The Dance Of The Deluded Peacock

First of all, forgive the infrequency of my recent posting. My time around computers lately has been constantly interrupted by the need to go to the phone booth and make convoluted inquiries with the Sri Lankan Air Force, an organization even less noted for its achievements in conversational English than its achievements in aviation.

So where were we?

Ah, yes, I was riding a bus on a narrow highway leading from Sri Lanka's east to its southern coast, passing through the fringes of Yala National Park, an extremely well-protected bit of nature. So well-protected, in fact, that there were small bunkers, rows of barbed wire, and a classic clear-cut field of fire stretching for miles, in case poachers attempt to enter the park in a tank. This is the first national park I've ever seen that looked like a military front, though in true Sri Lankan fashion the bus had to stop at every other bunker and chicken-fenced barracks to drop off some guy with a badly-faked Tommy Hilfiger shirt and a polythene bag full of okra.

I was on my way to Kataragama, the inconveniently located and highly confusing pilgrimage village that Sri Lankans visit to pay homage to the god Kataragama, or something like that. Really, as you'll see, Sri Lankan pilgrimages are things that one does without deeply questioning the whys and wherefores. Kataragama (the god, not the village), is basically a Sri Lankan village god that somehow got important for reasons unknown, and became much endeared to Buddhists because he helped them in war against Hindus. Then, just because this is how religions work, Sri Lankan Hindus also started worshipping him, saying that he is in fact the same entity as Murugam/Karkkiteya/Subramianan, the South Indian war god. The fact that the Buddhists "already had him", so to speak, was no detterrent. Sri Lankan pilgrim shrines are like the Super Bowl. It doesn't occur to the worhsippers that God is being invoked by both sides. That and there is likely to be a lot of wild dancing at halftime.

The village of Kataragama has the distinct feel of a small community that gets an annual inundation of visitors but is currently out of season, criss-crossed by enormous roads (by Sri Lankan standards), hordes of craptacular pilgrim hotels, hundreds of merchants selling colorful trinkets for a living, and hardly a visitor to be seen. I quickly left the village itself behind me, feeling like it was some strange, Sri Lankan-scaled version of a horrific modernist city built under the auspices of Order and Progeess, but then realized it was probably just a normal town and this pathetic island has messed with my mind, accustoming me to settlements consisting of twenty houses, ten mobile phone shops, and a guy selling fish from a bicycle.

On the edge of the village I had a good wander in the kitsch  religious bazaar, which is possibly the best place on the entire island to go shopping. If you need a small statue of Lord Buddha within a light-refracting prism within a snow globe, this is where to be. Amid the various psychedelic, flashing trinkets of Lords Kataragama and Ganesh posing by peacocks while Lakshmi floats around in her lotus leaf and pours money on their heads one can also find the sort of pilgrimage goods that have not much to do with either Buddhism or Hinduism (and are some of the least Buddhist things you will ever find in a Buddhist curio shop), but do have a lot to do with general Sri Lankan-ness. I mean, of course, to heaps and heaps of militaristic childrens' toys such as guns and helicopters emblazoned with the slogan "Sri Lankan Army - The Greatest Army In The World!".... Bitch, please. This is a country where recruiting posters for the Special Forces beckon with the image of men in ski masks handling the elite, 21st century tactical device known as the "Dirt Bike". No wonder the war lasted 26 years. If only the Tamil Tiger defenses had consisted of a row of wrecked Chevy Impalas, the Army could have jumped right over them.

Across the small river from the village is the "Kataragama Sacred City". Once again, this is a city by Sri Lankan standards, meaning that absolutely nobody lives there, but there are a cluster of mighty temples, some so mighty that they even have two rooms. The only architecturally imposing structure in the sacred city is its dagoba, but enormous whitewashed brick titties are the one type of large structure that Sri Lanka has for a dime a dozen. The first thing you come across is a lousy little Shiva temple, and across the square from that is the Muslim enclosure - yes, even the Muslims come here. The Muslims at least are doctrinally coherent and aloof in their monotheism, having nothing to do with the rather more flashy pagan activities going on nearby, but you can't help but remark that they've succumbed to every religion's childish inability to just ignore other religions' sacred cities and not try and claim them as their own. I actually rather liked the Muslim area, as they keep their strikingly green-painted mosques in the cool shade of palm trees, and because I just like the fact that they have a tomb of a saint that came to Sri Lanka from Kyrgyzstan, of all damn places. I like to imagine that his lengthy journey was well worth it, having passed all the way through the Afghan mountains, the Pakistani plains, and the sweltering expanse of India to finally reach an island where his co-religionists have a cuisine that isn't centered on goat.

