Without breaking all my limbs

Without breaking all my limbs was the term Amara used

When he said to his nine siblings

After their mother died

You let me stay in this house and eat and live and grow without breaking all my limbs

With some overseas and some dead by kidney or liver the rest grew angry and jealous of the adopted man, now forty, when their mother died and took away the house he lived in with her, caring for her the long years after his father

Instead he went to sleep in a school building

Built by Belgians 

With refugees from the north

And displaced families from all around

And people whose identity papers had burnt or were stolen or were left behind so no one had rights to redress or resettlement Singhala families, Tamil families, Muslim families. Amara the one single man the rest with children who call him "old uncle,"

Using the building at night as a sleeping place

And in the day clearing out, making room for the government kindergarten. 

Not all of your limbs were broken

When your parents were killed in the east in the first act of terror on the island

You were six maybe five

You knew your given name

You hid in the forest

You slept in the trees

You were different a stranger and hounded and used and chased and threatened and enslaved and attacked but not all of your limbs were broken 

and you could move

and you moved west

and you kept sleeping in the trees

and you kept being chased 

and you kept moving

and you ended in Mihintale 

where you slept in the street

and were found

Your adoptive father a healer

One who took no money

One who diagnosed on the spot

One who knew the herbs and soils

One who gave you his surname

And work

And when there was food, food

An old man already

And so many children

Your kind mother never had enough

you told me

Not even a sambol

As hard as you worked for them

And you sold lotus on the steps to Mihintale Dagoba

And you worked in the fields 

And you worked as a laborer

As a builder

As a carrier

As a helper

As a "waiter" 

As a tea bringer to the cultivators

As a carrier of sacks of pesticide powder

As a cultivator yourself 

Bending in killing heat

All your limbs weren't broken

The Lime & Other Cultural Questions

In my country we serve a piece of lime one of two ways. Either it's served in a wedge, like with fish, or in a slice, like when it comes with a cold beer. Here in Sri Lanka when a lovely plate of fruit is served it comes with a tiny piece of lime that seems to have been thinly shaved off the fruit. Would you call this stingy?

Fruit, limes and all, are plentiful in Sri Lanka. And my genial gentle hosts are all generous to boot. So why can't they give me a bigger piece of lime? Should I complain? Stamp my foot? Kvetch to trip advisor? 

Apt questions I suppose but then, why would I expect a piece of lime to be served the way it is in my country? Do I expect the rain to fall in gentle rivulets? Do I expect a less salty Indian Ocean? Sidewalks without potholes? Exhaust-free buses? This is not my place. I'm a visitor here. 

Cultural exchange I think has one principle at rock bottom. That is, accept people and the culture you are visiting at face value. Janet is an expert at this, in large part because of her medical practice where she meets all kinds of people. Not to get all preachy but I think at the heart of accepting people at face value is empathy, something I'm afraid most of us are a bit short of. 

If I can empathize with the people I interact with I can stop expecting things of them. I can assume that the slice of lime I'm given is an expression of generosity and graciousness, the same as I would provide for a welcome guest. I can have a lot more fun because I can get rid of the misconception that people are cheating me, shortchanging me, or trying to do something that's not nice to me. 

I think foreigners in Sri Lanka have a hard time with this, especially if they are here for a short time. Letting people open up to you, give you their best smile, and try to get to know you is one of the nicest experiences.  

Tank Cascade or Village Tank Morphology? Function or theory?

The question of unwrapping, unraveling, elucidating, or "uncovering" the landscape carries its own complexity beyond the complexity of topic, landscape itself, we are studying during this Fulbright. Part of the complexity is political or quasi-political. Its roots, like the roots of landscape, are embedded among histories that are at once dissonant and parallel. 

It seems to me this is especially apparent in a Sri Lankan context. Late the other afternoon we traveled by train from Vavuniya south to Colombo. Up in the Vanni, the region of which Vavuniya is the capital, and later as we transitioned into the Anuradhapura region while it was still light enough to see, we observed that over every stream, whether ephemeral or active, a bridge, however insignificant, carried the train safely above. How many streams in this part of the world? How many jungle rivulets? How many lost corners? 

How much engineering had the British employed to find these places, adjust them, and cover them with their network of transport, commerce, and conquest? 

