Our village by night

by Vijaya Jayasuriya

(May 11, Colombo, Sri Lana Guardian) The village by night today is tormented by the TV (apologies to its addicts), this ubiquitous spectre hailing from the West, where lived, too, the inventor of the famous dictum—"early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise".

Isn’t it thus a great paradox that the more wealth people accumulate the more sleepless nights they experience, not due to TV alone but for fear of losing that wealth too. Our little ones are the worst hit by this nocturnal vegitating of our folks, being flushed out of their sweet dreams and packed off with or without breakfast in waiting school vans honking endlessly for these habitual laggards. I leave it at that for it’s a different kettle of fish altogether.

Nights in our village half a century ago used to be as quiet and solemn as a cemetery at midnight. Only the occasional tuneless yodel of a lonely drunkard returning home after a drunken orgy could be heard from a distance as he tried to render his own version of the vintage number: "Namee nodirana-kunukaya dirana - arumeki soba sansarei..." as if he was contemplating the Buddhist doctrine of impermanence of life! He would continue to sing this way wobbling precariously along until his raucous voice suddenly stops within earshot of the temple where our chief monk is engaged in chanting a section of pirith all by himself in his usual melodious tone. The man walks past the temple quietly, knowing the disastrous consequence of getting caught red handed—a thundering rap on the knuckles from the priest, and would even bring his palms together in obeisance turning towards the temple muttering "sadu, sadu, apee loku hamuduruwo Budevenda!"

On kemmura days of the week (Wednesdys and Saturdays) when the villagers believed that the guardian gods were active, my mother used to plant herself on the doorstep of our kitchen leading to the backyard and keep looking up at the huge Bodhitree in the adjoining temple premises. We little ones gather round her inquisitively and ask her "what is it, amma?" and she would in a very reverent tone say: "sh... don’t shout... just keep looking up at the Bo-tree. There are gods coming to worship the Buddha..."Now the mother being no trifling fibber, we rally round her to keep watch in the silence of the still young night, all eyes to see these celestial visitors.

I have no idea whether the industrial West was using satellites in those good old days in the early nineteen fifties as well, yet I can vividly remember that I did see some of these little balls of light slowly but surely wending their way to the Bodhi-tree as we were watching awe-struck. They were bigger than fireflies, and unlike fireflies were travelling in a straight line. And the satellites we see nowadays travel much higher and do not stop at trees! My mother at once brings her palms together and say in a muted tone "sadu, sadu" and we too follow suit keeping our eyes glued to the spectacle until they disappear reaching the great canopy of the Bodhi-tree.

The following morning we very jubilantly relate the story to our chief monk who comes to the "vihara maluwa" overlooked by our kitchen window, in order to sweep the place with his army of little novices. A brief sermon immediately follows our gambit—"The gods come to pay their homage to our great master, the Buddha, because he has achieved the supreme state that a human being can ever aspire to achieve. So this is a good lesson for you little ones, if you do good, and be good even gods will worship you..." It was years later that we were to hear the popular song: "...hitiyoth hondata hedee—Deviyoth namata vandee..." (if you grow up to be virtuous, even gods will worship you). Isn’t it a paradox for most Buddhists then to worship gods invoking their help while themselves leading sinful lives?

It is on one of these kemmura days as we were watching the Bodhi tree to catch a glimpse of those little mystical lights that we happened to hear a strange sound of a huge dog barking from the direction of the dark woodland extending downwards until it reached a little stream at the foot of the gradient. The eerie sound was so horrifying that I involuntarily clutched at mother’s hand, after the initial shock was over I was swept away by an overwhelming temptation to go and look into what this strange sound was. It was unmistakably a dog barking, but it sounded like an unusually big one with a stentorian bark that reverberated menacingly in the dark environment, filling us with a sense of fascination tinged with fear, a sensation akin to that we had experienced reading "Ruduru Baluwa", the Sinhala translation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s "The Hound of the Baskervilles". There the hound made a hideous sight with its snout smeared with the luminous chemical phosphorus, while this invisible creature’s loud bark was equally sensational so that we could not help being compelled to probe its authenticity.

