BY RANDIMA ATTYGALLE
My atha- Dharmasena Attygalle was a man of off-the-beaten-track. Nothing he did was conventional.
In line with this, for his 100th birth remembrance, thaththa threw a big family party by the Bolgoda waters on February 15, four days before his birthday on February 19. We dressed up for the occasion, most Attygalle’s sporting red- perhaps because the Valentine’s spirit was still in the air and atha would have definitely chuckled. I insisted on red roses for the posy to lay at his grave and not the predictable white as suggested by the florist. Atha would have been nodding in approval…
Atha bore an ironic name- Dharmasena. He lived the essence of Dhamma yet he was not a pious soul. He was essentially a paradox and a maverick.
Atha accommodated the village temple’s priest at the foot of his four-poster if he happened to be in his bed at the time of the prelate’s visit. He did this unabashedly and openly. Atha’s grand four-poster was our playground and if malli and I happened to play the fool with him in the bed, we would nonchalantly watch atha and the priest in conversation as if it was the most ordinary sight.
Atha and I in his four poster
Many years later the prelate would recollect this incident good humoredly at his alms-giving. The skilled podi baas of Madapatha taking robes was beyond atha’s comprehending. He would visit him at his temple and cajole him to disrobe, tormenting him repeatedly with, ‘mokada oyi umba oya karagaththe’ (what the hell did you do). To make things take a worse turn, athamma would join him with, ‘lee baduwak hada gannawath kenek ne’ (no man around to get any furniture done). Finally, podi baas gave up the monastic life and atha was triumphant.
Despite all his antics and his skepticism about the so-called followers of the Great One, atha was the epitome of ath hereema or letting go proliferated by Lord Buddha. Atha’s compassion and his love for people was his trademark. He would impulsively cut down giant trees in his estate to help a destitute find a roof. No man ever walked out hungry through his doors. He was avant-garde in his faith as he was with everything else in his life. He personified Buddha’s words, ‘no man ever became poor by giving.’
Atha gave up politics, ministries and public life while he had ample energy and took refuge among tress and herbs in his ancestral setting in Madapatha. Yet he remained a public man effortlessly until the end. No wedding in his circle was complete without he bearing witness, no funeral or any other public gathering was complete without his towering presence. On an election day, atha would sport a green batik shirt with a line of elephants and walk as straight as a rod to the polling station at Philip Attygalle Vidyalaya.
I cannot imagine my atha as a centurion. It would have pained him to live that long with his faculties failing. Atha would not have tolerated his ‘would have been 100’ celebrated in all piety. Family was his epicenter and he would have nodded in approval watching his large family- now running into a several generations flocking together by his Bolgoda sanctuary to sing, dance and make merriment in his typical characteristic way.
Thaththa surprised all of us and surely atha too as he turned 100 with another gift with no parallels. His 13 Sri- 3344 Toyota Corolla which marked the birth of his grandson (as it was bought in the same year that malli was born in 1983), now 42 years old, shipped from Pakistan, was resurrected. My daughter Samadhee- the fourth generation to enjoy her, put her ‘loku atha’s’ car of memories on her Instagram account- another act of affection atha would have been moved by. The beloved Corolla cannot be captured into a few lines; for us it was not just a mode of transport but a slice of life. From school to our first driving lesson, she stayed loyal to us. I cannot fathom what she felt when atha breathed his last inside her on June 1, 1989.
Atha’s revived Toyota Corolla
Atha was the most unconventional grandfather ever; he would fire our imagination, encourage malli to orchestrate the worst mischief just as he did in his youth. During each school vacation atha would install a hiking-tent under the guava tree in our sprawling garden in which we devised the most unimaginable games beyond our childhood years! Atha would smother us with love. A man of traditional healing, he would lovingly add the most exotic herbal concoctions to our daily baths as children. Even today each time I look at a jasmine creeper, I would think of the baby pillow he stuffed with jasmine buds.
Today, in my eccentricity and foolhardy ways, I see you my atha. When often I take roads less traversed regardless the consequences, and peep into a mirror, it’s not my reflection that I see, but yours… You inspired me never to be stifled by the past benchmarks…
When the Bolgoda waters rippled to the tenor of sumihiri pane- padamata gahala as we celebrated your larger than life late into the night, I felt your infectious laugh and imagined you proclaiming loud, ‘what a jolly good night!’
With apologies to Laurence Binyon, I recraft:
He shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary him, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember him…