Polonnaruva

Fazal

Fazal

We spent the next two days eating at our favorite places, walking along the Galle Face Green at dawn, and generally loafing around the Tea Lounge at the Galle Face and Barista, the Starbucks-owned coffee chain built into the Galle Face Regency complex. One day Dan left me to relax at Gallery Café while he went and raided the Buddhist Publication Society for goodies, finding several books published by his new research subject, the stream enterer monk. “These are all his translations of American New Age books on reincarnation,” he explained. “All of his translations of American pop-paranormal books are still in print. None of his rational analyses of Dharma are still in print,” he furthered sadly. “The Sinhala dislike him for his attempts to re-interpret the Dharma and love this stuff,” he said, holding up a paperback book with a bad watercolor style cover.

On the evening of April 20th we decided to go and visit our jeweler to talk over a ring for Dan. When Dan had his security briefing at the Embassy back in August he had admired the security officer’s jewelry and she had referred him to Jewel Qudsi. Fortuitously, Jewel Qudsi was located 400 yards from the Barista built into the side of the Galle Face Regency. Jewel Qudsi didn’t have a fancy marble store-front or large illuminated pictures. The store was marked only by a modest yellow sign with black letters. One late afternoon on our second trip to Colombo when we stayed with Mrs. Ratanavale and met Typhoid Mary, we opened the glass door at street level under the sign, walked down a flight of steps, and then were buzzed into the subterranean shop. The first landing of the shop was all ready-made jewelry in semi-precious stones displayed in cases along the walls. We had to descend again past a wall of glass containing ropes of tourmaline, pearls, garnets, and other semi-precious stones to reach the main level of the shop. Both side walls were lined with cases of ready-made gold jewelry with precious stones. In the middle of the main floor rested a rotating table case in the middle of the room containing only rings. Glass boxes of loose semi precious stones were mounted into the back wall with a long display case of loose, individually-boxed Sri Lankan sapphires stationed in front of it. The shop continued around to the left to reveal a large, oval, oak desk for the owner and the door to the workshop.

I glanced briefly at the ready-made collection before zeroing in on the loose sapphire in the case where we were waited on by the owner, Fazal, a Muslim man in his mid-forties. His English was excellent and he used American idioms extremely skillfully when talking to us. Fazal had the relaxed ability to put both of us at ease, even Dan who had never entered a jewelry store before in his life except to get the band of his watch fixed. When I would become engrossed in a certain stone, Fazal would ask Dan about his research and was genuinely interested in drawing him out. Fazal showed us stone after stone in all colors of blue from pale blue, to cornflower blue, to deep royal blue, encouraging us to us to secure the stones in tweezers, hold them up to the light, and gaze at them under the loupe. He would explain the various inclusions that made each stone unique, “Here is one with a little bit of tourmaline there on the right side,” he would tell me before handing the stone over. He even showed us some recently acquired uncut sapphires the size of nutmeg seeds and showed us how to shine a pen-light through at different angles to determine the clarity of different regions of the stone. “’Qudsi’ means ‘pure’ he explained when I asked about the meaning of the store’s name.

Gradually my attention shifted to the yellow sapphires, then to the pink sapphires. “Do you have any green sapphires?” I asked. Fazal called for tea for all of us and brought out a box from under the display case of sapphires ranging from light green to dark forest green. “But these are from Madagascar,” he explained, frowning slightly. “We do not have green sapphires in Sri Lanka.” I looked at the green sapphires briefly, but I knew that I wanted something from Sri Lanka. “What other colors do you have?” I asked. Thousands of dollars of sapphires already littered the top of the display case, in and out of their white plastic boxes. Fazal seemed to relish the challenge, and called for another container of individually boxed loose stones to be brought from the back. I was sorting through the box and was initially transfixed by a few brown sapphires that glowed golden until I suddenly happened across the peach sapphire. The pink sapphires in the case were all florid hues of magenta, but the peach sapphire was a delicate shade of light peach, 4.55 ct deep square cut, and had a little tourmaline inclusion on one side that wouldn’t be noticed once it was set. I looked at the stone from all angles in the bright overhead light and I knew I had found my stone. The inner clarity of the stone indicated to me that the stone had been heated to improve the color, but I didn’t care. A non-heated stone would have an internal silkiness visible under the loupe. “This is from Sri Lanka right?” I asked. “Yes,” Fazal replied, smiling. “Put my name on this one,” I instructed, “We’ll be back for it,” I finished, and started to get up to leave. Fazal nodded and wrote our information on an envelope and filled the stone with other envelopes in a large wooden box. “It will be here for you,” he assured me.

