Tissamaharama - 5 days, 1 post

well, it has begun... i wept and lost sleep over this guy, and went back to find him to take him to the vet twice - first time, we got him, but no vet, second time, he could not be found, but maybe like an angel, the search for him led to discovery of this mama and her 5 pups - the pups were stashed in a woodpile being stalked by a large rat snake. Our friend Rohan saved them, and then a very concerned mama materialized. locals say they just appeared and "belong" to no one .. and so it begins, my "career" in dog rescue!!! I named her Tissa (for the town), took her to vet and got rabies shot, worm meds, and next day, lumber for doghouse, puppy chow, etc etc etc... 
the first dog (Eeyore) i will find again and take with me to the clinic at Midigama, where he can have that foot amputated and recover in good hands.

meanwhile... we stay in Tissa with D's folks and get the other dogs settled... some impressions during our 5 days there...
(below: my girls - Tissa, Lion, & Yala)

First light . D’s mother, the monks, the birds and geckos, and me. These monks are the most tuneful I’ve heard in Sri Lanka. D’s mother, a goddess among women. She is almost completely round, like a Skittle with legs, and has 2 front teeth. She has a heart the size of a mack truck, a smile that could charm the pants off of Stalin*, and this light in her eyes - twinkling like the stars but deep and lasting like the earth’s own molten core. Basically, she rocks. She all but had a heart attack when I tried to help her with the laundry at 4:30 this morning. An hour later, when I failed to sneakily sweep the kitchen floor (still can’t sleep) and bring on the 2nd heart attack, I finally acquiesce to her insistent offers to make me tea, and now I sit in the jeep covered in bug spray, and write.
In front of me, the 5 fur-worms sleep in the Puppy Palace, and Tissa sleeps in a big pile of sand just beyond that. She seems to have accepted domesticity quite readily - I think she knows her name already, and recognizes my special whistle, coming and going happily in & out of the Palace to feed the pups and then be free of them. Back to the vet today to buy some nutritional supplement and try desperately to put some meat on her bones. She is a terribly sweet girl. Lion, one of the 2 pups i have “claimed”, is not so sweet, but kind of an incestuous pervert - she has this nasty habit of fellating her 3 brothers, thinking (I hope) that their penises are teats… I try not to project human morality on her, but I must confess it strikes me as Deeply WRONG and makes me ever so slightly uncomfortable!!!
Today will be another day that we do not leave for Arugam Bay, & I’m fine with that. Anxious as I am to get the Hot Flash ( my 7”5 hull) in the water at l-o-n-g last, I want to make sure the dogs are settled and Dinesh’s parents are completely ok with temporary guardianship. We’ll be back before the puppies become trouble, so it should be fine.
* i have no idea how hard it was to get Stalin’s pants off, truth be told…

So very Romeo-and-Juliet, Dinesh climbing through my bedroom window in the dark of night for a brief tryst… ridiculous, on the one hand (he’s a grown man), but fun in its hushed kookiness. I think I do understand why he doesn’t want to tell his parents Who I Am until I have really “committed” to staying with him here in Sri Lanka - it is a big deal and why go through it if it’s this is a passing affair. I also kind of like that his folks get to know me without that layer of scrutiny - right now I am just a crazy white lady, charming in my love of animals, and slightly annoying in my hellbent determination to sweep the yard when no one is looking! They seem bemused by my eccentricity and delighted to have me as a guest… that’s a good start.

