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Sunday, 9 August 2015

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Sweet memories

Lilani watched yet another dreary winter day. A cold wind whipped up snow crystals in the air. Living in Georgia, she could never forget the estate in which she spent a happy childhood. She loved the serenity in her father’s vast coconut plantation.

She recalled the emotional experience of reaching puberty when her mother concealed her in the room commanding her not to go out. After a period of seven days, early in the morning the dhoby woman covered her in a white bed sheet and gave her a bath with water within a wooden tub in which jasmines floated gracefully. Then she worshipped her parents who presented her with some gold jewellery.

She liked the pink, organdie dress, the ribbons on her plaits and those delicate gold strap slippers. After that came a change when she had to live within a social framework. She sat behind the latticed outer veranda learning to sew and embroider. She took a fancy to the silken thread but the repetitive operations of preparing day-to-day meals put her into moods of distraction.

Earthenware

She brought back to memory her father’s paddy fields with golden grain-laden stalks swaying in the breeze. She relished rice and curries cooked in fire-blackened earthenware chattels and creamy curd and honey confection.

She loved to walk around the estate of tall coconut palms, fruit trees and patch-quilted grass adorned with little buds swimming in small pools of refreshing dew. It was Lilani’s world all wrapped in sunshine and nature’s loveliness.

One morning she wandered into the spice-grove and was surrounded with its aromatic intrinsic entity.

People called on her mother. The respected ‘native’ doctor, a Moor pedlar selling textile, thread, needles and enticing trinkets came monthly. The monk wrapped in his yellow robe and religious contemplation trudged down from his old, deteriorating temple set on a hillock.

He received reverence and mother placed some cooked food in his begging bowl. A bedraggled woman carrying her baby came from her wattle and daub hut on the outskirts of the estate. In spite of mother’s aristocracy she reached out to that woe begone woman and sent her back, a pillow-case bulging with foodstuff.

The crafty, shrewd, enthusiastic ‘match maker’ in his peculiar black coat and white sarong and umbrella also came.

He chose a betel leaf from the tall, brass tray while his eyes furtively fell on Lilani sitting on the doorstep threading glass beads. His suggestion made mother say, “but isn’t it too soon for her?’

Monthly trips in the undulating ‘buggy cart’ took them in its own dreamy fashion to those simple town-shops.

She found amusement in the travelling puppet shows and watched religious ceremonies of the paddy sowing and later the harvesting periods. Nevertheless the wailing, eerie, supernatural chanting from incantations of the devil-dancing event in the faraway village terrified her.

Celebrations

Preparations and the hustle and bustle of the New Year festival out-shone other activities.

In the breezy month of May came the enchanting enactment of Vesak celebrations involving Lilani to make intricate crepe-paper lanterns that wavered in frilled opulence against the moon-lit night. Childhood impressions made tears flow down her cheeks as she peered out through the window-panes of her house in the USA.

Mark’s hands touched her gently and drawing her closer he pointed out to some patterned snowflakes falling and Lilani realised that she was now a part of Mark’s world.

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