The Flying Carpet

Friday, September 29, 2006

The Abhidhamma



One of my good friends Elizabeth has lived alone for years while moving from city to city. When I asked her how she always seemed to get a great social life going wherever she went, she told me to never turn down an invitation to anything. No matter if she thinks it sounds stupid, or even if she doesn’t like the person, she might meet someone else interesting. Prior to moving to Sri Lanka I had lived in Charlottesville, Virginia, for 10 years. I sat back and let the social life come to me. If I just returned emails and phone calls I had more than enough on my dance card. Once I got to Sri Lanka I remembered Elizabeth’s words. “It’s easy to just sit around your house in your sweats. Sometimes when someone calls, I don’t feel like going out. But I tell myself that if I go and don’t like it, I can leave. About 80% of the time I end up having a good time.”

One of Dan’s friends gave me the number of a British woman, Kathleen, a trailing spouse whose husband works for one of the NGO’s on the tea plantations. I went ahead and called her, introducing myself. We talked briefly and exchanged basic information. A few weeks later she called me back and invited me to dinner with her and her cousin Kristeen, another British woman in town for three months helping a Kandy NGO write a new business plan. I felt nervous about going out alone after dark to a new place. It would have been really easy to curl up in my sarong and watch American TV on DVD’s, but I remembered Elizabeth’s words and agreed to the dinner. I had Kathleen give directions to Dan over the phone since I was not familiar with her part of town. That night Dan called our usual driver, Manju, and gave him the directions in Sinhala. He told me later that he also told Manju to me careful with me, “she is my treasure.” It was practically the first time I had ever been in a three-wheeler alone.

Dinner turned out to be really fun and Dan and I have both been invited to a large lunch Kathleen is throwing this weekend. Kathleen also recommended her yoga teacher, Janaka, to me. “He’s very good, it’s like an hour of Kristeen and I screaming in pain, my housekeeper doesn’t know what to think” she told me laughing.
“Yes, he’s married to an English woman too, so he’s got a good cultural understanding,” Kristeen added. He sounded perfect to me, and I felt especially secure knowing that he was used to working with Western women. I took his card and called to arrange a time for the next week. On the phone he started to give me directions and I stopped him, “my driver doesn’t speak English,” I explained. “I’ll call tomorrow and you can explain to him.” Since Dan was back at the Panagoda base for the week I had to call my driver on my own to come over. I identified myself to him by saying “hello, this is the white lady,” in Sinhala. Once my other driver, Manju’s brother Kapila, came to the house I called Janaka to give directions to my driver in Sinhala.

Everything went smoothly and the yoga session was amazing. I have a strong practice on my own, but it is good to have a teacher to shake you out of the rut of poses you like to avoid. I learned some new tips on alignment and even learned a new yoga party-trick to impress the folks back home. While I was waiting for Kapila to return to pick me up, Janaka mentioned that on Wednesday night he and a friend were going to lead an Abhidhamma discussion the next night and invited me to attend. I had no idea what the Abhidhamma was, but I recognized the word “Dhamma” in there and remembered Elizabeth’s mantra, “Accept any invitation.”
“Ok,” I agreed, “but can you please give my driver directions before we leave so that I can get there?” I asked, feeling very clever that I had this thought out in advance. Janaka agreed and came up to the road when Kapila arrived. They began extensive discussion in Sinhala centered on Janaka drawing a map in the dirt of the road with his toe and adding progressively more and more detail. Once Kapila felt secure that he knew where we were going the next evening, he took one of Janaka’s cards and we left.

When Dan called to check in that night I told him that the yoga session had gone well and I was going to go to an Abhidhamma discussion the next night. He immediately started laughing.
“What?” I demanded, “What is the Adhidhamma anyway?”
“Well, you’ll see,” he told me, refusing to offer any more information.
“Well look,” I said defensively, “Even if it’s lame, I might meet some other people there to hang-out with.”
“Yeah, maybe it won’t be so bad,” Dan agreed disingenuously, I could almost hear him smirking. “Call me when you get home.”

Kapila arrived at the appointed time and took me straight to the house in one of the Kandy suburbs only asking for directions once. When I arrived at the house I immediately saw a white woman with a substantial un-repaired cleft palate, who I took to be Jananka’s wife, Billy. I introduced myself, trying not to stare at the cleft in her lip as she spoke with the typical muffled cleft-palate voice. I had only seen one other example of such a strong cleft palate without repair. In both my previous acquaintance and the woman before me, the deformity seemed to define the entire jaw and lower face with a narrowing of the teeth and jaw. As I studied her she continued to talk and led me inside. “Ranyan has quite a lot of experience in meditation and Abhidhamma,” she explained Janaka’s co-teacher to me. “He lived for years in America, and, um, now he’s back,” she finished brightly. Billy began introducing me to various children, two of hers about 4 and 7, and “we’ve got another on the way,” she commented, patting her just visible stomach happily. She also introduced me to Ranyan’s daughter, who looked about 12. Looking at Billy’s strawberry blonde hair and freckled face, and then back at her children who looked purely Sri Lankan, I contemplated how strange it must be for one’s children not to resemble one’s self at all.

After Billy left to organize the children I was left to move around the small house on my own. I gradually figured out that Ranyan had returned to Sri Lanka from America with his daughter to live with his mother. The old woman floated around the house, herding the three children I had met plus others into a side room. I could tell it was the old woman’s house. There was a huge Buddha shrine, an upright piano, an old family picture, and overstuffed tapestry pattern furniture. I saw no evidence of anyone who had been to America, let alone lived there. Wandering into the main room I sat down next to the only other participant, a Sri Lankan woman on one of the couches. I was opening my notebook as Ranyan walked into the room. He was wearing a special outfit of black linen shirt and pants with an enlongated white Chinese character set on the left chest. He took a seat at the front of the room next to a small dry-erase board. He looked different than most Sri Lankan men, who tend to be very lean. Even though he wasn’t fat per se, he had a slightly over-stuffed chipmunk look to his face. Jananka followed him, wearing a white shirt with a black appliqué dragon and a white longi. I almost failed to recognize him since he had shaved his thick hair from the day before, like a monk.

“Well,” Janaka began as Billy sat down on the floor and Ranyan began to study a book in Sinhala, “This is the first night we are doing this. Each lesson will build on the next one.”
“We are going to give you five questions that you are not going to be able to answer now, you will eventually” Ranyan began, “you aren’t meant to understand now,” he assured us, as he and Janaka exchanged a pleased look with each other. Ranyan then began to translate the five questions from some sort of Sinhala lesson book; it was obvious that he had no preparation whatsoever. I suspect that he was translating out of classical Sinhala, which is difficult for even the native speaker to bring into English. With difficulty he put forth the following five questions:

What are the four ultimate realities?

In which way is consciousness divided?

What is the sense sphere?

What are the five material sphere consciousnesses?

What is the super-mundane consciousness?

I realized that I had stumbled into the inaugural meeting of a Buddhist Adult Bible Study group. With frequent references to the Sinhala book Ranyan began to outline the Adhidamma’s structure and it’s place in the Pali Cannon of Buddhist works. The Adbidhamma is the third Pitika, or “basket” of the Pali Cannon. The first group is the teaching of the Buddha, the second is the rules for monks, and the Adhidhamma is an elaborate classification system that makes up the third. He continued translating from the book and when he paused for a long period of time, Janaka would fill in with some color commentary. Janaka never looked at a book; instead he told stories about flying Arhats and personal examples to illustrate points.

The lesson went basically as follows: within the Mundane Sphere exist 81 spheres divided up into 54 Sense Spheres, 15 Fine Material Spheres, and 12 Immaterial Spheres. Within the Sense Sphere there are 12 unwholesome modes, 18 rootless modes, and 24 beautiful modes. Within the unwholesome there are 8 kinds of greed, 2 types of hatred, and 2 types of confusion. Janaka encouraged us to look within ourselves and those around us for these roots of thought an action. Ranyan went on to explain that “all love is really a form of greed. All love, love of family, everything.” Janaka nodded his head in approval in full view of his pregnant wife. Both men had children in the room next door but exchanged pleased self-satisfied looks. “And that is why Buddhism is supposed to be taught by monks,” I could hear Dan saying in my head. I focused back on Janaka’s shaved head, wondering if he wanted to look and feel like a monk instead of the reality of his status as a young lay householder.

When I got home I called Dan when I was settled into bed. “Well, I learned a lot, just not what they wanted me to learn,” I told him. “I feel sad for myself that I cannot accept the religion of my host culture, Christianity. I don’t know if it is some sort of need to be different or what, but even as a young child in Sunday School it just never rang true for me. There are these guys with their Abhidhamma and then the old women you see doing puja at the bo tree and neither one of them relates at all to what I thought Buddhism was or what I want it to be,” I continued, referring to the rituals with milk and oil that people perform at sacred Bodhi trees for good fortune. “I mean, maybe if I was receiving this teaching from the Buddha himself, or maybe even a bodhisattva, maybe then it would be palatable,” I ranted on.
“What you have to understand about the Abhidamma is that it’s a systematization of everything to help Buddhist monks argue with that nasty Brahmin priest down the road or just with each other.” Dan replied. “These’re not the teachings of the Buddha; they’re by monks for monks so that everything is laid out. This stuff is really dry. I would never teach it, maybe to a few really enthusiastic upper level grad students, but really, there’s no point. You put it in the hands of some middle class Sri Lankans and they just want to feel clever talking about it. I’ve only known one teacher who could really bring it to life,” he explained.
“That makes sense,” I replied, calmer now. “I’ve heard you say that sort of thing before, but now it all comes together.”
“Alright, I’ve had a long day at the base. I’m sorry you had a boring night, but I’ll be home tomorrow and we can go over it some more if you want,” Dan replied, sensing that I was more relaxed.
“I’m tired too,” I replied, and we said our goodnights.

Tuesday, September 26, 2006

Not Handicapped Accessible









These are the steps down to our annex. The iron gate at the top is open and you might be able to see Dan in blue at the very top of the steps.

MarriageAds

All of the ads are reproduced exactly including creative spelling, punctuation, and capitalization, there is a code at the end of each ad for replies I have not reproduced, phone numbers and emails have been reproduced to illustrate trends.

