Canoeing down the Kalu Ganga
By Capt Elmo Jayawardena
Thebuwana was a stop for lunch. We ate two rice packets and rested on a sand bank under a bo tree. It is the people you meet that give the varnish to the trip. A kind woman, living with her two small children in a shanty, gave us plain tea. The boatmen, the river dobbins making their meagre living, were ever so friendly. We stopped and chatted. Broke their monotony, ours too. They wished us well, we wished back for the fish to bite, hello and good-bye. The best were the sand collectors we met, or should I say the saddest. Jayantha is 29. He dives and digs sand from the riverbed. Only job available, works from 6 to 6. Makes 150-200 rupees. Starts the day with a gulp of moonshine and continues to warm himself from the brew all day long. “Otherwise too cold” he tells me. End the day with a full bottle, pauperized ecstasy of the poor. He is not the odd one. It is the norm among the sand diggers. No solution. No way out, perpetual penance in the concert of the downtrodden. The names of the actors did alter, but never the parts.
From Thebuwana we rowed to Galapatha, a pleasant afternoons work. It was six again when we came ashore. Total rowing time for the day; 8 hrs and 40 minutes, only three more hours to Kalutara.
The next day was the grand finale. The river gets wide after Galapatha and there is hardly a flow, hard work for worn old muscles. SOLITAIRE moved along, as graceful as ever. Our paddles dipped, and our hearts sang, as we inched our way to the destination. We came around the last bend and there loomed in all its majesty, the shining white Dagaba of the Kalutara Bodhi. It is a sight to remember, the two bridges linking the banks, the sea in the far horizon, and the temple dominating a clear blue sky.
The wild goose chase was over. “Oru Ana” packed his bags and flew off to Melbourne, to yell in his courtroom, whilst I crept back to my flight deck to drive aeroplanes. But we treasure the remembrance. We’ll surely take some moments and think of Solitaire and the Kalu Ganga, the journey, the people, the totality, all adding to the beauty and serenity of a distant world. We certainly will be thankful for the little intermission. A break from our daily drudgery, to sing our hearts on an odyssey, that others possibly may call eccentric and absurd.
At times, in life, such moonbeam melodies do make a difference.
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