A pea green boat

By Shireen Senadhira

One day, in the very early hours of morning, I awoke to the sounds of chairs and table being dragged in the balcony and some flower pots crashing down. It did sound ominous till I realised that it was caused by a tremendous wind. Then, after a few minutes, the rain came down, first in a hiss, swish and then the hum and drone of the abundant showers. It was end of October and beginning of November of 2012 in Colombo. Days of rain bring about floods in villages and even some towns go under water and one needs a boat to get from one place to another.

Such a lot of rain, it would be nice to be in a pea green boat with the owl and the pussy cat, I thought. Certainly, it would be interesting to see the bong trees and more, to eat mince with slices of quince. Truly delightful it would be to dance by the light of the moon and I did, as always, think of the runcible spoon! All this is from Edward Lear’s poem, The Owl and the Pussy Cat. How such a poem gained so much popularity is a wonder, but it did. Anyway, it did perk us up in our English Literature classes. What a difference from the other lengthy lines we had to memorise.

History of Sri Lanka

Pondering over boats, it brings to mind that boats have played an important role in the history of Sri Lanka. Being a tropical isle it is no surprise but a necessity that the isle was and is visited by boats. Breathtaking history and legend says around the 1st century, when the first tsunami hit the west of the island, there was much disaster. After contacting the soothsayers, to appease the Sea Gods, the beautiful princess, daughter of king Kelanitissa was sent as a sacrifice in a boat floating out to sea. The boat sailed all the way southwards and landed at Kirinda, miraculously unhurt and the princess was rescued by King Kavantissa, king of Ruhuna and his retinue.

He was the ruler of the south of the island. The king instantly fell in love with the princess and married her. She was Queen Vihara Maha Devi who later became the mother of the great King Dutu Gemunu. Luckily, her boat sojourn was fortuitous and it so happened that there were no tsunamis for over 2500 years.

Vijaya, the first king of Lanka and his followers sailed in a ship from the Bengal states in India where he was banished due to his misdeeds from the kingdom by his father. The boats happened to land in Mannar. Alighting from the ship and reaching land they held the good earth and the red soil of the district coloured their palms. They called the island Thambapani meaning red palms. Vijaya was adventurous, he consorted with a princess of the island, waged war and was victorious. Thus, the Sinhala nation came to being and has a history of over 2500 years.

According to legend, a royal couple of India, Prince Dantha and Princess Hemamala were given the task of taking the relic of the Buddha to Lanka for safety. Princess Hemamala hid the relic in her hair ornament and the royal couple disguised themselves as Brahmins in order to avoid discovery. They set sail from Tamralpti, a port at the mouth of the river Ganges and landed in Sri Lanka at the port of Lankapattana (now Ilankeiturai). Sri Lanka was chosen as the new home for the tooth relic

At the time of Dantha’s and Hemamali’s arrival on the island, King Kirthi Sri Meghavarna or Kithsirimevan ruled Sri Lanka. The king was overjoyed when he heard the news and warmly welcomed the royal couple and received the Sacred Tooth Relic with great veneration. He built a beautiful palace within the royal palace complex itself and enshrined the relic in it. Thereafter, he ordered that an annual procession, (perehera) be held in honour of the sacred relic.

As time went on, the land was threatened with foreign invasions and the seat of the kingdom was moved from Anuradhapura to Polonnaruwa, then to Dambadeniya and other cities. During the times the Portuguese ruled the coastal belt of the island, they offered £50 000 as a ransom for the tooth. However, upon each change of capital, a new palace was built to enshrine the relic. Finally, it was brought to Kandy where it is at present, in the Temple of the Tooth.

After the dynasties of kings ruled the island the foreigners blew in with their ships. In 1505, adverse winds blew the Portuguese ships into Galle harbour. They were followed by the Dutch in 1602 and later the British in 1797. The island was ruled by these foreigners for approximately 150 years by each.

Poetry

Our lives are surrounded by so much water therefore boats and ships are a necessity. Even in the Bible, in the time of the deluge, Noah and his sons built his ark. Likewise, boats have featured in our lives and our stories and literature.

