The Catholic Church at Hambantota town was the smallest church I had ever seen in Sri Lanka.
Large kohomba trees towering over the churchyard dwarfed the church. In the morning many birds perched on the trees and by late evening, hundreds of bats arrived to claim their roosts. The small stained-glass windows of the church filtering morning and afternoon sunlight added a touch of holiness to its ambiance.
Before a service started, altar assistants opened the large wooden church windows to let fresh air in and clear the musty indoor air. In the mid-fifties, there were only a few Catholic families in Hambantota town. The Sunday congregation seldom exceeded 30 and often, the parish priest could not find three boys to serve as altar assistants. I became an altar boy when I was just four years old and my brother, Nihal, who was then seven, was the chief altar assistant with me being the youngest of the servers.
During Lent, the priest conducted a Way of the Cross on Fridays and one Friday evening, I was the only altar assistant present to carry the cross from one station to the other. Suddenly, I felt my shorts slipping down and I held the cross with one hand and my shorts with the other. My mother, seeing my predicament, came over and taking the cross from me, handed it to a woman nearby and took me out of the church to tighten my trouser belt and bring me back to carry the cross.
The parish priest took the altar assistants in his old Austin car to distant places to officiate at the burials of the dead. Once, I went with him and two other boys to a leprosy colony to bury an old man who had died two days earlier. Apparently he had no relatives or friends. The priest conducted the burial rites and told the few hospital workers who attended the funeral, “Life is precious, although it could take many forms. What we witness today is one form, that is, poor and innocent. But God loves people of all sorts. That is because each one has a soul that is created in the mirror image of God”.
I thought about the eulogy on my return trip to Hambantota and felt uneasy wondering why the old man died without seeing his family. Then it dawned on me that life is erratic, and circumstances decide one’s fate, apparently God seem to be doing little to correct such errors.
My father was popular among his college staff and some of them offered to help his children in their studies. Mr. Senanayake, a senior teacher, helped Nihal and me in mathematics at home. Mrs. Wickramasinghe (Wicky) was an English teacher at the College. She lived with her family in a large bungalow with a beautiful front garden overlooking the public cricket grounds in Hambantota. The house was situated on elevated ground, lending it added
My father had arranged for Nihal and me to go to Wicky’s twice a week in the late afternoons to learn conversational English. We liked that arrangement because it allowed us to play cricket with friends on our way to the English class. We were amazed to see the toys at Wicky’s. Her two sons and daughter were friendly and willingly shared toys with us. Nihal and I were reluctant to sit on the comfortable sofas in the sitting room, but each time we visited, Wicky invited us to sit on them.
She usually served us each a piece of cake or a few cutlets on a small plate with a fork before a conversation started. Eating cake was a rare thing at our home. I had never seen my mother baking a cake or my father bringing one home. Nihal asked me not to eat the whole piece of cake as we were not used to such food. I did not know how to use a fork, so I watched Nihal eating his piece of cake. He used his fingers without hesitation. I followed suit. Wicky saw us eating the cake with our fingers but said nothing.
Although Wicky was kind and friendly to us, we hesitated to feel equal to her children. Nihal and I once discussed my father and Wicky and he pointed out that Wicky was an assistant teacher under my father’s (he was the principal) supervision. Yet we felt that they were well above us. That feeling came from the fact our English was weak compared to Wicky’s children, their home was better furnished than ours and they ate better.
I remember a large toy tractor with a reverse gear and an attached hoe at Wicky’s place thinking it could actually be used in the field to plough land. It was yellow in colour and smoke came out of its short exhaust when started. I thought about my toys having hardly any other than a cap pistol. Nihal, Gamini, and I had cap guns, costing us 50 cents each while a roll of caps was five cents.
We bought cap rolls from Maulana’s shop behind our house. These were narrow red paper rolls with black-powder dots along them. The dot makes a nice cracking sound when the pistol’s hammer hits it just right when the trigger pulled. A good crack gave us a chance to inhale the smell of gunpowder. Wicky’s three sons also had several cap guns. The eldest who was a teenager, had an air gun with lead pellets. He boasted that he had already killed three birds with his air gun. He occasionally let Nihal and I use his air gun to fire shots at the papaya tree just in front of the house.
Wicky’s Alsatian dog was a large beautiful animal with a glowing coat and friendly face. When we played cricket, he tried to take the ball from us to his kennel. One day, when we came to Wicky’s, we heard shouting and weeping from the house. First Nihal and I thought someone had died. That was the first time that I heard someone screaming in English. Someone had poisoned the dog.
Wicky’s husband was threatening that he would kill the culprit. We were all petrified. Wicky brought a wooden box with some old clothes, wrapped the dog’s body with them, and nailed the lid shut. We, children carried the coffin to a pit dug by their servant boy and buried the dog. We all cried and kept some flowers on the grave. We did not play cricket after the funeral for several weeks.
My desire for a dog disappeared after seeing Wicky’s dead Alsatian. My father told Nihal and me that we did not have to worry about our Blacky because it was a pariah dog and nobody would poison it. Two weeks later, Blackie died in a road accident. Nihal and I tried to emulate the Alsation’s funeral and buried our dog in a cardboard box we got from Maulana’s shop.
We did not wrap the body in a cloth because my mother refused to give us any. My father gave us a rupee each to console us. We spent the money buying caps for our pistols and bultos (sticky sweet gum).
Two frequent visitors to our house were Weerasinghe Master and JJ Master, teachers at the Sinhala School where I studied. Weerasinghe Master wore a national dress – a white sarong and a loose white, collarless shirt with a fountain pen in its pocket plus leather slippers. He had a few hairs on his scalp and was called ‘Kira’ by his senior students for his perpetual sleepy look. His drooping eyelids and unshaven face gave the impression that he had just woken up from his sleep.