After our Sunday run, one full lap around the Botanical Gardens this time, Dan and I bought the Sunday paper. After my shower I carried the nicely folder paper out onto the porch to destroy. The landlord’s dogs downstairs were barking more than usual, so I looked out over the second floor patio wall down into the yard of the compound to see Sri Lankan animal control in action. There is no such thing as professional human animal control. If you want to control the animals in your environment you have to have another animal. Our outside dogs attack the stray dogs that wander into the compound, the occasional stray cat that slips in through the black iron gate at the road and of course the monkeys.

After watching the dogs aggressively dispel a stray dog back up to the road, I settled myself into one of the wicker chairs transplanted from the living room and opened the paper. I forced myself to read up on local and international current events, saving my favorite feature for last. I have been utterly captivated by one aspect of the Sunday Times, the Marriage Ads. The Marriage Ads are a column in the classified section containing on average about 160 ads a week. In the Marriage Ads I have learned how people categorize themselves in Sri Lankan society. Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, Catholics, Anglicans, and Born Again Christians of Sinhala and Tamil origin all place ads. In almost all cases even the briefest ad will enclose religious affiliation, caste, and region. Ninety percent of ads request a horoscope in reply, a request that cuts across all other factors. Often ads will specify “caste immaterial”or“religious compatibility essential.” If the situation is bleaker, then an ad might read simply at the end, “differences immaterial,” implying that caste, race, and religion are not barriers. Most of the ads are not written by the prospective bride or groom, but by a relative, usually the parents. For a basic example:

We Govi, Buddhist, Kandyian, parents seek hands of an educated professional kind-hearted son for our daughter 26 years. 5’2” B.Sc. Management Marketing, caste immaterial, reply with the horoscope.

“Govi” is one of the higher castes and “Kandyian” means residents of Kandy. I like this ad because of the strange phrase, “seeks hands.”

Often the Marriage Ads are way for the Sri Lankan Diaspora to find prospective partners for their children such as these examples:

Govi Buddhist parents Australia citizens seek suitable girl, educated, attractive with Buddhist values, for their son medical doctor working and Australia handsome, 24 years, 5’3” tall, non-smoker, teetotaler, a vegetarian, brought up with Buddhist values, prefer from Australia. Reply with horoscope and family details. E-mail theproposal2006@yahoo.com.

Well established US citizen with own house Sinhalese wishes to contact a professional lady 40-50 yrs. Who likes to immigrate to the States for early marriage contact aswin____@yahoo.com

The term “early marriage,” is not unusual and seems to indicate some sort of marriage fast-track. A few weeks ago I found a confusing example of overseas Sri Lankans looking back to the motherland for a prospective son-in-law:

Govi Buddhist parents permanently residing in Toranto Canada with assets in Sri Lanka and Canada seek suitable son age between 18-21 years from respectable family willing to continue his studies in Canada for eldest daughter brought up in Sri Lanka value. She is pretty slim height 5’5” studying in Canada in view of marriage at proper age while continuing their higher studies in Canada. Arriving in December for a holiday. Parents please reply with fully details, horoscope, and telephone number.

The only thing I can figure is that the parents of the girl want to bring a young man back to Canada with them for an eventual marriage. They are offering studies in Canada as a sort of incentive. Other ads clearly desire a marriage as a vehicle out of the country:

On next year migrate to Australia. I seek 25 to 40 years well established rich lady to marry. Divorcees, widows also considered. Please reply with details or call on 071*******

This ad is also unusual because the man writes for himself.

In many of the ads the writers like publish any detracting factors up front such as these examples:

Both medical professional Catholic parents seek partner for their pretty 30 years old daughter who works as Legal Officer at private firm, but she is unable to conceive due to birth defect, one brother is a Medical Officer other is a Medical Student.

Buddhist Govi south English Teacher having small assets, divorced after short unsuited marriage, cured a slight illness, now completely healthy, seeks a kind hearted sympathetic, sober and professional partner, widowers, divorcees considered, Horoscope essential.

Parents seek suitable partner with sober habits for daughter 32, 5’1” working for a prestigious company drawing attractive salary dowry fully furnished house worth over 8 million. She has a sight defect at the shoulder. [note: 8 million Rupees is about 80,000 USD]

Well connected uncle seeks educated, pleasant, fair, sociable daughter below 28, preferably medium build over 5’4” for nephew, G/B, 31, 5’11” medium complexioned, big made, (Families who accept physique indifferences are more welcome). He is a UK business degree holder, Managing Director of an established business in Colombo. Substantial assets, religious, non-smoker, sociable, pleasing personality. Please write with horoscope.

One of the defects frequently mentioned is a malefic horoscope. A malefic horoscope often has to do with Mars being in the wrong house at the time of birth according to my internet research on highly reputed sights such as indigoray.net. Other planets and even the sun can result in a malefic horoscope, but Mars seems to be the most common and most powerful culprit. A malefic horoscope can be a powerful force for destruction in an individual’s life, or if it can be harnessed, a powerful force for success. In Sri Lanka there is the sense that if two malefics are together their similar star alignments will give them a better shot at managing their lot in life. Ads often give the malefic star sign or state “Malefic horoscopes preferred,” or “reply with malefic horoscope.”

The age of the proposed bride or groom is almost always given. On the bride’s side if the she bride is over 35 the phrase “but looks much younger” inevitably follows. On the groom’s side an age range for the prospective bride is often specified. Take for example an ad with some unusual features for which I little insight to offer:

Muslim young groom bachelor 29 y. seeks a disabled and widow bride below 25 years, groom working heavy bus Driver. Goldsmith. Pls. contact 715*******

These ads are all in English and therefore necessarily demand a certain level of education and affluence. Normally a laborer, such as a bus driver, would marry his cousin or use the village marriage broker.

Ads will usually specify age, height, citizenship abroad, or another necessary qualification. A recent ad ended with the line “Replies are only for beauties.” On the groom’s side I have seen a few ads specifying that applicant brides not work. A Catholic groom ad required that prospective daughters should be “God loving.”

Sometimes very humble ads such as the above bus driver ad or the following two examples will be placed:

Bodu Deva pleasant educated widow of 39 who lost her husband to Tsunami, having 1 and ½ years old baby boy. Possessing property and other assts in main city close to Colombo. Seeks suitable kind partner. Write with full detail.

A mature working lady foreign or local Aethetic minded widow dovorcee or separated sought by Artist/Designer 42 Buddhist Vegetarian works as Art Director for Ad Agency dark complexioned Afroasian looking. No assets, simple lifestyle. Age, religion race, immaterial older ladies considered write or call in English or Sinhala. 077*******

I found the tsunami ad heartbreaking. In its few lines I could see the story of a woman who had finally became pregnant with her first child at age 37. I read this ad in September of 2006; the father must have died before the child was even born.

Some seem to post ads that are not for marriage at all such as the following examples:

33 years independent handsome well-established quail professional (married with children) seeks female partner with open mind for a non-committed relationship. No marriage intended. Willing to consider divorced/separated individuals for mutual understanding for matured relationship. Genuine motives for a kind-hearted non-judgmental person with good life understanding. Please respond with good intention Include full details about self, family background, contact details. Confidentiality preserved.

Gent G/B 27+ PhD holder currently conducting research on “Marriage and Caste” seek a lady interesting in Psychology for marriage. 0723*******

In the first ad the writer seems to be advertising for a mistress. I can only guess that he asks for family background to get a feel for who might come around to light his house on fire if he gets found out. As for the second ad I seems to me that he is after some sort of observer-participant angle to his work.

When I read the ads on Sunday afternoon on the porch I like to imagine the stories behind them and the tensions in Sri Lankan culture. I see the parents advertising for their children abroad. They want their children to live in the West with all of the opportunities and safety not available in a country bogged down in a 20+ year civil war, but they don’t want them to marry and assimilate into Western culture. These parents want grandchildren brought up with the Sri Lankan Buddhist values. The civil war, or ethnic conflict, is seen by some as a battle for national identity. Many Buddhist Sri Lankans take great deal of pride in the historical role of Sri Lanka as the portal through which Theravada Buddhism found it way back to Southeast Asia in the 11th Century resurgence. Many Burmese and Thai monastic lineages trace their roots back to Sri Lanka. Many Buddhists equate the preservation of their culture and Sri Lanka’s identity as a Buddhist nation with the preservation of the Dhamma itself.

I see parents of well educated women in their late 30’s, concerned that their daughters will never marry. I envision these women working in Colombo, driving their own cars and paying their own bills after having worked hard for their law, advanced accounting, and medical degrees. I imagine fights at the family table where the parents say “enough is enough, you are nearly 40, we’re putting you in the Sunday Times.” I see the daughters protesting that a dowry should be placed on their heads, their defects advertised like cattle, and the phrase “but looks much younger” added to their descriptions. In one ad I even saw a father’s anger that his daughter cut off her traditional long hair as his bluntly disclosed this fact in the ad stating “she has short hair,” as a warning at the end.

I also envision the readers. I see the parents of grooms looking for the right mix of horoscope, caste, and especially the dowry offered. A few of the groom ads specify “no dowry expected.” I see educated but poor families hungrily gravitating towards those ads. I see spinster aunties left at home, scanning the Sunday Times for just the right girl already in Australia for their nephew in Sydney, heaven forbid her sister’s son marry a non-Lankan.

Interestingly, only once have I seen the same ad from week to week, it caught my eye because the mother describes her son as having “left side weakness.” I save each week’s section, circling and attempting to track the ads that interest me. It is possible that some boring ads are repeated or come out with different wording, but I suspect that people tend to advertise at on an astrologically auspicious week for them and not place ads week after week.

My all-time favorite ad, the one I search every week to surpass, was printed as follows:

Muslim brother of Quran Sunnah with Taqwa assists sister as second wife who should be young able in Arabic or English with humble qualities right sister will be given Mahar and accommodation. aswajpious@yahoo.com

The sunnah are those religious actions that were instituted by the Prophet Mohammed during his ministry and literally translates as “trodden path.” Taqwa is an awareness of Allah and one’s responsibility to Allah as his servant. I have no idea about “Mahar.” I also like the “aswaj pious” email address. I interpret this ad as conveying the message that this man thinks that he is very pious and is looking for his second wife in the Sunday paper. What could ever top that?

