Think about being king for only five months before war breaks out and your entire kingdom is overrun by militarized army from South India. Well in this case Valagamba did what any self-respecting king would do. He took off and spent 15 years in the shelter of huge caves before reclaiming his rightful kingdom of Anuradhapurna. Once he was back on the throne, he summoned engineers, sculptors, artists, monks, cooks and housekeepers to rebuild the interior of these caves that were so large they could accommodate thousands. And all of this was dedicated to Gautama Buddha, the first Siddhartha.
We spend a rainstorm day at these caves and are so enthralled that we revisit each of the five caves twice. Somehow the engineers of its time constructed pipelines within these massive rocks so water does not and did not seep into the caves but around and outside under the rocklike eaves. Now the current monks protect and guide the faithful, both people and caves.
Rainstorm? Any good rainstorm deserves a dominoe game at the closest diner. This time we meet Shiniva, who sits with us and within 15 minutes of coaching by Carlos is playing dominoes independently. Since we couldn't find any dominoe games in SL to buy, Shiniva gets out a pen and creates her own. "It's just mathematics," she says.
Next task for us is to find a photo developing shop. Once the photoeditors hear we're from California, they find the Eagles on youtube and for the next hour we sing "Hotel California" while editing the photos for our Habarana family. All this without English.
No comments:
Post a Comment