The Attack of the Killer Rhododendrons (13 page)

It is hard to imagine a time when the word “coolie,” implying someone who works very hard for very little pay, was anything other than a pejorative. Even so, it seems to be derived from the Tamil word
kuli,
implying a hired servant. Its application to the tea plantation workers of nineteenth-century Sri Lanka was probably proper usage.

In Cave’s 1905 treatment of the issue of management of tea plantation workers, he explained that the weight of tea plucked by each coolie was noted, and “laziness thus detected brings a fine of half pay and in many cases a taste of the cangany’s stick.” I have no idea what a cangany is. Nor does the unabridged
Oxford English Dictionary.
Apparently he, she, or it hits people with a stick. Cave went on to write, “The Tamil coolie in Ceylon may be a shocking barbarian in point of intellect and civilisation as compared to his British master, but making allowances for his origin and opportunities he is by no means an unfortunate or contemptible creature.” That must be the weakest compliment of all time.

Not content with insulting the workplace behaviour of Tamil workers, Cave went on to insult their religious beliefs: “Their inborn inclination to saami worship, with its weird demon rites of the most debasing type, holds them in awe of the supernatural…. But if we can realize the extreme ignorance of the coolies, the basest forms of religious worship and the barbarous forms of amusement which they practice will not surprise us.”

Just eighty years have passed since Elliott and Whitehead wrote, “In their own peculiar way the Tamils are a cleanly people…. The moral standards of the cooly are low; polygamy is practised among them and sexual relations are often free and easy, with the result that disease is rife…. With all their faults and failings it is generally admitted that Tamil coolies are unrivalled in their own sphere, and provide the finest coloured agricultural labour to be found in the tropics.”

Offering a minor compliment in one paragraph, Elliott and Whitehead took it all away in another:

It wasn’t just the Tamil workers who Elliott and Whitehead looked down on. In fact, “The ordinary Tamil cooly, male or female, is usually a good-tempered and cheerful individual … and will work day after day … in wind and rain, and only ask to be knocked off when conditions become really impossible. In this respect they display a great superiority over Sinhalese coolies, who are inclined to make for shelter directly as rain sets in.”

W
E GOT A VERY EARLY START
out of Nuwara Eliya. Even though the trip was only 180 kilometres, it would take nearly six hours to get back to Colombo because of the state of the roads. The word among Lincoln’s fellow drivers was that a massive rock had fallen across the road we had travelled the day before, and that mudslides had closed the alternative road to the south. As we departed, the road into Colombo was apparently still open. We crossed our fingers and set off.

When we stopped at St. Clair Falls, we found them in full flood from earlier rain, and brown from all the soil that had been washed away. A little further along, we came across Devon Falls, a clear and gentle lacework of water suggesting that its watershed had received less rain.

We had seen thousands of dogs along the roads since arriving in Sri Lanka. Anywhere there were people, there dwelt dogs. A small fraction of these were well cared for. Mongrels all, they varied in size from a large terrier to a small Alsatian, and the damnably largest portion of them were in rough shape. A very good small-animal veterinarian once told me that most dogs are a good weight when you can feel their ribs but cannot see them. In Sri Lanka, dogs’ ribs were visible from a speeding car. They lay at the side of the road, or in the middle of the road, and while drivers try hard to miss them, many are relieved from their earthly misery by being run over. As cars drove by, dogs cowered, with ears and tails down. We saw many dogs trying to eat items that were clearly not food.

A particularly piteous bitch walked up to us at the Devon Falls lookout. In her gaze I saw a message that I knew to be honest. She said, “If you don’t feed me now, I will be dead within a day or two.” She was so thin that I would have been nearly able to girdle her waist with the fingers of one hand. Her left hind leg was drawn uselessly toward her midline. We had seen this deformity so often that I wondered if it was a skeletal condition brought on by chronic malnutrition. We had nothing to feed her, and I suspect that if we had, she would have wolfed it down and immediately vomited it up.

“You are having a hard life,” said Lincoln, and the little thing tried hard to wag her tail without falling over.