Friday, September 22, 2006

Dan's Story Part Two



Finding oneself locked in a hotel or other building was common in the Third World, but terrifying to the modern fire-code minded American. Our home in Kandy had bars on the windows to keep people out, but I always had a claustrophobic sense that they also kept me in. I could feel Dan’s terror and disgust at being trapped inside.
“Being locked in like that, it must have been terrifying,” I commented as the food arrived, Aloo Ghobi for me, Chicken Tikka Masala for Dan.
“It was pretty bad,” Dan admitted, sampling his chicken. “Mmm, that’s good though,” he said, nodding in approval. “Tasty meat sweetie, are you sure you don’t want to try some? Maybe just the sauce?” Dan teased, attempting to tempt me off of the meat-wagon.
“Uh, no, that’s alright, I’m happy over here with my little cauliflower and potatoes,” I replied with faux-righteous indignation.
“Suit yourself, more meat for me,” Dan joked back. “Alright, so when we got to the base I told the Major that I was going to take Binari up on her offer,” he continued.
“What was the Major’s name again, Chakravarti?” I interrupted. “Isn’t that a name with some significance?” I furthered.
“Yes,” Dan replied. “When the future Buddha, Siddharta, was born the Brahmin astrologers told his father that if the young prince stayed in the world he’d become a Chakravarti, a wheel-turning king. If he left the world he would become a Buddha. A Chakravarti is a universal monarch who rules by virtue of his moral purity and all of his subjects flourish. It’s a not-unheard-of last name in India, but I’ve never heard it in Sri Lanka before. You really couldn’t ask for a better name of an Army officer in charge of a prominent Buddhist temple.”
“True, that’s a pretty cool name,” I replied, a bit disappointed in my Aloo Ghobi and considering a dip in the Chicken Tikka Masala sauce.
“So, we were out of options. I called Binari and arranged for us to stay the night. The road to her house was beautiful. It had been newly widened a few years back and was luxurious in comparison to most Lankan roads. Binari’s house and yard were extremely well maintained. The entire house was tiled and the living room was neat and spartan. As we went in the door I noticed a metal plate over the door in Arabic. I asked Binari if they were Muslim and didn’t really get an answer. Looking around the living room I saw some Buddhist paraphernalia so I just forgot about it. When Binari was showing us around the main house we caught a glimpse of a thin girl in the back rushing away. We thought that she was a servant, but it turns out that she was Binari’s older sister.”
“That’s a weird welcome,” I commented, I imagined that she wanted to fix herself up before meeting Dan and Thilak.
“That was just the start of weird,” Dan warned me. “The place that we were to stay was actually located in the house next door. This house had been built as a dowry for two daughters who are still unmarried, both quickly approaching 40.”
“Ouch,” I remarked at their ages. “You know, I could just write the marriage ad for the Sunday Times myself. ‘Buddhist Govi mother seeks son for fair daughter, 37, looks much younger, excellent character, for early marriage, dowry house in Colombo suburbs, daughter to inherit substantial assets, Caste immaterial, divorcees, widowers considered, apply with the horoscope.’ That’s about how it would go. That proposal is probably in the Sunday Times we have at home,” I finished, sneaking a bit of naan into the Chicken Tikka sauce while Dan was laughing.
“You’re probably right,” Dan replied, pretending that he didn’t see me sneak the meat sauce. “But here’s where it started to get surreal: the front yard of the dowry house was full of halves of axels, engines and car halves. Apparently the excessive luxury tax on vehicles here doesn’t apply to halves of cars. So some ‘friends’ of Binari were chopping cars in half in the Middle East and importing them into Sri Lanka. They then sell the halves and some local guy fuses everything back together. As we were going to look at the dowry house, a Member of Parliament pulled up to look at a chopped up SUV with his gang of thugs, and Binari hustled us back into the main house.”
“That is surreal,” I agreed. “I mean, how many cars are we talking about here?” I asked.
“Sixteen halves, so, about eight cars, some of them were stacked on top of each other. Some were covered in those green tarps. It was really weird,” Dan replied, expertly using his spoon to pry the chicken meat off the bone while he held the meat stationary with his fork. There were no dinner knives in Asia. If I were to attempt such a maneuver the entire contents of the plate would end up in my lap. I was partially a vegetarian because I did not know how to prepare meat at home and vegetables were safer for me to eat in public. “While we were waiting for Binari to finish her business with the Member of Parliament,” Dan continued, “Thilak went to the bathroom. Since there was no lock on the door he asked me to stand guard. While I’m standing in front of the bathroom door looking around a cow enters the gate and comes to the front stoop and stares at me. It was so strange. Then Binari’s mother shows up. I pointed to the car and joked in Sinhala that I was afraid that they were chopping up and selling cows as well as cars. She answered me in excellent English, telling me that they don’t chop up the cows, there was no need. I’m telling you, this was one very sad and lonely old woman. When Thilak comes out of the bathroom and she starts telling us all about how she is a divorcee. This is really rare. Sri Lanka has very low divorce rates.”
“But didn’t you tell me that Sri Lanka has the highest rates of female suicide in the world?” I asked sarcastically.
“No, I think that Sri Lanka has the overall highest rate of suicide in the world, like 50 or 55 out of every 10,000 people, one of my advisors works on suicide and mental health here,” he explained.
“No joke,” I replied, impressed. “I knew China was number one for female suicides all along, I was just kidding,” I finished a bit shocked.
“Yup, it’s true,” Dan replied. “So we’re talking to Binari’s mom and she’s telling us how she lives here with her two unmarried daughters, Binari ‘the fat one’ and Dani, ‘the thin girl,’ he continued. “She starts to tell us a story about how horrible it was to live with her sister-in-laws when Binari came back. “Everyone needs a partner,” she sighed as we followed Binari away. I had a really strong feeling that her husband had been a child molester.”
“Really, why?” I asked, intrigued. “I know it must be something major for her to get a divorce,” I admitted.
“I really can’t explain it, it’s just a feeling I got from the mother and the sisters,” he replied. “Well, we finally get over to the dowry house; the inside of the house was quite nice. The living room is done in white tile with stylish well-maintained old-fashioned furniture. You know how much I like tile compared with those red-wax floors like we have at home.”
“Yes, our floor at home is high-maitenance, you called that one,” I admitted.
“There was a large doll of a little girl sitting on the couch,” Dan went on. “The girl had blond hair and was wearing a pink dress with a yellow vest. It was all flopped out across couch. It was super creepy. The bedroom looked like it was being occupied by someone. There were pictures of couples everywhere. Hindu images, Muslim images, and Christian images. They had all their bases covered.”
“Ok, so add ‘differences immaterial ’and‘successful international business’ to the marriage add,” I interjected.
“I think you could have a real future here as a marriage broker,” Dan laughed. We had both eaten all we could and Dan signaled for the waiter to package up our leftovers. “When Binari finally left us alone,” he continuted, “Thilak started rooting around on this crazy shrine in the bedroom. I told him that he should just let it alone, but he starts finding these vāsi mantra, Mantra meant to charm and ensnare men.”
“Really?” I asked with great interest. “Could you teach me some?” I asked coyly.
“You don’t need any vāsi mantra,” Dan assured me before going on, “We were pretty freaked out. I went around locking all of the windows and the door. There is no fan, no netting. It was like a freakin’ mosquito attack when we get into the bed. Then we hear three knocks on the door. We both ignored it. Then another set of three knocks. We looked at each other, unable to deny what we heard. After the third set of three knocks I got up and opened the door. Nobody there. I locked everything again and get back into bed.”
“Nothing?” I ask incredulously, feeling a chill.
“Nothing,” Dan affirmed, nodding his head as he reviewed the bill. “It was hot, but I had to have the sheet on me or the mosquitoes would eat me alive,” he continued. “Somehow I fell asleep. So it was back to Bon Bon for the next night. Binari called me like every day for months, but I never answered. Once she called from another number and I hung up. About a week after staying there I developed my Filaria.” Dan paused, with a haunted look in his eye before finishing, “After another night at Bon Bon I made arrangements to stay with my friend Mahinda. His place was farther, but not as far as Kandy. It was pretty dirty and everything, but it wasn’t a brothel or a bunch of creepy women.”
“Wow, I didn’t know that you developed your Filaria symptoms right after Binari’s, that is really creepy,” I agreed, taking Dan’s hand in mine supportively as we got up to leave. One of the waiters politely handed me the bag of leftovers we were about to forget. “I mean, what do you think was going on there?” I asked. “Do you think that they were trying to put a spell on you and get you to marry one of the sisters or something? Or maybe Thilak?”
“Thilak is married already,” Dan mused. “Me, I don’t know. It was a pretty desperate situation out there. There’s a real stigma surrounding divorce here, and as you know from obsessively reading all of those marriage ads, when a marriage is considered the family background is really important. But I don’t really know,” Dan shrugged as we left the restaurant.

Wednesday, September 20, 2006

Dan's Story Part One



















Dan and I met in a coffee shop in Charlottesville, Virginia, on Tuesday, March 14th of 2006. I overheard him talking to one of his advisors about India, and since I thought he was handsome and saying interesting things about India, I spoke to him as soon as his advisor left. He was seated slightly behind me, so I turned to him and said “So, I hear you’re going to Delhi, I’ve been through there a few times myself.”
“Really?” he replied a bit startled, “any recommendations for things to do?”
“Stay in your hotel,” I told him firmly. “Find a good hotel and hunker down. Then leave as soon as possible. Now don’t get me wrong, I love India, I just don’t love Delhi,” I explained. Dan told me later that he was afraid at first that I was going to be some sort of starry-eyed privileged traveler of India, maybe spending most of my time retreating at a modern ashram with carefully constructed lotus ponds. In the following five hour conversation he quickly realized that was pretty far from the case. I gave him my number and told him to call before Thursday since I was going in for six night twelve’s on Thursday night at my job as a nurse in the local women’s prison. He called on Thursday and we went out to lunch at an Ethiopian place for our first real date. On our first date Dan told me a long story about his most recent trip to Sri Lanka, but it was tough for me to pay attention. I was too nervous to even eat. He was telling me the story as we were wrapping up our date and walking to Alderman Library at the University of Virginia. I was more concerned with if we were going to kiss or not. I figured I could always ask for the story again later.

