True, if you are in love with someone from Lewella then you would be in love with the Lewella bus as well. Or so it would seem. Suppose you are introduced to a group of people and you ask them where they are from, as we usually do. They might say, Pilimatalawa, Gelioya, Wathurakumbura, Asgiriya, Thalathuoya, Walala or any other place in and around Kandy or even outside the district. You would move on to the next person or the next question. But suppose someone said ‘Lewella,’ you would stop. That’s if you were in love with someone from Lewella.
‘Lewella? Really? Hmm’
And then the chances are you’ll spend more time with that person than anyone else, even if he or she had no clue about the beloved.
If you see a bus with the destination board ‘Lewella,’ you’ll stop and watch it pass, even if the beloved never traveled by bus or was at the time most certainly at home or in the hostel, assuming that he or she was an undergraduate.
Association. By association. It’s a trick that the heart plays on the mind.
It is unlikely that Arwa Turra knows the Lewella bus story, but then again it’s an ageless tale and one which most people encounter at some point in their lives, even if they don’t jot it down somewhere or commit it to memory.
Arwa Turra made a note: ‘The evil tricks of my mind, even a person with your name excites me.’
Happens, unless it’s a pretty uncommon name. I don’t know ‘the person’ Arwa referred to. I don’t know if she included that note in ‘Heartstrings,’ a coffee table book containing her ‘poetry and hand-drawn art’ that was published a couple of years ago.
One thing leads to another. That’s how it goes. Things are connected. Heartstrings do that, one might say.
It’s Arwa’s lines that made me remember Prabath’s observation. Arwa’s poetry does that. I’ve not seen her book. In fact I didn’t even know there was a book called ‘Heartstrings.’ I want to and hope to. I’ve only seen what she posts on social media.
What caught my attention was an observation on words: ‘Sometimes words are like needle and thread, stitch your broken heart AND sometimes just the sharp knife that rips it apart.’
Words do both. Double-edged. Silence is as versatile of course, but let’s not dwell too long on the possible philosophical extrapolations. Let’s instead follow the strings of Awra’s heart.
‘Don’t make homes in humans for you will one day be evicted and the pain will be suffocating.’ Left me breathless, that one.
I was like the fresh book just out of the press
and you picked me up, smelled the cover and kissed the outside
and like those thousand others
you never actually opened my pages.
How many people open pages and how often, Arwa made me wonder. ‘You didn’t stay but I will wear you on my skin forever,’ she notes. That’s skin, but there’s more: ‘Tear apart my bones and find your home.’
Strings. Lines. They move from page to page, stitching together thoughts that are familiar but are unfamiliarly stated and connected.
‘Your face is tattooed on my eyes.’ That’s another breath-stopper. That’s how it is when in love and everyone who has been in love would immediately understand. Like Prabath’s story of the Lewella bus. But not everyone can actually say it with such power, finesse and grace.
Not just poetry, but prose as well; Arwa is not just words, she’s also art. I don’t pretend to understand but her drawings, at least those which I’ve come across in social media, speak to me. Two languages, one song. Gathered with strings, stitched intricately and yet seamlessly.
There are buses going to Thambuttegama, Horowpathana, Chavakachcheri, Bibile, Narangamuwa, Angunakolapelessa and other destinations. There are innumerable people in love with these buses.
Other articles in this series:
Let's help Jagana Krishnakumar rebuild our ancestral home
Do you have a friend in Pennsylvania (or anywhere?)
A gateway to illumination in West Virginia
Through strange fissures into magical orchards
There's sea glass love few will see
Re-residencing Lakdasa Wikkramasinha
Poisoning poets and shredding books of verse
The responsible will not be broken
Ownership and tenuriality of the Wissahickon
Did you notice the 'tiny, tiny wayside flowers'?
Gifts, gifting and their rubbishing
Journalism inadvertently learned
Reflections on the young poetic heart
Wordaholic, trynasty and other portmanteaus
The 'Loku Aiya' of all 'Paththara Mallis'
Subverting the indecency of the mind
Character theft and the perennial question 'who am I?'