Again the 2 mothers (Tissa, varus caninus, and Rani, varus Dineshus) and I all start the day together in the pre-dawn light. This giant-hearted woman, who gently scoops a worm up off of the path with a shovel and deposits it in the garden row along the fence, who won’t let Dinesh pour water on the thousands of poisonous ants that appeared at dusk yesterday in a ferocious linear swarm between the back doorstep and a hole 2 feet away in the middle of the path to the toilet. “That’s a lot of lives” she tells him, and the ants are given a wide berth and left to do their ant things. This morning (thankfully) they are gone. This illiterate peasant woman who knows only the town she was born in and the one she married into… by what miraculously open mind and generous capacity does she cross the vast chasm between our worlds and embrace me into the fold, tattoos and all? Safe to say we adore one another at this point. A new and significant shift, she now touches my arm, and just this morning actually reached over to pat my too flat (in her opinion - ha!!!!) belly, exhorting me for the umpteenth time to “EAT MORE!!!” (you try eating a pile of raw onions at 7:30 am, i dare you). This morning, too, with eyes gleaming, she presented me with a gold(en) bracelet (“Buddhist… from India!”) and blessed my head.
[… oops…Distracted right now as a neighbor woman has come over, ostensibly to chat with Rani but she comes and stands a mere foot away from me, smiling reservedly, and just STARES AT ME. It’s a little unnerving, but in no way threatening, of course - I smile excessively, shake her hand and let fly my exceptional command of the Sinhalese language. The excitement wears off, and they soon shuffle off to look at the puppies…]
Somesinder, Dinesh’s father, is more of a vapor, there one minute, and then gone for hours. 35 years as a safari driver (before the red dust took his lungs ransom), he is a bit more comfortable in French than English, so that’s our entree. Somewhat gruff and taciturn, as (to my eternal consternation) all Sri Lankan men can be, he turned to mush over the puppies, and lies on the floor cuddling with his grandchildren like a babe himself. From this man, I understand where Dinesh gets not only his nose but also his passion for snuggling and his considerable charisma and charm.
For the edification of my vast readership, I would like to take and post pictures of all the mundane features and aspects of this house and the living that goes on here, but am hesitant. It is the same reticence that keeps me, by and large, from snapping photos of cute ragged children, temple rituals and the like… the “exoticizing” of other human beings and the amplication of Otherness. I keep asking myself “would I photograph an 8 yr old boy on the streets of San Francisco? Would I photograph a friend’s mother’s toilet in the US?!”  - if the answer is “no”, the photos do not get taken. That said, it is really interesting to catch a glimpse of how people live, the particulars of their ingenuity in facing the basic challenges of human existence. Beyond that, even crucial, perhaps, that those on one side of the global pond appreciate the ripples of consequence that their actions and attitudes create on the other side of pond… hari hari (“ok, ok”),  a picture of the toilet may not achieve all that, but for me these experiences foster deep respect and precious perspective on all the possible paths there are for walking through this world. This morning I remembered a conversation we had in the yoga training about what our “dealbreakers” were, and I had to laugh - if I had made such a list I think the deal would’ve been broken so many times over here that it might more resemble a small pile of inky rubbish… and yet, miracle of miracles, here I am! Alive and well, even without kale or a bathtub or regular “exercise” (soon, tho!!), without genmaicha, tofu, or the guarantee of toilet paper. Wonders never cease, nehe?

Sunday morning and we are still in Tissa. We packed up and left yesterday, but Dinesh’s phone was stolen (off the front seat and under my very nose) at a service station, so the sweltering day was spent in a thoroughly ineffective, keystone cops kind of search for the crook, and hours of paperwork at the police station. By the time all avenues of retrieval had been exhausted, I was way too fried to endure a 3+ hour diesel-y drive to Arugam Bay, so we turned around and came back. The crappy, disappointing day was redeem by sunset, bonfire, and naked-under-god’s-black-sky sex out on a flood plain of the lake, with a chaser of monks chanting in the distance. No complaints :)
Some of Tissa’s teats appear to be drying up, and I wonder and worry if that is how Nature culls the offspring. I expected them to fill back up, by virtue of the fact that she has eaten more in the last 5 days than the last month, most likely, but perhaps we are too late to reverse the process? I really hope not - I want to come back to a fat bitch with all five of her puppies alive and kicking. There is only so much we can do, tho, after which it’s “let go and let god”.
​Peace out. Arugam Bay tomorrow and the million dollar question will at last be answered...