As that (is), so this (will be)

‘Yatha idam, tatha edam – Yatha etam tatha idam”

As this (living body is) -so that (dead one was)

As that (is), so this (will be)

Today I am in the house alone — the would have been grandmother with the would have been grandson.

I sit cross-legged in front of the five candles lit by Ranil the father in front of the ashes in a white box. and closes my eyes to watch that little face float over — forcing my imagination to open the eyes and see a smile.

As I sit and my thought wander I remember the story of Kisagotami … and search for the verse from the Light of Asia…

 

Kisagotami and the Buddha

A woman — dove-eyed, young, with tearful face

And lifted hands — saluted, bending low:

“Lord! thou art he”, she said, “who yesterday

Had pity on me in the fig-grove here,

Where I live lone and reared my child; but he

Straying amid the blossoms found a snake,

Which twined about his wrist, whilst he did laugh

And tease the quick forked tongue and opened mouth

Of that cold playmate. But, alas! ere long

He turned so pale and still, I could not think

Why he should cease to play, and let my breast

Fall from his lips. And one said, ‘He is sick

Of poison’; and another, ‘He will die.’

But I, who could not lose my precious boy,

Prayed of them physic, which might bring the light

Back to his eyes; it was so very small

That kiss-mark of the serpent, and I think

It could not hate him, gracious as he was,

Nor hurt him in his sport. And some one said,

‘There is a holy man upon the hill –

Lo! now he passeth in the yellow robe –

Ask of the Rishi if there be a cure

For that which ails thy son.’ Whereon I came

Trembling to thee, whose brow is like a god’s,

And wept and drew the face-cloth from my babe,

Praying thee tell what simples might be good.

And thou, great sir! didst spurn me not, but gaze

With gentle eyes and touch with patient hand;

Then draw the face-cloth back, saying to me,

‘Yea! little sister, there is that might heal

Thee first, and him, if thou couldst fetch the thing;

For they who seek physicians bring to them

What is ordained. Therefore, I pray thee, find

Black mustard seed, a tola; only mark

Thou take it not from any hand or house

Where father, mother, child, or slave hath died:

It shall be well if thou canst find such seed.’

Thus didst thou speak, my Lord!”

The Master smiled

Exceeding tenderly. “Yea! I spake thus,

Dear Kisagotami! But didst thou find

The seed?”

“I went, Lord, clasping to my breast

The babe, grown colder, asking at each hut –

Here in the jungle and towards the town –

‘I pray you, give me mustard, of your grace,

A tola — black’; and each who had it gave,

For all the poor are piteous to the poor;

But when I asked, ‘In my friend’s household here

Hath any peradventure ever died –

Husband or wife, or child, or slave?’ they said:

‘O Sister! what is this you ask? the dead

Are very many, and the living few!’

So with sad thanks I gave the mustard back,

And prayed of others; but the others said,

‘Here is the seed, but we have lost our slave!’

‘Here is the seed, but our good man is dead!’

‘Here is some seed, but he that sowed it died

Between the rain time and the harvesting!’

Ah, sir! I could not find a single house

Where there was mustard seed and none had died!

Therefore I left my child — who would not suck

Nor smile — beneath the wild vines by the stream,

To seek thy face and kiss thy feet, and pray

Where I might find this seed and find no death,

If now, indeed, my baby be not dead,

As I do fear, and as they said to me.”

“My sister! thou hast found,” the Master said,

“Searching for what none finds — that bitter balm

I had to give thee. He thou lovedst slept

Dead on thy bosom yesterday: today

Thou know’st the whole wide world weeps with thy woe:

The grief which all hearts share grows less for one.

Lo! I would pour my blood if it could stay

Thy tears and win the secret of that curse

Which makes sweet love our anguish, and which drives

O’er flowers and pastures to the sacrifice –

As these dumb beasts are driven — men their lords.

I seek that secret: bury thou thy child!”

from The Light of Asia, Book the Fifth by Sir Edwin Arnold

Though one should live a hundred years without perceiving the deathless state, yet better indeed is a single day to one who has perceived the deathless state

Dhammapada 114

Cake and Comfort

It’s been a tough couple of days but Ranil and Aileen have had good courage and is being strong amidst the obvious sadness that follows.

