An amazing walk through unexpected terrain

We found ourselves with an extra day in Vavuniya waiting for an afternoon train. Janet had a great idea--let's take an early morning walk before it gets too hot! Great thought, and this freed us from waiting for morning "room tea" at 7, which always arrived lukewarm and a strangely pasty breakfast sambol that must have been made in a blender. My friend Ramya Chamale Jirasinghe says they haven't been exposed to much tourism in Vavuniya. Understatement of the year but just the same the young people at our guesthouse, who barely have a word of English to their name (can't criticize them for that--my Tamil is nonexistent), did their best to make us comfortable and happy. 

Just the same a morning walk sounded delicious so out the door we walked by about 7:00. We repeated our walk from the day before, north to the next train station in Thandikulam, this time skipping some of the twists and turns as Thandikulam was actually our jumping off point for exploring an unknown countryside. 

Getting to Thandikulam we walked along footpaths worn into the soil along the railroad bed. To one side as we moved north appeared to be a squatter community, built in the no-mans-land alongside the tracks. If this was a sqatter community, as Janet noted, it looked fairly affluent. Well dressed people were leaving for work on motorcycles. Children in uniform were on their way to school. People who were busy cleaning their verge smiled as we passed. Nevertheless it was pretty much the smallest path we had been on. 

Janet in her wisdom reminded me we were up in the Vanni to explore tank landscapes and, stupid me, I had forgotten to read the map the other day in all the heat of the afternoon. Thing is, I had forgotten to read the topo maps of Vavuniya I'd photographed a year or two ago at the Harvard Map Library. It was those maps that piqued my interest about peri-urban settlement around tanks in the Vavuniya area, something I was super pleased to remember!

A few steps north of the railway station, on the other side of the road, there were two paths we could have chosen. The first was smaller and not as nice looking but my trusty scout Janet noted a channel next to it that looked like it might hold water part of the year. A few steps in and her prediction held true. Here was a wide, and as we continued along the bund road, increasingly watery extension of the tank, the signal of a classic bell-shaped tank, which indeed this was. 

Thandi Kulam turned out to be a watery beauty, filled with bird life- cranes, eagles, cormorants, storks, and in the still partly dry catchment peacocks. Cows roamed the catchment as well and in muddy parts I wondered if we were seeing elephant tracks. 

Human activity on the bund road was intense, with people on scooters, bicycles, or tractors passing or overcoming us every few seconds it seemed. Several people stopped to talk to us. With their few words of English they managed to communicate welcome, as well as wonder and appreciation for the beauty of their own environment. 

From the vantage of the bund road we were pleased to see a well-developed perahana and gasgommana, part of the touweleh or catchment area. Here for the first time it was easy to make out the arc of the "protective girdle" of trees that my friend Dr. MUA Tennakoon describes. A peaceful and I can say awe-inspiring piece of human landscape replete with deep potholes on the bund road, a strategically placed Hindu shrine halfway across the road, and magnificent kumbuk trees close to the bund. On the opposite side, a well-preserved and wide kattakaduwa, one with plenty of standing water and even an area of water on the far side with pale brown alkaline water. How the tanks manage to retain this filtering function through the simple seepage of water is a mystery to me and as far as I know, to anyone who has studied the tanks. 

(We need to discuss this more in terms of tank morphology and function, and to consider how this inquiry is an extension of the previous elucidation of the "cascade system," which for the first time articulated the indigenous, vernacular landscape in a context not of a countryside that needed to be exploited or built over (as the British colonial administration might have seen it) but one that requires maintenance, attention, and nurturing).

Our walk was long and hot and our frequent stops made to admire the landscape drew it out into a sumptuous experience of observation and appreciation. 

When we reached the east end of the bund road (we had begun just a few steps off of the A9 highway) we were in a new, more deeply rural environment than we had experienced until now. Our goal to penetrate deeper and deeper into the countryside "on our own steam" was being fulfilled, and with great results. We were lost!

Just by continuing to the next vantage point and the next we passed a landscape of rice cultivation irrigated by large-diameter tube wells, the fields still dry and fallow. It was neither a promising landscape nor one that had any outstanding landmarks but we moved through it, not "forward" through it but in a kind of meander that defined itself as we went. 

