Temple of the Tooth

Happy Easter one and all! This weekend me and 8 of my fellow volunteers escaped our placements and went up to to the hill country to visit Kandy, or Nuwera as it's really known, for the Easter weekend. Kandy came about as a name as the Brits misunderstood the word for "hills" in Singhala and the name has stuck ever since!

Kandy is home to many famous sites but none more so than "The Temple of the Tooth", the Buddhist equivalent of the Vatican. Legend has it that when the Buddha was cremated in 543 BC in Northern India, various parts of his remains were rescued from the fire including one of his teeth. In the fourth century AD, as Buddhism was declining in India, the Tooth was smuggled into Sri Lanka hidden (according to legend) in the hair of a princess. Over the years there has been much tussling over the tooth. The worst offenders where the Portuguese who apparently stole the tooth and took it to Goa and pounded it to dust, burnt it and sprinkled it in the sea. Buddhists claim that they either destroyed a replica or that the tooth magically reassembled itself and flew back to Sri Lanka. The tooth is now only shown once or twice every decade and the rest of the time it's encased in a Russian-doll-like set of 6 caskets in the shape of dagobas (the bell shaped Buddhist shrines that are endemic across the island). Some, who have seen it, claim it looks like a buffalo's tooth. Whatever it is, it clearly has a huge significance to Buddhists all across the world. I went to the 6am puja (ceremony) and the place was packed with people all with an offering of flowers or food waiting patiently to see the tooth dagoba from a distance.

Within the temple grounds was the Raja Tusker Museum. Raja was an elephant who became a national treasurer after serving as the lead Elephant in the annual Esala Perahera, the largest Perahera (see my first blog) in Sri Lanka which lasts a week. Raja was the elephant who carried the tooth relic for 50 years during this festival. The perfect elephant for the job has to have 7 things that touch the ground: his 4 feet, his trunk, his tail and his penis! When he died, he was so much loved by Sri Lankans that a national day of mourning was called. He know stands proud (and stuffed) in the museum surrounded by photos of both him in his prime and during his last hours which are very sad.

As well as visiting the temple, we went to visit the Botanical Gardens, the largest in Sri Lanka and a treasure trove of plants that I've never seen before. The highlights for me were the Canon-Ball Tree, aptly named after it's fruits; the talipot palm, which has the most enormous leaves and flowers just once in about fifty to seventy years and then dies; and a fern whose proper name I didn't get, but has been renamed in our minds as the feces fern - I won't explain why!

We got to and from Kandy in style by taking the Observation car of the train from Colombo. The Observation car did what it said on the tin by providing incredible views of the hill country and the train line which is quite a feat of engineering. What they didn't say was that you needed a sports bra to enjoy the journey - the jiggling up and down and left and right resembled being in a washing machine at times!

We are not done with holidays as we'll go into "hibernation" (a VSO term when you're supposed to be at home or in a safe place during a period of instability) during the election which is this Thursday and the day after. A group of us are choosing to hibernate at the beach in Unawatuna which is just down the road from me here in Galle. The following week is then the Singhala and Tamil New Year so the Chamber closes for the week. It's as big here as Christmas and New Year is for us and so very little work is getting done right now. I'm looking forward to really trying to get things going once the festivities are over.

So as they say here "Suba alut arudde" or Happy New Year!