Circling around Devil's Point

by Padma EDIRISINGHE

Subsequent to the publication of the article, "The devil in election literature" the devil seems to just circle around me. At times I am just shaking on the verge of the Devil's Point about to fall into a deep abyss. Meanwhile a reader thinking that I am obsessed with the devil has sent me a strange tale about a devil fleeing from a human.

By the way I received this on the very day my son brought me an appetising meal of fried rice and devilled prawns. Just how the prawns get devilled is another puzzle.

The story runs as follows. There once lived in our villages a young Gama Rala named Ranbanda who brought in Deega marriage a beautiful Gama Hamine named Ran Ethana from the adjoining village. For weeks, at the fountains, at the base of hills and in the thick of emerald copses and glades, the topic of the villagers was the ravishing beauty of Ran Ethana.

It is rather paradoxical that despite all the deliberations of the main religion in the island on the impermanence of the physical form, when it comes to describe female beauty, our poets and writers including those robed well as our villagers just go beyond borders and gush and gush while Puritans of other faiths blush and blush at the minute details regarding breasts and buttocks and what not that even Boccassio has omitted.

Well to come back, in no time Ran Ethana's beauty reached the ears of a devil who had been haunting the forests fringing the village and he got overcome with a yearning to see her.

One twilight he crept into Ranbanda's garden but only Ranbanda was mingling with the night's shadows. So the devil managed to creep under the master bed hoping Ran Ethana would soon enter the room. Surveying his vicinity he saw a Katti (a piercing weapon) and a bunch of king coconuts too under the bed. Soon footsteps were heard which the devil mistook to be Ran Ethana's but it was again Ran Banda who came in asking out loud whether dinner is ready.

From the kitchen ensured a sweet voice, No. I am not used to cooking alone without amma's aid. So you will have to wait some time" Ran banda now said, "but I am hungry enough to eat the very devil himself" (yakek kanda badaginie) and bent under the bed.

He was actually looking for the Katti and the King coconuts to fill himself rather than taking Ran Ethana's cue and help in the kitchen.

Meanwhile, the poor devil froze there in fright, for a human turned cannibal and about to devour devils too was an unknown phenomena. So the moment Ran banda vanished with the cocos (originally from Coco islands), the devil forgetting all about beautiful golden coloured Ran Ethana dashed out and disappeared into the jungle.

Rather a disappointing tale. Anyway I chose it as a prelude to my predicament since it is short and my own story rather long. I am rather confused as to where to begin it. Perhaps with the geographical location of the Devil's Point.

Where did I come across the Devil's Point? The Devil's Point, according to data supplied to me on a yet unpublished book delay, half a year is a 15 km. land projection jutting out into the mighty Indian ocean and once in the LTTE controlled area that was to expand into their dreamland of Eelam. Anyway those in deadly action in the above book seem not to know nor bother why the Devil's Point is called the Devil's Point.

Immersed in one of the bloodiest wars in history, these unnamed doers had not time for scholarly ramifications.

Anyway the name Devil's Point just sizzled within me as I browsed through the files supplied for a more readable record of one of the strangest battle tales in history. Anyway what will finally come out (if it comes out at all) is a matter of conjecture.

To come back to Devil's Point my preoccupation with it could be that I have been hovering around this devilish point during all my tortured life and now with this assignment, more emphatically. Perhaps it is a ruse to run away from all the heavy stuff. I am bogged not only among the files but in hauls of guns and loads of ammunition. Trampled by infantry, by the charge of the Lion brigade any by numerous battalions and regiments.

Selfishly in a bold bid to preserve my mental equilibrium I keep hunting for streaks of light in the dismal canvas and stumbles on such info as that the next stop of the fleeing.

Tiger terrorists is Illuppakaari along the A 32 road which is an area beautiful to behold but desolate. I clutch at the rough phraseology as a drowning man or woman would hold on to a piece of straw. Now forgetting the raging battle I plan to feed a flow of words. "Here the Indian ocean and the land, embattle and bruised, meet in a tangle of nature's own curves comprising headlands inlets and tiny islands. Solitude reigns and one could walk miles and miles without meeting a human, only the rose red skies beyond beckoning the rare visitor.. It is a beautiful place indeed but unfortunately in enemy territory.

I mull over the last part. Why "unfortunately? Cannot rival parties own beautiful terrain? Are we egoistic enough to feel that we alone own nature's lovely creations? And isn't this Point legitimately ours? More realistic issues begin to bother me.

How did this lovely place get denuded of population? For the simple reason that the few denizens in this particular area have been killed caught in the cross fires. That brings me back with a jolt to reality. What right have I to trespass on this very important record wasting dozens of words on nature's masterpieces. Should hasten back to my ordained duty if I do not relish being shot by those who entrusted the work to me.

Yet I could be even accused of being partial to certain allegiances in my choice of quotations for which I give this excuse that Buddha never condoned war.

This is amply illustrated by the statements the Thathagatha made when he visited the site of blocking the waters of Mavil Aru, sorry, of the Rohini river springing from the mighty Himalayas and gushing down to the ocean between the Shakya and Koliya states.

There has been even a "No Fire zone" in this battle fought some 25 centuries before. Surprisingly the provokers of war had been the Shakyas (according to the original text), who on orders from kapilavasthu built a dam upstream and blocked it in the drought and opened it in the rainy season inundating the Koliya kingdom.

The particular No fire Zone or Peace Zone where war was forbidden under negotiated settlement was Sama Island.

Here Buddha preached and brought the war to a close mostly harping on the dual facts that water belongs to nature and is nobody's private property, not even of the mighty Shakyas and that the Shakyas and Koliyas being neighbours and relatives are killing those closest to them and thereby images of themselves.

Now obsessed with the Great Master I bulldoze a stanza from the Dhammapada to a certain dramatic juncture in the narrative.

Opposite the page carrying this stanza lies the man chased likewise by his horrendous crimes. His dead body lies sprawled on the kadolana marshes fringing Nandi Kandal lagoon, startled eyes questioning the fact of his death for he himself believed in his invincibility, a myth bloated to not only a national mantram but an international mantarm. The guns are silenced forever with the exit of this demon.

"They shall beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning tools. Nation shall not lift up sword against nation.'"

Pardon me. But that quotation is ascribed to Isiah, an old Testament prophet. But why should I crave pardon? The world is muddled alright with different faiths and a motley of theories, all bogged in a fearful tussle with each other making things pretty hideous for the children to be born. But I stand shivering on the brink of the Devil's Point mingling with devils and wondering whether all my labour was in vain and whether the narrative would never materialize as a publication.