We stopped for a late breakfast at a fine restaurant and small hotel near the Kelani River. It must be the perfect place to escape for a few days of quiet in dappled shade. The spot is famous as the site where most of the sequences in
The Bridge on the River Kwai
were filmed.

While we ate, Lincoln told us a quintessential Sri Lanka joke. It seemed that an Air Lanka flight was high over the Arabian Sea when the pilot came on the intercom to inform passengers that he was going to have to ditch the plane because of engine failure. After coming to rest on the water, the plane slowly started to sink, and the pilot instructed all passengers to climb onto the wings. “Swimmers are to climb onto the right wing, and non-swimmers are to climb onto the left wing.” A few minutes later, the evacuation had been successfully completed, and the pilot made one more announcement. “For those of you on the right wing, Karachi is due north. For those of you on the left wing … thank you for flying Air Lanka!”

T
HE WEDDING DAY
of Charu and Chaminda was to be as full of pageantry and symbolism as any since Charles and Diana’s. For those in the wedding party, the day began at 3 a.m. following a brief and sleepless night. Hair had to be coiffed, metre upon metre of robes affixed, and one jewel after another applied. In contrast, Lisa and I had a nice little lie-in until seven, followed by a leisurely and sumptuous breakfast overlooking the ocean.

Guests started entering the Empire Room shortly after ten o’clock. Thirty magnificent columns, each illuminated by endless tiny lights, swept past a balcony, rising up to support a grand dome. The room was festooned with white and gold, including metallic gold sashes over each chair. Lisa in her purple sari and me in my black suit; for an hour we introduced ourselves and shook hands.

Promptly at 11 a.m., the master of ceremonies began his introduction to the event in Sinhalese. Just as he began the English version of the same speech, a cacophony rang out; it was time for the
groom’s procession. Chaminda and his attendants entered, accompanied by four dancers, two drummers, and someone tootling on a conch shell. Each was dressed in white, black, yellow, and red. Girdled with scarves to make him look fat, Chaminda was dressed as a king, resplendent in a cream wrap and a burgundy jacket adorned with gold. Lisa and I stood to one side, trying to see as much as we could without looking too obvious as the only white people in the throng.

The performers left but returned minutes later to accompany the bride and her entourage. This time the dancers were complemented by acrobats. Charu and Chaminda came together at the front of a raised platform finished all over in gold with strings of white flowers. Charu is a Cancer and Chaminda is a Leo, and an astrologer had decreed that the most auspicious time for the couple to ascend the marriage platform was 11:24 a.m. In ceremonial tradition, attendants kept them from rising to the platform too early. A man providing spoken and sung prayers looked back and forth between the happy couple and his watch.

When the appointed time came, Chaminda and Charu stepped onto the platform and stood between statues of golden swans with interlocking necks. The couple was handed bunches of seven betel leaves, which they then dropped to the ground. Chaminda placed a gold necklace around Charu’s neck, bringing her tally to eight. He placed over her shoulders a burgundy vest, and then held a similar vest in front of her. He gave her two rings, and she gave him one. Their hands were tied together and water trickled over them. Several guests joked with us about the complexity of the ceremony, and one said, “Well, I suppose you have to suffer a bit with these things.” I think he was referring to the couple.

Then parents and other close relatives were called forward to receive bundles of betel leaves from the couple. Chaminda looked a little overwhelmed, but Charu looked so full of joy that she seemed on the verge of tears. Lisa and I were apparently a little more honoured than we realized, as Chaminda and Charu motioned for us to move to the platform to be handed a bunch of betel leaves.

“Ah, good,” I thought. “A chance to really screw things up.” We walked forward and stuck out our hands.

“Together,” whispered Charu, and Lisa and I put our hands side by side, received the leaves, bowed, and walked away. I thought that we had done pretty well, until I noticed that everyone after us was dropping the leaves after receiving them. I snuck back up to the platform, whispered “sorry,” and dropped the leaves so that they could be reused.