From the Muslim area I headed north towards the heart of the sacred precinct, passing by numerous tacky little Hindu/Buddhist/whatever shrines, where the priests groaned and grumbled because I was not impressed by, say, an eensy-weensy Durga shrine made out of kitchen granite and decorated with plastic clocks from the 99-cent store. Nearing the very center of the city I finally found a shrine to Lord Buddha, and what a shrine it was. For starters, its interior was apparently done by an MS Paint enthusiast determined to use all 256 colors, and somebody had taken it upon themselves to make sure Lord Buddha was surrounded a multitude of red string lights, a flashing multicolor halo, and vividly cheesy posters of figures deeply important to Sri Lankan "Buddhists" Buddhists, such as Lord Ganesh. People were praying to the Buddha inside. I've always found this activity curious. The whole point of Buddha being Buddha is that he's not a mere god, having found the way to nirvana and more or less ceased to exist in any form (or something like that), which to me seems like it would make him the last entity you'd want to pray to. But anyways, there's a picture of a wish-granting elephant man who rides around the heavens on a mouse only a few feet away, so debating about the likelihood of  divine intervention by liberated beings is perhaps splitting hairs, all considered. Outside of here, pilgrims filed by on their way to the main Kataragama shrine carrying large platters of assorted fruits. I would say that only about 60% of the fruit ever makes it to the god. The other 40% are the casualties of the unashamedly piratical Hanuman monkeys that charge at the pilgrims, tails held high, and directly assail the bearers of the goodies, leaving the pilgrims to stare in either amusement or horror as the rest of the money troupe darts in to snatch spilled coconuts, papayas, mangoes, bananas, and other Sri Lankan produce I'd be at a loss to name.  Belive me, you can pass quite a bit if time watching this scene repeat itself.

I pressed on beyond the Kataragama temple (because as I've hinted it ain't much to look at and all the exciting stuff happens after dark) and took a stroll on the wide, sandy avenue leading to the dagoba. I wasn't expecting to get much out of this visit, since you don't have to see too many dagobas before you've effectively seen them all, but just as I was getting ready to leave I noticed a procession forming at one end of the boulevard. It was about this time that I learned for certain how to tell apart a Sri Lankan Buddhist and a Sri Lankan Hindu if they are coming to the same shrine to worship the same god. You can extrapolate from this observation as neccesary. It goes like this: If a group of worhsippers are quietly forming an orderly queue  in the mid-afternoon and solemnly walking in unison to the accompaniment of rigorously-trained musicians, they are probably Buddhists. If a group of worshippers appears after dark, wildly flailing in every direction with various peacock-related accessories as shouting men haphazardly bang cymbals, drums, and play the trumpet while trying not to fall down, they are probably Hindus.

The proccession I was witnessing was of the Buddhist sort. Two rows of white-clad pilgrims, overwhelmingly women, formed on the boulevard and held at shoulder height a long, rainbow-striped Buddhist banner. They began to shuffle slowly and reverently in the direction of the dagoba. At the head of the procession were five figures. One was a Kandyan drummer wearing white pantaloons, a silly hat, and a red belt, and bearing a certain phsycial resemblance to Pumba from The Lion King. He was accompanied by another, slightly less ridiculous percussionist, and a Kandyan flautist in similar attire whose bearing of overwrought scowls and grimaces revealed the bitter knowledge that an overweight shirtless man playing a glorified Sinhalese kazoo in a silly hat faces an uphill struggle to be taken seriously. The fourth figure was a bespectacled monk in a brilliant orange robe, and the fifth was a mere dog which I only mention because that dog really started some shit. It was the sort of dog that likes people, and remains wholly ignorant of religious ettiquette, finding nothing but this utmost delight in distractingly hopping onto drummers' feet, getting shooed by the flapping of monastic robes, and causing one of the pilgrims to drop a loudspeaker unit with an ear-ripping squeal of electronic protest. Having a dog around was perhaps appropriate though, since the whole affair looked a lot like a large jury of little old ladies at a Buddhist dog-and-stupa show, getting ready to drape an enormous technical color ribbon on the Kataragama dagoba for having won in the category of Biggest Thing That Looks Like A Nipple.

