there are crowds of people anyway and holman don't manifest in crowds.

Finally another rather odd bit of ceremony is when, just at the end of the vigil, and before they take the dead body away to be dealt with, the entire house is closed up with the corpse inside. This is supposedly so that all the various spirits and undead things can actually swarm around the corpse and hang on to it when it is taken out, without remaining inside the house. Nasty and selfish if you ask me! That being done the deceased is carried out head first (or backwards) so that s/he cannot remember the way back into the house. This is extremely silly if you ask me because even if one was carried out upside down with ones head in a paperbag they would still likely remember their way home, if that was the last thing they did remember. (Comeon, have you thought about it ?)

Anyway these delightful practices are rituals that have gone on for hundreds of years and don't look like they will fade for a hundred more so lets have a moment of silence for the dead in Sri Lanka.

---

[1] This is apart from the distilled spirits which are imbibed practically by the barrel in time with the illegal gambling that goes on behind doors but Im not supposed to talk about this as it's a bad example to young people. I m not supposed to talk about it but some people keep doing it, which is called "hypocrisy." If you feel that my talking about it has made you interested in this subject please visit the website of exemplary organisations like ADIC (http://www.adicsrilanka.org/)  which are trying to fight this useless, destructive and anti Buddhist habit. 

​

ALIENS VS PARASITES: Fiery Serpents from Hell

If you think that vampires, ghouls and slithery things are creepy and scary this story is going to give you the shivers for some time to come, mostly because it’s not a legend but factually correct! Today’s narrative is about a creature called the guinea worm, which though that name sounds quite tame, is in fact one of the most horrible ways to suffer and sometimes die, in the tropics. See, from ghouls and vampires you can run, but this creature, much like those hideous internal parasites in Aliens Vs Predators, actually lives inside your body and moves around like a flesh eating train inside your system! And there is no way of getting it out, not even extensive surgery, because if you damage the worm and it dies it becomes septic and poisons you! The pain of the worm travelling around has been described as similar to being on fire, which is why the ancient Israelites called it a Fiery Serpent from Hell, although it is known by scientists as Dracunculus medinensis. The name dracunculiasis is from Latin and actually means  "afflicted with little dragons” and this disease has been known since ancient times and is mentioned in a very old Egyptian papyrus called the Ebers Papyrus as long ago  as around 1550 BC.

Out of all the animals in the world, guinea worms only infect humans. The worms are small, about one to two mm wide but quite long, maybe 60 – 100 centimetres long, and outside humans the eggs can only survive up to three weeks without a human host! They have to be eaten by water fleas (microscopic anthropods)  before they get into a human body and then they can survive inside the water flea for about four months.

Unfortunately in poor areas of Africa, local people have a tendency of unsuspectingly drinking water from streams and rivers without boiling or filtering it; the water fleas are so tiny and microscopic that people swallow them too. Once they reach the stomach, our stomach acids dissolve the water-fleas but not the guniea worm larvae because those are so tough, they can survive fine inside human beings, even in our acidic tummies.  These worm larvae are fine and grow in size for about three months, and even mate inside the human body, after which the female grows even bigger and starts to eat and tunnel her way through the persons flesh, towards his/her legs. What happens next is quite gruesome. The worm eats a hole in your leg, which is basically a rotting wound which becomes a very painful ulcer, so that she can stick her back out and lay eggs  whenever the ulcer is placed in water. Meanwhile the pain is so unbearable, like being on fire, that people by instinct want to put their legs in water, and then, with the drop in temperature the worm  quickly releases a cloud of her young contaminating the drinking water. The wound which does not heal due to the secretions from the worm, allows bacteria into the body and can result in death if left  untreated due to a condition called septicemia, which happens if decaying matter is kept within the human body.

Now guinea worms just tend to head for the legs, but not always. There is no gurantee that one might not migrate to your eye, or your face or even your private parts. Either way the common agreement is that the pain is incredible. Not just because something is eating its way through your flesh, but it secretes acidic fluids that cause ulceration and necrosis of human tissue. Just imagine a claustrophobic hell when something is eating you like this from inside and you cant get rid of it ! Surely this is a punishment straight out of hell!

Now the only way to even begin to treat this is to actually grab the female while she is extended out of the ulcer under water (ugh!!). You then have to very slowly pull at it,  being very careful not to break the worm which would result in all hell breaking lose, literally as it would poison you inside! So while gently easing the worm out, you rolled onto a small stick, which could be the basis for the coiled ‘serpent.'symbol. Remember that the whole process hurts terribly and there is no way to escape from it!

You have to have patience, and you can only pull the out the worm at the rate of  a few excruciating centimeters per day. This may take weeks or even months. During this whole time, the person is not able to work or take care of their children and can hardly walk or talk but must spend their time in hellish pain.

There is only one good point to this whole story and that is to note that the World Health Organisation has been valiantly fighting Guinea Worm Disease for years by creating awareness in affected regions on the importance of boiling or filtering water, and therefore this may be the first parasitic disease that is eradicated in the world: numbers of suffers have declined from millions in 1986 to only about 148 people last year, and it is expected that 2015 will see a complete eradication of this parasite from hell.

So now you know ! And, even if we don’t live in areas where such a freak does, isn’t that something we should be thankful for?

