After Cleo (40 page)

‘By the way,' he asked. ‘Do you know the way to this hotel?'

Thank Buddha for Google Earth. The instructions were clear, but as the driver said, we seemed to be on the safari route. As we reached the outskirts of Kandy the map told us to scale a cliff face. I'd heard the road to the hotel had been closed during the floods. Maybe this was an alternative approach. Jolting through the obsidian night, I was starting to tire of unpredictable adventures.

Eyes glowed along the roadside. When the driver asked them for directions they shook their heads or vanished into the jungle. A bus hurtled down the hill, nearly tossing us into the chasm. While both drivers stopped to regain their composure, the bus driver told us we were on the right road, and to keep going up.

Near the summit, a well-lit sign for the hotel shone reassuringly. A figure slid out from the shadows and approached our car; the driver wound down his window. The man tried to give him a piece of paper, but the driver put his foot down and charged up the rest of the hill.

‘These people are dangerous,' he said. ‘He wants us to find someone in the hotel who probably doesn't exist. He's selling drugs. He'll have us all killed. They'll call the police and we'll end up in the same cell. Two Sri Lankans and two foreigners.'

As we finally lurched into the hotel grounds, I was relieved beyond words. I prepared to bid farewell to the monk and his driver, but they said they had time for refreshments before leaving.

Inside, I revelled in the muzak, the unnatural glow of the swimming pool, and the staff uniforms with their pseudo references to Sri Lankan traditional dress.

As we sat down at a table, in my dazed state I noticed how versatile monastic robes are. They can look just at home in the lobby of a flash hotel as in the depths of a forest monastery.

After we'd had some tea, the monk cleared his throat. I was too tired and disoriented to imagine he might be about to say something important.

‘Lydia,' he said, radiating his charismatic smile. ‘If you want to come to the monastery and be ordained as a nun you can stay and be the meditation teacher.'

Suddenly alert, I leaned forward and waited for Lydia's response. This was the moment I'd travelled half the world for. If she was going to say yes, it would be okay. I might even get a shack in Kandy and spend several months a year in this crazy, beautiful place. But still . . .

Lydia stirred her lime and soda with her straw.

The monk, the driver and I waited for her to say something.

But, apart from the clink of champagne glasses at the next table and Elton John over the loudspeakers – there was silence.

Reverence

An enemy is sometimes a friend in disguise

The young man who cleaned our hotel room fell violently in love with Lydia. When she first spoke to him in Sinhalese, his eyebrows rose and parted like a drawbridge. His amazement melted into delight, solidifying into passion when he discovered she'd spent months living devoutly in a monastery.

When Lydia's new admirer wasn't lingering in the corridor outside our room, he was inventing an endless list of excuses for tapping on the door. The tea bags had forgotten to replenish themselves. Our pillows weren't straight. The curtains needed closing.

Though he was very good-looking and charming, he was approximately six inches shorter than Lydia. However, the difference in their heights did nothing to dampen his ardour. Like her, he said, he was Buddhist and, he added earnestly, hoped to visit Australia some day.

Elvis was in nappies the last time I'd witnessed such a severe affliction of lovesickness. I warned Lydia the signs were blazingly obvious, but she shrugged me off. Since her religious phase had begun, she'd lost any ability to read mating signals. Any men who looked at her with interest were simply ignored. Unlike her sister, she was immune to bulging biceps and aftershave. While she could speak four languages, she'd become flirt illiterate.

Sinhalese is notoriously complicated. About the only word I could recognise was ‘oh' for ‘yes'. Lydia and the young man chatted animatedly saying ‘oh' and nodding a lot. Feeling like a spare incense stick in an ashram, I asked what they were talking about.

‘It's Poya day,' Lydia said, as if I should have known. ‘Full moon is a special day on the Buddhist calendar. It's the best time to visit the Tooth Temple.'

The young man smiled in a besotted fashion at Lydia and promised that while we were away at the Tooth Temple he would do ‘something special' with our room. He then excused himself and wheeled his trolley of forgetful tea bags down the corridor.

