by Capt Elmo Jayawardena
I had a visitor to my home recently. He was born in Dallas, Texas and travels with a US passport. Fifteen months in age and the said Texan now lives with his parents in Singapore.
Out there in Singapore everything is in the first world syndrome. My little friend has a prominently programmed day, multiplied by six for a week, and the routine is almost computerized. Monday would be PlayGym at Gymboree, where he roams about on a thickly carpeted floor and crawl through fancy pastel coloured tubes and blocks. He climbs well protected little ladders and come down on more protected mat slides with gradients as shallow as river beds.
Tuesday follows a similar syllabus, it is play-group time with other children; different homes for different weeks. He has friends too, the ones who fight for toys with him. Martha-Jack is a name I remember. The mothers gather over coffee and cake, watching the kids do their burbling interactions with chocolate soiled cheeks and scatter food tit-bits whilst tearing fairytale books.
Come Wednesday it is swimming with qualified instructors, Thursday is learn-through-play at yet another place and Friday he’s back at Gymboree for more PlayGym. Saturday he stays in his multi-coloured play room at home with Papa and Mama taking allocated time spans for full attention. Sunday no program, he rests the Sabbath, like the good book says.
It is a nice life, well planned and well organized and programmed to the tee.
Back home in Moratuwa, Sri Lanka, we live by a river. That’s where my little grandson came to spend a few days with his ancient pelican of a grandfather. His routine was totally reversed and modified to suit the simplicity of Moratuwa and the river.
He had no playtime friends like in Singapore. But he had better, not one, but four, all gentle beautiful giants. A big Ridgeback led the team with three other adorable lovelies. He couldn’t be without them and they in turn reciprocated the "little master’s" love in the purest way as only dogs know how.
"Bawwa, bawwa, bawwa," he chanted continuously and ran after his four new friends, embracing and kissing, hugging and rolling with them on the lawn.
He saw a frog for the first time, not the ‘green frog’ from the children’s book he is used to, but a real big frog leaping around the garden. He was fascinated by flies, even tried to catch them as they whizzed past him and landed on his hand and took off with lightening speed at the slightest move.He saw boats too, every morning, the fishermen rowing their laden dug-out canoes and coming home after the night’s fishing up-river. They waved and he waved tenderly in return, bare bodied weary men taking time and effort to say hello to a little child.
I took him near the water and showed him how the eagles fly; two or three are always hovering over the water, slow drifting with wings spread and gliding with minimum effort using the thermals to stay aloft. He watched them with such interest and listened to my eagle stories as if he understood what I was talking about.
I introduced my little friend to parrots, hundreds of them who flew over our heads at sunset, going back to their homes in the tree infested land next-door. It was a sight to see, the clouds varying their pastel colours at twilight and the parrots speeding across the sky like little green darts; my little friend swung his head from left to right to follow their flight.
The bird life by the river is fascinating, cormorants, king fishers and cranes dominate the water’s edge and an occasional pelican from the Dehiwela Zoo comes to sit and swim like a Gulliver among Lilliputians. The gulls cry out to provide a special symphony and the squirrels dance running along the metallic fence whilst the fish jump as if to say hooray.
That is what my little friend saw with his little eyes and maybe made his infant attempt to log them in his little mind.
At night I showed him the heavens, a million stars twinkling, and a lazy full moon come crawling up from the eastern sky and he started yelling "Moo, Moo." He had the widest screen possible, an open air theater, a picture from heaven, the river strutting slowly and the lunar light painting everything in faint pale silver.
My US born friend returned to Singapore, back to Gymboree and playgroup and his swimming lessons and his crayon coloured room with posters showing birds and butterflies and cars and aeroplanes and big letters of the alphabet with pictures of animals to trigger his memory.
All that is fine, the way the world has got older and that is the way it will be. Yet, I like to think my little friend remembers how he saw frogs leap and flies fly and hawks glide in a nursery blue sky. Maybe he will now know what a real moon is, and recall how he and I tried counting stars on a clear velvet night.
More than all he will recall how the grass softened under his feet and the leaves that fell from the trees touched his head.
Then of course there will be his "Bawwa Bawwa" friends; Sudu Nangi, Boosan, Ebony and Snoopy, the ones he embraced and loved and was loved in return a thousand fold, undoubtedly the best friends he’s so far had, possibly the best he will ever have.
Elmojay1@gmail.com
island.lk