Felix’s ashes were brought home today — not something we Buddhists do — but the young couple wanted to bring Felix home for awhile. We have said pirith, sprinkled the “pirith pang” that came all the way from Brisbane and five little candles burn keeping a vigil.

Saturday, the day after the funeral was “Cake and Comfort” day when about 25 or so close friends of the young couple turned up here at their home in Neutral Bay, Sydney

Most friends brought presents to cheer them up — lots of chocolate, which included plenty of chocolate cake, spa packs, and many goodies for Aileen. The good point was that they not only bought presents for Aileen but one guy came and left his bass guitar for Ranil to play and parctise.

So on Sunday morning I found them playing a duet — “I still call Australia home” with Aileen on the piano and Ranil on the bass guitar and singing. Yesterday we played Scrabble which Ranil won easily and then I had a photography lesson

This is not the first time that the clock has come a full circle and the tables have been turned where Ranil is my teacher. He was my teacher on holiday from Uni and introduced me to Wordperfect and programs. And like those times, it is not just teaching — I have set exercises to do. So we took photos of all flowers in the house.

So with friends, family and comfort and their hobbies and interests holding them — I think — hopefully they’ve turned the corner.

When self itself owns not a “self”…

Puttã m’atthi dhanam m’atthi –Iti bãlo vihannati

Atta hi atano natthi – kuto puttã kutto dhanam

 

“These sons are mine, this wealth I hold”

The fool raves thus and comes to ruin;

When self itself owns not a “self”

Who are thy sons, what is thy wealth!

 

 

We had loved him much and mourned his loss long before we saw him today. – baby Felix de Silva. His parents thought the name meaning happy and fortunate was th apt name for their first born son . Swathed in white in a white coffin with three white roses he looked tiny. His little face was no bigger than my palm and was rosy pink, his eyes shut tight — a little bud that never opened.

In a little room in the Palm Chapel in the Sydney crematorium, the parents– Ranil and

Aileen and the closest family — the two mother’s in law, and one of Aileen’s sisters, Ivy gathered to say our last blessings even though his journey on earth never commenced. As there was no Theravada Buddhist priest, I read the pirith stanzas and did the best under the circumstances. Aileen’s mother had already conducted ceremonies in Kuala Lumpur keeping with the Confucian traditions.

 

We left the parents with the baby to say their last goodbye to find quite a large number of almost 50-60 from their workplaces and their dancing school outside the chapel including my other son.

The sermon was by an Australian converted to Mahayana Tibetan Buddhism – Stewart — who was present at their wedding too. Stewart cuts a calm peaceful but a colourful figure resplendent in a yellow sleeveless shirt, crimson robe and sports a huge tattoo on his right arm. His wide smile, the compassion and love for the parents was evident as he hugged them before delivering a calming and soothing sermon — easing much the tension we had felt throughout these last few days.

 

To close the ceremony, all of us emerged in to the sunny but sharply cold terrace of the chapel to watch Ranil and Aileen release a white pigeon – and to reflect on the impermanence of life…

 

 

“Uninvited he hither came,

And without leave departed hence;

E’en as he came, just so went he,

What ground is here for agony!

 

Tsunami Recovery: It’s the people that matter

“You give but little when you give of your possessions. It is when you give of yourself that you truly give.” –Kahlil Gibran

This is a truth that some of us forgot in the tsunami recovery swamped by statistics.  We got side tracked by numbers — the 100 metre no built zone, number of houses being built, amount of cash grants, goods dispersed etc. We failed in many instances to value our own compassion and to recognize and support the tough resilience of the survivors.  The handful I kept in touch with and met repeatedly said they are driven by one focused need –to see that their children get a good education.  This is a first look at mothers and a grandmother who are striving to do that with an abiding love for their offsprings shining through.

A Grandmother’s Love   

She was shielding herself from a hot sun under a black umbrella but the gentle face the buxom figure clad in a traditional cloth and jacket instantly reminded me of my relatives of yester year from the South. In her hand was a “pan malla” – a bag woven out of grass reeds growing near rivers and marshy water ways. 

Stopping her in the middle of the road and starting a conversation with her was easy. Her smile was wide and warm her name was a grand Sinhala name Leelawathi. She was on her sales round selling treacle – coconut sap extracted to make a sweet dark  honey  used widely to make sweets.  She also had in her bag dried gamboge a sour fruit dried and used extensively in fish curries like the famed “ambul thiyal” of the South. 