MY TWO SWEETEST GUYS IN ALL THE WORLD

And so by strange and wonderful coincidence the two sweetest guys in my life were born on the same day….although, eighteen years apart. In families I have heard that this happens quite often but  no one can really explain , how out of three hundred and sixty five to chose from, my tiny son decided to take his first deep breath of air, on my brother’s birthday …amazingly these two resemble each other too and would have looked almost like twins at the same age, tall, fair skinned , gangly and knobby jointed, with spiky hair, and sticking out ears…

 

The first thing I remember long ago about my kid brother was soft flannel , a sweet milky baby powdery smell and a cherubic face in a woolly cap; and then as now, an overwhelming sense of pride and protectiveness in possession of such a kid brother ….. (not that they will allow themselves to be protected by us). My son too is the kid brother of his elder sister and in this wherever they go in life they will have a loving and concerned mother substitute , even if we do occasionally boss them to distraction…

 

I called my brother  Malli or Malls, and that somehow shortened into Mouse and that stayed, although the man is now unpredictably, a slightly overweight six footer. You will find his character in many of my stories, if and when some day you read them. In the American TV series MONK,( which I have had nothing to do in producing,) we find a lot of Monk’s gentle phobias and eccentricities in Mouse, but he wont admit to any of them. His can best be described as a very naughty and tech savvy  Ghandi who in interested in power phones…

Apart from being a cleanliness freak, he is very soft spoken, a pacifist and a vegetarian and very very talented with computers and machines. He also finds himself owned and controlled by the pitiable stray cats  he rescues and brings home, with apologetic sentences of introduction like “This one was eating cardboard ,” or “ someone had kept this thing under my wheel” and I am now sure that some of our neighbors simply keep their sad looking four legged rejects out on the road when he is due to take his daily trip out to the supermarket for fresh veggies…

Mouse is my first shoulder to cry on and now has got so good at counseling me that I have told him I will buy him a couch and he can make it into a business.

Mouse’s amazing sense of humor and happy go lucky attitude on life has taken me, time and time again out of the desperate problems I thought had when I was trapped in an unhappy marriage – he has admittedly, although he probably does not know this, saved me time and time again from the brink of self made pits of despair, and put in the time and energy to drag me back to the cheery character I usually portray.

He has also tolerated with long suffering patience, being my literary punching bag, when I’m angry at life and circumstances, but he withstands this with amazing grace, which I hardly ever think I will be able to thank him for.

Mouse has an answer for anything and often since it is not the one you expected , you take a step back and start thinking beyond the box. He dosnt believe in silly Sri Lankanisms like bogusly  calling people machang or constantly showing off your material possessions, or boasting about what you can do , even when you cant. He dosnt go out to work because “its dangerous and polluted and there are crafty people out there waiting to relieve me of my cash,” but he works in the basement and loves staying at home

…and Mouse cooks .

 

Mouse may in some cases be the reason my family is alive and fairly coherent. When he was due to be born we were living in Uganda and this was a couple of months before its dictator Idi Amin decided that he hated Asians[1] and to throw them out, with all its accompanying savagery. Ugandan hospitals did not have the best reputations those days so our family doctor had recommended my mother travel to Kenya for the confinement which was ok with my father’s employer as he had offices all over Africa. We escaped the chaos and bloodshed with a space of a few weeks and settled in comparatively calmer Kenya, although that country too has never been without the potential for disconcertingly sudden explosions of violence.

 

My darling son Hishy , the little man in my life was born on this shared birthday 11 years ago, and of this wonderful day I remember walking about the house extremely pregnant and heavy and feeling rather entranced by the pains which were not due for two weeks,- I had been  wondering how to set about making my brother and his friends a Birthday Lunch…around ten o clock when I was wondering if I should actually start dismembering a chicken, I decided to go to the nursing home and have my “gas” pains analysed , and then I decided to stay and walk about and read magazines, but  then almost to my own surprise I had a baby. And a sweet smelling bright eyed round faced little angel he was and always will be, although of course, just like his uncle was at that age, he is a mass of long bones and joints and spikey hair at the moment ….

 

Unlike my quiet , book loving daughter, my Hishy is an out-doorsy man, and  he has a wonderful sense of making adventure whether it is among trees,(when we dig for the bones of dead fossils in the back yard)  on my bike, (when we have to go through puddles to see how high the mud will fly ) or at home in the kitchen, cutting beans ( searching for the furry green caterpillars that sometimes surprise us and make me scream and jump about to his amusement) or in finding new ways to make us fruit drinks (with very strange ingredients )…he is a budding scientist and  I know he will not be one of those people who follow the herd.

Hishy needs answers and wont accept anything simply because it’s the done thing. If he wants a doll , and once long ago he did, he certainly wanted answers as to why it was only the small women who were encouraged to play with dolls. And if bats fly about at night , he wants to know why.

…Hishy cooks too.

 

Hishy and Mouse, the times they are a changing, and you are one year older, and I am glad to see you change with the times and yet remain the sweet guys you have always been. You  are both wonderful guys who I know I will have to sacrifice to pretty women some day, and all I can say to you is that if you treat them with respect they will make your life the most beautiful it has ever been. Remember the power in compromise, and remember that caring for someone transcends gender. The way to a woman’s heart is by helping her around the kitchen, by finding adventure in your  home, and .…. believe it or not, that’s a trick only the foreign guys seem to have figured out so far, and Sri Lankan blokes seem to view it very unmanly to be even seen anywhere near the pots or holding a broom…[2]

But luckily I know you both have got over that silly notion, for after all, if man can walk on the moon, why would he be afraid of the kitchen?

 

Then, since I have run out of space in my page, let me cut out the old-matronly cackle and proceed to wish you both: wonderful times ahead, love, peace and good health and most of all may you always have each other to count on, as a very special uncle and nephew and good friends always. HAPPY BIRTHDAYS to you!  

 

---

[1] This was all because of a pretty Indian Lady who prudently would not accept his marriage proposal. We understand why she couldn’t considering he was a man who liked to keep the heads, livers and other smaller pieces  of people he disagreed with in his fridge. But alas due to her successful escape the rest of the Asians in Uganda had to pay. You can read more about this in my mothers “Nairobi Diaries” which I shall be typing soon.

[2] DHANES are the worst examples, aren’t they,  where you see the guys sitting about belching and the women have to clean up…and this was supposed to be a charitable act but its actually slave labor for the women!

Escape to Karandulena

Escape to Karandulena

C Gadiewasam /Pix by Nalaka Priyadharshana

 

 

What do you find relaxing and healing to the soul? Some young people try chatting, gaming, watching television or even getting wasted, but to one young accountant, Nalaka Priyadharshana, who works at a busy local non profit organization, a truly healing escape is losing himself in the wilderness, at least once in two or three months and disappearing deep into the rainforests of Sri Lanka for a couple of days.

