Four Feet to Home ll

 

Continued...

Four Feet to Home.

The water ripples with hues of the sky as I walk. 

The dirt roads are the colours of open wounds off the tarred busier ones closer to town, and daily I take off down one of these dusty trails on foot or bicycle.

I realize that on foot I am more approachable and the chances of conversations are high. 

So I walk along the lake and keep going for miles. There seems to be a bathing spot just where the road dips and the lake spills over, flowing to the fields below. I remove my slippers and gingerly wade across, ankle deep. The bathers are curious and openly stare as I pleasantly meet their gaze.

And then I see her.

Against the sun she is standing on high ground holding a child. She is ramrod straight and watches me silently. 

Behind her is her camp site, woven coconut leaf sheaths and plastic sheets secured into tents. I have no idea whether I stalled at this point. I don’t think so. As if in a trance, I just pass her beneath her feet, turn right and climb up the embankment to the Rodi camp.

She holds her ground as I walk up to her. She has quite the presence. I smile and gently touch the foot of the child. Soft as a whisper. She is fast asleep. 

We silently stand together for a while watching the lake and the bathers. 

The bathers are watching us. 

Within that time there is solidarity being established. 

Us vs them. 

I can feel it in the air. I can feel it in her.

But she is quiet and I am the intruder. So I speak.

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The following exchange is an ongoing one. I have no idea for how long it will last.

The conversation is filtered and simplified but the essence of it is not lost. The language is translated from Sinhala (she speaks it mixed with Malayalam) to English.

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“I need money for her milk.” Shanthi is coldly looking at me.

"Yes.” I tell her. But I don’t feel like reaching into my bag yet.

“So where are you coming from?” I ask.

“From Thumbuththu Gama… but others are from Kandala.”

“Different clans? how did you plan to meet here? or did you all just end up here?”

Now she is sneering at me. “I have a mobile phone,” she glares. “We call.”

That’s another thing I notice about her. Her spectacles are nicer and less smudgy than mine.

“They make the Cobras dance and sharpen knives & scissors.” She offers in reconciliation.

“… and your clan?”

“We sell Handun Kuru…. Look at palms and tell Shastra… they can read too”

I don’t extend my hand. I hear my childhood maid's voice nearly 50 years ago shouting at me not to go near the Rodi woman or offer my palm.

I have always been fascinated. More so some years back when I stumbled upon them in the sacred grounds of Mahamevuna in Anuradhapura.

Digging deep, I have my story of their exile and what they have gone through.

But this is the first time I have struck up a proper conversation. First hand interaction.

“Where are You going?” she startles me.

“… I don’t know…maybe I am trying to find My home.” I say.

She is not impressed. “you don’t have a home?”

“Well, I have a rented space…” I trail off.

 “That’s good. It is still a home.” She is profound.

 “What are you doing?”

 “What do you mean?”

 “You saw me. Now you are here. What do you do?”

I have to think this one through. “I tell stories, sometimes other people’s stories…”

 “That’s like robbing,” she says icily, “people accuse us all the time.”

“…do you?” I ask.

 She is silent. “If it’s there, some people take it… Like You.” She adds for good measure.

 “But I asked you and you said I can write this down” I remind her.

“Yes.”

 “You told me not to take your face or record. You told me to only take the child” I am petulant.

 “There are people who take our pictures and make lots of money. They build big houses.” She declares grandly.

 “I don’t know about big houses. But maybe they make money. Maybe they become famous.”

 She laughs….. “Then we are also famous!”

 “Yes!” I laugh with her.

 “But nothing comes out of it for us, not a cent… our kids still get harassed by village kids when they go to play… They don’t want them joining in.” she laments.

 “What about schools?”

 “Schools?... they go to one school. We keep them back in one place. With a grandmother or some one elderly. That way we travel. And they stay.” Ingenious.

 “Do the youngsters join later?”

She is silent….”Not many. They want jobs. Now lots work in one place. Some of them have started farming.”

Silence.

“We don’t move every 7 days like those days,” she suddenly starts. “Anyway now we are stuck here for the past 4 months because of that illness.”

 “Where are you moving to next?” I ask.

 “Who knows?” she says. “Maybe we will go towards Puttalam….”

 “Who decides?”

 “He decides,” She points to a man seated under a tree far away, watching us quietly. I had not noticed him before.

"Don't you want to rest in one place?"

She thinks for a while. "When we find that place"

I don't think she understood me..... or maybe she very well did.

But I don't push it. Hopefully it's for another time.

 “You speak Malayalam, did your people descend from India?”

 She is confused. “No, no we are Sri Lankans, we have all religions within us” she insists.

I try to talk of Goddess Swarnamali, the hunter tribe from Orissa and our very own Princess Ratnavalli. She insists she has no idea.

 “Didn’t your mother mention these names? Didn’t she tell you where you’ll come from?”

 “Did you ask your mother where You came from?”

 “ err.. Not exactly.”

 “Then Why would I ask my mother that? I am here aren’t I?”

 “Yes….but aren’t you curious about these things?”

 “I am curious about where my next meal is coming from!” She cackles.

 “ We are Sri Lankan” she says again.

 Darn right better than most people I have met, I think. 

She has grasped this. The kapu mahaththaya at the Devale yesterday had Not. Some educated people I have met on this journey have Not. 

Suddenly the sun dips. The beauty of the surroundings is breathtaking. 

Deep Indigo shadows rise and I suddenly remember I have to walk back a few kilometers. Almost all are on bikes or trishaws and the rest hitch rides. Nobody's on foot on the long stretch by the lake.

It is lonely.

She hints at feeding time. This time I reach into my bag.

She smiles.

 “When you go back now will you write this story?” she asks me.

 “Maybe,” I tell her.

“you and I both tell stories… you read palms.”

 “That’s true” she laughs “sometimes I tell them a good story to make them happy…”

As I pass them again down below on the road, I see the man has joined her and her baby, Danu. They watch me from high ground. 

She shouts, “Next time have something and go”

I wave. We are both smiling as I bend down to take my slippers off once again.