Elephants, Porcupines and Propositions (1)
The next day, my arms and legs were pock-marked with mosquito bites. I carried a cut lime around to rub on my skin in an attempt to ease the fierce itching. I was high on histamines.
A fresh breeze eased the heat. Still, I did not feel like going out. My mind was full of impressions of Trincomalee: the tempel and the rocks, the beach and the palm trees, the deep blue bay. Compared to that Negombo seemed, well, mundane. Instead, I took the opportunity to update my notes.
Classical music sounded from the adjacent room where S was practising his cello in tune to a concerto on the CD-player. It was like having our own orchestra in the house. I stopped writing and gazed dreamily out of the windows, pondering Sri Lanka. This could be a land of plenty. There is poverty, but nobody starves. The literacy rate, at 92% is comparable to Scotland and the life expectancy is similar to that in the West. Nobody walks around in rags, not even the beggars. If it was not for the heat, the ever-present dust and the brewing unease, this could be paradise. Yet, the tension that prevailed since the death of the Venerable Soma was like a fuse that could blow at any moment. There was something sinister in the air. It reminded me of the setting for an exotic thriller or a movie. Not real. And yet all too real.
John finally surfaced in the early afternoon. S stopped the tape at once and the two went to work on their database. I did nothing all day except potter around. For a change, this agreed with me; I had my fill of excitement for the moment. Tomorrow, Christmas Eve, we would join Rob, Maria and their son Simon in Kandy. We would need to get an early start.
I was up first, by a narrow margin. S followed the noise of the coffegrinder into the kitchen. Central Europeans will insist on filter coffee where they can, but he has got to be the only one who travels with his own coffeegrinder.
I made John a cup strong enough to wake the dead. It seemed to do the job as he looked at me blearily through blood-shot eyes. As usual, he had been up several times during the night to smoke and think. Many mathematicians are night-active. Maybe the darkness helps them to focus but more likely they simply can’t switch off until they are physically exhausted, then it takes them half the day to get back on-line. Our car was coming at nine and John had better get a move on.
He eventually emerged shortly before nine, moaning that he seemed to be suffering from a hangover although I was the one who had been drinking.
“Take a shower,” I said.
“I’m not sweaty.”
“You have a hangover when she is drinking,” S quibbed: “so why can’t you have a shower when she is sweating?”
Rob’s metallic blue Hyundai pulled up exactly at nine, driven by Kunara, one of his students. We had planned to drop by at the Pinnawela Elephant Orphanage not far from Kandy. On the way, I read about the project in my guidebook. The orphanage had been set up in 1975 to care for young elephants which could no longer be looked after by Dehiwala Zoo in Colombo. During the late seventies it became home to many elephants displaced by the Mahaweli Ganga Project when the river was diverted over large areas to provide irrigation and hydropower. The orphanage now holds the largest group of captive elephants anywhere in the world, ranging from hairy babies to fully grown bulls.
Reading in the car had made me feel queasy. I paused and looked out of the window, trying to focus on the horizon between the hills. I do not know why it is that I am fine traveling by bus, train, boat, plane or camel, but even as a child, I got car sick on long journeys. We swapped places and I was allocated the front seat while the others squeezed into the back. Looking out at the lush tropical landscape soon made me feel better.
All along the way, the roads were lined with yellow and orange flags in honour of the Venerable Soma whose funeral would be tomorrow. We drove through a village where small tiled roofs had been erected on iron pillars along the roadside. Under each stood a woman in a distinctive green and fuchsia dress with puffed sleeves, wriggling an outstretched hand at the passing traffic.
“Are they propositioning?” asked S
“They are selling cashew nuts” A replied: “Although by the looks of it they might be selling their bodies as well.”
We were driving through Cadjugama, literally ‘cashew-village’. A explained that it is not unusual for villages in Sri Lanka to specialize in one particular trade or craft. Further on, we passed a village of basket weavers and another consisting almost entirely of pottery stalls.
“So,” S said: “If you wanted to buy a pot of cashew nuts, you would first have to buy the pot in this village, then travel back to the cashew nut village, picking up a basket on the way to carry them home in.” He pondered this: “I guess you would then have to stay in Cadjugama and bed one of the women just to get some rest. I mean you’d be too exhausted for sex!”
A rolled her eyes and sighed. “It’s true”, she said: “In India, when someone starts to sell cotton thread, a stall will open up next selling needles. Here they see that complementary trading makes sense, but they stick to their ways.”
And why not? The local speciality guarantees the village a nation-wide reputation. In addition, many of the crafts or trades are specific to the caste of the villagers.
Further along the road we passed a man who was walking a porcupine on a leash. I did a double-take. Kunara slowed down, noting that our curiosity had been aroused, but S signalled him to go on. He reckoned that the porcupines were tied up by the roadside as a tourist attraction, which reminded him grimly of the performance by a ‘dancing bear’ he had witnessed on their travels in Turkey. Neither S nor A approved of exploiting animals in such a way. And sure enough, we passed numerous porcupines tied up and being photographed by tourists who had pulled over in their cars.
Tags: The Whales of Trincomalee, Tag Index
Denni