 

"These are places you won't hear any of the sounds of civilization, you can get away from the crowds, horns, arguments  and selfishness of human beings,  this is truly another world' he says about his recent escape to Suriyawewa, Ambilipitya  in the Hambantota District . " Here, its just you and the universe."

 

 

Nalaka and a group of friends and colleagues found a different way to  recharge their spiritual batteries.  They spent two weeks, last month in a secluded rock temple hermitage called Karandulena, a team of more than a dozen young urban professionals, truly living close to nature and working for a good cause, which was to build a small meditation room for the jungle dwelling hermit monks. After being trapped in spreadsheets and deadlines this is Nalaka's idea of a true green escape.

 

"This was a complete and amazing change from our usual day-to-day grind,' he says "We carried rocks, bricks and bags of sand and cement to the top of a hill, working like actual slaves. After a few days we were in some serious pain from the unaccustomed work. Accountants, lawyers, doctors etc, who usually hardly even walk for exercise and live their lives in electronic cubicles, shed all the artificial differences of class or profession and came together as a team of well wishers who united for a cause and also reconnected with their humanity.  

"At the same time, the change, the being close to nature, the beauty of our surroundings leading to the soothing of our minds can hardly be described. We ate simple food we cooked on wood(dara)  fires, you know, you take some parrippu and some karapincha, and a salmon tin and some onions - its like those days when we were kids with sellum bath( pretend cooking) and the fare after all the hard work had an incredible taste, when you are truly tired and hungry

 

"This experience brought out the beauty in the mundane. After trekking up and down this hill thirsty and suffering, you drink a little crystal clean water from a hillside stream it is like the most wonderful beverage ever," he says, recounting the incredible experience with nature and with the monks who live a much more disciplined and quiet life, than their city counterparts. True  Buddhism is a gentle, quiet philosophy of selflessness, which gives a great deal of respect to nature, and does not harm animals or trees, or seek material possessions, therefore showing the ideal path to counteract an increasingly consumerist world.

" Compared to the city monks who are more about preaching Buddhism and promoting it, the forest monks are more about practicing and living  true  and pure Buddhism, themselves.  Every night we were attended  a meditation class which taught us the true essence of the doctrine and also proper ways of relaxation that no modern technology can ever give us."

 

Finally at the end of the day, on top of the hill, in an out door camp, you should try to lie on the surface of a large flat rock,  still gently warm, under the cool stars. It is then that you understand how small you are and how small your worries are in contrast with the infinite universe which you see twinkling down at you, suffusing you with an incredible sense of peace.

 

……………………………………

Email greenteensceylon@gmail.com and tell us about any recent green escapes youd like to share.

hey, guys its me...Literally speaking.

Not bad no, I finally got my mugh in the paper, after about 5 years of writing articles

Mom was like " haarney dad, look will you, its someone just like our duwa" and then dad goes " hrrrmpph, what are you talking it IS her...read the name, will you..."

one of those days that make it all seem worthwhile :-)

WATER IN MY GRAVE and other horror stories from Sri Lanka

More info in Sunday Times
LIKE Water in My Grave on Facebook
Available at all Vijitha Yapa Outlets
and at Books.lk

Marrying Mom

Seriously fun! Totally recommend it if you want to find yourself LOLing!

A wickedly funny comedy of New York life and love, from the

seriously stylish,

bestselling author of The First Wives Club and Bestseller. She's the despair of her family, she tries to run their lives, and she just won't act her age. In fact there's only one way to get Mom out of her children's hair... When Phyllis Geronomous decides that retirement in Florida is not for her and moves back to the Big Apple, her three grown-up children are horrified. Sigourney is a successful stockbroker and a control freak, Sharon has two young children and a troubled marriage, while Bruce, the baby of the family, is finally feeling comfortable about having a significant other called Todd. They just can't let crazy Phyllis ruin their lives all over again. Murder is out purely for practical reasons. Only Sigourney has the ideal solution: they'll marry Mom off, and then she'll be someone else's problem. But where are they going to find a deaf, dumb, old, blind, and, above all, rich groom?

HOW I BOUGHT A HAUNTED HOUSE

I do hate it when visitors wake me from an afternoon siesta, don't you?

Youre sticky and groggy and you don't know what kind of nightmare it was that you were having and are going to have except that it isnt night, it is the blazing humid tropical equatorial afternoon and you honestly wish you could die rather that face people. 

Ceiling or table fans are just no use. Your brain is fried, and next your eyeballs and you cant even make sense of what people are saying. Your dehydrated gut craves caffine even though you know that will raise your body tempreature by another Celsius or so

This time was no exception and whats worse was the very worried look on my mother-in-law's face, as she peered around my door curtain.

" there are some people here to meet you, and they don't look happy' she said gently.

Which was an understatement – they looked furious, the whole tribe of them, I couldn't remember who these people even were except that I seemed to have done some business with one of them sometime back, but where on earth had they got so many damn backups from ? there seemed to be old people, young people, young mothers, offspring – an entire blooming clan.

I raked my groggy caffine starved mind for any idea of what I could have done wrong to them, because they had faces that were completely synchronised in how they seemed to hate me. 

It had to be one of the properties I had sold sometime back at the start of my forey into the real estate business. There must be something wrong with the deed or something, but then I was completely immune from that sort of thing having carefully drafted a brokerage contract which limited my liability for any subsequent problems which I could not possibly have found out following a reasonable investigation into the background of the place…

I liked to think that unlike tuk tuk drivers I was doing the land brokering business with a sense of ethnics as well as reasonable standard of professionalism. I actually earned my commissions.

"Take it back! It has problems !you are responsible. You said this was a good place, you recommended it " said the wife of the podgy young man who had done the deal with me – I groped among my turgid afternoon drowsy brain cells for his name. It had been Nuwan. He looked like a Nuwan, or a Lahiru or a Sumith- don't you know the kind who has a three wheeler but does other things, trafficking sort of things.   Typically he was being relatively soft spoken and it was his wife who was honestly scaring me now, with the rough way she was handling her squalling new born looing infant while she tried simultanously to shut it up, and to scream at me. I had to sit down to think hard. This was becoming a daylight nightmare.