When we re-ascended the stairs it was dark. That night over dinner at the Italian restaurant at the Hilton I told Dan “I don’t want that stone to be a ring,” I explained, “I want it to be the ring. You can give it to me whenever you want, years from now, but that’s my dream stone.” He reached across the table, took my hand, “Ok,” he replied and smiled.
“Look,” I continued, “I’m making this easy on you, do you want to have to figure all this out yourself?” I asked jokingly.
“No,” Dan replied laughing, shaking his head and widening his eyes in mock terror.
“That stone’s a bargain,” I ranted. “In the States that type of stone is totally unavailable and you couldn’t even get a half-carat diamond for that price, and setting it will be much cheaper too here, so really, you’ll be coming out ahead,” I reasoned with a touch of self-conscious sarcasm.
“Yes, I’ll be coming out way ahead with the 4 carat peach sapphire,” he teased me.
“Really, that’s just more a comment on how inflated diamond prices are,” I added, “but it’s still a really good deal.”

When we returned to the Galle Face for Christmas, I designed a simple setting for the peach sapphire with Fazal at his oak desk, two tiny three-point diamonds and a teardrop pigeon’s blood ruby from Burma on each side all bezel set in white gold. “You only get rubies this color red from Burma,” he explained as the three of us sifted through fifty teardrop rubies looking for the perfect pair, “Nowhere else. All other rubies are really more like pink sapphires, both rubies and sapphires are the same mineral, you know, Corundum, Aluminium Oxide,” He continued, sketching the cubic crystal structure of the mineral on a scratch sheet of paper on the green blotter of his desk. “Corundum naturally has no color, small amounts of metallic oxides give the color, titanium and iron in the lattice give the sapphire its blue color and Chromium gives the ruby its red color,” he finished, pointing to the joints in the lattice drawing with his pencil
“I remember reading about that before,” I replied nodding and finalizing my selection of accent stones.
“How has the drop in tourism affected your business?” Dan asked.
“It has been slow,” Fazal admitted. “But we always meet our targets. I will be thinking, oh, this is a terrible month, and then someone will come in and buy a 20,000 dollar stone.”
“What does a 20,000 dollar stone look like?” Dan asked.
“Well,” Fazal replied, reaching into a small wooden box behind his desk and pulling out an envelope, “This just came in from one of my cutters.” He replied and dropped a dark purplish pink rectangular stone the size of a small luggage-lock into Dan’s hand. The stone was massive, but I didn’t care for the color. I didn’t even think I would want a luggage-lock that color. “I don’t like the color,” I remarked. “Yes, it is a bit bluish,” Fazal conceded, “But if I heat the stone then all the blue will fade away and it will be a lovely ruby,” he finished smiling. I glanced back at the stone, unconvinced. “Where is it from?” I asked.
“Malawi,” Fazal replied.
“Who buys this sort of thing?” Dan asked, handing it back.
“Maybe Russians,” Fazal postulated, narrowing his eyes as if conjuring his future customer. “Maybe Russians with a box full of Pound notes.”

On our trip to Colombo for the Superbowl we picked up the ring the afternoon after the big game. I got a quick peek at it before Dan put the baby-blue box with white magnet bow deep into the void of his computer bag nicknamed “the sack of shit.”
“You know I’ll never find it in there,” I remarked.
“That’s the idea,” Dan replied gleefully.
“Ok, next thing,” I told Fazal, “Star sapphire for my mother, for her birthday. I want something she can clip onto her pearls,” I explained as we all moved down to the star sapphire part of the display case. I spent the next several hours digging around star sapphires of various colors and qualities as Fazal and Dan discussed how Dan’s war project was developing and Fazal’s decision to out-source stone cutting. “The cutters are from the village, so let them run their own businesses and cut the stones in the village,” Fazal began. “I used to have to pay for them to stay in Colombo, they would be coming to work by bus, and then I had to constantly inventory the stones,” he explained, shaking his head in remembered exhaustion. Since star sapphires only exhibit the star pattern when exposed to a concentrated light source, I checked the stones away from the focused overhead lights to make sure they would still look pretty in diffuse light. After picking the main stone Fazal and I drew up a design in yellow gold and selected a square white sapphire for an accent stone. “We’ll be back next month for this,” I instructed as we left the shop, once more well after sunset.

We picked up my mother’s pendant on our anniversary trip. Fazal was away on business and one of the other employees waited on us, resulting in a record short visit to Jewel Qudsi. While we were walking up the stairs back to the street I felt disoriented because it was still light out when we were leaving, the way you feel disoriented leaving a movie in the middle of the afternoon. “Do you want a Qudsi ring for, you know, future use?” I asked Dan as we walked back to the Galle Face. He thought for a moment,
“Yeah, I think that would be nice,” he replied.
“Well, let’s look at some designs on the web, and when we come back in April for my birthday we can talk it over with Fazal,” I suggested.
“That sounds good,” Dan replied as we entered the open-air lobby of the Classic side of the Galle Face.