‘What does he mean
something special
?' I asked Lydia. ‘Is he kinky?'

‘Don't worry about it,' she sighed, inspecting my red linen shirt. ‘Just change your clothes. We'll need to wear white.'

Thinking the religious part of my adventure was over, I'd scrunched all the white clothes in the bottom of my suitcase. Oh well. The crinkled look was so far out it was probably in.

Yet another demented tuk-tuk driver took us on a thrill ride over pot-holes the size of craters down the rutted precipice into town. He stopped outside different shops every now and then, explaining that this was the place he and his family bought all their gemstones/antiques/designer-label clothes and if we'd like to go inside and look around he would happily wait for us. Lydia explained this was common practice with tuk-tuk drivers. They'd revisit the store later to collect a percentage of anything we'd spent.

She waved him on good-naturedly, keen to get to the Tooth Temple before the day's heat set in and the crowds became overwhelming. I hadn't appreciated the importance of the Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic in Kandy. Housing a tooth (or more accurately, the remains of one) that once belonged to Buddha himself, the temple is one of the most religiously significant places in all of Sri Lanka.

The incisor was wrenched from Buddha's funeral pyre in 543 BC and smuggled to the island in the hair of a princess in the fourth century AD. Whoever holds the tooth relic is said to have the right to rule the country. Because of its importance, the Tooth Temple has been bombed several times, most recently in 1998 when eleven people were killed in a suicide truck explosion. The buildings have been restored every time, so they give no hint of a troubled past.

Every Sri Lankan Buddhist aims to make a pilgrimage to the Tooth Temple at least once in their lifetime. Though Lydia had been many times before, she had never been on Poya day.

Rising above limpid Kandy Lake, the Temple buildings and royal palace complex were every bit as imposing as I'd expected. Thousands of people, almost all dressed in white, thronged toward the entrance.

I've always been claustrophobic, which is one of the reasons I stay away from rock concerts and footy games. When I saw the Tooth Temple crowd, I toyed with the idea of sitting under a tree with a cool drink while Lydia went inside and merged with the multitude. But I'd stared down other phobias during this trip. I could surely conquer one more.

We hired a guide, took off our shoes at the door, and shuffled up a broad marble staircase. Crammed against so many others in stifling heat, I felt the beginnings of a panic attack. I concentrated on staying calm – it was essential to maintain dignity; for my daughter's sake, if nothing else.

‘Keep moving with the people,' our guide instructed repeatedly, his tone reassuringly matter-of-fact.

My shirt turned clammy and clung to my back. A rivulet of sweat trickled down my cheek as Lydia bought three white lotus blossoms for offerings to Buddha. She handed one to me, and one to our guide. Clutching the flower, he stared at the floor, embarrassed. A security guard laughed and teased him.

I dropped my flower and stooped to pick it up.

‘No! You mustn't do that!' snapped the guard. ‘The offerings must be clean and pure, not off the ground.'

At the top of the stairs we were shepherded into an open space interspersed with columns. Brightly coloured banners hung from a ceiling made of gold lotus flowers. Musicians wearing white caps and sarongs, the latter tied with red sashes, stepped into a shaft of light. Drums set up a mesmerising rhythm. Wind instruments wheedled out a haunting melody – music to trance by.

Climbing more stairs, I kept concentrating on staying calm while moving forward. By the time we reached the casket room I was too busy focusing on breathing to take much notice of our surroundings. Lydia placed her flower on the tooth casket and we shuffled downstairs before stepping outside into searing white daylight. I've rarely felt more relieved.

Outside we encountered an imposing bull elephant the size of a large garden shed. I assumed the creature was a fine example of a taxidermist's art. When his trunk swayed to life and drifted toward me, I almost bolted up a tree. The elephant's eyes twinkled mischievously. A man held out a stem of bananas, and the creature unfurled his trunk, wrinkled and worn like an old vacuum cleaner hose, and deftly retrieved them. We watched amazed as the elephant devoured the whole lot in one mouthful – bananas, skins and branch.