At precisely 11:59, the couple descended the platform and lit the wick of an oil candle. They cut their wedding cake and fed each other. Only then did they proceed to a pair of monks in saffron robes to receive a chanted blessing; one of the monks was Charu’s grandmother.

The time had come for Chaminda and Charu to meet their family and friends as a married couple for the first time. We were among the first to be invited into the reception line. I preceded Lisa. The bride and groom bowed deeply, and I bowed back. Chaminda brought his hands together in prayer and bowed. I did the same, and offered them my little rehearsed blessing, which was: “I hope that many years of marriage bring you as much happiness as they have brought Lisa and me.” I then stuck out my hand to shake Chaminda’s. He smiled and bowed again. When I didn’t withdraw my hand, he whispered through his teeth, “I’m not supposed to shake your hand.” Oops. I bowed again to Chaminda, bowed one final time to Charu, and scuttled off. It will come as a surprise to no one that I have come to think of each new day as an opportunity to embarrass myself.

I
HAVE BEEN INVITED
to many weddings, but I had never before been invited to join a honeymoon. The opportunity to visit some of Sri Lanka’s greatest ancient sites in the Central Province was too good to miss. The initial plan was to leave the wedding with Charu and Chaminda at 3 p.m. and make the three-hour trip to the Kandalama Resort near the rock fortress of Sigiriya with a hired driver. I had visions of sipping gin and tonic beside a pool by six. We were very late in leaving Mount Lavinia, and the ride was much longer
than three hours. This came down to a combination of heavy traffic and a crappy road. The approach road into the resort had been nearly demolished by rain, and I was tired and grumpy when we arrived. All of that dropped away as our van pulled up to the facility. There was no front door, and I suppose one isn’t necessary in a tropical paradise without plagues of biting insects. Instead, the van disgorged us under a high ceiling. Lisa and Charu were given lotus flowers, and we were led, not to the registration desk, but to a lounge where we were brought fruit drinks. “Oh, and by the way, if you could fill in the registration cards at some point, that would be very kind of you.”

Being open to the jungle from which it was carved, the building attracted small insects, which flew towards the lights. These were followed by myriad small bats that worked the hallways. On closer examination, we found that the walls were decorated with small insect-eating lizards.

Despite our late arrival, the restaurant was still open, and the four of us dove into creations exotic and conventional. Salads and curries and soups and breads and all manner of flesh and desserts. Oh, the desserts! I even managed to get a gin and tonic. When we gave up on the day and took to our room, we found it had a bathroom large enough for a family of six. Both the bath and shower looked out of floor-to-ceiling windows over the jungle. Other than odd dreams brought on by the anti-malarial drugs, I slept the sleep of the fabulously rich.

The next morning, after a breakfast as sumptuous as dinner, we set off for the rock-top fortress at Sigiriya. Because there were white people in the van, our driver was able to take us right up to the entrance. Locals had to park much further away. But then we were hit by what Charu called “the curse of the white guys.” While Charu and Chaminda were admitted for 20 rupees, Lisa and I were charged 2,000 rupees apiece. We were told that the Sinhala word
Sudda
means “white guy.” It isn’t terribly derogatory, but it isn’t used as a big compliment either. We had no reason for complaint because Chaminda paid our entry fee.

We discovered that King Kasyapa had constructed a bathing facility for his 500 wives on the plain below the fortress. Being a pervy kind of king, he used a hidden portal to watch them all bathe. Being a randy kind of king, he took the chosen wife or wives back through the portal for some less-public action. I was terribly impressed when told that the facility’s moat had originally been filled with alligators, and by the sheer scope of the plumbing problems that had been solved 1,500 years earlier.

We began the climb to the fortress. About halfway to the top, a spiral staircase took us to an alcove with rock paintings. In the past there were many more, but today some two dozen semi-naked, larger-than-life celestial nymphs danced across the rock face. Explicitly anatomical, this was pretty racy stuff for a country where topless sunbathing guarantees prosecution. In so restrained a society, it seemed odd that the image of the most buxom nymph with nipples three sizes too large was featured on tourist guidebooks to Sigiriya.