Having done some research on www.Weddingbands.com, we descended into Jewel Qudsi on the evening of April 20th to design a ring for Dan. I knew that he wanted a two-tone ring and that he wanted to incorporate a few, small, cornflower-blue sapphires. Fazal had some more pictures for Dan to go over as we sat around his desk and he was quickly drawn to a white gold ring with a strip of yellow gold circumnavigating the band at its equator. “And what if we put three little sapphires in the strip of gold?” Dan asked tentatively.
“That would be beautiful!” I exclaimed.
“That would be really nice,” Fazal replied, nodding contemplatively. Fazal called for the container of small cornflower-blue square-cut sapphires to be brought out for Dan to pick his stones. As Dan began to sort though the thirty tiny stones with the tweezers, I looked at Fazal and realized that he didn’t look Sinhala or Tamil. I recalled that our friend Malik had told us once that his family was from Saudi in the distant past and his father had been an Imam. “Fazal,” I began “Where is your family from?” I asked.
“Originally?” he asked.
“Yes, originally,” I replied.
“My family is from Yemen,” he answered, leaning back in his chair. “I researched this. My family came from Yemen nine generations ago. They were builders. My family built the Colombo Museum for the British. They didn’t want any payment. The British asked, ‘what can we do for you?’ and they replied ‘close the museum on Fridays.’ The Colombo Museum is still closed on Fridays to this day. The Sinhala, they tried to change it, but they could not.” He added with a satisfied smile.
“But what language do you speak in the home?” I asked.
“We speak Tamil,” Fazal replied, “But it is our own dialect,”
“Really,” Dan remarked in surprise, looking up from the stones.
“Yes, it is a different dialect,” Fazal confirmed. “My mother even read Tamil in Arabic script.”
“Why do most Muslim families speak Tamil in the home and not Sinhala?” I asked.
“When the Arab traders traveled from the Middle East they settled in India and Sri Lanka as well,” Fazal began. “The Hindu and Buddhist merchants didn’t travel, so they used Muslim shipping companies. The Muslims in India married Tamil women and translated the Koran in to Tamil written in Arabic script. Tamil was the language of trade and also the language of the Koran for this area.”
“Have you gone back to Yemen?” I asked.
“I did go back and I took my family,” Fazal replied. “Yemen, is very poor,” he commented, frowning. I knew that Yemen was poor, but if a Sri Lankan was saying that Yemen was very poor, “then it must be really poor,” I reasoned internally.
“It was terrible,” he continued, “Everyone was walking around with a big cheek full of that stuff they chew, that qat, and my kids were freaking out,” he trailed off. I smiled at his use of the American idiom “freaking out.”
“Well, your kids should be thankful to great-great-great granddad Fazal for getting on a boat and coming to Sri Lanka,” I joked and Fazal laughed.
“Qat is supposed to be pretty gross,” Dan commented, having selected his three stones.
“I tried it,” Fazal answered. “I didn’t think too much of it,” he shrugged while putting Dan’s stones into an envelope.
“I think it needs to build up in your system, you have to chew it all day,” Dan added.
“Maybe that’s it,” Fazal commented thoughtfully, “I just really tried one mouthful,” he finished as another established customer entered the shop. The other men behind the loose stones counter would take care of run-of-the-mill customers while Fazal talked to the regulars at his desk. While we were picking out stones they had helped several customers. I could tell that the most recent customer was a regular because she looked past the shop boys and around the corner for Fazal.
“Well, we’ve got to get going to dinner,” I said, getting up. I could sense that it was time for his next customer. “We’ll be back to get this ring right before we leave the country in May,” I added. Fazal stood up to say good-bye and we all shook hands before Dan and I re-ascended to the dark Colombo street and headed back to Nihonbashi for dinner.

Saddest Buddha Statue Ever

Lunch with Elaine

“Is Elaine in town?” I asked Dan on our morning walk along the Galle Face Green before breakfast the day after my birthday.
“I sent her a text before we came,” Dan replied, “And she said she might be free today for lunch.”
“Great!” I answered enthusiastically, “Let’s set something up. Let’s try that Japanese place this time.

After a swim in the pool we met Elaine in the lobby of the Galle Face Regency. She wore a white eyelet sleeveless wrap blouse paired with fitted, tan, polished-cotton slacks and tan high-heeled sandals. I hugged her and she tried to do an air-kiss on each cheek maneuver on me which failed utterly on the second cheek as I awkwardly tried to lean back in to complete the greeting, feeling awkward and provincial. “I know a great Japanese place, Nihonbashi, and it’s right across the street,” she informed us with a smile and led us out the doors of the Regency and across Galle Road.

We followed her into an alley between some closed shops and a construction site on the other side of Galle Road. We continued on along the wall of the construction site, the only thing I could see us walking towards was a closed casino marked by a broken neon sign reading “High Stakes” in red letters with a pair of dice under the words. When we passed the abandoned casino I suddenly noticed a white UN SUV complete with satellite phone antennae and snorkel parked between a navy blue BMW sedan and a Volvo station wagon under a tin roof along the wall of the construction site. “We must be getting warm,” I thought to myself on seeing the vehicles, each attended by its own driver. The UN driver slept in the driver’s seat with the window down, the Volvo driver simply stood next to the vehicle, and the BMW driver poured water out of a large water bottle over the hood of the car and used his hand to push the Colombo dust off of the paint job. Behind the “High Stakes” slate steps led down two glass doors emerged out of a thicket of bamboo.

