The Gaping Maw Of Absurdity

There are some places that just refuse to be normal. They aren't full-out insane all the time, and the places that you are likely to think of as being perpetually "off" probably have had some very average, nondescript periods in their history. This is not so with the town of Dambulla. It has for centuries been a place where people have tried odd ideas, and all evidence points that it's only getting loonier.

Dambulla is located pretty much smack center in the island, and exhibits to a small, Sri Lankan extent the attributes commonly found in the interior of Asian landmasses, namely heat, dust, and tedium. I happened to be stopping in Dambulla for a couple of days because its central location is convenient for visiting many places in the north-center of the island, and because Dambulla has a few sights of its own. For instance, the Gaping Maw of Absurdity. The Gaping Maw of Absurdity's popular name is the "Golden Temple", though given the number of Golden Temples in this part of the world and the Dambulla temple's.... unique attributes, it seems they could have been a little more creative. It's not every temple in the world that rises three stories from the ground, with each successive layer being fringed by giant, pink concrete lotus petals. Nor is it every temple in the world that has an enormous, 20-meter sitting Buddha on top of said pile of concrete lotus petals. Nor is it every temle, or indeed any other temple, that has Lord Buddha sitting directly above an enormous golden lion's mouth large enough to devour any elephant that might stroll up the steps to visit the library. All around this temple, where Buddha ponders the cosmos astride a ravenous lion face, there are fake rock faces topped by rows of bright orange statues of Buddhist monks and miscellaneous other figures forming a queue to pay homage to the Buddha in all his lion-squatting glory. In Dambulla, weird as this seems, it is not entirely without precedent.

I do not mean to suggest that there is another massive lion-Buddha combo in town (if there was I might have to move there permanently). I merely suggest that the people of Dambulla have taken the common inspiration that Buddhism offers and have repeatedly leapt off with it into unexpected directions. Dambulla is best known for what is apparently my favorite thing in the whole damn universe: cave temples. "Woooo boy! Cave temples!" I thought. "It has been too long since I walked amidst eroding statues in poorly-illuminated shrines with a suffocating atmosphere of bat poop. I shall visit Dambulla forthwith." Dambulla's cave temples turned out, however, to be much cooler than expected, because it was clear to me that those who designed and decorated them were just ever so slightly deranged.

There are five cave temples all in a row, and as you walk along they get bigger and more intricate. The small ones are walkable rooms carved out of the stone, with perhaps a large sleeping Buddha and a half dozen seated figures scattered around. The larger caves are a whole 'nother kettle of Enlightened Beings. Unlike the makers of the Indian cave temples, the Sri Lankan masters decided (correctly, in my view) that it would much cooler if they didn't bother really finishing the ceilings into any particular shape, and that the effort expended cutting away at stones to make the cave, say, rectangular would be better spent painting the irregular ceilings to look like something out of a carnival funhouse. The walls and ceilings ripple with the folds and crevices of natural stone, reminding you that you are without a doubt in a cave, yet for some reason the Buddhist murals and plethora of semi-random Buddhist statues are accompanied by a background of painted-on black and white "tile work", not entirely unlike a claustrophobic European toilet stall. You'll be following one natural fold in the rock past a large depiction of Buddha preaching Enlightenment to the gods, only to suddenly come across a surface design apparently picked out from a Parisian home decor catalogue circa 1953. This somehow has the effect of giving the caves remarkable atmosphere, with the strangeness of the ceilings and walls in the darkness drawing you in almost as if you expect to find yourself in an illusion, like if you cross your eyes and stare for long enough, a 3-D image of the Cocoa Puffs toucan will seem to bend out of the wall at you. It's hard to explain, but this effect was highly dignified, and I left the caves thinking that their unlikely jumble was one of the more inspired collections of ancient art I had yet seen.

I sat outside the caves and cracked my guide to Sri Lankan cultural sites to try and make sense of what I had just seen, when a voice hovering above me asked what I was reading.

"Oh, just an explanation of these temples." I responded as helpfully as I could. The girl who had asked the question seemed a bit perplexed by this but made a gesture of acceptance and moved on. I myself returned to one of the temples to make sure I had good pictures of some of the stranger details (a mural wherein a demon points a firearm at Lord Buddha, for example). I then took some photos of the general scenery and began descending the rock into which the temples are cut. I then heard the same voice again.

"Hello? Hello! Hi! Hi! I was trying to talk to you!"
There were two of them, but the one in yellow was doing all the talking. "Well then you have succeeded" I said, though I don't know why. This caused another contemplative pause.
"My name is Samobi" was the uncontemplative response. "What you are doing here?"
"Oh just visiting temple" I said.
"Oh, very good. What is your age?"
"Twenty-three"
"Oh, good! We are same age!" And on it went. At this time a particular instinctive suspicion was beginning to creep into my mind. Conversation turned to where I had seen in Sri Lanka so far, how long I had spent in each place, and so on."

