Fritz Grohs
Written on the occasion of a stay at Bogenvillya,
1993/1994

Letter from Sri Lanka

Monks are singing their morning mantras so it must be around four in the morning. I have no idea what the time is. All clocks show a different time. European, American, summer and winter time, Sri Lanka time. Who cares? Despite the stars in the sky it is dark, it seems to be double dark because of the power cut, and if you don't want to sleep or can't sleep or read.... Crickets are chirping, dogs are barking, goats are bleating, cows are mooing, cocks are crowing, geckos are cackling, monks are singing. There is actually a temple nearby. Until now I always suspected that the music that comes from the monks over to our house, Bogenvillya, came from a tape, it is so strong and regular, but today during a power cut? I suppose they could have an emergency generator to work their cassette recorder. Or even sing themselves. Monks are one of the central phenomena of Sri Lanka. With their orange-coloured cotton robe wrapped around their mostly sinewy bodies, their short cut hair, and black umbrellas against both the sun and the rain. You see them everywhere, on the streets, at the markets, stations, on buses. They travel a lot. Sri Lanka is regarded as the cradle of Buddhism. On public transport the monks have seats especially reserved for them, like the disabled in Europe. They've stopped singing now. The sound of the surf rushes through the window from the Indian Ocean less than one hundred metres away and which has been as stormy for the last few days as in the rainy season, which is in June, July and August. At least here, in the southern part of the island where we are. In the east it's now the monsoon season, in December. But also here there is above-average rainfall for the time of year. Warm rain that never lasts long, apart from yesterday, it was a deluge all afternoon, and since then power cut......

A monk has already blessed us for the new year. He was the abbot of the Natha Devala temple in Kandy, beside the Dalada Maligawa temple where Buddha's tooth is kept. In Natha Devala, the oldest building in Kandy, in which the coronation ceremonies of the kings used to take place, there is Buddha's gold begging bowl walled in under a dagoba, an onion-like bell-shaped construction. Or supposedly. Or more exactly: the fouder of the temple, one of the Singhalese kings which made Kandy the capital in colonial times by simply retreating inland in front of the advancing Portuguese, then Dutch, then British ever further from the coast, where they were practically invinsible for centuries until in 1815 they voluntarily, and probably to the advantage of both sides, submitted to the British who then gave the country coffee and tea plantations and railways and golf courses, provided the temple with two dagobas, and the begging bowl is supposed to be under one of them. Only, in order to find that out, the dagobas would have to be opened, and that would mean destroying them because they have no door or anything else. Every temple has its dagoba, a kind of shrine for relics. And there are many temples throughout the country. They are openly accessible structures in which you can stroll barefoot, leaving an offering such as money or flower petals in front of a statue of Buddha or one of the holy figures, and if you're lucky, as we were on the last Poyaday (full moon in 2003) then a knowledgable old temple servant will lead you through the temple and bring the place alive with all kinds of stories such as that of the rabbit in the moon. When you look at the full moon, what do you see? A rabbit. And how did the rabbit get onto the moon? It happened like this. When during the course of his 550 animal incarnations Buddha was once a rabbit, people neverthelss asked him for food. However, he answered that as a rabbit he could only offer grass. When the people were disatisfied with this he suggested they should make a fire and he would jump into the fire so they could soon eat a grilled rabbit. And the people made a fire and the Buddha/rabbit was just about to jump when a divine hand grabbed him in flight, pulled him from the flames and put him on the moon.

Actually, the moon plays a big role here, especially full moon. Full moon days are public holidays, comparible with our Sundays, but which are completely normal weekdays here. The 12 Poyadays in the year are holidays and banks and offices are closed, no alcohol is served and there are processions throughout the country. Buddhism is a cheerful religion, playful, chaotic, provisional, so it appears, and enriched with set pieces reminiscent of games and toys from childhood. The colours, the brightly colourful comic-like pictures, the dolls, the offerings, the statues of Buddha and his assistants and the statues of Hindu gods which are also revered here, such as the four-armed elephant god which looks like Babar.