Saji Coomaraswamy and rewards that matter
Seeing, unseeing and seeing again
Alex Carey and the (small) matter of legacy
The insomnial dreams of Kapila Kumara Kalinga
The clothes we wear and the clothes that wear us (down)
Every mountain, every rock, is sacred
Manufacturing passivity and obedience
Sanjeew Lonliyes: rawness unplugged, unlimited
In praise of courage, determination and insanity
The relative values of life and death
Poetry and poets will not be buried
Reunion Peradeniya (1980-1990)
Sorrowing and delighting the world
Encounters with Liyanage Amarakeerthi
Letters that cut and heal the heart
A forgotten dawn song from Embilipitiya
The soft rain of neighbourliness
Reflections on waves and markings
Respond to insults in line with the Akkosa Sutra
The right time, the right person
The silent equivalent of a thousand words
Crazy cousins are besties for life
The lost lyrics of Premakeerthi de Alwis
Consolation prizes in competitions no one ever wins
Blackness, whiteness and black-whiteness
Inscriptions: stubborn and erasable
Deveni: a priceless one-word koan
Recovering run-on lines and lost punctuation
'Wetness' is not the preserve of the Dry Zone
On sweeping close to one's feet
Kumkum Fernando installs Sri Lanka in Coachella, California
To be an island like the Roberts...
Debts that can never be repaid in full
An island which no flood can overwhelm
A melody faint and yet not beyond hearing
Heart dances that cannot be choreographed
Remembering to forget and forgetting to remember
Authors are assassinated, readers are immortal
It is good to be conscious of nudities
Saturday slides in after Monday and Sunday somersaults into Friday
There's a one in a million and a one in ten
Kumkum Fernando installs Sri Lanka in Coachella, California
Hemantha Gunawardena's signature
Architectures of the demolished
The exotic lunacy of parting gifts
Who the heck do you think I am?
Those fascinating 'Chitra Katha'
So how are things in Sri Lanka?
The sweetest three-letter poem
Teams, team-thinking, team-spirit and leadership
The songs we could sing in lifeboats when we are shipwrecked
Jekhan Aruliah set a ball rolling in Jaffna
Awaiting arrivals unlike any other
Teachers and students sometimes reverse roles
Colombo, Colombo, Colombo and so forth
The slowest road to Kumarigama, Ampara
Some play music, others listen
Mind and hearts, loquacious and taciturn
I am at Jaga Food, where are you?
On separating the missing from the disappeared
And intangible republics will save the day (as they always have)
The circuitous logic of Tony Muller
Rohana Kalyanaratne, an unforgettable 'Loku Aiya'
Mowgli, the Greatest Archaeologist
Figures and disfigurement, rocks and roses
Sujith Rathnayake and incarcerations imposed and embraced
Some stories are written on the covers themselves
A poetic enclave in the Republic of Literature
Landcapes of gone-time and going-time
The best insurance against the loud and repeated lie
So what if the best flutes will not go to the best flautists?
There's dust and words awaiting us at crossroads and crosswords
A song of terraced paddy fields
Of ants, bridges and possibilities
From A through Aardvark to Zyzzyva
Words, their potency, appropriation and abuse
Who did not listen, who's not listening still?
If you remember Kobe, visit GOAT Mountain
The world is made for re-colouring
No 27, Dickman's Road, Colombo 5
Visual cartographers and cartography
Ithaca from a long ago and right now
Lessons written in invisible ink
The amazing quality of 'equal-kindness'
The interchangeability of light and darkness
Sisterhood: moments, just moments
Chess is my life and perhaps your too
Reflections on ownership and belonging
The integrity of Nadeesha Rajapaksha
Signatures in the seasons of love
To Maceo Martinet as he flies over rainbows
Fragrances that will not be bottled
Colours and textures of living heritage
Countries of the past, present and future
Books launched and not-yet-launched
The sunrise as viewed from sacred mountains
Isaiah 58: 12-16 and the true meaning of grace
The age of Frederick Algernon Trotteville
Live and tell the tale as you will
Between struggle and cooperation
Neruda, Sekara and literary dimensions
Paul Christopher's heart of many chambers
Calmness gracefully cascades in the Dumbara Hills
Serendipitous amber rules the world
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