"Can we discuss this reasonably without disturbing my parents and the neighbours please ?"I asked groping for time.

"Yes we came  here to disturb people. You can pretend to be all civilised. Do you know what you did ?" she howled whilst her chubby hairy thug husband made a charming pretend show of trying to tell her to slow down or pipe down.

"I did not carry out this deal with you, please may I speak to the relevant person," I said politely since anything would have been better than dealing with this female; possibly post partum stress was making her this way, new mothers had some strange hormone issues I hear. I turned to Nuwan (or Lahiru or whoever)-who continued

  " the house, is haunted we there are problems there from the first day – that is why it has been cheap –"yes it blXXXy well was cheap it was 7 laks and that's blxxxy cheap for a two storey house in Sri Lanka, what did they expect for that price ? you cant even build a garage for that amount these days can you? " you have to take it back, we cant live there, you have to give us the money" Hold on a minute, that was not part of the agreement -

" I don't have the money . I got a regular commission remember, you will have to contact the previous oweners and Im not sure that –  " The whole family started bablling at once and it had a decidedly hostile tone to it . They clearly held me responsible for what ever misery happening in that darned place. I wracked my afternoon dozey brain for a recollection of the actual propertly and remembered the day I had gone over to see it . It had been beautiful and yes you couldn't believe that it would be available for 7 lakhs. It was on 15 perches of land to start with so realistically the land value itself in that area was almost 2 laks. Then the house was good, nothing SPECIAL nothing crazy but it was a good house. I had haggled with the owner and brought it down to 6. Which alone should have warned me that there was something really wrong. You cant build a barn with 6 lakhs in Sri Lanka. 

You had to travel in lazy village buses through lovely paddy fields and rubber plantations and this house  was near a tiny darling little stream, overlooking a paddy field …real Sri Lankan serandipity. The only feeling you got from the house was one of being charmed. It just didn't feel haunted.

" Wait a minute? YOU seriously believe this stuff?" I tried to appeal to the threewheel guys macho sense, and put him down a bit for beleiving silly stuff about spirits – I knew his kind and the only spirits they took seriously were the ones you get from Cargils in large crates on the days before Poya days etc. He evaded my parry and looked to his lactating wife for oral support –

you don't know the things that have happened to us , she bagan to screech and I wonderered how this man lived with her, let alone with the spectres supposedly haunting their  new house. You don't know how we are suffering the baby doesn't sleep cries all the time around 6 pm always ( its called colick you dumb lactating bovine, read more of Tharunee or something, I wanted to say- babies get gaseous in the) evenings. Some people should not be allowed to reproduce without a license!!!  ) and then there are sounds terrible sounds in our house (I understood- I was hearing one such just now) and the animals all died, our  pet love birds and the parrots they were valuable and the new persian cat we brought from the animal fair , she was inside the washing machine, dead ok that is really eww, you really should be more careful when you throw in the nappies, count them or something – and then mother fell down the front stairs and broke her hip- (ok THAT I just don't have a real  answer to, have you tried giving her Anelene -its good for the bones - ) "have you tried an excorcism?" I suggested reasonably.

There was another garbled babbling from lots of people including senior citizens,  speaking at once, and the answer seemed to revolve around how much capital they had acutally lost in the process of excorcism. I grinned as I imagined the local kattadi adds where they milked their clients dry based on how gullible they were. OK so that had been done.  

There was nothing for it but plan B

" Look I don't have to do this because its not my problem, but since I like the place myself I will offer you a deal. A very good deal, I must say. And I doing the best I can mind you. . ."

So that's how I bought a haunted house. And its been that way since then, because I didn't have time to visit the place. And Im not really bothered you know, because I believe that time heals everything. And the best thing, is that in the real estate sector- properties appreicate with time, whether they are haunted or not.

So if you are interested I have a lovely little house in Padukka, near a stream and Ill give it to you at cost, for just 8 lakhs. Send me an email. Seriously.

WALPURGISNACHT Having a devil of a time

Walpurgis Night, and the risks of being different

C Gadiewasam

April 30^th which fell last week, was although few modern people know about it, one of the biggest days in the calendar of the ancient witches of Europe in the Dark Ages; or that's what is claimed. It sits at  the exact opposite of Halloween or All Hollows Eve, which is October 31^st and six months away, and much better known the world over.

Witchcraft in Sri Lanka is not a domain of ugly old women, and in fact some of the best known and ' most effective" sorcery is attributed to witch doctors, kapuralas (attendants to the Gods, who actually know their language ) or kattadiyas/gurunanses (witch doctors/demon priests) as the case may be. In practice also, such people have always been held in great esteem and even if they are mostly confidence tricksters, they are paid vast amounts of money for an exorcism or a spell. ( Ive heard that a good one can cost upto USD 7000) So, in general,  Sri Lankan 'witches' have it lucky.

However at a certain time long ago in the history of ancient Europe a powerful hysteria went around among ordinary people who feared that certain women were in league with the devil and responsible for the death and destruction that befell either crops, farm animals,  families or entire towns and villages.  We now know that the Black Death or bubonic plague for just one example was caused by a regular microscopic germ that lived on the fleas on black rats, but in those superstitious and uncivilized times, people preferred to think that this was the work of the Devil and since he was unreachable in practice, they took out their frustrations on some ugly or quiet woman in the village.

Indeed the words 'witch hunt" even now means "searching out and deliberately harassing people considered unorthodox(or different) " in society. So basically this was a situation where no one could win in the end. If you were even marginally different you ran the risk of being accused of being in the league with the devil. You could be extra pretty, extra ugly, have a squint eye or a stutter or a baby brother who walked funny – and bingo you were targeted for torture, flaying(ripping your skin off), scourging(beating your skin off)  and execution at the stake(over a slow fire)!This means  whatever bad stuff that happened in the village like farmer Bills cow dying of foot rot, was your fault , you could be a witch!  But if you did not want to be different you had to agree with the crowd, and say that yes, the pretty girl up the street, or even your quiet aunt Sally with the three cats, had to be a witch. A truly horrible choice, again, because the results of such a conviction were not pretty. This was probably where they came up with the saying being "between the Devil and the deep blue sea"

And this persecution of women, was completely gender biased.  Women had been thought of for very long as inferior and common perception was that they were more susceptible to foolishness and sin. The Devil was a male personification of evil and would prefer female assistants. The prosecutors were mostly male, sometimes celibate, as affiliated to the Church and extremely sanctimonious in their accusations , indeed the more women they tortured and burnt, the more holy and virtuous they felt! Including a number of pretty village lasses who had rejected their advances. .. since there was no decent media or internet to correct the more absurd speculations made by people, the stories conjured up and recorded became quite wild indeed, limited only by the imagination of the scribes and citizens of the era.