Returning after her delivery round she invited us to see her rebuilt house with LKR 100,000  [approx. US$1000]given to partly damaged households within the buffer zone. The house has been rebuilt and she had to take a loan of LKR 60,000 [approx. US$600]in addition to the money she received from the government to complete the repairs. A mother of four sons and two daughters she lost her husband early in life. Her memories of the good times she spent with her husband fills her face with a tenderness bringing tears to her eyes. She recalled how at New Year’s festivities she laughed and played the Sri Lankan version of draughts with cowrie shells with her husband.   

Two of her grandchildren Trevin and Eshanie plays peak-a-boo with us

For Leelawathi now life is a struggle to help her children bring up the grandchildren. One daughter is sick with a nerve debility preventing her going out to work. Tears flow freely as Leelawathi recalls that horrible day when she lost a son. 

Another grandaughter Shenelka comes out to listen to her, and seeing her Leelawathi wipes her tears.  and the slow smile spreads across her face lighting it up.  “Now my main objective is to support my grand children and help them to find good employment opportunities in the best way I can,” she says.  

 A mother spins her love to create a cosy home

 

 

Shirani keeps her new two bedroomd house in Wellabada, Sri Lanka spick and span. She lost everything in the tsunami, and lived in a temporary shelter for one year and is rightly proud of her new home.

 Her brand new house was built in the same location of her tsunami destroyed house with Rupees 250,000 [approx$2500] from the Sri Lanka Government’s owner driven housing program, topped up with co-financing from Austria. 

Pre-tsunami Shirani had an additional income that came from spinning softened fibre from coconut  husks into rope, a popular cottage craft in the  Southern coastal belt. As most other families did she too lost her spinning machines and  has not been able to resume that work. He husband‘s daily wage as a laborer is their main income now. The children Thanusha and Raveesha missed school for about 4 months after the tsunami but are back in school and as most mother’s repeatedly told us Shiranee’s one priority is also ensuring that her children study well.

Happy New Year, Many Happy Returns and the story begins with love. …

 

The phones started ringing, sms beeps came fast one after another, and the New Year dawned in a cacophony of bursting firecrackers in Colombo. First to call was Anjie all the way from Sydney, Australia but I was fast sleep and by the time I reached for the phone  I lost the connection. There was not much point going back to sleep – most of Colombo was out partying and thought there were no sane/boring folks like me who wanted to sleep. They were stepping out of the dinners, parties, and nightclub hopping to call and sms me.    

January 1 is a double whammy for me  - as it happens it is my birthday too.  Not that I ever grumbled about my birthday being the first day of the year.  I grew up feeling special to have a birthday on the brand new day the year started. I felt no different today.  Squirrels were already up and squealing their lungs out, the birds were holding their cabinet meeting under the barren avocado tree, Shoe flowers on my one and only flowering bush were opening out and the arecanut palm tree was casting shadows on my neighbour’s wall.  Blue skies a lovely morning, no complains.

 The view from my bedroom

Being Buddhists, there was never a problem of low cash after Christmas revelries for birthday gifts.  Gifts arrived by post, telegrams instead of sms and I was lucky to get hampers in woven reed baskets from my maternal great grandmother/grand mother with all the yummy sweets I liked. There was always a new party dress from my seamstress aunt and story books from my school teacher aunt.  

Most 31 December evenings we’d sit on the beach and watch the last sunset – a fiery orange red ball that slowly disappeared below the horizon.  Then the focus would shift to the fisherman pulling their outrigger catamarans to sea and wait to see the row of lights near the horizon come on like a belt as the lamps got lit one by one on the boats. Hikkaduwa was a sleepy fishing village then – no hotels, no tourists,  no glass bottom boats –just a wide beach, a sea full of live coral, little rock pools with slimy green seaweeds and a myriad of coloured fish evading our attempts to catch them. 

My father never got tired of telling me that as all good things my life story began with love and a pair of loving genes. On that memorable day for him, the train from Colombo decided to move into express gear at Hikkaduwa railway station. Inside was the midwife that my father was waiting impatiently to meet. His panic was assuaged by a clerk who found him a new nurse and his Dr. brother,  Richie, practicing in the next town stepped into manage the delivery.  Uncle Richie who lived well into his nineties would always remind me rather gleefully “I was the one who pulled you out.”  Apparently “I saw the light of the evening without much trouble,” and his brother’s comment “it’s another daughter,” had little damping effect on my father as the soothsayers said I was a Lakshmi (goddess of wealth) who would bring luck to the family.  So Lakshmi became my middle name. Many years later even when things went wrong at Hikkaduwa I’d get this plea from my father “can you please come home for a couple of days even?.”  

