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| Sunday, 1 January 2006 |
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Postcard from the South :
Ghosts in the sunlight Sunday Essay by Ajith Samaranayake The sun beats down on the coastline as it runs in its southernly direction parallel to the sea which accompanies it like some endless destiny. Only last year at this time that destiny inscribed itself with devastating fury on the South and a year later its detritus is still evident on the shore line. Ruined buildings still stand mutely alongside the skeletal beginnings of new structures. Beyond Ambalangoda a rudimentary bulwark of sand banks and rocks has been put in place to keep the furies at bay. The pleasure gardens of Bentota and Hikkaduwa appear to be prospering but the wounds have to yet completely heal. There are enough gashes on display down this southern coast. But seemingly life has returned to normal. There is no dearth of pilgrims to Kataragama who appear today more in the guise of middle-class pleasure seekers who stop by the wayside for their meals and to break the tedium of the van journey, the preferred mode of holiday travel. Tourists roam the beaches and fishermen pull in their nets. The waves are washed up on shore to dash their fragile heads on the rocks. Beyond Matara the landscape changes drastically, tourist country giving way to the countryside. The South then is two countries, the hedonistic pleasure havens serving the tourist industry and living off the excrescence produced by the foreigners and the countryside living off agriculture. The hotels, guest houses, the house owners renting rooms in their homes, owners of curio shops, sellers of knick-knacks, touts, beach boys - these form the underbelly of the tourist industry in Beruwala, Aluthgama, Bentota, Hikkaduwa, Galle, Koggala, Weligama and Matara. Beyond that up to Hambantota, Tissamaharama and Kataragama is agricultural country, the stomping ground of the peasantry. This is the land of small scrub and paddy field where the buffaloes lie on their haunches gazing through their aged, clouding eyes allowing the crows to pick fleas off their leathery backs. This was once the country of Leonard Woolf and Silindu, the sympathetic colonial administrator and his bucolic creation, the bovine ageless peasant hemmed in by the encroaching jungle and oppressed by an unfeeling bureaucracy. But now suddenly this is Mahinda Rajapakse country which sent a southern son to the highest national office. Over a month after the election cut-outs of the victor still loom over the roadside and his banners are emblazoned across the bazaars. The legend lives on in its heartland. Hambantota is also 'kohomba' country where the cool, shade-giving plant grows in abundance. And looking at the vast stretch of the saltern today on the first anniversary of the tsunami it is difficult to believe that this had been a graveyard only a year before when dead bodies had floated with the wreckage of cars and three-wheelers and ruined furniture. But now rehabilitation has begun in earnest. Beyond the large busy market place large tracts of scrub jungle have been cleared and colonies of homes are being built for the displaced. The area named Siribopura looks like a frontier town. Singapore and Taiwan are among countries building houses here and Siripala, our three-wheel driver, says the community centre for which the foundation has been laid will be the biggest in Asia. The countryside is fast rising on the tsunami's ashes. What is today a dirt track skirting the new houses will soon be a highway linking Suriyawewa to the main Kataragama road while the town itself will be extended with a whole township growing up in what was once jungle. For the moment however the town's garbage is deposited here and elephants from the nearby scrub roam among the rubbish. Last Monday the first anniversary of the tsunami was commemorated at Hambantota. From the previous day the town was shrouded in white flags put up by the Traders' Association before every shop front. No fishing boats went out to sea and the boats flying white flags were hauled up on the beach like so many idling whales. The shops were closed. The whole town wore a doleful aspect and the largely Muslim community of the bazaar gathered on the beach and gazed at the sea which the previous year had devoured their kith and kin. In the morning Angela Price, a retired British nurse who has been spending this anniversary week with the people of Hambantota contributing to the Christmas Party for children and decorating the church, went down to the sea with a single red flower which she offered the ocean in symbolic commemoration of last December's dead. The sea was calm that day and the day dawned softly over the bay. But who is to say that the ghosts of the tsunami dead did not walk in the sunlight of that bright day? At the Rest House the great and the good of the town gathered under the banner of the District Chamber of Commerce to mark the anniversary. They had rigged up an altar in the dining room in the shape of a fishing boat. There were two sails which had small niches for clay lamps which the gathering lit in homage to their dead townsmen. At the Church of our Lady of Sorrows a mass was celebrated for the souls of those parishioners who had been devoured by the watery grave. In the church yard stands a statue of Our Lady with a plaque carrying the names of the eleven parishioners whom the stormy sea had taken. So the South is coming to painful grips with its agony. In Hambantota, the second worst district to be hit, the wounds still run deep but beyond that the agricultural hinterland is reconciled to the disaster. At Tissamaharama, the dome of the great dagoba rises over the foliage. Life and death and the path of the Dhamma - these eternal verities are interwoven in a seamless tapestry in this sacred city. Dusk falls quietly over the Tissa Wewa where the sky is awash with droves of storks flying to their night's rest. And soon darkness will descend obliterating all wounds, relieving all heartaches. Tissamaharama, December 28. |
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