Hotter and hotter it grew and we without bearings until a new visual sensation arose--a tank nearly empty and all but abandoned. This tank is not on google maps. If I can find the 1:10,000 topo map I'll need to check if I can locate it there. A long, typically concave, almost rope-shaped structure, more a dike than a dam, enclosed a barely extant puddle of water. Once this must have held much more water. Now cows strayed along the bund leisurely, in search of shade or succor. 

We noted how once again, we were wandering through the remains of an ancient landscape. Janet noted that this nearly extinct bund was not, as she originally thought, a geological formation. Instead, it represented, as in all of the bunds we have observed and walked upon, a community-based human landscape that dates back perhaps 2000 years. Today's villagers and cultivators are the heirs of landscape their ancestors built centuries ago. I still wonder. How do people here respond to these landscapes? 

Are they ignored? Appreciated? Seen as an obstacle? How do we in our civilization see cities and landmarks that our ancestors built?

Bravely I think, Janet encouraged us along the bund to a very small road. On one side it led to fenced-in property. If we followed it to the left we seemed to walk in the direction of an all but hidden village.  

We were hot and tired and a small store looked like it offered relief. We asked for a coke and we were offered a 2-liter bottle, more than we could handle even as hot and thirsty and hungry as we were. Two 175ml glass bottles were proffered, one random Pepsi and one random coke, and we drank them down with the straws we were given. More than satisfied, we asked the young men delivering candies in a brand new van which way to the A9 and they pointed laconically to the southeast. 

A little uncomfortable, we followed their instruction, though it seemed A9 should be the other way. A walk down more village roads revealed more bicycles, scooters, people on foot, cows, dogs, smoke, corrugated roofs and fences, and a large pink school I thought mistakenly I might have passed on a previous walk. 

A little further and we discovered another of the Australian mitigation aid signs we saw the other day on the Vavuniya Kulam. A bit further and a large ditch to our left indicated some sort of seasonal waterway. And finally. The great Moment of our walk (truthfully one of many)--a rise along the path indicated we were on the bund road of the Vavuniya Kulam!

This may sound peculiar and maybe it is just indicative of our own approach to exploration, but to be on this long (over 1km), high, gracefully curving, monumental and historic dam sparked our imagination and enthusiasm. To our right lay an expanse of rice fields that reminded us this must have been a royal (not village) project. To our left the monumental, magnificent, tank. In front of us lay Vavuniya, at its helm the green mosque we had seen the other day. And behind it, the city. 

The bund path held more than just magnificent views and thoughts of an imperial past (I haven't even had a chance to write about the exciting  Archeology Museum in Vavuniya). The way held pathos as well. Two boys on a scooter bearing large sheets of plate glass along the way, a couple of old guys lounging in the shade of a shrine on the path, bathers below shouting their greetings. 

As we rose slightly to the town, Bazaar Street lay at our feet. The ancient gateway to Vavuniya, a city living in the past and present. 

 

To Thandikulam Station: A song of the Vanni

Wanting nothing

Needing nothing 

Expecting nothing

Fearing nothing

Fabric all around

Village fabric all around

Village fabric neat

Village fabric cared for

Village fabric watched

Village fabric raked

Village fabric trodden

Village fabric lived in like a sarong

Dogs all around

Cows all around

Cows by the side

Dogs in the road

People passing

Fences passing

Aromas passing

Aroma of cooked curry leaf

Aroma of burning

Featureless full of features

Full of hand-hammered features

Full of dug features

Chopped features

Spilled features 

Built features

Culverted featured

Planted features

Walled features 

Watched features

Poured features

Plucked features 

Bright features

Dim features 

Doorways and openings

Dark inside the caves

Dark inside the screens

Dark behind the openings 

Dark beside the bright

Hung bananas heavy

Cakes and biscuits "light"

Lightest are the reloads unseen

Unfathomed

Useful

Strains of music

Recorded seldom sung

Drums and bells and horns and voice

Strains of fabric

Woven and unwoven 

Found and unfound

Warped and woofed of generations

Barefoot and flipflopped

Shod and sandalled

Salted simmering

Stepping stirring 

Striped strapping

Sliding cycling

Landscapes in transition: Disturbance, Disruption, Resilience.

