The New Year season or the Bak Maha of 1945 happened to be a time of a turning point in my life. We lived in Gampaha and from time to time. We were forced to go to our maternal ancestral house in Alawatupitiya in Seeduwa. We had to travel by a buggy cart chauffeured by an elderly man named Singhappu. My mother called him Singhappu Ayya. We followed her way of addressing.
My grandmother addressed my mother as Lily Baba or Baby Lily. She looked after the ancestral house with the assistance of my three uncles and two aunties and looked forward to seeing us during the New Year. That was to enjoy the festive rituals as a cluster family. The words I remember of my grandmother: “Lily Babo, now that the World War is gone, why don’t we have a good time? Make us a visit with the little ones. I will send Singhappu with the buggy cart. I am ready and waiting for you.”
These words still reverberate in my ears.
Wartime transmitter site
About four days before the beginning of the New Year Singhappu Siya arrived in our place. My elder sister, brother and I got into the buggy cart with our mother, and travelled along the Ekala Road, passing the wartime transmitter site in Ekala that leads to Seeduwa.
My mother had bought quite a lot of presents for my grandmother and the uncles and the aunts who flocked to greet us as we entered the ancestral house. The presents were mainly new clothes. Sarongs and shirts for males and multi-coloured cheettaya cloths for females. Even the two female servants were given presents. For the first time, I was amazed to see the eatables laid on the great big table in the long spacious dining room. For the New Year lunch, it was quite usual on the part of the grandmother to prepare one delicious curry known as hat maluva. This consists of seven types of ingredients that possessed herbal value, devoid of any fish or meat.
At the dining table, grandmother would relate the Pattini legend.
Pattini the noblewoman of chastity happens to be the goddess who guards the New Year rituals. She and her husband Kovalan are regarded as the ideal husband and wife who lived in the utmost happy state of their existence giving an example to all of us. An amorous king killed her husband. Then the lamenting Pattini made a vow that she would not move away from the dead body of her husband until he comes to life again.
Greatest merriment
She also prayed that one who killed her husband ought to be punished by bringing about seasonal disasters like fire and wind. It so happened that seven directions of fauna and flora went dry as the sun in the sky sympathised with her. Then the God of gods, Sakra, brought back to the life the husband Kovalan. This happened to be the greatest merriment as happiness to Pattini, but also all those who understand her lamentations. This merriment is the joy of the New Year. Rains poured down. The sun shone mildly giving life to plants. The trees were full up with fruits of all kinds.
The seven types of herbal curries, hatmaluva, then came from seven directions. They include vattakka, alu kesel, jak seeds, brinjal and mae karal. But later on I discovered that the seven types of vegetables vary from district to district retaining the main principles of vegetarianism as a guiding factor. I too found and understood from the grandmother that all the indoor and outdoor games that villagers play are based on the legend of Pattini and Kovalan. The two teams known by the villages and udupila and yatipila are represented by two characters Pattini and Kovalan. Even the swing or the onchillawa is symbolic of the couple.
The Onchili varam or the rhythmic songs are sung by those who use the swing sing songs of praise of Pattini and Kovalan. I too discovered that the New Year season is packed with blessings of varying types. As such, it embraces socio-religious nuances in all activities, my grandmother gets down new clay pots to cook the New year meals as a beginning of a new life. She makes the well, the water drawing fountain as a close relation. As such the primary transaction I with the well, into which she drops a new coin. All the animals of the house feel well and looked after like close companions. Attending the temple walking all the way to perform religious rituals take place in keeping with the auspicious time as indicated in the almanack, provided by the head priest of the temple. Just before the New Year, a representative patron from the temple comes with a lita or the nakath seettuwa which gives all the auspicious times.
Our grandmother had the habit of reading aloud the sacred religious books in order to attune our minds to the passing of the non-auspicious time, indicated as the time of preparation where wishes are made by individuals that will yield the results all throughout the dawn of a new year. We were socialized to the fact that anger, ill will and hatred are wiped off with the dawn of a New Year where prosperity or Bak remains the constant factor.
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