So, coming back to April 30^th,  the eve of May Day was a date when the so called "Grand Sabbat" was held, which was considered the biggest festival of witches, involving anything from 10 to 10,000 invitees usually held in some Baltic forest high on a mountain called Brocken in North Central  Germany for example.

 The Devil appeared as a huge black bearded man, or a black goat (!?) or even a humongous toad… He sat on an ebony throne and his witches gathered around. There were the usual formalities such as initiation of intern witches and punishments for those who had not met regional disaster creation targets, and then everyone brought him presents (they had to be black in colour, so you need to try finding black food coloring if you want to take him a cake) . There was also an ultimate act called osculm infame, (which you can google and find the meaning of, if your parents allow you to do so.)

Finally the party, but since it was the sanctimonious and fun-hating religious paragons of the time reporting this, none of the food had any taste, and the participants were hungry anyway. (Something a bit like the pretas of the East who never enjoy their food or get satisfied no matter how much they eat.) And then there was dancing, around a bonfire or the Devil or a Maypole, or some kind of pillar, which lead to worse things. That's what they claim anyway. Who knows maybe they did have witches, or maybe bored groups of people who were somewhat different and needed a ball, what with all the death  and misery going on around; these were after all the Dark Ages!

Authors note: some of the best Hollywood fare around depicting this inglorious and ridiculous era, includes "Black Death" and "Season of the Witch", which you can view, again, if your parents allow you to do so, and if you don't mind being depressed to death.  On a happier note, "Walpurgisnach"is celebrated in a much more fun way by modern day Europeans who camp out, make bonfires and sing and dance the night away…

Ps- dig the artwork- Satyr type fellow is clearly loving it -

Lunch in Elephant Land

Introducing you to the modest Wanapetha "Resort" which is actually a restaurant, affording  tasty hygienic local fare, complete with the fried lake fish from the nearby reservoir . You can find this cute eatery on the Tanamalwila Road, next to the Udawalawe Police Station.( Colombo Monaragala Route, and there is a bus halt right nearby where the No 98 halts from Colombo) 
Adorable simplicity in eco-design more than makes up for the lack of luxury and the simple but delicious local fare, served out of clay pots, includes brown country rice, with favourites such as bitter gourd curry, winged beans and Murunga when its in season,and is absolutely welcome for a tired traveler.
Enjoy a breezy respite from the heat, within the eatery before you head back to elephant-land.

Undead Cadaver

The University  is such a beautiful place, sprawling acres of lawn and the most incredible trees and flowering plants, this looks like a little bit of some other country, maybe England…except of course you see the demurely dressed local girls, who are made to wear long skirts and till some time back were not allowed to wear jeans, for fear of being ragged. And there are occasional tropical plants too.

I don't know whose idea it was to come up with an exhibition of dead bodies, but some bright boy did and let me tell you it was a roaring, jam packed success. People, it seems, love to look at dead bodies. What else would make it that popular? I don't understand us people, its just like when there used to be a bomb blast and we would email around the photographs, or more recently, the mobile phone movies. I have to conclude that we are actually ghouls ourselves, admit it ?

In 2009  there was this 'dead body' exhibit and I remember joining a group of cousins and travelling all the way to beautiful Peradeniya to see this, at their urging of course, boys seem to enjoy being all macho around disgusting things. In fact one of our cousins was a medical student who was in charge of one of the sections of the bodies exhibit and he had managed to get us in without tickets, not that those were expensive really, but it was another element of fun to the boys.

The rooms of the exhibit area were jam packed, full of families, which made me really fear for the state of the Sri Lankan entertainment industry. The turn out was just way beyond any movie or drama launch or bridal fair! In spite of the smell! I mean I can remember that cloying truly sickening smell even now as I write this down, staying at the back of my nostrils and slowly draining like custard, down my retching throat! It was putrification, bowels, and lots and lots of preservative chemicals mixed in, a smell like no other and our rather amateur med student exhibitionists had taken no real pains to seal it away. Well I have to agree, it was a dead body exhibit so what else were the public supposed to expect anyway?

So here for those that dared, were laid out the very innards of our mortality. Slab upon slab of post mortem humans, people like you and me, who had previously laughed, cried, been angry jeolous, in love, but who were now past the expiry date and alas , not allowed some proper rest even then. Some of them were cut open with white and brown bones jutting out of gaping autopsy mutilations. Glistening organs were laid out in trays of thick brown fluid for those who wanted to study anatomy. Im pretty sure though that no one came here to figure out how their liver looked like because really who cares, and there is a reason these things are wrapped up in skin and never seen, and its because they are simply disgusting to look at. Our med student cousin however seemed to think different, and actually picked up a brown and black organ he said was the heart, which had been sliced down the middle and showed us some hedious hollow tubes which were main blood vessels of some kind. I really didn't want to know, that was their business. Some thick stinking fluid was leaking out of it as he prodded and his gloved fingers were coated in it, so we reminded him kindly to stay at away  from us. He was completely enchanted by his lecture and didn't notice that thick blobs of this stuff were splashing here and there as he spoke. I wondered rather dis-enchantedly,  if starry eyed lovers knew that this ghastly, putrid tangle of tubes was what they kept promising each other on Valentines day. 
There was also the "Cholesterol" exhibit, which was actually a very skinny young man who had died of a head injury and was thus headless,  but had very recently died, whom they had cut up to show the amount of fat in a human body. It was crazy. The fat was in thick bright yellow slabs like the ghee you see in supermarkets. I shut my eyes and imagined some overweight people I knew, possibly their innards were all buttercup yellow!
The most interesting was the criminal victim's area. These people unfortunately had no identity, no relations to claim them, no name; so they had been appropriated by the exhibition.  One of them was a completely dried out crusted rigid mummy of a skinny female corpse, which seemed to have been a burn victim and was curled into a fetal position and absolutely stuck in this rigor. Interestingly there was a britle white plaster like substance sticking to her limbs at various places.

