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Published: August 3rd 2011
The Village Woman
They fear the Grease BoothayaThe ‘Grease Boothaya’ had struck twice. The first casualty was an old woman who was given enough time to complete her bath by a waterfall. Later the villagers found her decapitated body by a natural pool. The second casualty was an eight year old girl. They were both murdered in a manner that was unthinkable.
Low as the quiet mist that engulfed these rugged mountains at dusk, a sombre disposition greeted us when we reached the ancient village of Meemore. Situated in the dense forests of the Knuckles range of mountains in Sri Lanka, this village had a rare form of adrenaline running up its spine. Naively I drove over the valley into the village not knowing their underlying fears about strangers. Chintake, who joined me to Kabilitha was my companion for this trip. There is no electricity in this place and it is cut away from civilisation by a two day walk. It breathes a resigned sulkiness by 5 O’clock and with it creeps in the twilight. The fear of a murderer has threatened the peacefulness of village life. Meemore is the first village we encountered but there are others beyond and in the mountains. None of these villages
The Beautiful Lanka
This girl was pounding flour and in her I captured my winning portrait. can be reached by vehicle except Meemore—not even by a tractor. On average a twenty kilometre walk through the thickest part of the mountain terrain separates Meemore from the others. The jungle is thick and my tracker lost his way twice leaving me in anxiety.
The phantom murderer, knick-named the ‘Grease Boothaya’ was a ghost from the past. As a child I remember stories of a man who is covered in grease to make his body slippery so that nobody could catch him. Looking like a black ghost he commits various atrocities in rural areas mainly in the form of robbery. But these villagers are very simple and uncomplicated people. There is no television to watch in the evenings and hardly any radios. No hustle and bustle of urban culture. These atrocities are conveyed by word of mouth like Chinese whispers. At first there is excitement amongst the villagers about this creature and in this thrill mushrooms exaggeration which then develops into fear amongst the community. They had created their own story and now petrified of it. On our visit to the first tea house we were already informed of a peeping tom who watched a women bathing by
a river. As we progressed down the road the news escalated to rape, then murder, added with mutilation and eventually cannibalism.
So the story ran—‘Grease Boothaya’ had pounced on his prey, raped her, then clawed into the body of his victim and ate her up then left temporarily satisfied. Yesterday he had allegedly appeared covered in black grease like a devil with claws that dug into human flesh. He watched the woman bathe before making her his prey. “How do you know? Did you see?” I asked the boutique owner who was a middle-aged woman describing the murders with elaborate expression. I wondered whether the story had in fact created the perpetrator and not the other way round. We had stopped short of one kilometre to the village for another break from the driving. A small wattle & daub boutique with Cajan roofing was patronised by a couple of tea drinkers—dark tea from the local mountains with a piece of solidified honey made from the Kithul tree. It appears that the one thing Meemore has is a telephone connection powered with solar and an antenna. The villagers await any news with great anticipation to understand the whereabouts of the
Forest
We traveled 60 KM in this dense forrest. murderer and when they don’t receive news they make it all up. Was he getting closer to their village? Was he in fact this big guy in a jeep with his assistant? They weren’t sure but they were not prepared to trust anybody. I entered this village with this preconception.
The village was a cluster of houses scattered amongst paddy fields and pepper plantations. At the centre is a school, a temple and two boutiques. A mountainous rock looms high above guarding the village thirty kilometres from where we stand and I am instantly summoned by its energy. I felt I had to climb to the very top. Even though the tip of the mountain is pointed I was told that there is almost an acre of flat land there. The magnificence of this rock demands a benign relationship from the villagers who live in its shelter.
While driving through the village we meet a farmer who carries on his shoulder a ploughing harness. Chintake beckons me to stop the jeep so that he can have a chat with the farmer. “Dear Sir, please tell us what it is that you are carrying,” in Sinhala Chintake invites a
Wiseman
The farmer who related the story of the Buddha. conversation.
“Putha! (Son) This here is the harness for the plough. It has two holes on either side to tie the bulls. Lord Buddha had a story about this harness, in order to describe the preciousness of a human life: He said that a farmer, such as I, carried this harness and kept it at his back yard. Soon the monsoons created rain that brought floods from the mountains. These floods carried the harness to a brook. This brook led it to a stream. And the stream carried it all the way to a waterfall. This waterfall dropped the harness in to a river and the river carried it to the sea. In the sea a blind eyed turtle placed his good eye through one of these holes to see the bright blue sky that he had never seen. At that precise moment there was an eclipse of the moon preventing this turtle that rare chance of seeing the sky through the hole of this harness. Such is the rare occurrence that is given a being the chance to be human. Do not waste it son! Use it wisely.”