Lewis Carroll, in his poem, ‘A boat beneath a sunny sky,’ describes life is like a dream. A boat with three children, Alice Liddell and her two sisters and himself drifting down a river of a summer’s evening leisurely, with children awaiting a story to be told is a lovely scene to think about. The thought of gliding on the waters in a boat in a mellow evening listening to a story has a magical quality in it.

It could be that the poet did not want the summer to end. As it reads, the poem is of seven stanzas. The 1st, 2nd and 5th stanzas are full of tenderness and lightheartedness. The 3rd and 4th stanzas are melancholy and then it reverts to being dreamy and detached again.

The poem is about Alice, the little girl who inspired the poet to write the well known books, ‘Alice’s adventures in Wonderland’ and ‘Through the looking Glass.’ In this poem Alice grew up and forgot her childhood, which was everything Carroll loved about her.

The poem is also an acrostic poem, where the first letter of each line spells a name. In this poem the name spelt is Alice Pleasance Liddell, the name of his little heroine of his books.

The Golden Boat , poem, by Rabindranath Tagore never ceases to move the reader. A poem of six verses that talks of total surrender to love that remains unrequited, evokes emotions of tenderness and tragedy. On the other hand, it could be a meditation of a person waiting on the shore and it is about separation of the body and spirit at death noted by the following lines:

‘Trees on the far bank, smear shadows like ink’ followed by ‘On this side a paddy-field, no one but me.’ The poet sits alone on the river bank with sheaves of cut paddy waiting beside him. A boat approaches, piloted by a mysterious figure – probably female, who agrees to load the paddy. The person on the bank loads the paddy and then asks to be taken on board too. But there is no room.

However, another Tagore’s poem ‘The Boat’ is a short one where the writer is trying to hurry, hurry to launch his boat before time runs out. It is autumn and the emptiness is glooming over when the notes of a faraway song floats by making the scene more plaintive. The essence of being ready is imperative in this poem.

William Wordsworth wrote a long poem ‘The Prelude’ consisting of 14 books. The poem, ‘The Stolen Boat,’ taken from Book 1, is related to a memorable incident of his boyhood days. The poem describes that one summer evening he found a little boat tied to a willow tree. He untied the boat got in and rowed away. His pleasure was mixed with anxiety at the way he got the boat. Then, there was the lake, the great sky and the stars.

The lovely boat took on a fairytale appearance and a glowering peak of a mountain held him transfixed. He felt the mysterious forms of life in nature as he felt akin with nature being all alone. All this lead the poet to recognize the grandeur and loftiness in the human hear t beats. Thus, an experience of his boyhood brings upon the poet a profound awareness of the wisdom and spirit of the universe.

Emily Dickinson’s poem, ‘A little boat,’ describes a tragedy of a little boat capsizing in the big sea by a rogue wave. A large passing ship fails to even notice the loss. It could perhaps be a tale of love, someone who ventures forth from the known, like her circle of friends, to the unknown and flounders. Sadly, the friends do not even notice. Could it be that in this case, something would have lured a little soul away from its quiet and safe journey? Maybe, Dickinson was tempted away from her safe life by her passion for poetry, which is another way of saying her passion for life and truth! .

In Dickinson’s poem ‘Adrift! A little boat adrift,’ the poet shows how spunky even a little boat can be. The end of this poem shows that the little boat even at the moment of sinking, re-trimmed its masts, re-decked its sails and sailed exultantly on. This shows that one must never give up in life.

Stories

Hemingway’s Boat (2011) is Paul Hendrickson’s bewitchingly beautiful near biography of Hemingway. Hendrickson’s genius is to tack through Hemingway’s life by the way of a thing he loved most. That was Pilar, the magical, black hulled boat he bought in Brooklyn shipyard in 1934. By keeping Pilar at the centre of the story, he manages to draw out Hemingway’s character in different aspects, like underneath the rough demeanor there was a bookish man in glasses trying to get his work done, and finding it harder with each passing year.

Hendrickson traces Hemingway’s despair around the one constant in his life during this time, his beloved boat, Pilar. This book is an invaluable contribution to our understanding of the great American writer published 50 years after his death. The author understands the deep allure the ocean held for Hemingway. A sentence like, “the yearning for the short-water route to freedom, wide open freedom,” shows there is something redemptive about such language.