“We never would have found this,” I commented.
“I’ve only driven here with friends before,” Elaine admitted, “I never really noticed this alley before,” she finished as the doorman bowed and opened the glass doors for us. The Spartan restaurant was filled with light pouring in from large picture windows and diffused by the little bamboo forest that surrounded the restaurant. A fountain bubbled under a skylight in the atrium of the restaurant. We were shown to a highly-polished, thick, dark teak table with a shot of golden teak inlaid through the middle. “Wow,” I sat, sitting down in the laminated birch chair and taking stock of the little gem tucked into a seedy corner of Colombo.
“This place is pretty nice,” Elaine agreed as Dan excitedly studied the extensive menu.

We studied the menu in solemn silence, each making our decisions. After ordering I asked Elaine some of the NGO-related questions I had been pondering for awhile. “Dan has been going out to talk to families of soldiers killed in the war for awhile,” I began. “Recently when he goes to the families houses he has noticed a change. The families now expect that the white person is going to bring running water to their house or something like that.”
“That’s a new thing,” Dan echoed me, nodding.
“So,” I continued. “Do you think that all of the NGO work in this country is creating a culture of dependence where individuals assume that the foreigners will teacher their children English for free and dig their wells to the government assuming that the NGOs will come in and care for the masses of people displaced by the war?”
“Absolutely,” she replied bluntly, nodding. I did feel like I could quite ask “Then what are you doing here?” I just looked at her in silence until she continued.
“But the government just doesn’t care,” she continued. “If we don’t help these people, Especially the Tamils, then they’ll die. Most of the NGOs do really good work and help people that nobody else is going to help,” she replied simply. “But the government and everything they do to prevent us from delivering aid is really starting to get to me,” she conceded. “I work with people who have worked in Indonesia and Chad,” she continued. “They tell me that this government drives them crazy.”
“That’s a pretty strong statement,” Dan replied.
“I have to admit,” Elaine continued, “That’s one of the reasons that I took my current assignment, I’m looking into the possibility of making a lateral move within the organization to a management level in another country where language skills won’t be an issue.”
“So after ten years you are starting to plan your exit?” I asked, surprised.
“I’m looking into it,” she confessed.
“That would be a real loss for Sri Lanka,” Dan commented. “You are fluent in both Tamil and Sinhala and you really know how to work with the people here after so much time in the field.” Elaine nodded in agreement.
“Do you ever think of moving back to the States?” I asked.
“No,” she replied definitively, “I know I’d be bored, getting up every day, driving in to work at an office,” she said, rolling her eyes as the first courses of sushi arrived.

We were quiet for a few moments, each savoring the tasty morsels of fish before I launched into my next question. “You know,” I commented, “Before I met Dan and really started to think about Sri Lanka I knew about the LTTE. I thought that they were freedom fighters; I figured they had a good reason for doing what they were doing. But then I got here and heard about them blowing up convoys of unarmed soldiers going home on leave, sea piracy, and assassinating opposing Tamil politicians; and these are just things that happened since I’ve been living here. You’ve also got the history, the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, ethnic cleansing of Jaffna, and blowing up the Temple of the Tooth for example,” I paused. “Now, I’m not saying that the Sinhala didn’t do bad, bad, things, especially after independence, but I feel like the LTTE isn’t about that anymore. I don’t know what they are about, what their goal really is. What do you think? You’ve been up there right?” I asked.
“I will admit that I had much more sympathy for the concept of Eelam before I actually went there,” she began. “I went to the LTTE controlled east after the Tsunami…”
“Did they stamp your passport?” Dan interjected.
“No,” Elaine replied. “I’ve heard about that stamp,” she laughed, “but I’ve never seen it. And they just use Sri Lankan Rupees up there for currency,” she added as the waiter cleared away the plates from our first course. “So I went there to distribute aid after the Tsunami,” she continued. “It was a fascist state, with someone watching you all the time. Nobody would talk to me. The LTTE said to me ‘give us the supplies and we will distribute them.’ I said to them ‘No, how can we give aid when we don’t even know what the people need?’ I mean, in other areas we first asked people ‘what did you lose? Are you a fisherman and you lost your nets? Where are you getting your food? How many homes were destroyed?’ Things like that. So finally,” she breathed a dramatic sigh to add emphasis to the struggle, “I was allowed to talk to the people in the villages with a LTTE soldier right next to me.” I could easily visualize Elaine in a professional but stylish outfit standing in front of Prabhakaran himself and saying “No! We must talk to the people ourselves.”
“What did some of the other organizations do?” Dan asked.
“It was crazy,” She admitted. “There were organizations driving through towns at night pushing supplies out of the back of SUVs into the street and whoever got it got it. They had these supplies and they needed to get rid of them. That’s how disorganized things were.”
“When I was on the Tsunami tour in the south I had some similar experiences,” Dan replied. “So much random aid had been distributed that a certain village might have tons of chick peas and bandages and nothing else. Then we would ask who the villagers wanted to distribute the aid, you know, because we needed a local contact person. Sometimes I would say ‘do you want to monks to distribute the aid?’ and almost always the villagers would suggest someone else other than the local monk,” Dan remarked. “Then we went to this one Catholic village,” he continued, “And they enthusiastically asked that the aid be distributed by the father, by the priest.”
“That’s really interesting,” I commented as the main courses arrived, tempura for me, udon for Dan, and more sushi for Elaine.
“I’ve heard it said that the Tsunami catalyzed the breakdown of the ceasefire agreement,” I commented, realizing I had to wait for my tempura to cool before eating. “But it seems to me that Prabhakaran just needed to re-arm.”
“It sure looks that way,” Elaine replied after a bite of crab roll, nodding her head vigorously.