After a few weeks I asked him to tell the story again and he refused. “You’ve got to get me drunk first, it’s a really draining story to tell,” he explained. Dan and I did not drink much, especially when it is just the two of us, so I knew it would be awhile before I got my next chance at the story. By the time we arrived at the Mango Tree Dan had already drank a pint of Lion Lager at the Galle Face Hotel. When he ordered the gin and tonic before dinner on an empty stomach I knew I had my chance. I could not drink anyway since a bathroom break on the three hour ride home was totally out of the question. “So, can I hear the story about you and Thilak staying in the brothels again?” I asked after his gin and tonic.
“One more gin and tonic, then I’ll tell the story,” Dan told me, smiling. He knew that I had been waiting to hear the story again. I immediately signaled to the waiter and the next gin and tonic was in front of him in minutes.
“Ok, so you and Thilak were doing research at some Army base around here, where was it again?” I prompted him.
“Panagoda. That’s just outside of Colombo on the Kandy side. First we started off driving the three hours each way to the base every day,” he started.
“That’s crazy!” I exclaimed. “Why couldn’t you stay on base, like at Mihintale? There must be some extra bunks around somewhere.” I asked.
“We just couldn’t,” he stated simply. “That is an on-base hotel where we stay at Mihintale. It’s for the soldiers’ families to come and visit since Mihintale is sort of a recovery base. Panagoda doesn’t have anything like that. At this point we were way, way off the tourist map. It wasn’t like we could’ve just looked in the Lonely Planet and called a few places. We were way off the map period. One day we were driving home and we saw a sign for a place called the Nippon Rest. It was back off the road quite a ways. When we finally got there the exterior was Pepto-Bismol pink. The interior looked like someone had drunk Pepto and immediately thrown it up, a sort of Pepto-vomit interior. When we asked for a room they asked how many hours we wanted it for. So we knew we were in brothel,”
“I guess it makes sense, I mean, who else would be staying out there right?” I commented as the naan arrived. “I know that the Lonely Planets do run out,” I admitted. “I think the worst place I ever stayed was in Turkey right at the Syrian border, way out east, in a little town off the Lonely Planet. The bed smelled like a greasy man and there were cigarette buts on the floor. I remember it was called the Hotel Paris. I don’t think it was a brothel though since it was right in town.”
“Probably not then,” Dan commented. He had a sip of his gin and tonic and a few bites of naan before continuing. “So we got out of the Nippon rest pretty quick. We’d just gotten back out to the main road and we saw another sign in Sinhala, for the Ranmal Rest House. We could just see it across a rice paddy from the road. This place was painted green and it was pretty run down, but it had one nicer room with an attached bath. The bed didn’t stink or anything. There was sort of a nice breeze across the paddy rustling the palm trees. They had a day rate, 500 Rupees, and a night rate, 600 Rupees, so I figured it must be some sort of love hotel. I mean, where else are you going to sleep with your girlfriend? Or with so many families sharing one room and one bed, maybe even your wife. Thilak’s fourteen year old daughter sleeps with him and his wife. They’ve one bedroom and one bed. That’s not uncommon in Asia.”
“The family bed,” I mused as Dan worked on finishing the naan. “I’ve heard about that. No wonder there’s no concept of personal space over here. My mom had to share a room with her sister growing up. These days in the US even that would be a total hardship. But sharing your room with your parents? Man. And with so few people owning cars, that’s another venue eliminated.”
Dan nodded in agreement and continued, “So we could get the room at night, but we had to pack our stuff out during the day so that the room could be used by couples. During the day the place was packed and at night we were the only people there. We’d drive the 20 or so minutes to the base, do interviews all day, and then come back to the Ranmal to work on our notes and translations. The manager guy was pretty nice, as a part of the charade that the place was a real hotel he’d even cook dinner for us. I don’t think they normally offered food; we’d also send him out with money and he’d go get us beers. I figured it probably was a pretty decent deal for him, an extra 600 Rupees each night he wouldn’t normally have. So we were there for like three nights. Then the owner, a total thug, came by. He basically threatened us because we were scaring away business.”
“What do you mean, what did he say to you?” I furthered, taking a sip of the gin and tonic myself.
“He just told us it wasn’t safe for us there anymore,” Dan replied. “So then the Lt. Colonel at the Panagoda base told us about another place, the Bon Bon, also off the same road. We found it only with his directions. There was no sign. This place was yellow. They had separate day and night rates, about the same. We had to leave during the day so people could use the room. The room was hot. It smelled like cigarettes and mold. It had been a long day at the base so we decided to take it. The mattress was split open like someone had tried to shove a body in there or something. It was terrible. There were Sinhala guys staying up all night drinking downstairs. The weird thing was that it was right next to the area police station.”
“So much for enforcement,” I commented. “So at these places people were basically getting it on in your room during the day, and you slept there at night?” I asked. “I’m guessing the staff didn’t rush in and change the sheets or anything,” I clarified with revulsion.
“I mean yeah, it was pretty gross, but as you now know, the drive to and from Kandy is pretty bad.”
“Why couldn’t you just sleep in the car, sure it’s hot and moldy, but at least it doesn’t smell like cigarettes and it’s not a brothel?” I asked.
“You’ve been in my car. Common now. How well am I going to fit in the back seat? And Thilak? What, would I put him in the trunk?” Dan replied. I could tell he had seriously considered this option.
“Ok, what about camping, or sleeping rough?” I asked.
“That’s just not safe, all of these hotels, even the shitty ones, are behind locked gates. Plus we’d be eaten alive my mosquitoes. The hotels all had netting or at least a fan. There was no other option. That was it except for this woman, Binari.”
“Binari?” I asked, “Who was she again?”
“Binari is a local woman who first contacted me when we were in Trinco a few weeks before. I guess Major Cakravarti, from the base, gave her my number or something. She’s a friend of his. She called every day for a while and I got suspicious. When we met Binari a few weeks later at the temple with the major, I felt even more suspicious. She was in her late thirties. She had a wandering eye and was very ugly for starters. Second of all, while we were talking, she kept staring at me. It was creepy. She talked of her business selling expensive cars, but it looked as if she was traveling by bus.”
“She must’ve been pretty creepy if you were willing to stay in the Bon Bon on the split mattress rather than stay at her place,” I commented.
“She was!” Dan exclaimed, nodding his head emphatically. After draining the gin and tonic he continued, “So we stayed at the Bon Bon for a few nights. This hotel had a restaurant-bar sort of thing, we tried the food there and it was really expensive and terrible. We could get terrible food for next to nothing on the road, so we just lived off of those fried short eats. I felt like I was turning into a ball of lard. I got to show Thilak his first condom wrapper there though; he’d never seen one before.”
“What a special experience that must have been,” I interjected sarcastically. “Where was it?”
“In the hall outside our room,” Dan replied. “So then we had to leave early one morning for a special memorial ceremony at the base,” he continued. “When we got downstairs at 7 AM we were locked in. The whole downstairs, the lobby, the lounge, everything was full of empty bottles and half-eaten food on plates. There were flies everywhere, it was disgusting. There was nobody around. The doors were all locked; we had to try several windows before we could find one that was left unlocked and climb out with our stuff. Once outside, the gate of the compound was locked so we had to climb over the wall. Luckily the Lancer was parked outside of the compound walls. I knew that was it. It was time to take Binari, up on her offer.

Tuesday, September 19, 2006

Colombo

“Colombo is the perfect metaphor for Samsara,” Dan told me as we were preparing to embark on our journey; “You are going to suffer, but you are always drawn back for something else.” He went on to explain that in Buddhist belief a being can be born into one of six realms: the realm of hell-beings; the realm of hungry ghosts; life as an animal; life as a human; the realm of Asuras, or lesser heavenly beings; and the heavens of the gods. Life as a god can get boring, especially for the Asuras, who are jealous of the gods above them in heaven and tend to pick fights. All beings are drawn back into the life cycles of Samsara and back into the world. Our jealousy of the commercial products available in Colombo drew us out of our relative heaven at 1650 feet up in the Hill Country of Sri Lanka, down the twisting road of hungry ghosts between Kandy and Colombo, and straight into the heart of hell, Galle Road.

With our hired car and driver we left at 7 AM and began the 72 mile descent that takes three hours due to poor road conditions. The road was swamped with careening inter-city buses that stopped for everyone, everywhere, all the time, while trying to maintain a tight schedule so as to fit in as many trips as possible. Small towns clung to both sides of the two lane road, which sometimes must become a three or four lane road, filling it with children, dogs, and three-wheelers. First we passed through the clay town featuring everything from large planters to delicate wind chimes, and then on to wicker and leather town selling baskets and chairs. Next we passed the cashew and prostitute town with girls in red suggestively waving little bags of cashews. Just before passing into Colombo we passed the pineapple men selling pineapple fruits still on their stalks. Once in Colombo I glimpsed my first UN SUV. Gleaming white in the equatorial sun, the five-foot snorkel rising proudly from underneath the front fender straight up in the air, and the darkly tinted windows made it look like something that an up-and-coming rapper ought to take to the Vibe Awards.

I had read up in the guide book to figure out why Colombo existed at all. It was not a natural location for a capital city. No splendid harbor, no historical significance, not terribly close to the Indian mainland. The name Colombo is taken from a type of tree, the Kola Amba, a variety of mango that does not bear fruit. I learned that Colombo was just a marsh of fruitless mangos and a small trading port until the Portuguese built their fort, the Dutch sacked the fort, and finally the British made it their crown capital in 1802. Since Independence in 1948 Colombo has been working on its reputation as the “Las Vegas” of South Asia. Gambling, prostitution, shopping, it was all there. Colombo was a sweltering ugly piece of concrete slapped down in a marsh next to the ocean whereas Vegas was a sweltering ugly stretch of concrete slapped down in the desert. Colombo had a few high-rises and one nice mall, but it is mostly a heavily fortified, seedy, run-down pit. But if you need a nice sarong, presents for the folks back home, or a coffee grinder, it’s where you have to go.

We started out at the old mall. Dan worked over the bootleg DVD stores while I circulated for the coffee grinder, quickly captivating my quarry. The old mall was more of a multi-story air-con market with a roof. The interior was dark with no natural light.
The halls are winding, confusing, and packed with groups of teenage boys with their arms around each other.

Next we hit the pavement under the searing sun to walk down the street to Barefoot, a cultural institution. As soon as I opened the door and saw the colorful bolts of fabric hanging from the ceiling I nearly lost my mind. “Dan, how do to come here and not go completely crazy?” I asked in awe, retrieving my gift list from my bag.
“I’ve been coming here for a long time,” he laughed in reply, thrilled that I liked the place as much as he’d hoped.
“Get a shopping basket, the biggest one,” I instructed, and referring to my list I got to work.