To say that the British "tamed" these places is wholly wrong. But to note that these places are impregnated with British and later Western technology is perhaps not inaccurate. Railroads reach to the remotest corners of this island, as do roads and other infrastructure. Many of these, though not all, were introduced by the British. They exist in a huge, intricate network over terrains varied and heterogenous. The variation is so great, the obstacles so rife, and the remoteness so profound, it amounts to a modern miracle that this infrastructure is maintained as well as it is at the national level. So when topo maps of Sri Lanka were undertaken it's no wonder that rail lines, roads, and similar landscape features were depicted with pride. They are embedded in this landscape like raisins in a scone. Or should I say, like chiles in a sambol. 

But these features are not the only infrastructure in this landscape. An even more intricate human-built fabric, one that holds the hand of nature rather than strapping it to straitjacket, characterized this place. The genius of Brohier, who first and fully described the "hydraulic civilization" of ancient Sri Lanka followed on the findings of Parker and other astute British observers. These landscape explorers had found themselves in an extensive human-built matrix of land and water unlike what existed in any other part of the world. Like the colonial infrastructure that was to come later, this matrix effectively covered every square kilometer of the Dry Zone of Sri Lanka. Through neglect, willful destruction, and natural forces the tank systems had declined and in many places disappeared. But like a moldering skeleton the hardscape of the tanks persisted widely here and there. We saw one such tank the other day, all but abandoned, but distinctly present. Unlike a skeleton, disembodied from living tissue, the tank system was able to be revivified. It was available for human repair and re-use. 

Brohier revealed much about the tanks but to my knowledge he didn't articulate the cascade system. This was left to later scholars, notably CMM Madduma Bandara and CR Penanokke. They unearthed, as it were, the indigenous, vernacular landscape of Sri Lanka. The physical and social undertaking they documented, the construction and maintenance of tens of thousands of village tanks over hundreds of years was, as Brohier noted, truly "prodigious" in scope. It shaped the cultural landscape ecology that was and still is synonymous with much of Sri Lanka. 

Articulating the tank cascade system was in a sense a national and nationalist statement, similar to the massive archeological endeavors of 20th century Mexico or Israel. But in contradistinction to these efforts, which were largely but certainly not exclusively focused on physical structures centered around worship, the tank systems were and are a banausic artifact of everyday life and sustenance in Dry Zone Sri Lanka. They are still in use and they are deeply and closely woven into the fabric of the countryside. The village tank is still the village tank, however neglected or silted over. Cultivators still use it for irrigation. It is still used for bathing, washing clothing, harvesting fish, lotus, and foods. The tank still functions as a wildlife refuge and its banks are still the site of shrines, offerings, and other periodic religious functions. 

So the cascade system is kind of insoluble unit of the landscape, bounded neither by political nor social constructs but embodied watershed by watershed. Whether ancient villages of a given series of tanks (cascade) communicated about the flow of water from one to the next is not known. Professor Bandara in personal communication with me explained that such a communications structure is presently unknown. Nor are all the methods the ancients or their descendants, returning cultivators of the 19th century, used to build and maintain these structures. But they were maintained and curated over the hundreds (sometimes thousands) of years they were in use. The cascade system by whatever name or account remains the indivisible unit by which the Dry Zone of Sri Lanka may be characterized. 

At the same time as the "cascade system" remains indivisible there is the reality of the anatomy and morphology of the individual village tank. These terms, which we normally reserve for living organisms, were introduced to me by my friend and colleague MUA Tennakoon, just as I was conceptualizing tanks in this fashion. The tanks are alive in that their biotic features are components of tank function. Plants, animals, and microorganisms all play some role in tank function. And rather than just holding water, tanks appropriate its behaviors in order to filter and distribute water and water-borne chemicals differentially. I consider the tank to be a sort of valve, harnessing, controlling, and behaving as a conduit for water. Perhaps the Sinhala word for tank, wewa, is somehow through Sanskrit related to the Latin word for valve, valva. 

The ability of tanks to perform complex functions is hindered by neglect. As naturally-borne silt builds in tanks their ability to hold water is decreased. As surrounding forests and reed-beds are degraded or destroyed, their tangible or intangible functions are lost. Introduced species of plants and animals alter the tanks. For example the tunneling activity of lotus tubers plays some role in the the interaction between the tank surface and water that comes into contact with it. As lotuses are out-competed by invasive plants this role is lost.  Tank morphology changes as well, perhaps imperceptibly when the tanks are full and lush with wildlife, so that the functions of filtering, for example alkaline solutions, are altered. The silt may sequester certain elements like phosphorous and nitrogen, slowing the eutrophication process. But to what extent and how effectively still needs to be seen. My colleague Nimal Abeysingha and I, accompanied by students from Rajarata University collected over 50 soil samples from a dry tank bed a couple of weeks ago, just before the rains. As these samples are analyzed we will come to better understand the role of silt in tanks. But we need to collect more. And we need to assay them for heavy metals such as cadmium and arsenic that directly impact human health in Dry Zine Sri Lanka. 

