Where I grew up, people believed in all kinds of weird things. Devils walking in the night, dead people haunting their relatives and enemies, man-eating ghosts. It had odd-looking symbols in its religions. Gods that are animal shaped, like elephants, rats, and monkeys. One Goddess had eight hands.
Sri Lankan culture was and still is embedded with unnatural stories and ghosts.
The day started at school with a period dedicated to religion. One of the first lessons was how a devil in the guise of a snake tempted Adam and Eve. Then our attention was drawn to Mother Mary’s picture of a trampling devil in the shape of a snake. Added were the stories of Lucifer and an army of angels who turned into devils — unbelievable stories, yet designed to impart fear onto innocent young minds.
A boy studying science in a Catholic school had to deal with the juxtaposition of societal beliefs against modern science. These myths and odd stories did not make sense. It was a major conflict a little boy could not grasp. Science vs myths. A confrontation.
My junior school had a heritage building in its front that, in its earlier life, was a mansion that belonged to a rich aristocrat who rode horses on his large property in his heyday. But later on, he tragically committed suicide inside this building. There was a claim that the dead owner rode horses in the middle of the night. Some claimed to have heard the horse’s riding sounds.
Occasionally in my suburb, there were Thovil ceremonies. They were not common in my neighbourhood, which Catholics dominated. The few Buddhists held these odd ceremonies at night and never during the day. They were held either to banish illnesses or to exorcise evil spirits from a mentally ill person. The master of ceremonies, the exorcist, wore a colourful mask, waved a torch, lit bonfires, and recited mantras in a language nobody could understand. A drummer also joined in these ceremonies beating his drum. Finally, a cock was killed violently by breaking its neck to appease the evil spirits. People crowded by the side of the street to watch these spectacles, designed to draw fear in people.
But Catholics had their rival exorcists in competition with the Buddhists. David, a balding priest with unkempt hair, was famous for exorcising devils. He had his practice. The Catholics brought their mentally sick people to banish the devils. Although David did not kill cocks and had no drummers to support him, he had adoring fans that virtually worshipped him, treating him like a walking deity. In David, the Catholics had their match with other religions.
Exposed to these fallacies, I was too scared to go out to the garden at night. What if a ghost was lurking in the bush waiting for me? I did not venture too far from my home at night in the dark.
My father took me aside and explained that the dark was the opposite of light. Although it gave me confidence in the night, yet influence from years of exposure to demonic stories could not be banished overnight.
When one of my grand-uncles passed away, his family held a vigil. The vigil was kept in the belief that their house doors and windows must not be closed until seven days had passed. They believed that the dead spirit wandered into the house and should have a free exit from the house at any time, lest it is trapped inside it.
During the seven-day vigil, relatives and friends helped to keep watch by playing cards. I stayed with my father till late into the night. Men narrated ghost stories to each other while, from a distance, I listened to them. They told stories of Mahasona, the devil that killed people at night by striking them between the shoulders, leaving marks of his hand embossed on their backs. Then a story of Mohini, a woman ghost with a baby in her arms that stopped you in the middle of the road asking you to give her a lift. The narrators described these as if they had seen these make-believe characters first-hand.
My mother believed anyone that ate fried food should not go near water wells. She believed a lurking devil could strike anyone eating fried food. So, whenever I ate outside our home, my mother questioned me about what I ate. She reminded me I should not go near our water well if I had eaten a fried egg. This was confusing; the combination of egg, oil and a devil I could not see. It defied physics and sciences.
Fortunetellers who read your palm and forecast your future was common. People relied on them to clear their apprehensions about the future. In every village, in marketplaces and door to door, one found palm readers, fortunetellers, and horoscope readers. They pried on the gullible general populace offering their services.
In school, boys examined each other’s hands for signs of future destiny. Some said that the length of the middle line in your right palm would indicate how old you would live, and another line in your palm could predict the number of children and another number of girlfriends you would have in later life.
As a teenager, I was in two minds when I cycled after sunset on my way home. Were these stories of ghosts, Mahasona, who lived in cemeteries, real? Would Mahasona attack me? I cycled as fast as I could past the local cemetery without looking back. Near our home was a bridge, where some claimed Mohini, the ghost with a child, had been seen. Again, I cycled super-fast if ever I had to pass that bridge should the female devil Mohini appear with a child. I did not want to be devoured by either Mahasona or Mohini. As I entered my late teens, part of me rejected these fallacies and myths. What if these science-defying ghosts were real?
When my grandmother died, we did not follow the age-old silly custom of keeping all-night vigils for seven days. That night after the burial ceremony, my father shut and closed all doors and windows in our home, defying the established norm. We slept well that night; my grandmother, who was peacefully buried at our local cemetery, stayed where she was — another nail in the coffin of these myths.
A Catholic church venue in Sri Lanka, in the village of Kudagama became famous for an exorcist priest’s powers of curing demonically possessed women. Around the same time, many young women in my home claimed to be demonically possessed. Many Catholics visited this church, treating it as a religious shrine. I did not think much of this aberration of my Catholic faith. Why could Catholic priests thrive on a populace believing in these myths?
One weekend, I took off with some friends to see this parody for myself. So we cycled to this so-called shrine, some 92 kilometres away, on the weekend. It was a long bike ride, nearly 100 kilometres each way, a distance a young lad did not think much of.
At this Kudagama shrine, Catholics had assembled, the equivalent of what Kataragama was for most Buddhists/Hindus in the country. There were hundreds of demonically possessed people, mostly young women. They ranted, raved, screamed and rolled on the ground in the mud. They revelled in the attention of the people around them. The rest of the devotees were deep in their chants in prayer, probably in fear for their lives, assuming they were witnessing miracles. They needed to see the power of the devil to trust their God.
This was not Christianity, as far I as could gather as a nineteen-year-old. I was simply amused at this whole spectacle defying science and human studies. When the so-called devil-possessed women saw my friends, and I were not impressed; they started screaming at us, calling us names.
I never revisited Kudagama after seeing the errant priest practising devil worship in competition with his religious counterparts.
I figured that the exorcist priest preyed on the mental vulnerabilities of young women. The shrine of Kudagama became famous on the backs of the demonically possessed and depended upon them for its existence. These vulnerable women should have been sent for counselling or to an institute to treat their mental issues.
A couple of years later, my mother took my kid brother and me to Tewatta church, the only Basilica in Sri Lanka, for a visit. Father David had now retired and was living by the side of this Basilica. He was now an old man. My mother spoke to him in our presence out of respect for the clergy. He then prayed for my kid brother and me. Then, pressing his hands on my head, he said, ' This boy is possessed”.
That was the trigger that turned my table on this whole parody. How, according to his religion, I, a creature of God, come to be also possessed according to this priest’s faith? I resented his verbatim then and there. I told my mother what an idiot this priest was.
When I landed in Dubai two years later, I looked for the fearful ghosts. There was none. There were no devils, no spirits, nothing abnormal. If devils existed in this universe, they should not only be in Sri Lanka. They should be everywhere and also in Dubai. Where the hell were these devils and ghosts now? The ghosts in Sri Lanka with superpowers could not fly out of Sri Lanka. These so-called devils have found a home only where I came from.
Then it dawned on me that Sri Lankans have lived in a parody, irrespective of their faith, mired in their crazy institutional superstitions.
The ghosts were a myth for the vulnerable and the mentally sick. A whole nation had been made to believe in them.
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