The textiles were extraordinary, all hand-dyed and hand woven, the product of rural cottage industries. I went through the entire rack of a hundred or so sarongs, meticulously selecting colors and patterns for individual gifts with the recipient carefully in mind, and then two for myself. The staff on the floor were trained to leave the customers alone, keep the showroom immaculate, and never utter the phrase “hello my friend.” One of them quietly followed after me repairing the damage I did to the sarong rack, which was fairly substantial. We shopped unmolested, relishing the fixed and very reasonable prices. We bought four bags worth of loot, everything from little stuffed crocodiles, to painted trays, to scarves and sarongs.

After Barefoot we ran the gauntlet of Galle Road three-wheel drivers back to the car parked at the old mall lot. Dan attempted to call the driver’s cell phone; but the driver’s phone was off. We wandered around the dirt parking lot until we were able to pick our white Nissan sedan from the sea of other white Nissan sedans. We had the car, but no driver. In a wordless understanding I waited next to the locked car with the stuff while Dan went off on foot to look for the driver. A boy was circulating through the lot putting brochures on windshields advertising a local garage. When we came to our car he looked at me very confused, a decision making process evidently running through his mind, and then just handed it to me, shrugging. I accepted it and even read it over since it was mostly in English. “Macro Autotech,” it read on the cover of the glossy pamphlet, “Moving ahead with modern Technology.” The text was blocked above four pictures of Caucasian men working on cars; cutting edge evidently meaning white. I was moving into the interior of the brochure and pursuing offers such as “Issuing of fitness certificates” listed under “Wheel Alignment Balancing & Repairs,” and “Accident repairs- Tinkering & repainting,” when Dan re-emerged, drenched in sweat with the driver in tow.

We stashed our bag in the trunk and continued on to the circa 1864 Galle Hotel, a colonial classic. The removable plastic letter sign in the lobby read “Welcome CIA Bribery and Corruption Conference.” We continued out onto the terrace where white skin and a Lion Lager bought us a comfortable and privileged view of the sunset over the ocean. I had allowed myself to be lulled into the rhythmic hypnosis of the waves when Dan broke into my thoughts, “check out that anti-aircraft gun over there,” he said, “that thing is like 50 caliber, tops. That is just not an effective surface to air weapon,” he finished, referring to the floor-mounted anti-aircraft machine gun positioned on top of a five story tower just outside of the neighboring compound. 50 yards from the infinity pool of the Galle Hotel rose 20 foot cement walls toped with razor wire and punctuated with a tower at each corner of the square property. Army soldiers manned the corner towers and the anti-aircraft gun.
“I’m sure the intention of the gun is to take out something at close range, from air, land, or sea, not to take out a plane at 5 thousand feet,” I replied, amazed that I had not noticed the gun and its stark contrast to the lush hotel grounds.
“Yeah, but those are the luckiest guys in the army. They could be up in Jaffna getting their legs blown off; instead, they’re down here watching the European women in bikinis,” Dan added.
“Whose house is that? What is the Army doing there anyway?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Dan replied, frowning. We watched the soldier watch the tourists in silence for awhile, and then turned our attention to the sunset.
“You know, I hate this place and never want to come back,” Dan said wistfully, gazing out at the ocean. “I’m going to get what I need to write my dis, and that’s it. I want to move the focus of my research back to Japan, to India, anywhere,” he finished.
“This is a terrible place,” I agreed. “All this fighting and tragedy goes on here and everyone is completely numb to it, a long war like this really takes a toll on a place. It wears everyone down, stunts the growth of the country, and erodes hope” I finished. Virtually as we were having this conversation the terrorist organization, the Liberation of Tamil Tigers Eelam, or LTTE, were murdering and hacking to pieces 11 Muslim civilians 150 miles away in Ampara.

“It’s terrible you know, because it could be really nice. It used to be better, ten years ago when I started coming here. I really loved Sri Lanka,” Dan added sadly.
“But what about Barefoot?” I questioned lightly. “I just don’t think that I can be cut off from Barefoot for the rest of my life,” I said decisively. “You know that even with a year here you will need to come back to put the finishing touches on some of your projects,” I teased him. “Just long enough to pick up some more sarongs and a few painted trays.”
“You’re right,” Dan admitted. “But it won’t be for long. No more long trips for awhile after this,” he finished, pausing. “You know sweetie,” he added with a devlish look in his green eyes, “That’s Samsara in action. You say how much you hate it here, but something draws you back,” he quipped back. As we silently watched the big ships out in the Indian Ocean, silhouetted against the sunset, I pondered how many sarongs I would need to take back to the states on my final journey.

After a lavish dinner and drinks at the Mango Tree, a North Indian restaurant; we started the trek back to Kandy. The driver slept in the car in the restaurant parking lot while we ate. I was relieved to see that he was well-rested for the journey ahead. “Turf Accountants” off-track betting facilities signs were illuminated in neon along the dark streets of Colombo as we began our journey east. Each sign featured a little blinking horse and jockey. Once out of Colombo the pineapple town had turned into a fish market. Cross sections of fresh tuna the size of twin mattresses were brightly illuminated on stall counters. Whole fish were being cleaned and hung up on hooks next to the bare bulbs. The cashew girls had retreated under the shelter of their tiny roadside run-in sheds. The rest of the towns were dark and hunkered into the hillside for the night as we sped for home.

Saturday, September 09, 2006

Sunday Run



Running was dangerous, difficult, and unpleasant, but Dan and I did it anyway. The only possible time was in the early morning, before the punishing equatorial sun asserted its power. The evening was out of the question due to mosquitoes. Even though we made it up the steps and onto the road before 7 AM, rush hour would already be in full chaotic glory. Japanese mini buses coming in both directions, three-wheelers trying to pick us up, pods of school kids walking in their white uniforms, potholes, trash, ditches, cow shit, dog shit, eternal construction, trees full of bats, homeless people on the pavement, ox-carts, buses, motorcyclists trying to pass everyone else, monkeys gathered around a dumpster, cows in the road, stray dogs everywhere, and even an ornery stallion miniature pony tethered near the playground. Running in this seething Third World soup required total attention to the environment at all times.

The one thing you have in your favor running is here is the right to exist and be on the road, nothing else. Running in the Third World gets easier once you embrace the inalienable right of everyone to convey himself down the road is whatever manner necessary at the time. If you are driving an ox-cart then everyone else will work that in to their trajectory. If you are running, then everyone out and around will accommodate that also. Everyone has the right away all of the time. You just have to balance your right away with other guy’s right of way without collision, that’s the tricky part. Getting down the street is a team effort involving everyone present on the road at the time. During the morning rush there are lots of team members on the road, but this can be an advantage also as nobody is going anywhere at too fast. Along the main road hugging the edge of the lake we might be the fastest thing on the road.

On Sunday morning for a special treat Dan suggested that we went to the Botanical Gardens to run. You had pay admission, but the paths are paved and well-maintained, there were no motorized vehicles, no pavement dwellers, no monkeys, no trash, and no pony. “And we can take the car,” Dan added. Dan’s 1968 Lancer had just arrived back from the shop where the crank-shaft had been replaced and the radiator had been repaired. He had taken it around town a few times and was eager to continuing driving it. It would be my first voyage. After we got our gear on we headed up the steps to Dan’s little parking spot inside the compound walls. I opened and closed the iron gates for Dan as he expertly backed the car out of its tiny covered slot. “I have total confidence in everything…except maybe the brakes,” he mentioned off-hand as I got into the car. My immediate internal reaction to the car’s interior was that “it’s fascinating how different people have different levels of physical comfort, and this is way, way outside of mine.” This thought consumed me even more than the comment about the breaks as we started down the hill. I could feel the stink of the seat fabric oozing into my running pants. There was a feeling of dampness in the seat, but this was actually just my own sweat plastering me into the seat. The car had no ventilation other than the small open window.

Dan seemed pleased enough with his repaired ride. “Thilak and I’ve really put in some miles in this thing,” he said wistfully as he muscled the rack-and-pinion steering around the hair-pin curves. “You know, when we pull up at the Army base in this thing, they know we aren’t CIA. It really helps put the soldiers at ease and helps them open up,” he continued.
“I bet,” I replied bitingly, raising and eyebrow. “They must know you guys’re academics for sure.”
“I just like the review mirrors on the hood,” Dan replied, “that’s my favorite part, like insect antennae or something.” When we arrived at the gardens and got out of the car I could smell the car’s stink clinging to my sweaty legs. “I hate your car, you know that right?” I commented as we crossed the busy road.
“Really Sweeite?” he replied with concern. “We can take a three-wheeler next time then, I promise.”

Dan explained to the ticket man in Singhala why we deserved the local rate of 20 Rupees and not the visitor rate of 300 Rupees. I would think that his proficiency in the language would be proof itself of residency, but the man took a fair amount of convincing. Once inside the gate we started running on the sparsely populated black asphalt path. I started to feel tired quickly. “Are you ok?” Dan asked, “You’re breathing pretty hard.”
“I’m fine,” I replied, I willed myself with pride to control my breathing. I tried to focus on the beauty of the lush and carefully manicured vegetation. I tried to enjoy the freedom of running without having to worry about being hit by minivan. As we approached the bat-tree section of the Gardens, I used my desire to get away from the bats to motivate me to keep going as quickly as possible. These were not the small little bats that live in your attic. These bats are huge, like a large North American Grey Squirrel with a three foot wingspan. Hundreds of them roost together in a single large tree. The Botanical Gardens must have featured 20 or so bat-trees over its 60 hectares. When I ran under them I could hear the bats squeaking and shifting around. At dusk at home I watched them each night gliding at an incredibly high altitude from the Botanical Gardens, over the Kandy Lake, and into the hills beyond. At dusk I found them elegant and peaceful, high up in the sky. When running under them 20 feet above my head and smelling their acrid guano, I found them revolting motivation to keep moving as quickly as my labored breathing would allow.

Even between the beautiful flowers and the bats to motivate me along, I could not make it around the outer loop of the Botanical Gardens, which I estimate to be about 2 miles and included no hills. In Kandy I was not sure if the harsh environment wore me down faster, but here out of the danger and activity of Kandy I had to face a simple fact: I was horribly out of shape.