Wherever you go in Sri Lanka you get a feeling that people are getting on with their lives no matter how unpretty the immediate environment. This unprettiness takes some time for a westerner to get used to. Most of what we see is rough, dirty, corrugated, woven, falling apart, in the process of being built, muddy, dusty, concretized, weedy, rusty, broken or torn. Missing are the pristine expanses of shimmering paddy, gently swaying coconuts, or stately colonial arcades we'd "like" to see. 

I write this not as a critique of the Sri Lankan landscape! At least not in any negative sense. My impression, as I said, is that people are getting on with the business of life. This is a living place. Alive, vibrant, something you can grab ahold of and not lose heart, as you might on the sterile scenic streets, once the scene of great crimes now covered up and forgotten of, say, a European city. 

Sri Lankans live in their landscape. More I think than we do in America. Our landscapes are repetitive and becoming more so. As we move to exurban places we bring with us the same road engineering, the same motel chains, the same big box stores. The same huge cars inhabiting the same drive-thrus. Meanwhile the place most of us inhabit is our big cars. These are our landscape. 

Well speaking of exurban, in a recent proposal to the American Institute of Sri Lankan Studies (AISLS) which was, by the way rejected, I wrote that I wanted to study the peri urban landscape of a place like Vavuniya, which topo maps indicate is being built out along its lakes. I wondered if this kind of quasi-urban form might be comparable with, say, Madison Wisconsin, which is built along the shores of several good-sized lakes.  

So today we set out, walking the bund road just past the railroad tracks, on the other side of town just west of Vavuniya. To our left was the tank, a profoundly disturbed environment, and to our right, the paddy fields. 

Why do I say the tank was disturbed? For one thing, most of its surface was covered with water hyacinths. At the far end of the tank, in what was once the gasgommana, a few huge kumbuk trees remained. Just passed them lay a road. I had seen a hog grazing here earlier this morning. And I met the man who claimed to be its owner, and the owner of a large farm with 1000 more. Strange to have seen my first swine in Sri Lanka. The road on which the Farmer lived clearly bisected the catchment area of the tank. Probably the railroad track and perhaps still farther east, where the land still slopes upward, were the original touweleh, or catchment area. In a sense, it's a wonder that the tank still persists, with most of its catchment area gone. And certainly, its biogeochemistry has been severely impacted by the built environment where once was the gasgommana and perahana. 

What about rice fields on the other side of the bund road? At a glance they are lovely. With the rains having started, many of the plots are flooded. Others are bright green and vibrant. The whole scene, replete with wading birds appears to be on of wholeness and wholesomeness. A closer look reveals some other truths. 

For example, the kattakaduwa, the wild area just the other side of the bund (tank dam) is narrow and disturbed. For a tank this size I estimate it should be about twice the width that we see now. People have built structures, especially houses, right in the basin of the kattakaduwa.  This area, through which water typically seeps and is purified, is functioning at much less capacity than in the "ideal" tank situation. My question about peri urban growth seems to be addressed here. Yes on and of the kattakaduwa A very large house, almost a mansion, has been built. Elsewhere much smaller places that resemble shacks have popped up. 

So this is a little different from what we hear about "land hungry peasants" "encroaching" on the tank. Whether it's squatting here or something more "legitimate" it looks like peri urban development is part of the landscape, and that compromised tank structure and function is secondary. 

How do people consider their tank? Something scenic? Something they live next to or with? An impediment to development?

Across The rice field some distance to the north we could see another kovil. Somewhere midway between the lower rice fields that originated from our tank and that kovil lay another line of trees, probably the remnants of a gasgommana belonging to the next tank below ours.  

I mentioned before that aspect of this landscape are "difficult" for westerners to appreciate. Maybe the key is in being able to "read" the landscape. It was thrilling today to be able to read the larger tank landscape, both the built environment and the more natural part of the environment. As we continue to sensitize ourselves to landscapes here, and as we come to read their transitions in a clearer light I hope is that our ideas will coalesce into a more coherent model that will provide some kind of baseline for interpreting landscape transitions in this quickly changing human environment. 

