News
Nature’s vivid show hides misery for temple flower sellers
The tanks in the Rajarata are full of waterlilies and lotuses blooming with colour but there is heartbreak behind the vivid show, an unseen consequence of coronavirus.
These flowers are normally picked and collected by people living around religious centres who sell them to devotees who visit the temples and, in centuries-old tradition, wish to make a worship offering of the blossoms.
The sellers, many of them women, earn a daily living from selling the flowers.
These days, the temple grounds are mostly empty because of the coronavirus curfew, and the women’s livelihood has evaporated. After weeks of disruption they are finding it difficult to care for themselves and their families.
The situation is mirrored across popular places of worship in Anuradhapura, Polonnaruwa and Kataragama.
Kataragama, which is usually filled with devotees on Poya Day, was without the usual devotees this week, and also suffering from the lack of visitors were the monkeys around the temple grounds who normally grab their meals from food brought by visitors.
Local residents took time to feed the hungry and forlorn monkeys and dogs left behind here.