Three years ago I had trained for a marathon that had been canceled. I followed my training plan exactly and was poised, injury-free, for a great race when the plug had been pulled three days before by the sponsors. It would have been the second running of the Washington DC marathon. Security issues secondary to Operation Iraqi Freedom were cited, but rumor had it that interest was not high enough. I had not been seriously running since. Before coming to Sri Lanka I bought myself my first new pair of running shoes since the failed marathon attempt and vowed to return to my training.

After the run I got back into the car gingerly, motivated towards its shelter by a clove seller and a beggar rapidly closing in on me from opposite sides. I set a benchmark in my mind: today, nearly one lap around the Botanical Gardens. I would run in Kandy twice during the week and then next Sunday I bet that I could do a lap and a half.

Thursday, September 07, 2006

More Errands





On Monday I was out on the patio with my pump-pressurized water rifle defending the house and mango tree from a monkey attack when I decided that water was not enough, I needed rocks. I couldn’t reach the monkeys in the high branches with enough force. I looked down amongst the greenery in the long planter that ran along the side of the patio wall, searching for the right small stones. What I found instead was a fairly nice six-inch chopping knife with a wooden handle hidden in the planter. It was slightly rusted and not very sharp, if someone wanted to chop us to pieces with it they would have a tough row to hoe. My discovery was vaguely disturbing however since it was obvious that knife had not been there for a long period of time. A search of the planter revealed nothing else of interest. The knife was of no use to me in its current condition, so I decided to get it sharpened. I had seen a knife sharpening man in the Alley of Many Things next to the man who makes key copies and sells small motors for blenders.

The next day I made my list, put some Rupee coins in my pockets for beggars, packaged my new find first in a paper bag and then in a thick plastic bag before stowing it in my backpack. Dan had stolen all of my small money, so before going into the Alley I went to the Food City supermarket and bought two rolls of toilet paper totaling 68 Rupees, about 68 cents, with a 1,000 Rupee note. As I was leaving Food City I could see Elephantiasis of the Legs Man in his usual position on the pavement just down the hill near the crosswalk. I decided that I would give him some of my change. I felt out a two Rupee coin in my pocket and planned to drop it into his hand as I passed on my way to the crosswalk. Making my approach I realized I would have to bend down to his level on the busy sidewalk in order to deposit my donation, a concept that made me profoundly uncomfortable. The other option would be to sort of throw the money at him or drop it on his head. When I reached him I performed an ungraceful curtsey to place the money in his hand and proceeded out into traffic as fast a possible, feeling unsettled. It reminded me of the time an old woman in Turkey held me in the mosque during the call to prayer and took me through the salat.

Knife Man ran his operation near the mouth of the Alley. He wore his longi knotted up around his knees in a double-layer, giving the impression of a man in a mini-skirt. With his bare feet he manned dual pedal-powered grindstones set into a single faded blue wooden frame. The pedal spun a large ox-cart sized wheel on a length of twine which in turn whirled around the small grindstones. He was already working on another man’s knife as I came toward him, pulling the enormous chopping knife out of my bag. He took the knife and deposited it in his small rig. I imagined that I could leave the knife, go shopping, and return for it, but I wanted to watch him work. The man in front of me was waiting for a small knife with several large chinks in the blade. The Knife Man effortlessly used different angles and alternated the grindstones to work out the chinks and bring the worn knife to a sharp edge. When he came to my knife he spent most of the time on the point of the knife, reshaping it and honing it down. I wondered who had put the knife in my planter and why as I watched my new knife sharpening into a proficient kitchen tool or weapon.

After paying 40 Rupees for the services of Knife Man I went up into the Alley to my Plastic Housewares Man. Wearing my trademark sunhat I moved though the Alley completely ignored. No shouts of “Hello My Friend,” followed me. When I arrived at his stall, Plastic Housewares Man greeted me warmly. He knew me well by now and gave me good prices, knowing I would always need another plastic container, hanger, sponge, or cheap pot. After selecting several small spice containers I headed on to the main street and to the focus of my mission in Kandy today: hair clippers. I was carrying about 4,000 Rupees with me for this purchase, much more money than I would ever normally take out on the street. I even had these notes stashed in a separate place from my small money.

Dan’s hair had grown out of control and he was reluctant to get it cut in town. “If I don’t speak Singhala they mess up my hair,” he said. “If I speak Singhala then they ask me for a visa by the end of the cut,” he complained.
“Well, then tell the barber that you can get him one just before you go home, I bet you’ll get a good rate and a good cut while you’re here,” I suggested sarcastically.
“But that would be wrong,” Dan mocked me, nodding his head.
“Ok then, I’ll find clippers and I’ll cut your hair. I’m sure I can get it right after a couple of tries,” I replied. I used to cut my ex’s hair. I had just started learning how to use clippers when he had his passport photo taken. The image in his passport for the next ten years shows a man whose hair looks like he had an accident trying to fix a lawnmower.

Several sources had pointed to a single store for my clipper-mission. Fortuitously this store was located next to my favorite Chinese restaurant in town, Flower Song, and I was already familiar with its location. The bottom floor seemed to be more of a pick-up and warehouse area, so I followed some locals and proceeded upstairs. After a brief survey of the merchandise I found the single product on offer in a glass case. A young man in a blue button-down shirt approached me and asked in English if I wanted to see anything. I indicated the clippers in the case in between several models of electric razors. He went into the case from the back and pulled out a box, opened the box, and showed me the clippers. Instead of having removable guards, this model featured a sliding guard that could be set from 3mm to 21mm. To show him that I knew how commercial exchanges worked in Sri Lanka I requested that he plug in the device and turn it on. Once the clippers whirled to life I said that I would take them.

I followed him downstairs into the warehouse area. Several other blue-shirted employees buzzed around closing other sales behind a counter with customers seated in black chairs in front of them. The salesman had my clippers in his hand. He showed me the price, 3,300 Rupees and I handed him my four 1,000 Rupee notes. He then indicated for me have a seat, a common practice in Sri Lanka as warranty information is taken off of the box and elaborate receipts and records are filled out by hand. I called Dan on my cell to tell him of my victory. As I was talking to him I glanced around the room. I saw a small sign hanging from the ceiling in Singhala and English reading “Pay Only the Cashier,” over a woman sitting behind a Plexiglas partition. Suddenly I felt sick. The man in the blue shirt with my clippers and my money was nowhere in sight. “I’ve, uh, got to go,” I told Dan abruptly.

The other employees and customers in the store were staring at me, but this was nothing terribly unusual. Where they staring at me because they had all watched me get had or just because I was a foreigner in a place they do not expect foreigners? Were they amused at watching me get screwed? Would nobody intervene to protect me if that man was not a real employee, or was a real employee who had just taken my money and gone home for the day? To what extent would a nice establishment such as this support that sort of behavior and blame it on my stupidity? I carefully studied the known employees. They were all speaking in Singhala, wearing blue shirts like my “salesman.” Also like the man who had waited on me, they did not wear name tags. The other women waiting in the chairs next to me seemed to be simply waiting, not filling out warranty paperwork as I did at another store for my rice-cooker. I turned around and could see another side room with lots of men in blue shirts filling out large books. “Perhaps my man was in there,” I told myself hopefully.

I then began to ponder what my next action would be and how long I would wait to take it. Studying the traffic pattern I identified a front desk near the entrance, a central processor for all activity. I resolved to start there and then take it to the cops out in the street if necessary. “Has the great Sara, veteran traveler of the Third World, never been robbed, never been seriously screwed over, finally been nailed?” I wondered. I felt shame rush hot into my cheeks. “There is always, always someone better than you,” I consoled myself; “maybe today you just met that man,” my internal dialogue ran as I started to move toward acceptance of the situation. Just then my salesman then returned with a wide smile, head-waggle, my clippers in a bag, my receipt, and my change in hand. “But not today,” I told myself with relief, “evidently not today.”

Wednesday, September 06, 2006

Touts





After Dan had worked for one week we tried to be tourists again on the weekend. There was a line for the Temple of the Tooth, so we went first to a nearby devali were Dan almost came to blows with a tout. The tout was trying to get us to leave our shoes in a certain location. A devali is not really a building so much as it is an enclosure around several small shrines and a bodhi tree. The place is all dirt and sand, but you must take your shoes off as it is a holy area. Dan has had his shoes stolen from several holy areas, so we carried our shoes with us. The tout approached us in English and Dan replied fairly nicely in Singhala. Rather than melt back into the crowd, the tout started to follow us, doing his touting routine in his native tongue. I would think he would see that this cover was blown, but instead he started to get angry when we would not obey. He started to try speaking in English again, this time to me, and I stone-walled him. Dan started to tell him in a firm voice not to approach me. At this point I knew our little outing was over and started heading straight for the entrance as fast as I could, shoes firmly in hand. Dan followed me out.

The last time we walked into town for dinner this week another tout approached us, asking us if we remembered him, “from the hotel, with the baggage?” he asked. He had approached me in the street when I was alone a few weeks ago, so I knew the routine verbatim. When he started to follow us Dan led off in angry Singhala saying “did I give you permission to speak to me?” The tout stayed glued to Dan, just behind his left shoulder. Dan threatened to hit him if he did not leave us. “This is Sri Lanka,” the tout yelled, “You have to be able to talk to people.” After a brief and angry exchange in English the both tout and Dan became enraged; “I will pick up a rock and smash your fucking face in you motherfucker,” He screamed down the street as I dragged Dan away. The tout’s English was excellent. He claimed to work for the Hotel Sharon. I can see the Hotel Sharon from my kitchen window. With the Perahera over we are practically the only white people in town. Sometimes I wonder if he is waiting for us? Does he know where we live?

Dan breaks the rules of touts. They expect you to follow them like hungry puppies. If you ignore them they are annoyed and may curse you, but they usually drift away quickly. By confronting them in Singhala Dan tears off their “face.” Face is a very important concept in the East, and enters the American consciousness with the phrase “to lose face.” This expression implies an uncomfortable and perhaps humiliating experience, but does not capture the true crisis for the Asian losing face. When the Hotel Sharon tout approached me I totally and utterly ignored him, he became a bit angry and followed me for awhile, but went away without incident. He did not get his money from me and I did not cause him to lose face on the street. As long as the touts don’t touch me I can ignore them indefinitely as I quickly move toward the first establishment where I am known, like a favorite restaurant, or a shop I know has security. You can’t just duck in anywhere; some local establishments will support the tout and not you. Hotels and restaurants will allow touts to pose as employees as the tout continues to con the white skinned tourist. The hotel or restaurant gets the business while the tout works his angle. The mantra I have preached for years to anyone who will listen is that normal people leave you alone. Only touts can comfortably approach you. Some travelers say it is pessimistic to say that no non-tout would ever stop to help. I agree and I have accepted the help of strangers at various times. When normal people stop to offer help they convey an air of embarrassment. Also, non-tout people help you accomplish what you were trying to accomplish in the first place, they do not try to change your mind. These two criteria are my litmus test and they have served me well.