No student wanted to sit close to him in our class because of the foul smell his clothes and mouth exuded. He too wore a sarong and a light cotton jacket with a vest underneath. His black belt was about two inches wide, with a large metal buckle. He was my grade two class teacher.
My mother served visitors with biscuits and tea or coffee. They usually brought a packet of biscuits or a bag of toffees for the children. My father always welcomed them and, in fact, waited for their arrival. If they were delayed, my father asked me to go to the gate and check whether they were on their way.
When they arrived, my father occupied the armchair in the verandah. There were two more chairs without armrests and visitors occupied them. I sat on my father’s lap to listen to their conversation. He was in his sarong without a shirt or banian. He allowed me to sip some tea from his cup and to get an extra biscuit from the tray. They discussed politics, school gossip, and new development projects in Hambantota.
Weerasinghe Master and JJ Master were my father’s key sources of information. He said little but listened intently especially to Weerasinghe. Occasionally, the visitors talked to me, too. Once, Weerasinghe Master asked me: “What is the midpoint of the earth?” I replied, “here.”
“How do you know?”
“Because nobody knows; therefore, any place could be the centre,” I responded.
“Good answer,” he happily said while stroking my head and gave me a ten-cent coin. I told my mother, who was in the kitchen, about the gift. She worried about the kata vaha (evil tongue) or ‘evil eye’ and didn’t appreciate my smartness. She later told my father that Weerasinghe’s envy could harm the children and asked that he discouraged me from joining their evening chats saying I do my homework instead. But I liked to sit on his lap, and this practice continued for another two or three years until we left Hambantota.
Many years later, I found the chair on which my father and I sat when he talked to his friends in Hambantota. Although my father was dead by then, I felt his presence whenever I sat on it. I thought about him, his magnanimity, his kindness to me and how much I missed him. I re- enacted in my mind the discussions that I remembered from those long evenings on our verandah in Hambantota. I thought about his body warmth, his roaring laughter and his jovial personality. I broke the chair into pieces and set them on fire.
My mother saw this but said nothing. Perhaps she understood that I wanted to get away from the memories of my father that had haunted me for many years. I thought I was angry with my father for dying when I was only 16 years old. I wanted him to live to appreciate my performance as a good student and an athlete.
Once when my younger brother, Gamini, fell ill, our family’s peace and happiness shattered.
Gamini was then five years old, had low fever for many days and could not eat any food. He was hospitalized and treated for a week but his condition deteriorated. Weerasinghe Master told my father that a yaka (demon) had apparently possessed my brother and, therefore, an exorcism was the proper remedy. He recommended a yakkadura (exorcist) in Matara Town, about 50 miles west of Hambantota, known for protecting children from evil spirits.
Two days later, my father went to Matara in search of him and brought him home, along with an assistant and accommodated them in our empty garage. They first checked the entire house for any hidden charms buried by our enemies and found nothing. Then, they dug small holes at random around the house to look for such charms without any result. My mother resented having two strangers at home and told my father that being Catholics, we should not entertain thoughts of demons when the church and the priest were only 100 feet from our house. My father agreed but said that the priest cannot detect demons and combat their evil actions.
On the following day, the exorcist prepared offerings for the gods and evil spirits and arranged them on several wooden trays. In the evening, he began chanting and making small offerings – sweets and handun kuru (incense sticks) – to various gods who protect Sri Lanka. Then, a tray loaded with charred meat was offered to a mighty devil, which had in the past attempted to usurp the powers of the Kataragama Deiyo (a powerful god) of the Southeast Corner of the island. The exorcist complained that there was no discipline among minor demons, and they were mischievous spirits who were happy to harm human beings, especially children.
He then offered a tray to a benevolent god and another to a malevolent demon, pleading for their help in persuading the evil spirit which had possessed my brother, to leave without harming him. He cajoled and pleaded with them, offering food and drinks on trays several times.
In the late evening, neighbours and several schoolteachers came to watch the exorcism. My mother offered them cool drinks and biscuits. On several occasions, the exorcist asked them questions. One question was, “Should the devil who possessed the child leave immediately?” All who were there said “yes”. One woman went further and said, “Yes, please leave this baby and his family for which we will offer you lots of food and drinks.”
Another question was, “What was the best sign that the demon could give the onlookers that he had left the possessed child?” Someone said, “why not break a branch of the kohomba tree so that we know that the spirit had left.” This interaction between the exorcist and the onlookers eased the tension and fear among the latter. At that point, the exorcist cajoled the spirit, demanding that it leave the child immediately.
He was sure that only a minor spirit had possessed my brother demanding proper appeasement. Dancing, chanting, and offering food trays continued until the early hours of the morning. At four in the morning of the following day, my brother passed a stool and the exorcist examined it and found some undigested dark matter. But the spirit left no sign of departure.
My father checked the kohomba tree in the morning but could not find any broken branches. He was disappointed. But from that time, Gamini began to move and recovered rapidly. The exorcist and his assistant left after collecting their fees and gifts. They advised my parents to protect their children from evil eyes and evil tongues. He advised my father and mother to avoid taking all four sons with them to church or school, as someone might envy four sons in the family and cast evil eyes or evil tongues that could harm them.
Sixty years later, I visited Hambantota with Gamini and Nihal. When we passed the Catholic cemetery, Nihal reminded us that if Gamini had died in Hambantota as a toddler, he would have been buried there. Although it was a simple statement, it shook me as that was the first time I thought of death as a real-life experience. We all remained silent for several minutes until Nihal broke our thoughts saying if Gamini was buried there, we would have come to Hambantota more frequently to visit him at the cemetery!
by Jayantha Perera
from The Island https://ift.tt/tiFCYgo