Chintake and I laughed with the Wiseman and the
preconceptions with which I entered this village left me to join the journey of the harness. The villagers of Meemore and the neighbouring habitat are known to belong to a clan known as the Raksha Clan related to the mythological story of Ramayana.
On this subject allow me to quote what Wikipedia has to offer: [Descendents of Ravana was a king of ancient Lanka and the primary antagonist in the mythological story of Ramayana. Ravana kidnaps Rama’s wife Sita Devi to claim vengeance on Rama and his brother Lakshmana for having cut off the nose of his sister Surpanakha. Ravana is described as a devout follower of Shiva, a great scholar, a capable ruler and a maestro of the Veena. He has his apologists and staunch devotees in this village, some of whom believe that his description as a ten-headed person is a reference to him possessing a very thorough knowledge over the 4 Vedas and 6 Upanishads, which made him as powerful as 10 scholars. An alternative interpretation is that he is guided by and does not have control over the five senses and five bodily instruments of action. His counterpart, Rama, on the contrary, is always in
full control of these ten. Ravana also authored Ravana Samhita, a powerful book on the Hindu astrology. Ravana possessed a thorough knowledge of Ayurveda and political science. He is said to have possessed the nectar of immortality, which was stored under his navel, thanks to a celestial boon by Brahma. According to some theories, he was a historical emperor who reigned over Sri Lanka roughly between 1800-1600 BC.]
My tracker, Nava is not happy about climbing the rocky mountain to its peak. He says it is too windy and the final stretch to the peak treacherous. But he claims the trek to the other side of the mountain to see half of this giant boulder blown away in the attempt to capture Ravana by Rama is noteworthy. It is forty kilometres to circumambulate the mountain. I agree to leave at dawn as we will only reach the village at nightfall.
It appears that this ancient village did possess some magical powers in ancient times. There were voodoo priests who followed the Ravana teachings to cure people and to make success their ventures. But along the way the magic is lost and now they fear the demon very source
by which they regained such powers. This fear is evident in their anxiety over the ‘grease boothaya’.
People at Meemore set about their work unpretentiously. They are physically small people. I have yet to notice a tall villager. Three quarters my length— the men are hairy and the women coquettish—a sign of the Raksha clan, I am told. A girl spreads peppercorns to dry in the sun without much exertion. The monk in the temple is seated in the portico calmly observing the passersby. He is thrilled by the appearance of a child and starts a juvenile tease. These days the paddy fields have less activity but the peppercorn forests are busy. They keep a ladder by the tall tree and pluck the corns which are popped into a bag. I have noted Nava the tracker over the last couple of days. In the morning he wakes up at about 5.30 am and sits on his bench in the garden for at least an hour with a cup of tea in his hand—aimless, thoughtless. The birds sing endlessly and he seems not to notice. Blankness on his face gives him away—his mind is empty. Occasionally a thought enters in
the direction he stares; that gutter needs clearing, his voice echoes to nobody in particular. It is like an instruction to add a task to his to-do list. During the day he keeps himself busy, doing what trackers do or as a farmer, doing what a farmer does. These are not lazy people but they have not packed their lives to the brim with the evolving nature of urbanism. His wife wakes up at five to make breakfast. She cooks rice and curry three times a day. “I am fed up of cooking,” she says to me. “These days there is something to look forward to. It is the plucking season for peppercorn and we have some pepper land; gives me something to look forward to.” I observe with interest that all the ancient Sinhala utensils are used in the kitchen. The store is made out of clay and so are the walls of the buildings. Interestingly, the floor is made out of cow dung. It’s quite clean and smooth to walk on. Just as civet coffee is produced by coffee beans passed through a specific variety of cat’s digestive system, our villagers have a similar concept with the flooring
material. Straw that has passed through a cow’s digestive system makes a surface fit for flooring even though it has yet not fetched a demanding price tag that the coffee has. Perhaps it has patiently awaited my arrival to start a marketing campaign.
“In our village we have no money to hire people. So we have maintained an ancient Sinhala system called the ‘Shramadane’. We offer a Beatle leaf each to the villages as an invitation to come and help us harvest our produce. They all oblige without failing. They are given lunch befitting the task at hand,” said Nava.
“So, what is their motivation to help you?” I ask.
“Because we all help each other. They too have land, and if they don’t help we all become selfish instead of self-sufficient. History has proven that this is the best way for us!” said the tracker.