Now that we understand to a great extent the morphology of the tank cascade system I would propose that we shift our energy slightly, to pay greater attention to tank morphology, anatomy, and function. I'm not the first person to propose this. It's been part of the work of Madduma Bandara and especially MUA Tennakoon as well, in addition to other voices in the IWMI (International Water Management Institute). But while the elucidation of the cascade system was arguably a post-colonial response to an otherwise imposed geography, it is tank function at the village level that reflects the performance, agricultural, social, and societal, of the Dry Zone countryside. Without functional tanks, agriculture, already on the wane in the countryside, will wither. No matter how well we understand the cascade system, and we should continue to study that as well, the individual tank is the heart of agricultural function in this country. We should move our efforts to understand it better.

Gampaha Station

We met in the dark and it was damp

So many people pressed at the window I knew for sure I'd miss the train

But two hours later when I was done waiting

I had seen hundreds, maybe thousands of people on the opposite track get on the trains to Colombo 

I dropped a pen early and unaware was given it 

No train had a sign 

And no schedule was posted

So every train in my direction

I had to ask

And got an assortment of answers places times directions only a few of which I understood. 

Learning

that my train was due at 6:38 I asked a likely fellow if this was the one

"Kandy" he told me, and slipped on. 

Next a young woman I asked demurred had she understood me? But the next train I got on with the crowd and someone told me it was Anuradhapura bound. 

Gampaha. Lonely for all its crowds. Empty for its crush. Forlorn for its lively morning schedule. Soft for all its spikey pineapples. Gampaha murky in the dark and in the light. Your paper New Years decorations still installed. Your paper seller still walking the platforms. Giving me the first glimpse of Singhala typeface. Giving me something but not information 

except

You are here. 

Dogs of the Dry Zone

The dogs limping or three legged

The dogs slouching on the road

The dogs smiling at each other

The dogs snarling over food

The flying dogs whipped in random formation

Over the late day lagoon

Over the humid water

Over the road on the dike

Under the clouds

Under the sky 

But in the sky

The roads with the buses as king

The size of the vehicle reckons its speed reckons its right of way reckons its owners wealth

Are the the rich fat and the poor skinny?

Does a helmet on both parents mean the child will be safe?

Is the rain hard enough to take shelter?

Are the clay lamps garbage if they're in a garbage heap?

Is a dog's meal in the garbage of a roadside restaurant?

Is a roadside restaurant selling brandy in that icy bottle. No. Just ice water.   

Is there palmyra toddy in the north? In the east?

Is it hot in the east like the north?

Are the upper fields fallow?

Are the upper fields alkaline?

Does the alkaline collect in the drains?

Do the drains need mending?

Do you see the tailor in his nighttime shop when you forgot your pants that need hemming?

Is the metal grate closing on the beer shop?

Is the metal screw greasy in the sluice gate?

Is the sluice gate cracked and muddy?

Do white termites fill the mud with purpose?

Does the mud run into the field?

Is the field in a state of permanent flux?

The dikelets small and flattened

And renewed every crop

And crowded with hay

And topped by knops of mud

And breached by stream portals

Like the portals of dreams

Like the portals of spillways

Like the slots in the rock

Slipped by slabs of stone

With rock and stone and mud in every space

And roads and paths and canals at every turn

With flocks and buses and beeps at every place

And homes for Ganeshas, runic, repainted, and sculptural.  

Formed by stream portals

Like the portals of dreams

Like the portals of spillways

Like the slots in the rock

Slipped by slabs of stone

With rock and stone and mud in every space

And roads and paths and canals at every turn

With flocks and buses and beeps at every place

And homes for Ganeshas, runic, repainted, and sculptural. 

Thick like beans spilling: A poem of Rajarata

Thickness of the sky

Thickness of the clouds

Thickness of the rain

Thickness of smoke

Wake up in a choke

But it's a happy dream

You feel refreshed and clean

Wake up in a breeze

Cooler though it seems

Hot to the touch

You hold your breath

Instead let it out

Revert and repeat

Allow time for the engine

The road is crowded with dogs

The campus is crowded with paid certificate students

The students repeat from their open hall-classrooms,

"The small house is red. It sits in a field."

The small house is muddy

It sits by the road

The boys on a motorbike shout in Singhala,

"Take a tooth from the foreigner."

