The Kelani River

  So I will now tell the story of how I got the idea to travel around the island. Once I lived in a place called Peliyagoda, which is a suburb of the capital Colombo. The trouble with Peliyagoda was this – despite being the closest suburb of Colombo, it was not very developed. Many other suburbs like Wattala or Kiribathgoda had much better buildings and facilities. The biggest landmark there seemed to be the police station, which I think says a lot. And before the police station, its most famous landmark was enormous rubbish dumb that could be seen from miles away, which I think says even more. 

However, it was an exciting place for me because the great Kelani River flowed through it, and I wanted to paint it. I am only an amateur artist, but I have a great passion for painting and drawing. But unlike most artists who draw rivers, I wanted to draw it at night. And so, many years ago, I did one of the weirdest things I have ever done; I decided to stay in the garden at night and paint till morning. The night was infinitely dark and strange; it seemed that everyone had gone to bed and switched off all the lights. The road was deserted except for a lone cow which seemed half asleep. A blue-green firefly, very rare for this part of Sri Lanka, flew and disappeared behind a leaf. Flowers that bloom at night are usually white, and most have a fragrance.

In the foreground, I could see the great river flowing. It moved slowly in the night like destiny itself. It was silent, mysterious, and fatal. Above the river shone many strange stars. There was a particularly bright reddish star that didn't twinkle. Could it be Mars, the one they called the red planet? Unfortunately, I could not be certain. Then there was another bright star which, for some reason, I felt was Venus. Unfortunately, my knowledge of astronomy, like so much else, was incomplete. All these thoughts made me tired that I sat down in the garden and couldn't remember anything after that except the ground felt hard on my head, an annoying cricket made an annoying noise, the smell of grass and marigold flowers and once I imagined that the cow was in the garden.

 

The hoot of an alarm made me jump, and for a moment, I was horrified to find that I was not in bed but outside at night. I went to the gate to see what made that noise but could not locate it.  Then I looked up, god how things had changed. Now it was around two in the morning, and the stars were brighter than ever. I couldn't see the Great Bear, the only constellation I knew apart from Orion, but I could see a group of prominent stars which curled down and formed what looked exactly like a tail. I wondered whether this was the Scorpion constellation, and I still do. I looked down again, and the river was still flowing endlessly, and at that moment, I felt a great energy come over me, and I decided to explore my country even if it was the last thing I do. 

 

George Orwell once wrote, "By retaining one's childhood love of such things as trees, fishes, butterflies, and toads, one makes a peaceful and decent future a little more probable." I always believed that this was so. People who grow up and forget these things altogether either become dictators or, worse, become depressed. My way of celebrating these things is through art and traveling. I am giving below the watercolor painting I did of the Kelani River that night.