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| Sunday, 21 December 2003 |
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Koti Seeya's Christmas message by Padma Edirisinghe Not even Koti Seeya nor those in the vicinity knew the exact origin of the sobriquet Koti Seeya attached to this 92-year-old ex-choir boy (kantaru lamaya). But almost everybody was of the consensus that it had nothing to do with the kotis or Tigers of the north nor those fabulously striped beasts of the wilds and only was entangled with some innocent incident.
It was the late 80s and we were driving back from Anuradhapura where I had gone on an official assignment. Somewhere off Galewela the driver disturbing my slumber gave me the ominous news that the engine had developed trouble and we could never make it to Colombo. Time was dusk with a slice of the moon goddess already spangling over a tall cross looming above the thick foliage in this boundary area between the North Central and Central provinces. Moon-slice OK but what was a translucently blue cross doing in this Buddhist deeps of the island I wondered even in that confusion caused by the driver's information. A beautiful statue of the Madonna swathed in blue by the wayside added to my confusion. The driver, a Roman Catholic now informed me that the famous Wahacotte church was closeby replete with pilgrims' cottages. Perhaps madam could put up there for the night, he suggested. On the pitch dark highway we lost our way and finally stopped not before the pilgrim cottages but before a convent from where a nun emerged. After due explanation by me, the kind nun, already knowing me by name invited me to put up in a room in the convent. Even dinner was provided. I was asked only to put something in the charity box before I depart. The Brothers in the church were equally gracious to me the next day and took the trouble to show me many documents tracing the strange history of this village whose population had been spawned out of five Portuguese fugitives running away from Dutch persecution of the 17th century who were finally befriended by Rajasinghe II, King of Kandy. Among the documents were those with quotations from "Letter of Goa" (1746) and the 1896 Central Province Gazette including an article by Revd. S. Rodrigo on Wahacotte village. Today the population of this village goes under the ethnic label Sinhala, for they are descendants of the marriages of the alien fugitives and local women with ge-names as Samarakoon and Wijeratne. But the males had certainly ensured that religionwise they should follow the paternal line religion. While the driver laboured in a garage with the vehicle I had a blissful walk around in the village and there I met Koti Seeya whose relative, the church Moopu Rala's grandmother was the last person to talk Portuguese. But to illustrate that this culture has still not left the village he began to sing a baila and broke into a kapiriggna dance much to my alarm and the alarm of some villagers who had now thronged. Later losing his buoyance Koti Seeya became pensive and narrated some beautiful tales on God and Man. I was so intrigued by them that I asked from where he learnt these tales. "Nona. It is Deiyo Budun (God and the Buddha) who sends them into my head," he answered. Just to provoke him I said, "God sending stories to your head I can understand. But Buddha?" "Duwe daughter!)" he said changing his form of address "Christus and Buddha are very similar men (uttama varu) almost the same person in different veshas (guises) who came into this world to make humans better." In this period when the year is tapering to a close and a new bright year dawning, a recent incident made me recapitulate my adventures or misadventures in the field of media that I had skipped into. There was an instance when I was accosted with a threat to be put on the LTTE web site just for reviewing a book that tried to trace the origins of Christianity to Buddhism. It only left me confused as what the LTTE has to do with such a subject. Recently my innocent attempt to show the cosmopolitan nature of our society via a minuscule group of deceased too had unpleasant results. Writing on the dead it was pin-pointed was unethical and disgraceful which argument if carried to the extreme point would make world history including Lankan history stink for all the figures that strut the stage of history are dead and gone. But undeterred I thought of giving Koti Seeya's Christmas message braving an attack (and pleasing neither party) by extremist Buddhists that Buddha cannot be at all compared to Christus or by extremist Christians, that Christus can never be compared to Buddha. It is all a matter of the mental approach. However the optimist I am, my faith in goodness of humans was only strengthened by the way many rallied around me in their support in the recent episode. Of course the world is an extremely good place. In that list of the dead was school girl Biyanka who died of a peculiar ailment. Her friends were good enough to collect lakhs to send her to Apollo hospital in India. But Maraya came before Apollo. The unfortunate parents instead of being jealous of parents whose kids were still living, donated all that money for the cause of healing children suffering from this kind of ailment. All these details I had mentioned in "the black listed" article that created such a furore and caused whispers in a recent academic gathering unaware that I sat behind. Eavesdropping is not in my agenda but this literary criticism in the "backyard" or "Pilikanu literary criticism' I simply could not help but overhear. But yet the world remains a fine place where however much horrendous war goes on, peace processes go on with equal fervour and we thank great mentors like Buddha and Christus for that. So here I reiterate what Koti Seeya said years back. And Happy Christmas greetings from a fervent Buddhist! |
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My encounter with Koti Seeya of distant Wahacotte whose real name is
Don Valenteenu Samarakoon may need some explanation.