Finding our way to Vavuniya

My Fulbright project is concerned with landscapes in transition. We have traveled all over Sri Lanka to explore and document this topic. And sometimes it's necessary to go off the beaten track to find the really juicy insights. That's what I was hoping for by traveling to Vavuniya. But as is always the case, there are moments of uncertainty. 

Vavuniya offered plenty of uncertainty when we first entered town after an exceptionally noisy bus ride from Point Pedro. After little tiny Point Pedro, the Vavuniya bus station and streets around it looked impossibly crowded and busy. Having been stared has an unknown spectacle for several days, we were now accosted by every sort of hawker and person trying to make contact with us. No longer was English and English language use 10,000 miles away. Everybody had something to sell or some question about where we were going. 

Lucky for us we knew we were going. Straight to the Second Cross Street, where we would turn left, and make our first right. So easy to move forward when you have purpose. And so easy to answer your pesty interlocutors with a wave of the hand, "over there." Second Cross Street turned out to be, well, a little disheartening, lined with trucks and buses and exhaust and touts. We held judgment until we arrived at the lane where our hotel was. But sadly, the Vanni Inn looked like a reprise of the truly execrable Pilliyar Inn in Jaffna. A front area that was someone's concept of "clean" and "modern" was plunked in front of a rundown building that was shabby 30 years ago. Not that easily defeated though, we entered the reception area and offered a smile to the young man who greeted us. 

He smiled back, something they don't do at the Pilliyar. Once it was established who we were, and that we had called ahead for our room, he called someone to take me upstairs. "Take a good look at it," Janet admonished. "And be picky!" 

You didn't need to be picky to see three unhappy looking single beds on rudimentary wood frames in front of a barred window with a sign that reads "Keep careful! Monkeys." Not the highest standard of Sri Lankan room, even in the budget category. The bathroom's cracked sink finished the job for me and going back downstairs, I asked if there was a better room. The nice young man said sadly, "if only you had asked for an AC room." "May I have a look at an AC room?" I asked. "All rooms are booked" was his sad reply. 

A quick walk down the street to the almost equally pokey "Nelly Star" hotel, with its severely walled in swimming pool, revealed, in a most unfriendly manner by a Piliyar-type receptionist, that all the rooms in this deluxe dump were also taken for the night. Back to the Vanni Inn, where Janet had found rooms on booking.com and on Agoda for the "Nelly Star." But the truly lovely reception there had clinched it for me. We had to find someplace else or get outta town. 

If this were a blog about accommodations and finding them in Sri Lanka there would be lots more to say. I feel kind of bad loading you down with these details anyway, but they do give you a feeling of what Vavuniya seems to be about. It is bustling, busy, boisterous, and it seems to me to be prosperous as well. One of my secret measures of prosperity is whether people smoke, and I've seen plenty of smoke and plenty of cigarette butts all over the place. 

We ended up finding a fine place across from the railroad station, just a ten minute walk away, an amenity (the train station) we felt sure we would be using at our first opportunity. But the two of us took a breath, got a little cleaned up, and decided to go for a walk. Our walk, which was aimed for the large Vavuniya Kulam (the major tank in town), led us again down some busy roads with occasionally heavy traffic. We had started our walk with a refreshing coconut, a good beginning, but we also bought a too-big bag of unroasted peanuts. Not the worst thing you ever tasted, but not good enough to eat more than a handful, even with no lunch in me. 

The walk was getting long, and as sometimes (well, often) happens, it was becoming hotter and less productive as we moved ahead. Backtracking, we ended up at the unpretty shores of a large tank (I'll write more about a Vavuniya tank in my next post). It was the Vavuniya Kulam but it looked in awful shape. An Australian aid project that was noted there had supposedly gone on for six months last year. A relatively small amount of money had been invested, paid out to a subcontractor (also listed on the sign) and visibly at least, it didn't look like much had gotten accomplished.

 

To tell you the truth, I was beginning to think this was not a nice walk to take a lady on. There was little that recommended itself in terms of scenery or interest. And I was beginning to despair of Vavuniya, something that's always worse when you've convinced your partner that it might be cool to see...even if it was barely written up in any guide book. 

Up ahead was a bright green mosque, always a bit of local color. But still. Lots of traffic and heat. Not a pretty picture and it looked like our walk back to the center of town would be as forlorn as the walk out. From the mosque we happened to turn left onto Bazaar Street and, turn up the volume! The fun begun!