"This one moves," said my cousin with a completely straight face, surprising me considerably since I could not dream of any situation in which this wood hard corpse could possibly move. The other fresh ones, yes, but this was as cold,hard  and brittle as a dried tree trunk  " In the morning she is in a different place. It has happened a number of  times. I have asked the Professor in charge we should really retire her. I think her spirit is very restless and it is here, unlike the others who have left and moved on. This one is spooky."

I gaped at him in awe. " You mean the other corpses are NOT spooky?" I asked
" No, not to us, we have an intuition about this, this is science, we don't think of it as dead people we think of it as so much meat, like when you are at butchers the way you think of a side of pork or chicken breasts. Or if you buy a handbag made of crocodile skin, its inanimate. But this corpse may be haunted. She was a murder victim you see,"
"What happened to her?"
"Her husband murdered her because he wanted another woman, and they hid the body by cementing a stove over her ; she was left there for 20 years as these two ate drank and were merry in her own home. Police and relatives were told she ran away…imagine what this poor woman had to go through. The body was only discovered 40 years later, when the man had perished, theoretically poisoned by his new wife, and she had then sold the house and gone away. Someone at the police morgue handed it over to the university since there was no one to claim the body. No rest for this poor woman, not in this life and not in this death. That's why I say this bit of corpse is haunted I think someone should say some prayers over her and cremate her. Before something bad happens."
As I think of that interesting exhibit, and our outstation trip, I do hope they have done so, because the thought of what that poor woman had to live with and the purgatory she suffered after her death is very sad indeed. Little wonder that particular cadaver was restless...

Place of Drying Skins

There is a beautiful stretch of country road, from Hanwalla to Seethawaka, in Sri Lanka as you head for cool Avisawella from Colombo .
Apart from the impossibly green paddy fields and divine river bathing spots, Seethawaka is also a land of rather gory Sinhala legend. The town Hanwalla itself has its name from "place of drying skins" and its probably not animal skins we are referring to here, as some of the old Sinhala conquerors were quite cruel. You can let your imagination take over! Another beautiful town, Labugama, was actually named when a prince once said something like " Oooh would you look at that, it looks like a pile of Labu fruits…" in reference to a large pile of the heads of enemy soldiers…and Seethawaka itself was the place of a famous battle of yore.
Among the reeds, on the side of the Kelani river you can also find the neglected, modest tomb of an ancient  Sinhala king of Seetawaka . Not only was he guilty of boiling a few holy monks in oil because he suspected one of having an affair with his queen, he also once played a trick on his harem and signalled from the battle field that he had lost the war and was dead. The distraught queens all jumped in the river and killed themselves, which must have left him rather numbed to say the least. His tomb is very discreete and has a sad little wooden stick fence round it so you cant imagine that this was a magestic conqueror and VIP personality of many hundreds of  years ago…
However the cool river lined A4 road is now peaceful, bordered by micro sized tea and rubber plantations, bamboo groves, and gorgeous little coconut leaf-thatched road side shacks selling boiled corn, clay items and fruits.
Hanwella has a couple of cute holiday spots like the Natures Resort Bungalow , an Eco Resort named Ambalama, and you can see waterfalls, lush green hills, paddy fields and cool rubber plantations as well as two beautiful reservoirs  which supply water to Colombo ..and so many country roads in paradise.

Make way for Curd & Treacle!

Theres a charming Sinhala saying that no matter how crowded a place is, when the King comes everyone has to give him space…you'll be tickled  to know that this is said in reference to that very Sri Lankan delicacy called buffaloe curd or "Mee Kiri" because no matter how sumptuously you may have feasted at a local festivity, and how full your tummy is, there is always room for a bit of curd & treacle! Its also called Dahi in India and it's a bit like Greek Yogurt they say, although I could not judge that ! Some do say that like the strongest addictions, it's an acquired taste, and personally Im such a fan that writing this blog is becoming difficult, without me wanting to run out and get some… but as a tip, the stuff sold in supermarkets is the sterile "official" version, whearas for the real smoky FLAVOUR of genuine Buffalo, nothing beats the "original" from villages in the  regions of Matara or Tissamaharama, in the South where wood fires are involved and this is made by traditional experts who have done this for generations! 

That leads to another saying about pushy go getter people who make things happen , which is "If he wants it he'll go to Matara to get his curd tonight!" which is all about the extent to which someone would go to get hold of the real deal… 

To make curd, buffalo milk is filtered and boiled, the scum is removed and it is cooled to room temperature. A few spoonfuls of a previous batch of curd are added and it is then mixed well and poured into clay pots.[1] Its eaten with kitul treacle, which is fruity sweet, which makes for a heavenly blend of tangy sour and nectar sweet, as well as a hypnotic mix of colors and textures! …and last but not least,what with traditional packaging is clay pots, and the buffaloes themselves living a comparatively contented lifestyle much of the time lazing deep in mud, which they definitely enjoy, Meekiri is perhaps more cruelty free and environment friendly than many other dairy products around! 

Well, Matara is rather far off, so for now we're going to have to be satisfied with photos of Colombo buffaloes, which, as you guessed, are a bit of a nuisance in traffic. But I do love it that you can see rather wild looking beasts  like this on your way to work on a Monday morning!

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[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_curd

Love your mother tongue - respect the other ones!

Love your mother tongue & respect the other ones!



