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ENNA NANGI  (Come little sister)


Time is drifting like the sands through the shanties of the Singhalese. A rusty train races the breeze, clatters clumsily by the frail shacks where the children play. Frightened dogs bark and give chase. Starkly silhouetted, figures rush out from the dark sands to wave. Faraway swimmers turn, dreamily, caught in the dance of the surf, the crashing waves of jade. Brevity of the breeze. Teeth shine and smiles flash. The gulls glide timelessly. Nets dry in evening bays. In silver air they have their smiles.

In Tiuda's house the fisher boys laugh together, a heaving litter of cubs on the damp copra mattress. One is tiny, the others youths. Their eyes shine and their lips smile but there is no roof in their house.

Enna Nangi.  Enna Nangi.  Dolphins are singing on the reef. The Poya Moon swims like a golden fish, wandering in the southern waters. These are the good nights for thieves and fishers. And Gunna Wansa knows it. Throws out his rod with a gay laugh. A squid spurts a fountain of ink at him. A large turtle paddles by and his catamaran pitches, tossed in the surf flowers.

Life on the far limits. Spawned in water to seek mercy from the deep, watercraft and fisherman are captured in vast nets, thrown or fiercely beached in the late surf. Fisher boats bob silently among the diving gulls. They cast out again through the wily currents, float like cautious leaves upon the sea. From time to time caught up, tossed and carried the lobster-catchers drift to the reef and are returned again. And again. As the salt and sand, taken where the sea wills, enticing, engulfing, ebbing. Forever.
And gentle buddha Gunna dreams among the coral, his breath held amid the grazing dugongs in the marine sanctuaries. Inhalation:  the journeying into Veddhic memory. Exhalation: Passing into Nirvana. Expiry into the gentian heart. The shimmering hymn.