What decade was frozen in the crazy, zany, colorful, outrageous, goofy, unexpected, outlandish, eye-popping Bazaar Street?

Who designed these buildings and to what purpose? What were they meant to say?

What was the influence that dictated these architects' hands? Were they even professional "architects?"

How do these buildings work? How is air-flow managed? How does sanitation work? What were they built for? Are they still used for the same purpose?

Why has no guide book that I know of ever mentioned this magical street? How does this old neighborhood fit into Vavunia?

And so again, even with the touts, the noise, the exhaust fumes, the heat, the dust, the crowds, the discomfort, a Sri Lankan city, unexpected and unknown, showed itself to have a Sri Lankan heart, worthy of deeper exploration, appreciation, and love. 

Karaveddi: a Jaffna landscape

We were dropped not even at a junction. Just an advertising sign along the road, like everyplace in Sri Lanka, indicated where we were. Karaveddi was meant to be a town center, at least on the Rough Guide map. 

A kovil opposite where we were dropped off indicated something, but not the commercial center we expected. After we explored its beautiful, deep step tank lined at the bottom with limestone rocks, we walked down the road a bit and then turned left (and slightly downhill) along a pretty, winding lane. 

The lane continued downhill for a mile, seeming to meander all the way. Mostly fenced in properties and a few stores. A very small Hanuman shrine along the right side of the road provided some refreshing water for our hands and faces.

The village ended abruptly at a windscreen and some high palmyras and opened to a vast flatland, un inhabited except for another kovil half a km to our left along the pitted road that ran parallel to the marsh. 

Was Karaveddi this road, roughly bounded by two kovils above and below it? Was this village without a center a new kind of village for us, a linear collection of houses, tightly woven by generations over hundreds of years who had lived here?

Could this kind of linear village have existed in the past, bound less by trade than kinship, with each family more or less self-sufficient, a line of communication connecting the hundred or so families along the road? 

Tempting thoughts as we considered the possibility of a new-old urban-suburban form in this dense, rich, deeply rooted place. 

Country lanes, village buses, an extended society

So many long walks on country roads getting lost and enjoying every curve on the lane. Living fences everywhere lined with oil drums hammered out or corrugated metal or woven palm fronds. Goats, cows, motorcycles. Thankful for a cloud when it comes along to shade us because even though we have been ending up walking during the "hottest" time of the day pretty much every hour has its intensity. On the way back from today's fish market at 7:30 am we nearly swooned with the heat given off by the early morning sun-straight out of the east. Meanwhile, school kids swerved and swarmed around us on bicycles just before the beginning of the school day. Partly we retraced our steps from the other day taking another look at the three step tanks we found right here in Point Pedro. What an awesome find and how authentic a tie to a much much earlier historical time. 

The drive to find more water features had me in a quandary this morning, or I should say, in the wee hours of the night when thunder crashed so extensively and sharply I had to turn around and give Janet a giant hug in all the heat. But with tomorrow our check out day in Point Pedro I found myself thinking about not two but three alternatives for the next few days. A sure way to catch insomnia. 

One. We could stay here a few more days and explore the extensive countryside in this part of the Jaffna Peninsula. Plusses, very cheap rent and a great place to chill on the porch. Negatives, the grandma where we're staying, who's also the cook, is tired and a bit ill with a respiratory discomfort. Maybe give her a break from having to serve us every breakfast and dinner. 

Two. Back to Jaffna for a few days before catching the express train all the way to Mount Lavinia. Plusses, a well-loved landlord who has arranged stupendous breakfasts for us. Negatives, our host Mr. Gregory (Lenin Gregory to be exact) is super tied up with his son's academic pursuits right now. He and his wife had expressed that they wanted us to visit them personally last week but nothing took shape. He also promised to call me and visit us in Point Pedro. Didn't happen. So how much do I want to depend on him to help me organize a bicycle or find a well-versed tuktuk driver who can take me to the kind of sites I want to explore in Jaffna? Maybe better to wait for a more opportune moment. 