As I started to work on my tempura, Elaine asked Dan about his research. “Well, I’m wrapping up the war project, finally,” he sighed. “This project has just been really draining. It’s been such a big survey of so many aspects of Buddhist belief and the war that I haven’t had the time and energy to devote to any one research subject or site. I’ve gotten a lot of data, but I haven’t developed any really emotionally satisfying relationships like I had when I was a junior Fulbrighter. I feel like the only relationships I have right now are with Sri Lankans that I employ in one way or another,” he paused to stir his noodle soup. “Also, I haven’t been looking at anything or anyone extraordinary or inspirational,” he continued. “I am more just trying to illustrate the situation on the ground. The monks I’ve been working with are nice guys, but I wouldn’t say that most of them are particularly good monks.” Elaine nodded her head in agreement.
“Early in your career you can have some close relationships for short periods of time that are part of your growth as a scholar, but fall away once you start doing serious research,” Elaine explained. “I lived with a family in a waddle and dob hut for nine months when I was a Fulbrighter,” she continued. “I slept on the floor with the kids. I cried, everyone cried when it was time for me to leave. I’ve gone back to that area maybe once or twice and seen them, but everything is different now.”
“You can’t carry that relationship into the future,” I remarked and Elaine nodded approvingly.

“The other thing is my role as an employer of Sri Lankans,” Dan continued as Elaine gave him a sympathetic look.
“This whole project has been experienced through Thilak,” he began. “I never would have been able to accomplish what I accomplished without him, but trying to get the work I need out him is tough at times,”
“Capacity building,” I interjected and Elaine laughed.
“The worst part though is I have learned that Thilak is practically incapable of doing an interview without lying,” Dan confessed. “For example, we’ll be interviewing a monk and Thilak will say ‘we’ve interviewed over 100 other monks,’ and then I have to say ‘no, we’ve interviewed about twenty monks.’ Thilak is often really good at sort of greasing the wheels of the interview, but that is one bad habit he has.”
“Thilak is just going to say whatever he thinks will put the interview subject in the right frame of mind,” Elaine explained. “The veracity of his statement is immaterial to him. If he feels that his job is to facilitate the best possible interview, he probably can’t understand when you are upset at little details like how many other monks have been interviewed,” she said, shrugging her shoulders and tilting her head with a dead-pan expression as if to say “who could care about such trivialities?” before breaking into a smile. “When you go from just sort of living in the culture and learning about the culture to having to utilize the human resources of the culture to get data on a large scale, that’s when everything changes,” she assured him.
“Another thing is having Sara here,” Dan continued. “Even though it’s great having her here and everything, I used to get a certain amount of attention and harassment, but now I have to deal with the amount of attention and harassment she gets and it has really changed the way I walk around on the street, even when I’m on my own. I’m always just waiting for the next thing to happen.”
“That’s why we tend to come here for vacations instead of to the beach or some place more touristy,” I added. “We can go out for a nice meal and just sort of feel normal for a little while here.”
“It’s really tough,” she agreed. “I knew a guy who was here from Canada and he brought his wife. After three months she just really hated it, she had to go home. The trouble was that his university was giving him extra money for her and when she went home they were trying to get him to pay it back.”
“That’s crazy,” I replied as the waiter cleared our plates.
“Well, it’s about time for me to get back to the office,” Elaine commented as the check arrived. “We don’t have much to do since we aren’t allowed to go to the north and collect data because the fighting is so bad, but I need to be there anyway,” she sighed as we all chipped in money for the check.