Towards the end of Hemingway’s life, Pilar’s power to shift his mood wanes. He stopped his writing, lost his beloved home in Cuba and began to suffer from acute paranoia. He eventually shot himself in the passageway of his farmhouse in Ketchum, Idaho in 1961, two days after being released from the Mayo Clinic for psychiatry. As for Pilar, the boat, she’s up on concrete blocks on what was once the tennis court of Hemingway’s Cuban farm, looking like “some old gasping browned-out whale”: a lovely relic of a productive and profoundly unquiet life.

Alistair Macleod’s short story, ‘The Boat,’ is a story told from the perspective of a boy living in Cape Breton, Canada’s East coast around 1940s. The story is based on the harsh life style that fishermen in Nova Scotia lead. The story is related when the boy is an adult but he is talking about his childhood. The main character in the story is the boy’s father, a fisherman who did his job for the sake of a job and not for the liking of it. The father’s room is described as a room full of books implying he valued education but he never had the chance of getting it. He would like his son to get an education.

The conflict is between the narrator’s mother and father, as his mother does not want change. She is a conservative who wants everything to remain the same and therefore does not encourage education. She likes the isolation from the outside world and would prefer to keep her family too in isolation. There is another conflict, which is the important one in that it is of the narrator’s internal conflict; he wants to study but as he is the only son, he has to support his parents and the fishing business is beckoning him. Thus the story becomes interesting with all these elements in it.

Then, another novel regarding a boat is, ‘Three men in a Boat,’ to say nothing of the dog too. This book is by Jerome K Jerome which was published in 1889. It is a fictional story of three London friends and a dog taking a leisurely boat trip up the Thames, from Kingston upon Thames to Oxford. It is narrated by Jerome and his companions are George and William accompanied by the dog, Montgomery.

The story is a tapestry of incidents that occur, anecdotes on various topics, loosely connected digressions and descriptive pieces on the places they pass. It is these descriptive pieces that hold one’s interest and the possibility of the author wanting to write a guide book. Actually, he achieved a classic of British humorous writing which has an enduring timeless quality.

Why a boat?

Why is a boat needed? Firstly, it is for transport. In ancient times, living near a lake and the sea, it is a means to cross the lake or to go from one port to another. A second reason, is to fish for food to feed one’s family. Also, later, the fish buying and selling business which becomes an immense industry especially in the coastal towns of developed countries. Fishing is also a sport for the people who fish, no, not for the fish certainly. Another reason, a good one, is to explore and to escape. Think well on the last reason.

Boat building is a time honoured tradition with over 30,000 years of history. The oldest dugout canoes so far found are about that many years old. It is recorded that human life started in Africa and migrated in several spells over the last 100,000 years.

Just think, how did they ever get to Australia? Australia is a continent cut away from the rest of the world for many, many years and one which has unique flora and fauna. The Australian aboriginal people are very different from Malaysians and Polynesians, so they must have been there a long time. Current thinking is that it is 50,000 to 70,000 years. Perhaps, building boats is so inherent in us that we do it automatically. Do we? Can we?

In the years gone by, waterways were the main highways before gravel and tarred roads were made which is why towns always sprang up next to water. Even, today, the river is used for transport in very remote areas of the world. In some countries like Thailand, China, Holland and Bangladesh, the river retains its important function still.

Though we are an island state we have no big boat/ship building industries. Nevertheless, we have our fishing fleets around the island’s coastal towns and villages. History records that we have had sojourns to Burma where our delegations negotiated with the royalty there. This shows that we have had our means of crossing the seas.

Doing the same job for many years is rather monotonous and one needs to relax with a physically creative pastime. How to do it? Working in an office or factory day after day one is cut off from the natural world that created us and the urges that shaped our nomadic past.

Where does one find excitement, adventure and stimulation? Creativity is a basic urge that is within all of us. Though this urge is mostly latent in many of us it does niggle out sometimes and this cannot be resisted but expressed. The human mind needs fresh stimulation with fresh ideas and actions always. The human spirit needs wild remote places for escape, to refresh the soul and create. Could this be why we build boats?