Three. Take a morning bus to unknown Vavuniya, the kind of borderland between the Sinhala south and this amazing Northland. Check out a new example of urban form there (so much new stuff came to light here in Point Pedro!), maybe get to see peri urban expansion along the tanks that are right in the city, something that has really interested me, and discover a new place. Negatives: the unknown. But wait! Those are the positives!

So we decided on Vavuniya for tomorrow but first I suggested to Janet that we might take a random bus from here into the countryside. OK she surprised me by answering. So we found ourselves in the central market/bus stand at the top of the hill at about 10:30. The market was hopping, tailors sewing and cutting, vendors hawing and handling money, and on the unknown second storey under the exotic blue dome, an array of fruit and vegetable sellers we were wondering about these past few days but hadn't located. Janet got some great pictures and we had fun fantasizing about vegetables, which have been kind of scarce at Amma's place. 

After a leisurely sweep around the indoor market we found ourselves in the glare of late morning. Not much caring where we were headed I half decided on nearby Karaveddi, one of the towns (accurately or inaccurately it turns out) in the copy of Rough a Guide I keep in my phone. From the looks of it at least Karaveddi might be on a water feature (lagoon) and I figured it might have some decent step tank action. Worst case scenario we could grab a tuktuk back.

The conductor (have I told you how much these guys play the role of social chairman on the bus?--seating people, arranging for bicycles to ride on top of the bus and unloading them when the destination is reached!--making change, chattering with the riders, announcing stops and itinerary etc.) gave me a lesson in pronunciation. Not Karaveddi with stress on the third syllable. Karaveddi with stress on the last syllable. 

Finally we were on our way. Janet and I had gotten seats early on...single seats next to the window..and the bus got totally thoroughly packed with mostly ladies. Had they been shopping in Point Pedro and now on their way back to their villages? Your guess. 

Several stops and a bit of a slow crawl and an older lady got on the bus hesitantly but the conductor pointed at me and indicated she could have my seat forthwith and on she came but couldn't squeeze all the way to my seat and I couldn't squeeze out if it or so I thought. At the next stop his indicating became more pronounced and (from off the bus) he gesticulated to me that I should get up. Next stop was really ours (or what he had decided would be ours) and he managed to yell "get off! Get off!"

We lumbered off the bus, she managed herself into my seat, and we found ourselves on the main road across from a kovil complex with a magnificent old step tank. This one, Janet declared, reminded her of a cenote in the Yucatan, a good comparison since the Jaffna Peninsula is a raised limestone bed. Similar geology, same landscape with no rivers, same orientation toward springs and worshipping them. 

A good ten or fifteen minutes of discovery and we walked a few meters on the main road to what looked like an inviting lane. We took the bait and walked down it, Janet photographing a well-made woven fence for our friend Dina in Israel, and we were apparently overheard by the person whose house was inside. Long story short his son is in his final year at Moratuwa University where I'm officially commissioned for the Fulbright. Along cycled his same-age pal who also has a son finishing up at Moratuwa and we were treated to a rundown of the prestigious intellectual angle of this part of the Jaffna Peninsula. No news to us but fun to hear about. This strangely rural-village region, densely populated and long tortured by the civil war and it's antecedents is an important center of intellectual achievement. More Cambridge Massachusetts than a laid back village. 

We were half-heartedly invited to tea, maybe the same treatment you'd get in our hyper intellectual part of the world --or maybe their wives were out this time of day--but we declined, all smiles, and went on our way. 

The sun seeming as hot as could be and shadows resisting revealing themselves we found a small place where I bought us two cokes with 500 Rs. I thought the cokes would come to Rs 200 at least--probably more--but somehow they were cheaper and it took the time we spent drinking our drinks before change could be made. The young girl being the counter, with a mouth full of braces, along with several new bank branches along our route, and the proud fathers of Moratuwa boys give a hint of the prosperity and promise of this place. 

We continued our walk until an incredibly broad expanse of windswept landscape and in the distance, perhaps at low tide, the luminous green of the lagoon. A few cows grazed, the wind was crazy strong and refreshing but quite warm, and my iPhone compass, bless it with the awful Rough Guide maps we've been using, told me we were headed due south. Karaveddi I suppose should have been right snack here, according to our map. And the driver had dropped us off in front of a sign that said Karaveddi. But the village had no center we could find, and may have just been the collection of lanes we'd just meandered through. A marker stone gave us no indication of the spot and a couple of inquiries led us nowhere in particular so we decided to backtrack rather than walk to unknown destinations (not even on our Rough Guide map!) six or seven km away. 