We headed on to dinner after our encounter with the Hotel Sharon tout. “I just can’t stand that they think they can approach me like that, they’re scum,” Dan growled. “I’ve lived here for four years. They would never dare approach a Sri Lankan that way.”
“They look at your white skin and they don’t see all the stamps in your passport.” I replied. “But what is the point of getting in someone’s face in the street anyway? You are not going to get him to stop touting.” I finished, a bit annoyed at his aggressive behavior.
“We live here now. We’re not just passing through. I want to send the message that we are not to be fooled with. I don’t want you bothered when you go out alone. I just want them to stop touting us. Word gets out between them. I mean, how many touts are there in Kandy? There’s Snake Man, you’ve already busted him, there are the three of four guys who work the Temple and the devalis, and this hotel guy.” He finished. “Snake Man” was a tout who walked around the touristy area of the lake, he always carried an umbrella. He would gaze into the water intently when he saw white skin coming along the sidewalk that hugged the edge of the lake. When the tourist passed he would point with the umbrella and say “water snake.” I have to admit that the first time I looked too. That is his ice-breaker. He then touts trips to the north, local hotels, and hotels in the north. The next time I saw him I pointed into the lake and said “water snake,” before he could even get it out.
“Up until now I have mostly ignored them, except that thing with Snake Man,” I replied, “but that’s only out of fear. I am afraid to confront them a following tout like Hotel Man, I worry that they will take it to the next level or something. It’s that American ‘culture of fear’ mindset. You flick someone off in traffic for cutting you off and they whip out their Desert Eagle and blow you away.”
“They can’t hurt you. Nobody has guns here. They are impossible to get legally and very expensive illegally. The police know all of the touts anyway. They don’t want to attract attention.”
“I guess I feel like if someone touched me I would retaliate, or I hope I would be able to retaliate. How many degrees of separation are there between touching my ass and walking two inches from it down there street while talking in my ear?” I asked, thoughtfully, starting to see Dan’s point.
“Not too many. I can’t stand when they stay close to me like that,” he replied. “I also think that the touts expect a certain degree of respect from the white people that they are not going to get from their own culture. They expect us to listen to them. Even if I talk to them, they expect you to acknowledge them too,” he furthered.
“That’s when the tout at the devali got pissed, when I would not give him recognition,” I mused.
“Anyway, when I have lived here before I get tout attention briefly, but then they all figure it out and leave me alone. I want to make an extra point this time so that they know to leave you alone too. I want you to feel comfortable going out here,” Dan finished.

After our meal, we walked along the river. As we approached Tree Man’s location and I got my two Rupee coin ready in my pocket. When we arrived at the tree with the cleft the man was sleeping inside, snuggled up against the back of the tree. The plastic ice cream container was out but empty. I quickly stooped to deposit the coin, to Dan’s surprise. “I’ve decided to patronize Tree Man,” I explained. “He doesn’t bother anyone, he just stays there in the tree. I like that. He has become familiar to me now,” I furthered.
“Well, now he will have something nice to wake up to,” Dan commented, squeezing my hand.
While walking back up the hill, we passed Malik at his second hotel, next to the Hotel Sharon. We explained what had happened that night. Malik apologized that he did not know the man from our description of the routine. “If I knew the man, I would go and get him and bring him here,” Malik explained, pointing decisively at the floor of the hotel. Behind him his all-male staff nodded in agreement. “You know this man, with the umbrella all the time he is carrying?” he asked.
“Oh yeah, Snake Man,” I replied laughing.
“Yes, the snake man. He brought tourists here, and went into the back, into the kitchen to get glasses, like he worked here. I told him never again. It is hard for us sometimes, this is a restaurant too, open to everyone. Sometimes a tourist, she will bring a man here, maybe to buy some drink or something and they will be talking. We do not interfere. But do not go into the back and get glasses and say that you are one of my men or my brother or something. That will be the last time,” Malik finished heatedly. I was shocked. “I can’t believe that they just walk into your kitchen like they work here,” I exclaimed.
“They think we will back them up, that we can all get what we want. But that is not how my guests will be treated,” Malik said firmly.
“Thanks for the explanation,” I spoke sincerely back. Malik encouraged Dan to file a police report. “But do not tell your friends in the military,” he warned, “They will find him and really hurt him.”
“I had my shoes stolen from a temple one time,” Dan replied, nodding his head in agreement, “I went to the cops and they knew the guy. They found him, got my shoes back, and then beat the man right in front of me. I had to ask for mercy for the man.”
“Yes, that is how it is sometimes,” Malik agreed. “This place needs the tourists. The police do not like to see shoes getting stolen, they will side with you,” he finished.
“That is one of my fears also,” I replied, “That the local people and police will side with the tout.”
“No, this is not so. Sri Lankans hate touts. The police want to encourage tourism, so they will be with you,” Malik re-assured me. He then apologized that we had such an unpleasant experience as we left for home.

Tuesday, September 05, 2006

Errands



After cleaning up I realized there was no food in the house. There was only one thing to do, go out for lunch and a shopping trip. This would be my maiden solo voyage into Kandy. I planned my mission carefully, laying my gear out on the bed. Backpack for carrying things back up the hill, dark sunglasses to avoid eye contact, hat, detailed and well-organized list, Lonely Planet book for back-up, journal, pen, Pepto-Bismol tabs, small underarm red purse for money, cell phone, and Dan’s business cards. I felt nervous about going out on the street alone; I remembered all the people crushed around me at the Perahera. “Was this how agoraphobic people back home felt?” I wondered to myself. “Is it reasonable, here or there?” I debated with myself as I packed my gear. I reminded myself of the first rule of mental health “is it causing a problem in the negotiation of your life and relationships? If yes, then something is a problem and not just an eccentricity or habit.” I knew that if I couldn’t make it out there on the street alone, that would be a problem.

Starting out I figured that without Dan I was more likely to be groped, but less likely to be hit by a bus. Walking behind someone taller than you in the Third World can be dangerous, drastically reducing your sight-line. I also feel safer negotiating my own street crossings even though I am actually more aggressive on my own than I would be walking next to Dan. I felt surprising comfortable and confident behind my dark shades and dropping my head to dip down the brim of my hat when I had to go through a gaggle of idle men.

I had only large bills, so I went to the supermarket first to break my 1000 Rupee note, the equivalent of about ten bucks. Then I could proceed into the “alley of many things” with my small bills to get sponges, buckets, a floor brush et cetera. One of the Third World Universal Constants bridging culture, religion, and continent is that no independent vendor can handle large bills. If I were to go into the alley to get some plastic bowls, hangers, and a strainer from one vendor and the total was 200 Rupees, and I tried to pay with a 1000 Rupee note, it would be a crisis. The shopkeeper would have to send the 8 year old errand boy off someplace to get change. You would think that if the vendor is selling 100 and 200 Rupee purchases all day long he would have a collection of small notes, but this is never the case. Ever. One must cultivate and carefully monitor one’s small bill and coin collection.

I did well in the alley, acquiring everything on my list from a large plastic food cage to getting an extra key made for the annex, paying what I estimated to be slightly white-skinned prices, but not too bad. I was not going to stand around in the equatorial sun and work a man with no shoes from 150 to 100 Rupees for a clothesline and clothespins. I am just not that into the spirit of haggling. My reward was lunch at Rams.

It didn’t take me long to realize that I do not like Sri Lankan food, the backbone of which is dahl, curries, and rice. Before I came to Sri Lanka Dan warned me that the rice was bad here. I had my favorites, but as a serious carb addict I had never met a grain I didn’t like. I’d had everything from Thai rice to Japanese rice to Basmati. Sri Lankan rice has a very small, squat grain, and tastes like it was grown in a swamp next to an open sewer. Rams was a South Indian Tamil restaurant where they served great thalis featuring savory Basmati rice. A thali is a little curry sampler with various pickled things and chutneys in small metal bowls ringing a cereal-bowl sized metal bowl of rice and crammed onto a large metal platter. You dump the rice on the platter and dig in. I dig in with a fork, Dan and the natives dig in with their fingers. I find eating with your fingers revolting in a country where soap in the bathroom is a rare commodity.

Eating my thali meal and sipping my fresh lime juice in the refreshingly dark interior of Rams I felt the pain of future loss again. I could eat here for a little while, but not forever. I was comforted by Rams with the attentive but not creepy staff and reliably excellent food, but I could not cling to it. When every smear of curry juice had been soaked up I knew it was time to start rolling myself and my loot back up the hill. It was monsoon season and I had tempted the rain gods far too long. Starting back along the lake I passed Tree Man, one of the legion of homeless men who live on the streets of Kandy. This man was special though because he lived in the cleft of a huge tree by the lake, he had blankets and a few belongings in there. You never saw him with an open bottle of booze or passed out drunk on the pavement at night. He never hassled anyone for money; he just had his nicely washed ice-cream container out for donation. He was familiar to me from other walks by with Dan, but not irritating. When I passed by that day he gave me a nice smile. I decided that he would become my first homeless donation. Not that day, since I was not going to stop walking and crack open my bag on that stretch, but in the future I would carry a few Rupee coins in my pocket. The one and two Rupee coins were building up in my desk anyway. I had never, ever given money to a homeless person before, under any circumstances. Since I lived here now though, I felt that I should become part of the social economy. I decided that on my future trips into town I would carry small coins in my pocket and carefully decide on other recipients. Candidates should first and foremost not follow me or in any way approach me physically, or even verbally. I decided that I would also prefer a homeless person to be familiar, in a usual location, and not obviously drunk.