We spent the Poyaday night on Adam's Peak, or Sri Pada, or Sri Shiva, depending on your religion. In any case a 2,300 metre high mountain which is regarded as holy by all four religions: Buddhism, Hinduism, Catholicism and Islam, and is a place of pilgrimage. According to the legend the prophet put his foot on earth here, and on the peak a temple was built around an indentation which looks like a footprint, and which is copied in many other temples. And according to religion it is supposed to be the footprint of Adam, Buddha, St. Thomas or Shiva. Our climb on 28 December coincided with the beginning of the pilgrimage season which lasts from December to May, and the innumerable steps were consequently crowded. Lined with little lights and from time to time tea huts, the steps meander up to the peak where on this morning a great Buddhist offering ritual is taking place. The faithful trail up through the cold with bag and baggage, often barefoot or only dressed in a sarong. At the shrine you ring a bell, you ring once for each time you have been here - once. Some people pull the bell rope 21 times, a 72 year-old woman more often. Climbing up Sri Pada, as the Buddhists call it (Sri = the enlightened; Pada means on the one hand mountain, and on the other step, so footprint), frees you from your sins and you only know afterwards what is meant when the muscles start to ache after the six-hour climb up the steps.

We solved this problem very comfortably by going on to Kandy after climbing down (see also above: Natha Devala and Dalada Maligawa temple), taking a room at Queens Hotel and firstly asking for the Chinese masseur who gave us a powerful massage before we swam a few lengths of the pool with a view of a huge illuminated Buddha on a hill at the edge of town, before going into the dining room where the buffet with rice and fish and various curries and fruit awaited us. Queens Hotel is a relic from the British colonial period, a venerable relic of which there are a few in the various towns on the island (e.g. the Galle Face Hotel in the capital Colombo, or the oldest hotel of all, the New Oriental in Galle, founded in 1860 in a building which had already served the Portuguese as the headquarters of their prefects as they settled here on the search for cinnamon).

The monks stopped singing a long time ago and it is getting a little light. From the neighbouring piece of land come the sounds of washing and coughing and a broom sweeping the sand floor. Somebody is always sweeping in this country. Outside, at the back over the ocean, on the coast, on the beach, behind the palm grove, the drone of a helicopter is getting nearer with another load of people to be dropped at the nearby Triton Hotel. In any case, it's now summer here and the peak season and the Triton, a new hotel built by the Singhalese architect Geoffrey Bawa, whose brother Bewis Bawa laid out the legendary botanical gardens 'Brief Bawa' in the interior of the country. Bewis Bawa was a former officer in the British colonial army, bon vivant and car lover who only died two years ago and whose ashes are buried under a stone, polished on the lower side facing the earth but inconspicuous from above, in the garden of the property which he left to his servants. This Triton Hotel is almost something like a new landmark of the region, a complex sealed off on all sides by uniformed guards. Who is protecting whom from whom is not completely clear, the tourists from the sometimes quite pushy beach boys or the locals from the sometimes corrupting behaviour of the tourists.

By the way, the Bawa brothers were not actually Singhalese but Burgher, that means from mixed marriages of Tamils and Portuguese. And while we're on the subject (which one?): here in this area virtually every family is called de Silva or Perera, names taken from the Portuguese as they trundled in here in the 16th century, I suppose, and settled in the south, in Galle, and built a huge fort on a small island in front of the town, which is still standing today with its thick walls. Now in any case it is getting light, the tourists are in the meantime already in their rooms, the helicopter already long gone over all holy mountains and valleys, seas and rivers, paddy fields, cinnamon, tea and coconut plantations, and my computer is reminding me to save what I have written so far and turn it off because the battery is as good as dead (remember, power cut!) and I'm going to do it too and then jump into the swimming pool. In the meantime a few other people in the house are awake. I've already seen Sofi and Qirin and Cyril and Aruna and Ratta and Ewa and Nanda and Romana and it seems that this 6 January 1994 has bit by bit begun.