A gentle ride home for  Rs 20 apiece got us back into Point Pedro for a relaxing afternoon on the veranda thinking over this and other days here in Sri Lanka 's farthest north. 

Most interesting to me (for today at least) was thinking about connections in this extended village. The man delivering fish on his bicycle in Karaveddi recognized Janet from our morning at the fish market. His stunned, then hyper-excited reporting this to the lady he was selling fish to told it all. He may have also reported to her the boy who was bitten by a dog just in front of us on our way to the market. The conductors today knew each passenger and talked to them, assured them, conducted them in their short seven km journey. The gents connected with Moratuwa told us that this laid away place, mostly hidden from the eyes of the world, is an intellectual power house. The joking, the clowning, the joviality we've seen, the long conversations if this human ballet, all suggest many many connections, well established, some quite deep, that run through this "rural" population. As far as "rural" goes you have to wonder. What's missing? A cinema? A shopping mall? Maybe most important, high level medical care. But then Jaffna is only a hour away. 

Society here seems to exist, and I noticed this in Mihintale earlier this year, in a kind of extended network fed by many agents, the driver, the seller, the conductor, the merchant, the lady doing her shopping, the schoolchild on a bike. There's a gesture or a word or a handshake for everyone. We are not quite connected but every head boggle seems to say "welcome. You are free to pass through." 

Vavunia is in a bowl. A poem of Dry Zone Sri Lanka

Vavunia is in a bowl

In the bowl are bodies of water

The water is filled with fish

In the fish were sculpted other fish

The sculpted fish had open mouths

And after centuries they looked like spleens or stomachs

Wrenched of meaning because they were sculpted from clay and buried for two thousand years 

The clay gotten from silt

The silt collected from tanks

The tanks at the bottom of the bowl

--

People come down into the bowl

Here they pray and do business

Here they burn coconuts and incense and garbage

Here fumes from cycles and trucks stay 

even after the people go home to their suburban precincts

The suburban precincts are all called kulam this and kulam that

After bowls of their own

That once collected water

And now are extinct

The bowls were shaped like spleens and stomachs

Open on one end and less open on the other

They were lined with clay

Semi-permeable like cell membranes

They stored and persuaded water

The water went to rice

Nearby water buffalo swamped

And swapped

And gave milk for curd

--

The curd is yogurt it was made in clay pots made from silt 

Some silt is eaten by crocodiles

says folklore and that's why they eat so seldom

But when they eat it is with big bites

The bowl shakes

And the water in it like jelly

In some places jelly is called cheese

In some places curd is called yogurt

In some places lakes are called wewa

In some places lakes are called kulam

In some places palmyrah grows

Other places kumbuk grows

Other places margosa grows

In some places margosa is called neem

Small girls throw stones with their left arms and hit a dog 50 feet away

Small girls when they are done with the first stone pick up another

Small girls hit the running dog a second time with stones

And a third time as the dog decides not to come back

These girls are our hostesses and cooks smiling and nodding and watching while they don't watch

These girls finish four years of university taught in English with not a word of English

These girls want government jobs

The government wants this bowl

The government wants these rupees

The government wants these hearts

The govt wants these motorways 

The govt wants this gravel

The govt wants these bund roads

The govt wants these coconut groves

The govt wants this coir 

--

This chorus is recorded

These horns are recorded

These bells are not recorded

These cows are recorded and they're not recorded

These cows are animals here

Like giant monkeys

And giant storks

And graceful cranes

And slithering mongooses

And stinging ants

And wading frogs at poolside

And peacocks in the field

And hawks with serpents in their mouth

And eagles soaring high and higher

And dragonflies in a small evanescent swarm

And cats domesticated and semi domesticated 

And crows waiting for the catch in Point Pedro

And flying foxes letting loose at dusk in Jaffna

And a dead monkey in the Royal Pleasure Garden in Anuradhapura

And a stinging ant in a deluxe guesthouse in Colombo