Birthday

Birthday

After I returned home from the Goenka workshop on Tuesday, April 10th, Dan and I curled up and watched a great college bowl game on the computer. The lead shifted back and forth several times and the game ran into overtime. I relished becoming absorbed into the frivolous entertainment of my culture. Dan made me popcorn to munch on during the game and afterwards I ate a big lunch, but the thought of eating in the evening completely repulsed me. The first night back I slept well out of exhaustion, but then my mania resurfaced and for the next two nights I did not feel sleepy and was unable to fall asleep until after midnight and woke up without an alarm at 6 AM the following mornings. “This is really weird,” I told Dan on the second night, “I’ve never experienced anything like this before. I don’t even feel tired during the day, it’s sort of scary.”
“I’ve never seen you like this,” Dan agreed with concern.

On the fourth night, Friday the 13th, I fell into a restless, dream-filled sleep on the Sri Lankan New Years Eve. People shot off bottle rockets at auspicious times throughout the night and the Festivities continued on the nights of the 14th and 15th. Kandy ground to a halt, our three-wheeler drivers were on vacation, and Dan gave his research assistant a vacation to visit his family for the holiday. “It’s so weird to be held hostage by this holiday that is totally meaningless to me,” I commented to Dan as we read and surfed on the internet sitting side by side in uncomfortable wicker chairs on the back porch. “It’s probably like growing up Jewish in the States only you can’t even go to the movies on Christmas,” I continued.
“Yeah, it is a drag,” Dan agreed without looking up from his computer.
“It sucks that there isn’t any sort of interesting parade or fair or anything,” I continued.
“It’s a very family-oriented holiday,” Dan explained, looking up from the computer screen. “People make cookies and take them around to see their friends and extended families. This is when a lot of people get a chance to go back to their villages if they live and work in Colombo,” he continued.
“Right, I can see that” I conceded, “But we don’t have anyone to visit; Delia can’t even get over here for lunch because none of her three-wheeler drivers are working. We can’t go to the Botanical Gardens for the same reason,” I complained as another round of bottle-rockets erupted throughout Kandy. “These bottle-rockets are just loud,” I continued my lament, “They aren’t even pretty,” I pouted.
“Just wait until Vesak,” Dan replied, “There’ll be more going on with all of the lanterns and stuff.”
“What’s Vesak?” I asked.
“It’s Buddha Day,” Dan replied. “It’s Sri Lankan Christmas, the biggest holiday of the year. It’s the Buddha’s birth, enlightenment, and death. They all happened on the same poya day, the same full moon day. It’s the Taurus full moon I think.”
“That’s handy,” I commented. “What do people do?” I asked.
“People go to the temple, listen to sermons, and take the eight precepts for the day,” he began. “It is supposed to be a time for Buddhists to renew their commitment to lead noble lives. People make offerings of flowers, incense, and lights, and donate to charities. The lanterns are a part of the light offering.”
“I see what you mean about the difficulties of trying to be a convert,” I admitted. “making offerings of flowers, incense, and lights just don’t make cultural sense to me. And I’d never even heard of Vesak.”
“Those are all really South Asian things that find their roots in the over all culture of the region,” Dan explained.
“It’s weird,” I replied thoughtfully, “Being removed from the Western holidays and seasons gives the passage of time a really weird feeling, like we’ve been here forever. I don’t do anything for Easter, but it is somehow comforting to see the marshmallow chicks come and go at the drugstore. That’s a part of spring for me somehow, like the mailman breaking out his shorts,” I finished.
“On the Sri Lankan calendars, Good Friday is marked,” Dan replied, “But not Easter. It’s like they are saying ‘OK, he’s dead and he’s not coming back.’”
“That’s funny,” I laughed. “I guess of all the challenges of living here, having to go without seeing the Cadbury Egg after-Easter sale at Walgreens is pretty minor, but you know, it’s the little things.”
“Yes I know,” Dan answered, reaching out to run his hand along my hair from the crown of my head down my ponytail, “It’s time to go home.”
“Actually,” I replied with a glimmer in my eye, “I believe that it’s time to go to the Galle Face for a few days.”

On my birthday, April 17th, we took to train to Colombo to stay at the Galle Face for a few days. Tourism had dipped drastically since the recent LTTE bombing of the air force installment at the international airport on March 26, 2007. In the maiden voyage of the “Air Tigers,” two small, Czech, single-engine planes had flown over the airport, dropped bombs killing three airmen, and flown off unscathed. They had timed their attack to synchronize with an important Sri Lankan match in the cricket World Cup. As a result of the low season, prices for the newly renovated South wing of the Galle Face called the Regency were affordable.