 
Last month I visited Jaffna for the first time in my life, and wow what a lovely adventure!  I loved the different colours, the different clothes and the sights and fantastic vegetarian cooking, Ive hardly any words to describe how thrilled I was by this land that was so different and yet, our country. Sri Lanka is made beautiful by its diversity,  that is the very differences that make us who we are. Many of you who are reading this article will remember pretty much all your life there was this ethnic conflict/ civil war or whatever,  going on. There were bombs blowing up, Army checkpoints, and sad news on television, people dying and suffering and a general sense of worry. You didn't know if your parents would come back home at the end of the day, after going to work!! For our Tamil friends the situation was worse, they were treated with suspicion, and harassed every where they went in this country, of which they too are equally citizens. Well this ethnic conflict goes back a long way into the past before all the violence and revenge, and one of the reasons it actually started is that the powers that be those days were not sensitive to the rights of all citizens of this country. Thats what we need to understand you see, that all of us Sinhala, Tamil,Muslim Burger and various mixes in between, that this lovely island is ours to have and to hold together.
Let me start with the food for just one example, have you tasted delicious Pongal,  and do you remember the mouth watering sawans that our Muslim sisters send us after Ramadan, and how about those delightful creamy Bombay sweets? Then how about all the wonderful varied characters you meet in life? The different stories, dramas, songs we hear and the colourful festivals we celebrate here, along with so many public holidays...  these all originate from different cultures, and in Sri Lanka we are ever so lucky to have different ethnic communities on one island. But then why were we fighting? For the reasons you'd have to travel way back in history, which might be boring but I will explain it very briefly...some of the reasons are political, meaning people in high positions made unfair decisions, basically so that they could retain power!
One of these decisions was the "Sinhala Only policy" which was made in the late 1950s probably when your grandparents were young.
Now this had some pretty strange paragraphs  which we cant even begin to justify now since  most of the people who wrote it are not around, but basically it meant that all official work should be done in Sinhala and you have to pass Sinhala exams if you wanted to progress in life. This is one of the reasons English was given third place,and then  it wasnt taught for some time,  and now there are only few quality English teachers left in the country. This means that  Sri Lanka is once more in trouble, because when it tries to interact with the rest of the world, all communication is done in English, from scientific discovery to technological breakthroughs and tourism and internet communications - everything needs English
But lets think about the people in Sri Lanka first. We are all equally citizens of this country, Sinhala Tamil Muslim, Burgher or any Sri Lankan. We all live here and we work together to develop it , and we love this country . Being Sri Lankan means we have equal rights, no matter if we are rich or poor, or dark skinned or fair, short or tall, men or women and no matter whatever language we speak. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights,  starts by saying  All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.
The government later realized that this SInhala Only policy was not only being silly, but was causing real problems and making people hurt, so they updated it with new laws about language namely the Official Languages Act and various changes to the Constitution . The Constitution which is the Most Important Law of any country, in Sri Lanka now says that both Sinhala and Tamil are official languages  of Sri Lanka and so any Sri Lankan has a right to speak in those languages, and to get their official work done in that language. This means if you have a water bill, or if you want to apply for permission to build another room to your house, or if you want to register your marriage, basically any official kind of work, you should be able to carry this out in one of those "official" languages.
But do you know what? Yesterday I was sitting at the Central Bus halt in Fort at 7  in the evening, all tired and waiting for the bus to go home when I heard the announcements for the buses to Jaffna and Vanunia, and  they were all speaking in Sinhala. Can you imagine what a poor tired Tamil old lady would feel like if she was waiting for the bus to go to Jaffna and she did not understand Sinhala? She would probably miss the bus, and get into worse trouble don't you think? and what's even worse is that the huge neon lit signboard for the public toilets is in Sinhala and English only, so if you were an unfortunate Sri Lankan who didn't know Sinhala you would find it difficult to find the toilets , except perhaps for how smelly they are! Ok, Im joking, but then think about some serious sign, like something saying "THIS BRIDGE IS BROKEN.". What if you didn't see that sign because no one had bothered to write it in your language and then you went and got hurt? Actually it is the public duty according to the Law of the land, including the Constitution and some other important acts, like the Official Languages Act , that all public places should have notices, announcements, signboards and documentation in all three languages!
So  how about your National Identity card, how about the signboards on your road, or on the bus, or the signs in the public hospital in your area, or the instructions on how to get a blood test, or the directions on a box of heart pills?  Are they written in all three languages?  If not have you thought how unfair it is to some people who might know only one language?  I hope you will spot things like that and talk about it  next time you see them, because for sure something has to be done about them .
That way everyone can celebrate a spirit of respect and friendship and we can see a very beautiful future ahead of us, together in this lovely country.



"Progress in the North" Photo by Priyan Amarasingha

The Jeweled net of Indra

there are ―thousands...of suns, thousands of moons, thousands of continents...Anguttara Nikaya 1.227

In a tropical rain forest in Sri Lanka, a rare endangered yellow frog is discovered which unknown to anyone, may have the key to life in a parallel universe, and the saving of lives in this one.A Cosmic council of intelligent elders decides it may be necessary to commit murder to save its habitat. An unwilling, and unlikely assassin is selected, and activated.

Water in my grave

You hear from the news each day terrible crimes are committed, people like monsters killing other people,  sometimes for money or anger or jelously or to simply snatch a gold chain, and sometimes you cant even begin understand why. It seems like demons are possesing them and making them do things which cause tragedy and pain to even themselves too, because often they are caught and made to pay for their crimes, sooner or later . 

Recently prision staff in Anuradhapura reported a strange case of murder –suicide from inside the prision itself – two men who were caught for a terrible crime, of having abducted and killed a woman, had been arrested but on the third night one of them had strangled the other and then hung himself . What was amazing was that the one who had done this was the smaller and younger of the two and prision officials could never begin to understand how he had got the strenght and the ability to do this, but perhaps after you read the rest of the story you may understand.

This started with a pretty village woman called Seetha whose family worked in kilns, meaning they mined the mud near the Kelani river and shaped it into bricks which were burnt for sale. Their family had lots of land near the river and this had been their source of income for generations, although now the land was somewhat pockmarked with all the digging. 