The ending of this whole business came around just in time for me to get back to the main Kataragama temple for the much-lauded evening worship ceremonies, with a potential sighting of the famed "peacock dance", which the locals reccomended entusiastically. Night fell and I found myself in the rather modest enclosure, little more than three brightly illuminated shrines in a sandlot with some bodhi trees tucked around back. The local police and a few soldiers from the army were on hand to provide security, looking a touch preposterous standing around with dull brown assault rifles slung over their shoulders but no damn shoes on their feet. I can see the news now: "Four servicemen were wounded today by an IID -improvised incisive device- reportedly consisting of several pieces of broken glass in the sand. The Chief of the Army has placed the nation on its highest terror alert. Report any minorities suspicious charachters, especially those carrying bottles, immediately."

The ceremony, as they tend to be in this country, was a wildly boring affair in which huffy-puffy priests in front of a curtain concealing all the interesting bits, reciting long obeisances which I'm sure wouldn't have been an iota more interesting had I known the language. People lined up to pay their respects. In the sandy courtyard, some visitors clustered around a tiny, fenced-off pit where they prayed to the god somewhat more dramatically by setting coconuts on fire and then smashing them against rocks. Fair enough, I say, if you want to worship a god who rides around on a peacock then by all means throw flaming coconuts around for him. I just can't help but think, however, that up in the cosmic planes Lord Kataragama might be wearying of hearing for the millionth time "My Lord, I offer you this coconut..." "Great! Now this time don't -*CRACK*- sigh.... I just wish I could get offered some fruit that wasn't shattered and immolated first. HEAR, YE MORTALS. God proclaims that henceforth thou shalt offer thine coconuts in the form of daquiris. Thus shall I be honored."

Then as yet another pilgrim mustered the intense concentration required to make a brittle coconut husk break when thrown against rock after having already been set on fire, the peacock dancers arrived. At first I just heard the random shoutings of a mob, looked out of the shrine area and saw a gang of men carrying hoops of peacock feathers being swung this way and that. "Ahh, some unruly worshippers," I thought, "perhaps this will be a preamble to the elaborate, well-ordered 'peacock dance' that the Hindu pilgims will soon....oh, right". It still sometimes takes me a moment to remember that where people of Indian descent are concerned, waving around madly and shouting while people bash away on instruments they've apparently just been acquainted with is considered religious dance. There are of course myriad forms of Hindu worship, but the Tamils have long gone in for spectacle, intensity, and ecstatic participation. And by ecstatic participation I mean "doing insane things with your body like driving skewers through your face or just spinning around and around until you pass out." Tellingly, the most devout practitioners of this peacock dance performed it almost identically to the way the children did. I could make a caustic remark about religous faith in general here, but I will instead merely say that many of the more 'ecstatic' forms of worship in the world are essentially activities for strange people whose inner child never stopped saying "Look! I can dance so crazy I faint!", and proving it. The main difference is that an adult proclaims "I was overcome by God!" while a child says "That was awesome! Not let's trying doing it and glue at the same time!" Such extremes off devotion/delusion are however a step removed from the dancing of the general multitude. Most of the charachters in this flailing human tempest merely wore faces of resignation that said "I have to keep going. If I don't continue to adequately interpret the jumping of a mythical warrior peacock through the sublime medium of spontaneous dance, then I will really look foolish."

As I slipped back through the curio bazaar late that night I couldn't help feeling that I had not been incredibly edified by my visit to Kataragama. All told it merely graphically illustrated my increasing conviction on the nature of religions in general, that people will just believe anything so long as it's convenient. But then, why the hell not? OK, so a wee bit of education and pausing to think about the history of your deities or whatever, or taking a moment to look for glaring contradictions in the dogma you follow might reveal that it all doesn't make a terrible amount of sense. But once again, what the hell. In Kataragama, where just about every mish-mangly-mixing thing in sight is a reminder that the gods are our own creations, and sometimes rather silly creations at that, at least nobody is getting all up in arms about the details. Perhaps being surrounded by contradictory elements of technicolor nonsense has a soothing effect; maybe when you don't particularly expect your own creed to be possessing of rigorous mortal logic you don't have to go around proving to the rest of the world that you're right all the time. I turned about in bed a lot trying to glean something more useful than the two other foreign tourists I met had ("It's such a vibrant spectacle! yada yada, something about cultural diversity...), but as you can see I still haven't come up with much. I ain't got any answers for ya. I dunno... try setting some coconuts on fire and see what happens? I'll leave you to it. Me and Lord Kataragama (he's a notorious pimp) are taking some girls out for daquiris. Peace.