The foreigner looks strange wherever he goes. However he dresses. The fact of this is a closed society. The face of this is a closed society. The font of this 

is round

like bubbles

like buds of dew

like beans or bribes

We're stopped by the road for a bribe but I'm seen

And according to Amara the police know I know I will report them

How could I know when

The language sounds

Like bubbles 

Or beans

Spilling. 

Prodigious genius: A Poem of Dry Zone Sri Lanka

Pouring out of the waters 

Pouring out of the self

Each generation just a receptacle

Pouring it out to the next

Prodigious prodigious prodigious it pours

Pouring and holding like series of fountains

Like series of fountains in full pouring mode

Like series of rivers in series of flows 

Every lifetime in fullness

Pours into the next

The eye and the ear flowing seasons like text

Discernment dissension divestment direct 

As each living being flies into the next 

The nest is too small

But the nest is the home

The nest is the settled 

But pouring is roam

Prodigious and generous

And golden and smooth

And wetness and gathering 

In channels it broods

The future it lies in the flow in the stream

And nothing can stop it no rock and no plank

And no dam and no spillway 

No sluice at its flank

Pouring golden in droves the earth bends to receive

Waters' blessings renewed formed 

In the nurtured seed

In curves abundant untamed understood underwhelmed

In curves unexpected

In curves deeply delved

In curves slowly made by innumerable hands over years over time 

That we can't imagine

Where the old stones were placed once shorn and now strewn

Still water flows not furious but it flows anew

Not tamed and not held but coaxed and concurred

Concursive refractive redrawn and retroved

In huge tanks whose arms close

To enclose all the glory 

The lotus filled waters remain as a story

The sloshing and rippling and huts of exalting

The trees that are cleansing the birds that are rare

The swimming monitor its head up for air

The bathers the washers the stones the shampoo 

In packets along the government stairs

Some used some abandoned 

The foreigner stares

Lotus pickers on bicycle bags full of buds that they collected in long boats and take to the monks 

Tiny children dark parents the slapping of laundry

The fineness of features

The cloth worn and faded

The eyes shining bright like the lake bed unfaded

In huts and in houses in clay and in mud

With sticks and with thatch 

Caliche from the flood

With wood fires and with flies with betel with spit

With limbs that are long with wood that is split

With hot sun and with pebbles

Whitewash and graffito 

Bodhi margossa kumbuk nalam

Azolla and weeds introduced with the seeds choke the lakes and the lotus that blow in the breeze

The leaf like a plate with its own lake of water

That swims on its surface like mercury in the wind

The lotus holds nothing and nothing is held

The wind flows like water the pesticide flows like a shower the fertilizer pellets like seed scattered

The rocks like ganeshas the porches like verandas the shade like insect song the insect song like choruses of frogs 

The grasses hold vipers we jump through them daintily

We walk from one end of the dike to the other

We revel in breezes fresh

We climb on rock fortresses that hold the dams

We dream of the makers their history their societies their inscriptions their errors their floods their invasions and migrations their plans and calculations

We dream of families close and far in time we dream of families close and far in space we dream of families bedded for the night we dream of families standing in the shade 

We dream of birds flightless and flying we dream of clay pots full of food we dream of nadu rice and we dream of other rices we dream of foods steamed, fried, sweetened, curried

We dream of spice of chiles of garlic of coriander of flies alighting and launching of smoke of tea of ginger beer of washing drying on bushes near canals

Of water in channels guided many miles of roads along the canals of bicycles on the roads of walkers on the roads of children on the backs of bicycles driven by sarong-ed grandfathers of fathers carrying their children of dikes in the fields walked barefoot as the rice is watched

Rice two weeks and six weeks and eight weeks as it toughens

The changes of colors as the stalks lengthen

The density changing

The light bouncing glistening flowering thundering

Birds of prey, eagles, kites, hawks

Insect eaters and bee eaters and king fishers and the marble eye of the tank surface flowing not flowing filling refilling refilling refilling refining defining sordid landscapes of poverty and struggle and hate and violence and drunkenness and accidents and dismemberment and death and hunting and cleaving and burning and abusing and powering over and grabbing and keeping and hiding and stealing 

Tremendous power of water hydro and irrigation and seepage for the water table

And elephant watches and boar watches and felling trees and planting plantations in regulation teak not to be touched

And teals and cormorants and pelicans and bitterns and tilapia and introduced fish outcompeting the natives destroying lotus forests leaving lakes empty as we fill our stomachs for now.