The darkening green

Below, on the lake road, the bullock carts were rumbling by. If you looked down you could see the lantern swinging from the shaft as each step of the bull’s iron shod feet and his garland of tinkling bells accompanied the creaking of the axles. I lay in bed watching the black of the night slowly turn grey. I played a game of looking at one corner of my room and then at the next. In the swift tropical dawn, each time I looked the other side of the room became clearer. Round the walls ran a frieze of drawings and poems painted for me by my father. All the denizens of our own private fantasy world were there – and real life things too, like parrots and crows and “gombees” (My childish name for snails: gombellas).

Bored with my bed I looked over at my ayah breathing rhythmically on her mat. Noiselessly I put my feet on the floor. She slept on steadily so I slipped past her and through the sleeping house.

My father, in his sarong, was still not awake so I climbed on his bed and sat on his chest. “Diana, my little Diana,” he murmured sleepily as I cuddled up against him. Every morning my ayah would carry me to his bed, but often I anticipated her and went on my own for my morning visit. Decades later, when her ayah carried my little firstborn to my bed and she snuggled against me while I breathed in her perfume, I thought of my father inhaling the indescribable baby scent of my sunbrowned skin.

We began every morning like that – my father was the most wonderful playfellow in the world. Together we would go on fascinating imaginary journeys where the counterpane became the great milky ocean and Garuda the Divine Eagle, would fly us off to visit Indra on his throne in his special heaven. King Vikram dispensed justice on earth while above the clouds heavenly maidens danced for our amusement. Too soon my ayah would be back. I had to be washed and dressed to meet the day. For now the sun, Indra’s earthly manifestation, was streaming bright sharp rays like brazen spears through the rain trees around the lake, burning away the morning mist.

My ayah gave me some Kurumba water. I sat on a high branch in the temple flower tree watching my father go to the Malwatta Vihara whence soon he reappeared. He strolled over to the bathing place with his yellow-robed friends. He was back for lunch with my grandmother and me and then everybody slept while the noon sun beat down on the dancing water of the lake which sent rippling lines of light on the ceiling of my room.

At tea time I went to my father’s studio and played at his feet while he painted. He always gave me drawing paper and crayons and I coloured steadily or played with the worn-out brushes. The bristles of these old brushes had fallen out and what were left was so stiff that they felt like solid wood to me.

I watched with admiration as my father painted. The brushes were so flexible when he handled them! He dabbled the bristles in his palette and covered the canvas with sweeping strokes of colour. “What a man of power!” I thought to myself. He admired me too. Taking up each of my pictures he would ask me about them and tell me how much he liked the colours I had chosen and tactfully try to discover what I had tried to represent. We spent some of our day in mutually enjoying our work.

My ayah came to take me to dress for dinner. And then my father told me that tonight we would go to see the carnival. The sun set in ribbons of scarlet glory behind the Western mountains and the world was immediately wrapped in darkness.

Across the water came the reedy music of the horanewa and the Hevisi drums from the Dalada Maligawa. The full moon rose in the East. The picture of the rabbit on her face was complete and the moon contentedly threw down her pure light into every valley.

Jasmine and Sepali flowers opened attracting the fluttering moths swiftly to be gulped by swooping bats. Their wings were silent but they gave themselves away with their sibilant, whistling cries which you could hear as they passed overhead.

After we had eaten, my father carried me on his shoulder to Bogambara Green which was now humming with exciting activity.

In a large tent we sat, as important citizens, on the front benches. Decked out in amazingly brilliant costumes, gorgeous ladies, their faces completely covered with garish paint, danced seductively to very loud music. So these were the Bombay dancers my ayah had told me would be at the carnival! The torches burned brightly as the lovely ladies performed so merrily and unselfconsciously. It was simply breathtaking.

The ladies sprang about and danced off the stage, and now came some figures, almost life size but moving so stiffly that I was chilled with fear. My father told me that they were rukada puppets that were like dolls and that somebody we couldn’t see was making them move. A king sat on a throne surrounded by Kandyan noblemen in their clothes like those they wore when walking in the perahera. They dragged in a noblewoman who carried her baby in her wooden arms. The king and his courtiers made her put her baby in a mortar hollowed out of a log and pound the infant with a pestle made out of a smaller log.

The mother sang a sad song while she rhythmically pounded her baby and her other child, a little boy shouted defiantly at the king. They seized the other child but I could watch no more. I could not repress my screams of horror and my father immediately carried me out.

I found out later that this was a re-enactment of the story of Ehelapola’s wife. The vengeful king forced her to kill her children because the secret of the entrance to the Kandyan Kingdom had been betrayed to the English. Ehelapola disgusted by the King’s cruelty and unfairness, had become a traitor. His wife and babies would pay the price of treachery. I also heard that the lady was drowned in a water tank that had been on that very spot. But then I knew nothing of these far off events.

My father walked around the carnival and bought me some sweets. I grew calm. We stopped to talk with the rickshaw coolie who had come to enjoy the festival when my father inadvertently turned so that, as I looked over his shoulder, I could see the puppet noblewoman whose ornaments and jewels were being stripped off by the executioner. I started crying and they had to soothe me all over again. Finally, I fell asleep as my father carried me home.

I never woke when my ayah put me to bed. In the morning my father told me no, it hadn’t been a dream, we really had gone to the carnival last night. Today, he said, he would show me how to write secret messages with lime juice. Then we went back to our usual games in the heavenly kingdoms where kinnaras sang and we could fly freely over magical lands and milky oceans.

(From The Sunday Times, of August 29, 1993).Diana Keyt is the elder daughter of George Keyt and Ruth Jansz.