Village, Grandma & Lost Happiness

* views from my village

Last Saturday I visited my grandma’s house, the journey revoked memories of my beautiful childhood. The village is situated far away inside the central mountain range of Sri Lanka. The landscape is filled with vast stretches of tea plantations. The road descends down to the village situated in a valley partly covered by rice fields. There is an old temple right in the middle of the rice field making the scenery picture perfect. We always used to point out the partly visible roof of grandma’s house to others when we were descending towards the valley below. I always loved to visit grandma’s house, specially during the New Year festival season, it was the central hub of entertainment for the whole village. There were people playing Raban ( traditional drumming done by four people),eating on the huge table full of food, placing a firecracker behind some one who is unaware, playing cards or carom, enjoying the giant swing specially build for those who seek rush of adrenaline.

I must explain little bit about this swing, it is built by tying two ropes on top of a coconut tree, the ends are tied to a piece of flat wood so people can sit on it, they choose a tree up on the hill to make sure that it fly over the house brushing the tops of trees below like a giant pendulum. It was so exiting and popular among the visitors, we had to stand on line to get on it sometimes. But fortunately accidents were rare, someone slipped and fell on some banana trees below and lived to tell the tale with few bruises, once a guy lost hold of his sarong while in mid air which made women run in to the house in shame, made us laugh for weeks, it was the story of the year, the guy had to stay on the swing for considerable amount of time until others managed to stop it. The house was open to anybody in the village anytime of the year, full of happiness and sharing, most of the time there were at least 15 people to eat, that wasn’t a problem for any of my grand parents.

Food was not a problem at that time, it was always growing nearby. They were happy sharing their happiness with some of the poor villagers, I still admire their generousness. It’s hard to find people like them nowadays. Then my grandfather died (he’s another story), my uncles got married, open economy and war stated to change the way people think. Beautiful village life got shattered in to pieces by the globalization. The village has hardly changed its looks during the last 29 years; it’s still beautiful and serene (look at the pictures). But it doesn’t create that beautiful New Year scenario anymore, most of the villagers are busy earning money in the hope of finding happiness at some point in time in the future, but few of them know that it was already with them when they were poor.