Monday, September 04, 2006

Home



The bed and fridge were delivered, three months rent were paid, and we got our keys and moved in on a Friday. We had each brought one large backpack, one rolling suitcase, a laptop each, plus my viola, to Sri Lanka. Siam helped us drag each item down the steep steps to the annex. Dan gave him a nice tip for his repeated services and then we were alone in our home. We flopped down in the brand-new naked foam mattress, exhausted from the heat, the packing, and the hauling. We lay curled up, side by side for a few minutes feeling the breeze from the open windows blow over us until suddenly there was a loud scuffling noise in the ceiling, send us both flying to our feet. “Pole cat. We have a goddamn pole cat,” Dan exclaimed.
“What the hell is a pole cat?” I demanded, “And how do you kill it?”
“It’s an animal that lives in ceilings here. I had one pee on my laundry once. I was living with Jeff and I had my laundry spread all over the bed. I left to get a drink and when I came back it was obvious that my laundry had been pee’d on,” Dan replied.
“Jeff?” I asked.
“He wasn’t home,” Dan laughed.
“What about the ceiling, couldn’t you tell by that?” I asked.
“It was a wooden ceiling,” Dan replied. It was difficult for me to imagine a ceiling that would not give evidence of urine saturation, but I didn’t press any further into the issue. “The key thing to remember,” I said encouragingly, “is that animals in the ceiling are much, much smaller than they sound. My violin teacher used to have me come over to her house for lessons. There was this real racket in the ceiling one day and we were really freaked out, so we made her boyfriend go up there. It sounded huge, like a wombat or something. It was a damn squirrel.”
“Hopefully it won’t like it once we start living here,” Dan added.
“What about gangster rap?” I asked. “How does that work? We could have a West-Coast marathon and drive the thing away,” I suggested.
“We can try,” Dan said, unconvinced.

The pole cat was my first chapter in the lesson of the Sri Lankan house. In Sri Lanka, the indoors and the outdoors are not as clearly defined as they are in the West. To ventilate the annex we had to keep the doors to the patio and the windows open whenever we are home. There were bars on the windows to keep people out, but that is about it. When we moved in we had two inch roaches, four different regiments of ants, geckos, mosquitoes, and the pole cat living in the house. Just outside we had a raven and an angry chipmunk that peeps and yells all day long. The local herd of monkeys would occasionally drop by to attack the house and enormous mango tree in the yard. Fortunately Dan was well-versed in animal maintenance and destruction. We both liked the geckos, the raven, and the chipmunk. On our first shopping trip we got spray for the roaches, powder for the ants, and coils to burn for the mosquitos. For the monkeys we armed ourselves with pump-action water rifles.

After a weekend of basic unpacking and organization Dan left on Monday morning for work at the think-tank. I handed him his computer bag with a bottle of freshly filtered water and kissed him goodbye as he changed from his indoor shoes to his outdoor shoes. I was now a Sri Lankan house-girlfriend. In the week before we moved in Dan and I had asked around for work for me, utilizing all of Dan’s contacts and friends built up over the past ten years. Back in the states I was a nurse and made a good living, but I was not licensed to practice in Sri Lanka and held only a tourist visa. After two years of nights and mandatory overtime I was burned out and had been looking for a change of pace. When I was thinking about coming to Sri Lanka I envisioned myself working for one of the myriad of Non-Governmental Organizations, or NGO, doing relief work. Right after we arrived in-county 15 aid workers were shot execution-style as the civil war heated up in the north, so I was not pursuing that option. I interviewed at two International Schools. During each interview I was forced to admit that I had no teaching experience, my only qualifications were my native English tongue and my degree in English Literature. In a country where basically everyone already speaks English, this skill set was less compelling. Sri Lankans themselves go abroad to China and Korea to teach English. I even interviewed at one of Kandy’s better hotels. I was offered a job as a receptionist working everyday of the month except five, eight hours a day, for $80 US a month. This is a living wage for Sri Lanka. I was putting the word out there for private English tutoring, but nothing had come through yet.

Dan had made it clear at the outset that I did not need to work. His grant could more than cover our living expenses and all of the little extras. I paid for my various plane tickets and that was it. “I just don’t want you to be bored,” he had told me with concern, “I don’t expect you to earn money, if you want to take the hotel job for a cultural experience take it, but I didn’t expect you to find work, especially not right away.” I still had some money in savings and no debt. Back in the states I owned a brand-new car outright. When I checked my accounts on-line it chilled me that the figure would not grow for a very long time, only dwindle.

After Dan left I started to clean up the breakfast dishes. I thought about how a move in the US would be different. Before I had gone back to school for nursing, I had worked for a temp agency and landed a job in accounting. Forget the fact that I had a degree and significant work experience for one of the most in-demand fields in the States. Even without that I would be registering with temp agencies, writing cover letters, and attacking the want-ads with a red pen. Here, I had to cast my lines in all directions and wait. Even if I did land a job as a teacher it wouldn’t be for more than $150 US a month. I felt helpless and parasitic.

After washing and drying the dishes I started pumping water. All of our drinking and cooking water had to be purified by with a hand-pump water filter. I pumped the tap water from one 5 liter jug to another. For all of our drinking, cooking, and tea we used nearly 10 liters a day. After the water I swept the floor, picked up the apartment, packaged up the trash, and made the bed. Someone really needed to sweep every day since leaves and dirt blew in the windows, and dead ants, roaches, and mosquitoes covered the floor each morning after we sprayed, powdered, and lit coils each night. To keep the fruit flies to a minimum the trash had to be taken out to the big bin on the road each day. You couldn’t even just have a barrel outside on the compound because the monkeys would be drawn to it. When I looked at the clock I realized that 3 hours had gone by and I hadn’t even tackled the mango leaves on the patio. “Dan was right, this place is high maintenance,” I thought as I moved out onto the patio and grabbed the outside broom. The sun was striking the gold canopy of the Temple of the Tooth and shinning off of the top of the lake. I could see Kandy thronging with activity and life down the hill below me as I worked. I stopped to look at the view and I reminded myself that this is what I had wanted. I wanted the challenge of living in the third world for a year. I had invited the assault on my values and habits. I wanted to be stripped of all the external things like my job, my car, my spending power, and my routine. I had wanted to pop the hood and see what was under there.

Friday, September 01, 2006

Perahera


The Esala Perahera is a 10 day sequence of parades at night during which the tooth relic and representations of the protective deities of Kandy are removed from their temples and shrines and carried around the city with much fanfare. The tooth relic is a four inch tooth said to be snatched from the funeral pyre of Gautama Buddha. The Buddha was, apparently, quite large. “We’ll go on the second to last night, things will be getting big but good seats’ll be affordable,” Dan explained. Our tickets were purchased through Malik, who told Dan that the seats would be in front of Hattan Bank. “That’s right at the turn of the main road, those are great seats,” Dan told me as Siam pointed them out on a day trip in the three-wheeler through town. On the second to the last night of the Perahera Siam drove us into Kandy town in the three-wheeler. He parked in the modern parking deck built for a shopping mall that has yet to materialize. Kandy may be the only third-world city with an overabundance of convenient, affordable parking. Siam then led us to the security check where our camera bags were thoroughly investigated and we each had a full penitentiary-style pat-down before entering the parade area.

We began threading our way though and at times over the crowd. Every inch of curb was staked out and aggressively defended by whole families camped on cardboard slabs. The streets were patrolled by squadrons of mounted police. As I was struggling to keep up with Siam I heard a male British voice say “someone has their hand somewhere very strange.” I turned to my left to see a tall man attempting to move in the other direction, there was a school aged local child behind him with his hand in the man’s crotch from behind. Before I could pull on the child’s arm the crowd swept me up the street toward the bank.

With great relief I saw the Hatton Bank side. Siam showed our tickets to the local man guarding the risers in front. I could not tell if the seat-keeper was shaking his head “no,” or doing the affirmative side to side head waggle so ubiquitous in Asia. When he raised his voice to Siam and pointed back down the seat, I knew that we had been re-assigned. We headed back down the street. There were bodies pressed into every angle of my flesh. With each step away from the bank and down around the corner I could feel Dan started to fume more and more. When we arrived at the risers Siam indicated Dan lit into this seat-keeper angrily in Singhala. Siam put his hand on Dan’s shoulder to calm him down, indicating that there was nothing to be done. “Let’s just sit the hell down and out of this damn crowd,” I pleaded, and we took our seats.

I was relieved to be above the fray. As I looked out across the street I saw a familiar sight: an Anglican church with the windows painted over and a crooked neon cross at the top. “We are at Piava’s,” Dan stated bluntly. “We are on the goddamn risers that they were building the other night with the table saw.”
“Wow,” I said, awestruck by the irony. “You just can’t make this shit up. You know that someone screwed Malik, he would never do this to us.”
“I know, I know,” Dan replied, dejected. “This is toward the end, the dancers are tired and some of the torches and things have gone out,” he finished.

Soon after we sat down three confused older British couples took the row in front of us. I watched in disbelief as they asked the seat-keeper when their 5 course meal would begin. “No meal.” He told them.
“But you see, we were told that there was to be a 5 course meal, starting when we sat down,” one of the gentlemen tried to patiently explain.
“No meal,” the seat-keeper repeated and walked away.
“I just can’t believe it,” one of the women exclaimed, “this was meant to be our special meal!”
“yes, and weren’t we supposed to be at the Hatton Bank?” Another woman enquired of her husband.
“Yes, yes, quite right,” he mused.

I returned my attention to the street. I noticed pairs of teenage girls in retro-nursing smocks walking down the street itself, on the other side of the crowd-control barrier. They were the only people allowed on the street besides the police. One girl carried a shopping bag with the “Panadol” logo on the side and the other carried a jug of water that resembled a plastic gas-can. Panadol is the local term for Tylenol. One girl would reach into the bag as the other would pour a little paper cup of water. I watched in fascination as they delivered Panadol up and down the street until the parade itself began.

Once the Perahera began it did not disappoint. Hundreds of dancers, flag bearers, men carrying torches, self-muliators with hooks in their backs, men walking on stilts, and men wielding cartwheels of fire paraded past interspersed between 50 costumed elephants. About half of the elephants’ costumes were covered in Christmas lights powered by a battery behind the elephants head just in front of the mahout.

The perahera lasted two hours. When it was over the barriers were cracked and pedestrians flooded the street. No buses, no cars, no three-wheeler drivers shouting and honking. There was plenty of space for everyone on the street, Dan and I walked side by side, hand in hand, a rare treat for us walking in public. “That was pretty amazing,” I commented, “you don’t see that everyday.”
“I’m glad you liked it. I guess there was till plenty and fire and dancing from our seats,” Dan replied as we walked together up the middle of the main road toward the lake.