A look back twenty four moons after the tsunami

“Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding” – Khalil Gibran   

The fragrance of cinnamon mingled with the salty sea breeze wafted in as I walked into the garden of our house in Hikkaduwa on the second anniversary of the tsunami. The cinnamon twigs were piled up on the back verandah. “we are  rebuilding the fence on the seaside,” said Gunadasa, our caretaker, a polio victim when young, he survived the tsunami.   

The twigs are from the small plot of cinnamon that my sister-in-law Padmini owns. Prasanna her husband and my brother who died in the tsunami looked after the cinnamon plot.  He normally would have been there supervising his workers. On that fateful day he was taking it easy reading the Sunday papers in an easy planter’s chair in the cottage just a few steps away from the beach.

The house remains forlorn but not forgotten. The contrast between the front portion of the house built by my grandfather in 1911, which largely withstood the tsunami onslaught and the hastily rebuilt back portion was heart breaking. There were no cement blocks where our little cottage by the sea was. An ipomea creeper growing lushly has removed every vestige of the cosy cottage and masking all signs of the of the tragedy.  

So what are we left with? Did we learn anything from it? Well, we certainly didn’t know how to forge a peace and reconcile the divided of this land. We who celebrate life so lavishly at birthdays, marriages, anniversaries are still uncomfortable with death. Our grief is suppressed; we talk fleetingly about death; trying to rationalize the passing away of a loved one so we can control the pain.   

What was the most difficult thing for us after the tsunami? It forced us to look at death and destruction mass scale. Some were not confronted with one death in a family but several.  There were bodies everywhere.  My lasting memory is not of the wave but all the bodies piled up on lorries, bodies lying on the cold cement floor at the rural hospital in Arachchiknade, Hikkaduwa. Memories are also of how we walked, hitch hiked looking for my brother’s body,  praying to gods I had never prayed before –asking for one favour –please, please let me see him one more time, let me find him.  

At first I didn’t see him. I only saw the others –children, young and old women, old men, The struggle to survive still visible in their faces, bodies bloated,foaming at the mouth. Numb with pain I turned away, sat on a step and cried.  Later my nephew Kanishka found me sitting on a wooden bench. It was with Kanishka going around the dead bodies for the second time that I found Prasanna. The red striped Tshirt — a gift from my niece Ranmali and her Aussie husband Aaron he was proudly showing off  that morning was gone. He lay on his back, injuries not visible and his face was peaceful.  Was death in all its brutality kind to him in the final minutes? 

Sri Lanka: Tsunami Two years on

Out of the womb of sightless night – bring out the word of healing strong 

Colombo, 26 December, 2007

Two years after Sri Lanka faced death and destruction of unimaginable proportions there is much soul searching. Many are the questions being asked — where did the aid  money go, how many houses were built, how many are more to be build, what went wrong and what did we do right, did we forget the people concentrating on statistics?– the search for answers continue….  One thing for sure we couldn’t do was to unite the people of this land. We did unite very briefly in the immediate aftermath but that was just a very very brief moment. 

This morning before I started on the track back to Hikkaduwa, I needed to read again a poem sent to me by my father many moons ago. In it he wrote about a Buddhist monk he knew who lived in a hermitage close to Hikkaduwa – Polgasduwa.  The monk, he wrote was weighed by asthma as I was then, but worked hard at his studies to forget his asthma.  Years ago my birthday gift to my father was an English translation of “Visuddhimaga” – the original. [a Buddhist Pali Canon], which is now lost forever. In the preface were these poems this monk had written one night at 2 a.m. because he believed my father said of “wearing out than rusting out.” 

Out of the womb of sightless night – bring out the word of healing strong

And put to flight the evil thoughts – that stood betwixt the eye and light

Where lies, friend, the golden mean? In giving up

Where’s the heart forever clean? In giving up

Where is life at its best seen? In giving up Where reaches one peace serene? In giving up 

More on the trek back South on Tsunami’s second anniversary follows…

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