They all got into their cars and drove away. One of the uneaten pizzas which was now cold and hard was balanced precariously on the retaining wall which was giving way—a wide crack slashed across it. The earth bulged out through it, sprouting ferns. Jasmine had left the remains of the picnic feast behind. Lifting the pizza down they bore it back to the house. The green peas stuck in it seemed to stare balefully at them like small vicious eyes. Camille picked out one and bit it. It was hard, cold, unappetizing. She kept taking them out and then stuffed them back again, arranging them in a careful pattern like the disks on a gameboard. It was all that remained of the pizza and she suddenly felt that it was a leaden weight in her hands.

She looked once more at the familiar landscape before her. As the dusk thickened and the water slipped slowly through the shadows that gathered depth, the river followed its serpentine course and vanished into the distance of hidden perspectives. She knew that their faces were already receding into the darkness. They would be forgotten with time, one by one, elusive as faces in dreams that lie floating on a river of sleep, borne away by a strong current that drifts into that distant world of dark. Wakening from that dream, the sleeper throws a stone into a vague reflection that shimmers on those flowing waters. It shatters, dispersed in fragments so that there can never again be a connection between remembrance and recognition.

Prayers to Kali

IT WAS MY birthday. I went to the temple to make an arichenai. The Brahmin priest was from my village in Jaffna and we were talking about the new Vishnu statue that had been enshrined in the temple. It was a statue of the god sleeping on the coiled serpent in the Anandasayanam pose. There had been a nadhesweram kacheri in the temple for three nights and one of the virtuoso nadhesweram players had come with the other musicians all the way from Jaffna to play his instrument.

How different this kovil, this temple, in Katukelle was from that of my village, Navaly, in the north. Katukelle had once been a thorny wilderness just outside the township of Kandy, a fearful place which was dangerous after dark, without even streetlighting. Now, the teeming streets of Kandy lay outside its gates. In the inner courtyard the beggars sat and waited for alms. In the mandapam marriage rituals were performed.

In my village the Chintahamani Pillaiyar Temple was close to my home. The veedhi of the temple was on part of our land. My father had been the patron of the festivals and rituals in his lifetime. His sons were expected to follow suit. Last year my mother had written and asked me to be present at the Kodiyetham but I had not been able to go.