Pic by Thilina Kaluthotage |
A wewa, Peter Wise once insisted, is not a tank or a reservoir for those terms don’t capture the true social, cultural and ecological weight of this particular kind of water-body. People in Sri Lanka know what a wewa is. Children learn about the great bodies of water built by their ancestors, the Kala Wewa, the Tisa Wewa, the Nuwara Wewa, Minneriya, Giritale, Parakrama Samudra and so on.
And then there are the innumerable ‘lesser’ wew (wewas?) sometimes crafted into entire cascade systems. They are ingeniously designed water conservation mechanisms where at the top end you get the polkatu weva, then the kulu weva, then the gam weva associated with a particular village, followed by the maha weva and then of course the mighty ocean. They have certain common features. There are the sluice gates, a spill and canals leading into tracts of paddy fields of sizes corresponding to the capacities of the particular wewa. And they all have dams.
Dam. Earth-dam. Earth-mound. A thick wall if you will but one which enables the conservation of water. That’s the vaekanda.
I remember a day in an unforgettable April almost thirty years ago in a village called Kelegama located about a kilometre from Buduruwakanda, which lies around four kilometres from Galgamuwa along the Anuradhapura Road. It was late evening when I finally got to sink into the cool waters of the village wewa. It was night when I was done. Walking along the vaekanda towards the house where I was to spend the night I was greeted by an amazing sight.
Fireflies. Thousands of fireflies. They were blinking away on the other side of the vaekanda. It was as though the Milky Way had descended to earth. So I stopped in wonderment for a few minutes. It had to be ‘a few minutes’ for it was elephant territory as much as it was home to human beings.
The vaekanda offers magic at night. I’ve not seen the ‘Milky Way’ like I did that night, but when the moon is out there’s poetry undulating across the water. The faraway trees turn into sentinels. If there are stars, it’s a picture postcard.
The magic is not the preserve of the night, however. The vaekanda is a vantage point and as such can offer different landscapes at different times of the day and different times of the year in the seasonal arrivals and departures of trials and tribulations.
There’s a humble vessel moving across the water. There are steps leading to the water and there are people bathing or washing clothes. At the far end there could be a set of rocks, a hill, and a temple. There’s a lotus dance on the waters, choreographed by the wind. Light and shade play hide and seek among the sentence-shards of conversations where the day’s duka-sepa are measured and compared. And a bicycle silhouetted against the evening sky.
Vaekanda is vantage-point;
You can soak in
the union of sunset and tree-line
or let its innumerable lessons
clothe or pass over,
life ripples to you
as water and wind
thotupola chit-chat
the beats of clothes-wash
and on the other side
by and by
the festival of fireflies
the dusk symphony
of vakkada and insects
the gutterality of the buffalo;
and to this place
comes household and squabble
inter-generationality
and timeless tales of
life passing torch to life
the wounding of seizure
submission by the weak
equanimity of the wise,
it’s a tenurial narrative
of multi-crop extraction
that perfects the mind’s insistent questionnaire,
but cripples the researcher’s query;
loses itself in treatise
to be misquoted and re-misquoted
to conclude that the vaekanda must go
for smudging the blueprint of betterment.
These waters hold stories. The vaekanda is privy to them all and then some for there’s water-less commerce among people, creatures and elements. Those stories are impossible to transcribe in full. Incomplete poems whose charm lies in fact in their incompleteness. The echoes of a vaekanda song take residence in memory and rise now and then but seldom on request. Like now. Decades and thousands of miles removed from Kelegama, a song arrives and stays for a while. It has a vaekanda signature. That much I know.
malindadocs@gmail.com
Other articles in this series:
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Ivan Art: Ivanthi Fernando's efforts to align meaning
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
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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
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The right time, the right person
The silent equivalent of a thousand words
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The lost lyrics of Premakeerthi de Alwis
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Blackness, whiteness and black-whiteness
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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
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It is good to be conscious of nudities
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Kumkum Fernando installs Sri Lanka in Coachella, California
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Jekhan Aruliah set a ball rolling in Jaffna
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The circuitous logic of Tony Muller
Rohana Kalyanaratne, an unforgettable 'Loku Aiya'
Mowgli, the Greatest Archaeologist
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Sujith Rathnayake and incarcerations imposed and embraced
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Landcapes of gone-time and going-time
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A song of terraced paddy fields
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The amazing quality of 'equal-kindness'
The interchangeability of light and darkness
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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
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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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