After a pleasant ride on the Kandy-Colombo Express, we found a three-wheeler outside and Dan proudly told the driver to take us to the Galle Face on the Regency side. When the doorman opened the heavy golden teak door to the lobby, I could see straight through the lobby and through a set of glass doors at the opposite end directly out to the glittering sea. The doorman smiled as I entered and I felt safe to smile back. I knew that I could return to doorman’s smile and he wouldn’t then think that he could ask us where we were from or pinch my ass or anything. I felt comforted as I stepped into my safe place for human interaction.
“I know these people are being paid to be nice to me,” I remarked to Dan as we walked across the highly polished cream-colored marble floor toward the reception desk, “But at this point, I’ll take it.”
“That’s why I’ll never speak Sinhala here,” he replied. “That would ruin it, it would destroy this buffer of comfort we have here. Remember that one time I accidentally spoke Sinhala to the guy at the omelet station?” I nodded. “That guy was asking me for my cell phone number and going on about I don’t know what and all I could think was ‘please shut up before I have to get you fired,’” he finished.
“I haven’t seen that guy around since,” I remarked as we approached the reception desk and the woman behind the desk greeted us with a wide smile. “He probably messed up some other way,” I finished.

Our room was smaller than the rooms on the Classic side, but the renovations more than compensated for the lack of square-footage. The bathroom featured a green marble countertop with a free-standing glass bowl functioning as the basin with the faucet mounted into the marble backsplash. A large window mounted into the wall of the shower allowed the bather to look out through the bedroom area and out the bedroom window directly to the sea. The sound of the waves permeated the room. The 150 year old Burmese teak floors had been refinished and the writing desk even concealed its own wireless internet router. After the porter had situated our bag on the luggage rack we sat down on the bed to savor the view.

My next action was to go and investigate the new spa, Jal, that had opened on the ground floor as a part of the March 19th Grand Opening of the Regency side. From an article in the paper I learned that “Jal” meant water in Sanskrit. The new spa area was breath-taking, new teak floors flanked by small, up-lit, channels of water ran down the sides of the hallways. Frangipani flowers floated in a large glass bowl in the reception area and also in the illuminated channels of water. I made an appointment for a Shiatsu massage in the afternoon for my birthday.

After a light lunch at a hotel across the street and an afternoon floating in the pool, I arrived for my massage. The Sinhala woman who gave the massage was obviously very well-trained and professional. The body-work room was filled with afternoon light and I could hear the waves of the Indian Ocean throughout my massage.

After resting in the room for the afternoon, it was time to get ready for dinner at The 1864. I quickly draped one of my white sarees from Kerala, getting each fold and pinning right the first time. Dan was still in his underwear watching a show on Kangaroos on TV when I proclaimed myself ready for dinner. “Already?” he asked, surprised.
“Don’t I look ready?” I countered, feigning insult.
“Yes, yes,” Dan replied turning off the TV, standing up, and changing his belt from his jeans to his slacks, “You’re getting quick with that saree,” he grumbled as he got dressed.

“My next project is going to be totally different,” Dan commented once we were settled at our table at The 1864. “I’m going to write on the teachings of that one monk, the one who claims he was born a stream-enterer and everyone called a heretic. He’s dead, but I have recordings of his sermons on minidisk,” Dan explained. “Thilak and I have already translated the sermons. I also have interviews I conducted with his primary students back when I was a Fulbrighter, before I knew Thilak. We’re working on translating those now. But really, I’m not going to need a research assistant on this project because I already have all of the contacts for the project from my undergrad professor who inspired me to study Sri Lanka in the first place,” Dan furthered.

“By the phrase ‘totally different,’ does that mean that we can live in Colombo?” I asked hopefully after ordering the same bottle of white wine as we had enjoyed on our anniversary along with the same soup and lobster dishes.
“Yes,” Dan replied definitively. “My primary research site would be 30 minutes out in the Colombo suburbs, at the temple of one of one of the monk’s students. He teaches a meditation course that I would participate in, interview other participants, and get more background data on his teacher as well. I already have some of his publications in Sinhala that I could translate. And of course, I would need to live in Colombo to use the National Archives and the Library,” Dan assured me. “The research for this topic would be quicker and easier,” he continued. “I would do the interviews on my own and then I would just need to hire transcription help. We would probably just have to live in Colombo for a few months.”
“Ok, so this monk says that he was born a stream-enterer, what does he mean by that” I asked.
“A stream-enterer has entered the stream leading towards release,” Dan explained. “Contemporary tradition interprets it as a very advanced state,” he continued, “But this monk argued that becoming a stream enterer was like entering into the Buddhist paradigm. Once someone accepts the paradigm, they will naturally move towards enlightenment. The first step is the elimination of doubt in the path of Buddhism. A stream enterer has complete confidence in Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. The second thing is that you have a glimpse of the truth of no-self. This monk says that a stream-enterer still has a sense of self, but the process of realization has begun. The third thing is that you no longer have attachment to rites and rituals,”
“That’s funny,” I interjected, “I have no attachment to rites and rituals, but I wish I did,” I remarked.
“Well, that’s one down,” Dan joked.