Such planning takes place at the temple. These days the villagers get together for a seven day ritual offering at dusk. In Buddhism offerings given to the temple and the resident monk attract the highest form of merit. Once the food is made in a household a portion is served
for the priest. This plate wrapped in a clean white cloth is offered in abundance. Rather a beautiful gesture which usually make the village priest obese. In the mornings when I started my expeditions into the jungle I paid a visit to the priest who was doing his usual sitting and observing the passersby. It seemed disrespectful to simply wave to him. But of course the priest is only too glad to have a visitor drop in. He invites us in for breakfast not wishing to let the ample food go to waste.
The walk round the mountain looked ambitious. The thick jungle is similar to Kabilitha, the terrain however is mountainous. It was all about climbing up and then down and then up again, endlessly. It took us five hours to reach the other side of the mountain, all eighteen kilometres of it. Through the dark woods there was hardly a path to follow. Chintake, who is a trained soldier who fought in the war for fifteen years found the jungle easy. He was even ahead of the tracker at times. He carried my bag and thankfully I had only the camera to carry. But after a while
even the camera felt too heavy. This jungle is full of leopards and wild elephants. There are beehives at a height unreachable by man. If one bee was disturbed, that would have been the end of us. I heard that a month ago there was a woman that was taken by a leopard but generally all jungle creatures keep away from humans unless provoked. We are in another’s domain and cannot expect our ideal habitat. This place had a beauty that cannot be compromised. I thread the ground cautiously over the dry crusty leaves careful not to step on some reptile or another. Apparently this jungle is full of them. They can be anywhere, on the trees, under the leaves. Nava says that we will never step on one as they know when we approach. “How come I have heard of so many snakebite stories?” I ask him. “It happens, but rarely.” I continue my cautious journey and make an intention that I should wear my climbing boots tomorrow. Today I am in slippers, a choice I made for comfort rather than caution.
The crunch of the dry leaves is the only sound overpowering nature. Occasionally we would
come across the flow of crystal waters. Crossing a brook gives us an opportunity to rest but not for long periods—time catches on and we must get back before dark. Some villagers come into the jungle to tap toddy illicitly as it is made illegal by the government. We met a man from a neighbouring village in the jungle. First he tried to hide from us. Failing this he emerges meekly ready with explanation and with a bottle of Toddy in hand. He was deaf and thus spoke in sign language. He was a comical creature and tried explaining in mute actions to say that he was taking the stuff for a sick woman. “Ah! Only for the sick woman not for you to get drunk?” implied Nava in sign language. He laughed and hurried off before we continued with our interrogation.
Our destination was about 3,000ft from sea level. It was a breathtaking cliff that was apparently made by Rama; when he with supernatural power blew half the mountain in order to destroy Ravana. The blown-up rock boulders were scattered spanning a few miles and rested about a thousand feet below us. A sturdy gust of wind threatened
our unsteady feet. One couldn’t stand at the edge of the cliff for the fear of falling. We lay in a horizontal position to look down the cliff gripping each other to prevent vertigo. This all happened in 1800 BC claims Nava as we admired the site of treetops and rock boulders scattered in the distanced dense forest beneath us.
The story of Ramayana is mythological, a celestial play of the Gods and Goddesses performed in the stage of the human realm. The pundits who believe in its authenticity have penetrated into the ancient scripts to come up with more plausible explanations.
“Could this not have been caused by the movement of some tectonic plates?” my vague knowledge disputes myth.
Nava looks at me blankly and comments, “Do you mean like the Tsunami?”
“Yes!” I reply. “But would that not affect this whole mountain range? And if the mountain simply disintegrated then the pile of boulders like rubble would be at the foot of the cliff. How is it that they got thrown such a distance?” asks Nava for my expert input. I decide to rest the case on lack of evidence. Myth makes it through a
length of time so unrealistic to expect factual explanation.
Nava throws a rock the size of a loaf of bread into the precipice. Almost 30 seconds later a walloping crash echoes. After a while we make our way down and round the mountain to complete the journey. It appears we are the only people who made this trek round the mountain in about twenty years. Most of them turn back. I am exhausted. Never in my life have I walked twenty kilometres leave alone trek round a mountain. But I am encouraged.
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Indira
non-member comment
some corrections...
i think the name of the village is Meemure, not Meemore. check! in second para.....Looking like a black ghost he commits various atrocities in rural areas mainly in the form of robbery. it is good to say that these myths are no longer prevailing in this part of the world, but still terrify these villagers who are naive, simple and uncomplicated. Tea 'house' is not a common application, it has to be tea 'boutique'. check spelling 'kabiliththa'.....