We lied low until mother was out of sight and slipped out into the gravel road beside our house leading to this woody "pahala watta" which had a large number of coconut trees and a few houses. The bark continued to sound and gradually began to glide further into the darkness as we inched our way down the slope, and suddenly stopped.

"Don’t know whether it stopped after seeing us coming" said my elder brother Bandula, always my partner in this kind of adventures.

"Then what shall we do?"

"We will hide behind this bush and keep quiet so that it will think we had gone". So that was the strategy, and we squatted on our haunches under a "pinna" bush and waited. Bandula had in his hand his brand new two-cell torch, while I had in my hand a thick cinnamon stick which I used to keep in the spirit of youthful adventure those days.

A few minutes elapsed and suddenly the barking began again, this time a little closer and as we watched eagerly, it appeared to close in on us, its bark becoming louder than ever. Instead of fear, we began to grow suspicious now as something seemed to tell us that it couldn’t be a real dog, and before long our suspicions proved to be correct—as the sound got closer my brother flashed his torch on the object, and lo and behold! It was ‘Wilbert uncle’, a neighbour who lived a few houses away from ours!

He appeared to get a little flustered, yet in spite of himself was wearing a broad smile on his face. We were at first wondering now he was in his hands drew our immediate attention—it was an empty tin can and as he held it up to our eyes we could also see a cloth string coming out of its bottom through a hole made right at its centre.

"Baya una neida?" (You got frightened didn’t you) he asked still with that broad smile on him. "Ha ha ha" he also started to laugh in obvious mirth that he had been able to fool us at least for a while.

We were now glad that we "scotched the phantom" and also it was a consolation that it ultimately turned out to be Wilbert mama who was a highly jovial character in our neighbourhood. He later showed us how to make one like his "barking toy"—make a hole at the bottom of a tin can and insert a cloth string through it with a knot to hold it inside; then wet the string with kerosene oil and tug at the hanging part of it with your thumb and the index finger—then you have the eerie bark of a huge dog!

We had a land of about half-an-acre on the other side of the gravel road bordering our house and there was a dispute over the fence on the far side of it with the man on the adjoining land. He was a fish vendor with a rough demeanour and had been hostile towards our fence, which he maintained had encroached upon his land. This was later settled by a court-case and until then hostilities continued.

Once during this interim period my father put up a new fence using a few rolls of new barbed wire and a couple of days later we found in the morning that the wires were cut into pieces in several places. My mother refrained from telling the father about this and very prudently told one of our relatives living close by to help catch the culprit.

The cutting of wires continued for several days and as soon as we went to sleep we could hear the sharp crack of wires being cut and when we went, there was no trace of any one to be seen. One day Simon uncle our helpful relative who was a brave man kept watch over the land and we too joined him with our mother.

When suddenly the sound of wire-cutting was heard Simon mama ran that way with his flashlight scouring the area around the fence, and with a short sword-like knife ready in his right hand. We too ran after him and could see with the help of the torch light "Raththaran datha" (man with the golden tooth) flitting away towards his house. My brother Bandula ran forward with Simon mama and as he shouted "Ohoma hitapan!" (stay where you are), the rogue was opening the door of his house. Bandula threw a heavy stone at the man.

"Budu ammo" yelled the fellow in obvious pain while we could see how he crouched down to grab his ankle. He was then dragged in by his wife and Simon mama laughed as he stroked Bandula’s head saying: "Hari hapana" (clever chap).

The man did not come out for several days, and when he came out he was walking very unsteadily with a limp while his ankle was heavily bandaged. It took nearly three months for a local "vedarala" to cure his leg and the wire-cutting stopped for ever, while Bandula became the hero around the village who being a stripling youth braved a notorious thug and thus was able to put an end to his nefarious activities.
- Sri Lanka Guardian