Seethas husband was a succesful agriculturalist in other ways and planned the mining sometimes a year ahead and how he would roll that money into his other work and manage the income and expenditure for the year. In the year Im taking about his eldest daughter had just decided she wanted to do a rather expensive but well recognised Information Technology course in Colombo and he was trying to figure out how he should fund this.. 

He had one problem, the land that remained to be excavated in that area was some land which had remained with a good reason. His mother had told him long ago that she had some very bad dreams about a river spirit in the area, who had warned them not to dig that land. This warning had been given to him about 15-20 years ago when he was young and impressionable but in his middle age he had grown more cynical possibly because of boisterous friends of his,  and he felt that it was foolish to worry about this bad dream from long ago and more practical to go ahead with his plan of mining that area. 

So this year he dismissed the irrational fear from his mind and went ahead and told his crew to use the clay of the particular area for the next batch of bricks. About 12000 bricks could be made from this block which at the  current sale prices could comfortably see to his daughters education as well as about 6 installments to his tractor lease.

The process of shaping and burning that batch would take about 4 – 6 weeks and after the initial subconcious worries about his mothers warning, he actually forgot it completely as life seemed to go on fine. He was planning how to level the remaining land in this seciton and sell it for some final income.

One night though, as he had been feeling a bit feverish after working in the sun all day, he felt he could not do the final checking round and sent his wife to check the kiln instead. This was not a good idea. 

The family were startled horribly by the terrible screams of Seetha who came running back with her hair awry and her face distorted. Seetha could not even speak for a day or two afterwards, she had been shocked so badly by something she saw. She never did tell them what it was she had seen either but from that day onwards, she was never the same again, and began to behave in a very bizarre way.

Village folks concluded that she must have been possessed by the terrible and vengeful river spirit and lost her mind , but her husband took her to a psychiatrist in Colombo who gave her various lots of tablets and seemed to get her to function normally again. 

No matter how anyone asked,  she would not however tell of what she had seen that night, and it was to become clear that when the sedative effect of the pills faded, she was still possessed by the unspeakable madness that had caught hold of her that night alone in the kiln.

And in months to come, the nightmare was to take on new levels of horror.

To be continued

Stress proof your motherhood...

Life in this modern day and age has become such a relentless rat race that moms in particular, single and or working moms are likely to feel incredible levels of stress, in particular if you are trying to bring up small ones, manage a competitive stance on the career front and hold an important relationship together and sometimes do all of this without extended family support or a partners contribution. We all agree that mothers have so many responsibilities and so little time, so how do they cope? Remember stress will inevitably have its costs in the long run, where later you could get high blood pressure, diabetes, cholesterol and so on, and end up being a long term burden to the kids you love. In any case don't we all owe it to ourselves to be happy in our lives, not just slaves to the system in our own homes?

Having heard  popular complaints such as I don't remember the last time there was "me" time, why is it always me that has to do XYZ, Im such a bad mother Im fed up…we decided to interview a number of ladies on their ideas for how to stress proof motherhood..the ideas were surprisingly uniform!

On top of the list is Time Management- a valuable skill which we learn in the office place which can save us at home! Doing anything at the correct time is always a way of avoiding stress and aggravation, and if you need help in this, create a habit of making lists of things to do, with their deadlines.(hey modern phones are good at this with the little electronic beeps to remind you) Delegate anything that you can to your brood, because they have to learn, regardless of whether they are boys or girls,  they must be able to cope with the difficulties of modern life and what better a way than to train them early! Next comes Prioritizing. Do we really have to go to that cousins wedding, or birthday party or  is there a way we can politely and graciously decline and yet make our sincere best wishes clear? Days of shopping , fit ons , anxiety knocked off in one go(not to mention all that expense- you can use the money saved to send them an honestly useful gift!) . And if you are planning a party, think about your invitees, the simpler you make it the less stress there will be.  Perhaps you can insist on an informal location and informal clothes, instead of the usual showing off! Prioritizing applies at home too, don't obsess about cleanliness if it's at the expense of your temper, as long as the kids are happy and well fed who cares about a few dog hairs on the sofa…and the latest scientific findings are that pets are good for you too, just train them first. Take time to be thankful for the Special moments in life, like clean sun dried cotton laundry…watch an occasional comedy with the kids, taking the dog for a walk, teaching little ones how to grow tomatoes or make pol sambol, or going shopping or when your seven year old decides to make you some tea. Don't try be a perfectionist and DON'T agree to do too much, there are only so many hours in a day and you deserve some time for yourself too! Keeping yourself happy is NOT a CRIME, it is finally for the good of your child! In Austrailia, a lady called Amanda Cox, mother of three, has actually formed the Bad Mothers Club, where she and fellow "bad" mothers support each other over why they gave up in the race to become perfect .

Finally…one very important tip that I found from talking to my friends was "STOP LISTENING to people trying to judge you!" which is very true. People (ehem, women mostly) have a tendency to say mean little things like Oh how skinny your kid is…or such a pity she had to wear braces…or you should do this, you should not have done that. As long as your kids know you love them, and you know you are doing your best for them, do allow all those nosy old in law aunts to go fly kites.

image from http://www.everydaylifeandbalance.com/quick-tips-to-help-you-let-go-of-stress.html

Serendipity

Serendipity has always been one of my favourite words
For a long time I didnt know what it meant but associated it with eating Marie Biscuits and Ambul Kesel, on a quiet Balmy afternoon in my grandpas antique house in Unawatuna( those old houses with the fancy trelis work and wooden windows with bars across...and the doors are double doors with glazed windows in them...the cupboards are full of thick cotton sheets which smell of sunshine), with the rustling of coconut trees outside, and the distant sound of a fisherman on a bicycle saying maaalmaalohhh...and of course some friendly cat squeaking nearby...
His house had a dusty old attic full of olden novels, including a 1952 Famous Five book and one of the first editions of CS Lewis "The Magicians Uncle" which itself is about kids who discover a wardrobe which leads into a different world... for a loner  kid who loves to read, that attic was simply enchanting.
When I looked it up in the dictionary I believe I got it right perhaps by sheer instinct, because the attic was certainly a serendipitous discovery in serendipity...:-)

Photo: Sri Lanka Tourism website