The guide escorted us through a courtyard filled with hundreds of women in white sitting under trees while a recorded male voice droned teachings over loudspeakers. Some women were alone and giving the appearance of listening, but most were in groups talking softly to each other.

‘Why are they here?' I whispered.

‘Because women know more about suffering than anybody,' our guide explained. ‘They give their lives to their family and then they come here to catch up on time they missed out on.'

A pair of grandmothers nodded and smiled over a shared amusement. A group of middle-aged women sat in companionable silence. Their life stories were written on their faces. No one had discovered pain-free childbirth. They'd all worried themselves sick over their children – husbands and parents, too. They were all givers, taking time out together for a little peace and kindness.

The courtyard had such a gentle ambience I wished I could sit in the shade and linger with them. Even though our lives were different on superficial levels, we were sisters under the skin.

Some of the older women stayed all night long, the guide continued, talking and drinking tea. Younger ones left early, around 5 p.m. – meaning they'd still spent most of the day there.

It was a living, breathing circle of women. In the way I'd found loving support from my yoga group, Mary and my women friends, these Sri Lankan women had formalised the union. I wished there was a place like it in Melbourne where women could go – and just be.

After another white-knuckle tuk-tuk ride up the hill, we returned hot and dusty to our hotel room.

‘Oh my goodness!' said Lydia, opening the door to behold the sight before her.

Our beds were covered in red flowers painstakingly arranged in geometric patterns contrasting against triangular crimson leaves. Three red flowers had been placed in a row on each of our pillows. Lydia's pyjamas had been lovingly folded into a rectangle beside her pillow.

Her admirer had certainly done something special.

We changed into our swimwear and walked through the warm evening air toward the pool, passing a sign advertising the hotel fortune-teller. Sri Lankans translate English into a more refined language. Tables have signs saying ‘Promised' rather than ‘Reserved'. Activity organisers are called ‘Animators'.

A German woman called her toddler away from the water's edge. A French couple sipped cocktails at a table. The luxury of this place was surreal compared to the monastery.

Sun drifted down toward hills across the other side of the valley. Clouds rose like temples lined with gold. Slipping noiselessly into the pool, Lydia and I were anointed in its turquoise cool.

Climbing out of the water refreshed, I shook my hair and sat on a lounger to admire the spectacle across the valley. There was no point getting my camera. No photo could live up to the reality. If any great artist – from one of the Ancient Greeks to Van Gogh – had seen this sunset, he would've put down his brushes and walked away.

Monks' voices wafted from a nearby monastery, chanting in velvet unison. Giant rays of gold radiated from the sun and stretched across the sky.

Lydia stepped out of the pool, slipped into her Calvin Klein singlet top and walked toward me.

‘I can't remember when I last watched a sunset,' I said. ‘I mean
really
watched one.'

‘I suppose you could regard it as a form of meditation,' she said, towelling her hair. ‘The beauty of every second melting into the next.'

I stood up and walked with her to the edge of the terrace to get a better view. As the sun sank into the clouds, majestic bands of colour flattened out to form red and gold brush strokes across the sky.

‘It is a magic country,' I said, gazing across the hills silhouetted in the distance.

She nodded in silent agreement.

‘You'll have to find another island to run away to now I've found you here,' I said, only half joking.

Lydia smiled.

‘If I was your age, I'd have done the same,' I added. ‘Especially if I could speak the language . . . except maybe not the nun thing.”

The scene was perfect now. I wanted everything to stop and stay frozen in this moment. This golden sky in the warm blanket of a tropic night with my beautiful, grown-up daughter in the land she'd chosen to be part of.

There'd been other times when I'd wanted to capture time – a summer when I was insanely in love; an autumn morning near a duck pond where baby Lydia toddled toward me, her arms open for me to catch her soft weight in mine.

But clinging to moments, or for that matter daughters, is futile. The trick is to appreciate their beauty, do your best by them and let them go as graciously as possible.

Life is always in movement. One beautiful moment can evolve into another, more precious form. Every second, even when coloured with sadness, has potential to be richer than the last.