“Ok, so you are a stream-enterer, then what?” I asked.
“Buddhism teaches that you will become fully enlightened, an arahat, in no more than seven rebirths if not sooner after stream-entry,” he replied. “Stream-enterer is the first step, and then you are a once-returner, then a non-returner, then an arahat. Also, you will not have any unfortunate rebirths like in hell or the animal womb or something,” he finished as the wine arrived and my attention was diverted to inspecting the cork and taking the first, careful sip to see if the wine had gone bad.
“Then what made this monk so controversial?” I asked once we both had full glasses.
“A few things,” Dan started. “First of all, in these parts, you just don’t go around saying you are a stream-enterer. This’s Theravada country. For the Vajrayana practitioners in Tibet, China and Japan with all of their tantric stuff to speed up the process this path doesn’t even apply. The idea of contemporary enlightenment is more accepted by Mahayana Buddhists as well because of their belief in the in-dwelling Buddha nature hidden all beings,” he paused to make sure I was still listening, “But in the Theravada tradition you have to work for it, it’s not just already there inside of you” he continued. “And many schools don’t think that and stage of enlightenment is possible so far away from the time of a living Buddha.”
“I see,” I replied, nodding my head.

“Not only did this monk say that he was a stream-enterer,” Dan continued, “But he preached that it wasn’t as difficult as everyone thought to become a stream-enterer. He preached that lots of people could do it, and they didn’t need meditation it or even the practice of sila, to achieve it .”
“Really!” I interjected, surprised. “I wish someone had told me that before I went to Goenka,” I joked.
“He taught that right-view, Prajña, needed to come first,” Dan explained, “and Prajña could be developed intellectually by the study of scriptures,” he continued. “Then Sila, morality, would naturally develop with Samadhi coming last. That’s backward from what you learned at Goenka and from what is commonly taught. At Goenka you learned that you start with Sila, you make yourself act right. Then you meditate to develop Samadhi to sharpen your mind, then you do Vipassana meditation to realize Prañja, to achieve wisdom.”
“Ok, I remember that,” I replied thoughtfully. “So, he’s saying that you can study the texts and sort of talk yourself into Prajña without meditation.”
“But what’s weird is that both of his main students run meditation schools,” Dan furthered, “So that’s one of the things I’m going to be looking into.”
“Why does he change things around?” I asked.
“Well,” Dan started, leaning back in his chair and preparing a complicated answer as the soups arrived. I immediately tucked into my chilled avocado soup with basil sorbet with relish. “There was an Indian Theravada Buddhist monk and commentator named ‘Buddhagosa’ who lived in the Fifth Century,” he began, picking up his soup spoon.
“Wow, ‘Buddhaghosa,’” I commented. “That sounds like an important name.”
“Yes, it means ‘voice or roar’ of the Buddha,’” Dan replied. “He came down to Sri Lanka from India,” he continued, “And collected the ancient commentaries that had been developed over the past five hundred years on the last century BCE Pali Canon. Tradition has it that everything was written in Sinhala, so he translated the commentaries back to Pali, the international language of Buddhism at that time, and created the first large-scale systemization of the commentaries for the entire Buddhist world to use. While he was in Sri Lanka he stayed up at the Mahavihara, the ‘Great Monastary’ up north in Anuradhapura. During his stay, in addition to translating existing commentaries, he also wrote his own. The ‘Visuddhimagga,’ the ‘Path to Purity’ lays down the path to enlightenment as you learned it at Goenka, Sila, Samadhi, and then Prañja. It’s one of the most influential Theravada texts. It was one of the first texts to really outline Buddhist meditation as it is commonly taught today, as a synthesis of Samadhi and Vipassana. You can see since it basically shaped your own meditation retreat.”
“I can see that,” I commented, “It’s cool that it was written in Sri Lanka,” I paused, taking a break from my soup and allowing Dan to grab a bite. “It really helps me understand what an important place Sri Lanka has in development of the tradition,” I finished.

“The thing about this monk, though,” Dan continued, “is that he doesn’t like that the Visuddhimagga was written by an Indian, the Tamil son of a Brahmin. He preached that Buddhaghosa was on a covert mission to create an ethical structure to prevent the Sinhala from fighting and make them passive so they would be easy to conquer. So that’s part of his motivation for changing around the order. He also taught that monks like to make it seem harder than it really is to become a stream-enterer so that they will keep getting more daña and support from the lay people,” he finished, starting to eat his soup.
“I can see how that would be unpopular,” I remarked, scraping the last remnant of soup out of the groove in the bottom of the soup bowl.
“You have to remember though that all of the biographical info on Buddhaghosa comes from really late Burmese text,” Dan furthered.
“I see,” I replied, “So maybe it was a group of people or something, it does seem like a lot of work for one man.”
“Right,” Dan nodded, “But in my stream-enterer monk’s world view it was one man and he was Tamil. As a matter of fact,” Dan continued, “He says that the decline of Buddhism started when things started getting written down with the recording of the Pali Canon and continues declining through the Commentaries. It’s a radical view and that’s a big part of why he’s so interesting,” Dan added.
“I get it,” I replied, “It’s Buddhist fundamentalism.”
“Exactly,” Dan agreed, finishing his soup as the waiter brought the lobster and saffron rice main courses.