".... well I was only in Colombo because I was sick so I had to stay." I explained quickly. Perhaps too quickly to be properly understood. Though as it turned out this was just quickly enough.
"In Colombo you were sex?" Samobi asked with a certain eager puzzlement. Ah. So there it was. Girl had something on her mind. And that something wasn't on the outside of my clothes.
"No, sick" I clarified, but hastened to add "I am completely better now. Very healthy. Fully strong."

The three of us had reached the bottom of the hill and Samobi and friend had to turn off towards their homes. Samobi fished for a phone number, but ha! Ghostface ain't got no phone. It was instead agreed that I give her some online contact (this blog, heh) and that we would meet in the same place at seven that evening for further conversation, which seemed like it was going to be extremely stimulating.

In the meantime I had errands, such as visiting a museum on the history of Sri Lankan painting (I'm still hoping of getting some stray money out of this trip) and walking down the interminable baking road along which Dambulla is built to reach the banks on the far side of town. On the way I noticed a commotion at the market and peeked in to see what it was all about. People were congregating around a line of pickup trucks that had palm trunks balanced in them, giving an appearance akin to siege engines. I then noticed that there were people dangling from these trunks as the trucks moves, and that furthermore, these people were suspended from the trunks by numerous small strings which were attached to them by metal hooks passing through their flesh. One truck passed carrying a man in standing position, suspended Christ-like in a horrific web of ropes that tugged at him in every direction as he dimly gazed out of some sort of terrible trance that kept him from screaming in horror at the dozens of hooks sinking into his skin. Trumpets started blaring and the trucks moved ever so slightly faster forwards. Behind them a mob of locals headed by a child in a priestly loincloth pulled a tower-like chariot piled high with palm leaves and coconuts. I took in the entire scene. "Definitely the local Hindus" I mused. And indeed, so they were. From the darkness of their skin you could guess it was the Tamil populace of Dambulla, and when I asked about the nature of the festival I was given a great deal of evasion. The closest I could pinpoint was that it was in honor of a Tamil version of Kali, though nobody would give me the godess's actual Tamil name. As the procession moved along more men came out of the woodwork to submit themselves to various hook-related horrors, and the men dangling from hooks in the sky began swooping low like angels to touch and give blessings to the ecstatic crowd below. Every time they swooped down the hooks pulled at their flesh making stomach-churning tent shapes on their skin, and the men definitely had the appearance of people who were controlling their breath and other bodily rhythmns with intense concentration and a deep awareness of how goddamn awful they would feel if they fucked up and lost control of their yogic abilities just then. Common folk began dancing like crazy people, but they're Tamils so especially with the young men it's hard to tell if this was something unusual. Women began waving giant leaves around and shrieking religious chants to which the men responded. One woman thrust her way into the crowd dancing in a three-foot hat the shape of a temple tower of delicious fruits. Finally, things settled down a bit and people remembered that processions are actually supposed to go somewhere, so they made less with the madness and more with the processing.

Like I said, Dambulla is very, very strange.

I returned to the bottom of Dambulla Rock promptly at seven. Samobi was waiting and had evidently spent much more of the intervening time preparing for the moment. She had strings of small red flowers in her hair and had picked out a fine folk skirt to match. She was also wearing a local form of cotton blouse with some sort of string mechanism on the front that performed a lifting function, which she was putting to good effect, if I am any judge. She had on perfume - too much, but this was a fault I was willing to overlook. On the other hand, I looked (not coincidentally) like I had just walked four miles around a dusty shithole, pausing now and then only to take pictures of crazy people. Fortunately, "world-beaten wanderer" is a look I wear well. We went up and over the hill to a grassy slope on the other side and spoke. I learned (through the fine art of conversation, of course) that she tasted like soft and sugary fruit, though I couldn't place which one. I had oppurtunity to consider this at length but came to no definite conclusion, perhaps because I am easily distracted, especially by women clawing at my clothes. For the purpose of closure, let's just say she tasted like mango.

For the record, I taste like cannabis, tequila, and chocolate chip cookies. You're doubtful now, but you'll never know just how damn good it is until you try it.

edit: It turns out I was wildly misinformed by the locals re: the divinity in question at the "Kali" festival. It was in fact the local celebration of an island-wide Kataragama festival, Kataragama being a semi-Buddhist god who the Sri Lankan Tamils believe is the same entity as Skanda a.k.a Murugan a.k.a. Karkkiteya, the peacock-riding god of war, second son of Shiva. So there you go.