Gloom falls over pretty blooms
It is a familiar sight - white and pink lotus blossoms, neatly arranged on a platter or carried as a bunch in the hands of a Buddhist devotee who visits the temple.
When offering flowers to the Buddha, Buddhists chant the stanza - Pujemi Buddham kusumenanena, Punnenametena ca hotu mokkham, Puppham milayati yatha idam me, Kayo
tatha yati vinasa-bhavam (I worship the Buddha with these flowers, may the virtue of this help me to attain liberation, just as these flowers fade and wither, my body will also decay).
The lotus flower itself is significant in Buddhism.Growing in the mud, out of the dirt, it blooms above the water without contact with the soil. The Buddha is likened to the lotus. Born into a world full of defilements and suffering, He rose above it all obtaining Enlightenment.
At many temples, such as the Bellanwila Raja Maha Viharaya, Pillawa Temple and Kelaniya Raja Maha Viharaya, there are numerous roadside stalls selling not only nelum (lotus) , but nil manel, olu, araliya, jasmine and many other flowers for devotees to make their offerings.
But in the wake of the Easter Sunday attacks, the number of devotees visiting the temples has dropped, say the disappointed vendors.
Visiting Bellanwila temple last Saturday morning we saw the devotees pass through the half-closed gate to be checked by the Army and Police. The temple premises appeared rather quiet - usually on Saturdays it is filled with devotees who visit for Bodhi Pooja.
Selling a bunch of white nelum to a customer, Sanduni Bandaranayake said, “People are scarce at the temple since Sunday’s attack and flowers are thrown away as we have no way of selling them.”
Pushpakumara runs one of the five flower shops inside the temple’s vehicle park and has been in business for the past 13 years. “LTTE kale wat mehema une ne. Me mulma wathawa metharan business adu
una (business had never been bad like this even during the time of LTTE war),” he says adding that now people are scared to visit temples.
Deepani Priyangika, a resident in Bellanwila was selling flowers in front of her statue shop. She pointed out that with the current situation everyone has grown suspicious, especially about vendors who rent their shops. “Dan kade laga wahanay
ak nawattuwat bayai (we get scared even when a vehicle stops near the shop),” Deepani said.
The flowers are plucked from the tanks in Anuradhapura, Polonnaruwa, Habarana, Puttalam and Kilinochchi and brought to the vendors early in the morning by a network of distributors.
On the way to Pillawa Temple we met Leelawathi Perera who runs a small roadside nelum and nil manel flower stall in the shed next to her house. Sales had drastically dropped for the past few weeks and she has had to bear a loss of around Rs 15,000.“Issara iskole lamai mal gatta. Dan ehemat ne (earlier school children used to
buy flowers for occasions which is not happening anymore),” she remarked.
The Bodhiraja Mawatha, winding along a green paddy field which leads to the Pillawa Temple has a line of cement huts occupied by the flower vendors.“There are no taps or restrooms here.The small roof of the huts doesn’t give shelter from rain and the packs of incense are getting soaked,” said a despondent Nelum Suraweera adding “lately it has been difficult even to sell 50 flowers a day and earn 100 rupees.”
We see a pile of faded red lotus flowers near Ramani Embuldeniya’s stall. “With Vesak Poya, usually people visit the temple almost daily. There were times I used to sell around 2500 flowers a day. But now even 100 flowers are not sold,”she says adding that the only reason she opened the stall was because of her few regular customers who buy flowers for offices and other functions.
S.A.P. Suraweera has been living in the area even before the temple was built. “It was just the Bo tree back then and people believed that it could do miraculous deeds. The devotees built the temple with their own money as an offering,” he says. “These days the number of devotees has decreased by one fourth,” Suraweera added while lowering a plastic bucket to the small canal running nearby to get water to sprinkle on the lotus buds to keep them fresh.
Near the Kelaniya Temple many flower stalls are vacant. “We open the shops at around five in the morning and remain here till ten in the night, just to sell 100 flowers a day. Earlier people used to buy flowers for wedding decor and other functions which are not happening anymore,” said Madushanka Kumara, one of the few flower sellers still present.
For most of the vendors, selling flowers is their only means of livelihood and they desperately hope that things will get back to normal soon.