Shamans, Demons, and the Lime

It is Saturday morning, the sun has just risen, so, no wonder I get a little upset when somebody starts to croak in front of my window. I run outside where I see Soma, one of our neighbors with a ceremonial tray in her hands.

“What is it? “– I look at her with a question mark on my face. She explains that her husband is ill, and if the kaputa (the crow) takes the oily wick he will take the illness with it.

Buddhism and the practice of kattadias – local shamans – go very well together. People turn to one or the other depending on the problem – if trouble is big, to both, just in case.

Kattadias are believed to be able to chase away bad spirits, they can talk to demons and – as the basic step they cut limes which symbolizes cutting the row of trouble. The kattadia Sunil calls to our house also cut limes – at each corner of the yard and inside the house as well. The miner team has not got any founding for months so he turns to the kattadia for aid. That is the third attempt: first they went to the temple, than they made all the ceremonies at home prescribed by a famous scholar, but all in vain. This kattadia is new in the village, there used to be a very strong one but he died a few years back. He helped when Ayanthi was she was possessed by the spirit of her late mother.
“She talked in her mother’s voice” – Sunil remembers. “She didn’t leave us alone until we arranged the two-year-dane.”

They don’t make the same mistake twice: it has been two years now that her father died. So we prepare for the dane.

“It has been two years. The bane is on Saturday” – Ayanthi tells everybody as we walk through the village. No one can be left out, and indeed, the entire village comes: the men sit on the courtyard, we, women and the children sit in the room, on the mats spread out on the floor. A young Buddhist monk has arrived, he is only 21, he tells, but everybody hangs attentively on his words that emanate easiness and humor. I don’t understand a lot, but I can see the women are gaining strength and are smiling as if they were listening to a wise old man. Later everybody remarks what a good monk we could get and what a good dane it was. They leave the gifts told by the tradition with a warm heart: rice, flower, sugar, eggs – whatever one can bring so that the family could eat after the dane as well. They will get it back soon enough, when the village will be due at their houses.
There are plenty of occasions: they celebrate together when a child first goes to the kindergarten, and gets books that have letters for the first time. They celebrate when a little girl becomes a big girl. At that occasion she gets a new name and the stars even tell her what color to wear when she first step outside the house. And, of courses, there are weddings and funerals. All those give a new chance to strengthen community bonds. There is a row of events that bring the whole village, the entire community together. Such is the New Year Sport Games that are taking place just in these days, as in Sri Lanka New Year begins on the 14th of April. That’s what I will tell about next.