On our first full day in Sri Lanka, our AirBnB host graciously offered her driver to take us to Mihintale, a Buddhist pilgrimage site in Anuradhapura.
A former driver for the Sri Lankan government, his quiet confidence in navigating the organized chaos of the local roads put us both at ease. Karl, having already driven four hours earlier that morning (on five hours of sleep) made small talk between limited shared English words and gesticulations. I rested in the back seat, thankful for air conditioning as I gazed out the window.
We passed a large parking lot that seemed to be a mixture of mechanic, used car dealer, and junkyard. Used (but still a feasible mode of transportation) as well as decrepit cars were parked next to one another and stacked, perhaps 30 feet high, via a gigantic mechanical car lift. Perched at the top of one of these lifts was the pristine body of a white Toyota Land Cruiser, the same 100 model as Karl and I own. But the similarities stopped there. There were no tires. It was a carapace of our Land Cruiser back in Maryland.
Karl and I anthropomorphize everything, and seeing a cousin of our “Larry” in this condition was unsettling. A few years ago, Karl and I were walking down a dock somewhere along the ICW in North Carolina, when we passed an abandoned boat. “This one day will be Contigo,” Karl tenderly remarked. Under our ownership, we proudly considered Contigo in (almost) immaculate condition. I winced thinking about her deteriorating to this stage – when nobody would want her. Contigo is not susceptible to human conditions such as stroke or heart attack, but rust, sun, salt, and time are all factors to which she will inevitably succumb. This uncomfortable fact did not make our caretaking efforts futile.
During our visits over the next several days to Buddhist temples, the one constant underpinning hundreds of visitors and pilgrims was devotion. As we circumambulated the gigantic stupa at the Sri Maha Bodhi, I was awestruck not by the size of the massive structure just to my right, but the generosity, creativity, and deep care in which offerings were arranged on the tables circling the stupa. It reminded me of visiting the Frederick Fair as a child, when farmers would present their most beautiful squash for judging. Karl and I slowly passed one table boasting a bountiful assortment of donuts, pizzettes, croissant sandwiches, exotic-to-us fruit, and Pringles (which somehow looked like a delicacy); a feast that rivaled any luxury hotel breakfast buffet. On other tables, there were deep bowls of still-steaming coconut milk rice, each with a mandala of raisins and cashews artfully arranged on top.
For those without access to a kitchen or otherwise means to present such fare, one could purchase still-dripping flowers from farmers who posted outside the temples. For less than $1, Karl and I bought deep purple and white lotuses to offer alongside these generous spreads.
The tables closest to the temple’s Buddha statue would quickly become overladen with flowers, at which point they were swept to the ground, and then gathered up in large bins, the tops of which were attached to a long wooden pole. When the bins were almost overflowing, two strong men put the wooden pole on one of their shoulders and ran-walked out of the temple and down the stairs, outside of the main grounds.
The petals, which just moments ago were treasures, would soon be shoveled into a pile and mixed with their decomposing counterparts from previous days, just a few steps behind them in the eventual cycle of returning to the temple as offerings. The icing on the donuts would melt, the rice would get cold, the cashews soggy. The food spreads would be removed that evening, and offered to monks, needy residents, and the menagerie of birds, dogs, and other animals passing through the temple grounds.
Parting with Contigo involved a financial transaction, but it also held a similar, pure intention as to that which we saw during our temple visits: to offer something of deep value we know will change – and eventually dissolve – once out of our hands. Karl and I purposely tended to Contigo until our final drive away from her, so that we could offer something of beauty to her new owners. We weren’t fighting her known ephemerality. It was perhaps the most important part of the offering.
