‘Look, Miss Lydia!’ said the driver, pulling to the side of the road. ‘A waterfall!’
We paused alongside a group of brightly dressed locals to admire the torrent charging over huge rocks. As I leant out of the window to take a photo, an ancient arm thrust itself into the car, the fingers curved up in the unmistakable shape of want. The arm belonged to a grey-haired woman, her eyes milky with age. Another beggar hovered ghostlike outside Lydia’s window.
The driver urged us not to give them anything, but it was my first encounter with begging in Sri Lanka. If I’d stayed home in Melbourne, I’d have met more beggars on Chapel Street by now. I rustled through my wallet for an appropriate note to offer, but the hand pointed to another note, the equivalent of $10 – a fortune by local standards. I gave it to her.
The driver grumbled as we roared away. Those people they do nothing, he complained. They expect others to do everything for them. But the monk reminded him beggars provide an opportunity for dharma.
Tea plantations rolled like plush green carpets over the hills. No wonder the British had loved it up here – a cool retreat away from the confusing bustle of the lowlands, with an endless supply of tea. Dotted among the rows of tea bushes were women workers wearing saris with large white sacks draped over their backs. Their bodies seemed permanently bent from picking tea, all for $2 a day.
It was getting near the magic hour of noon, before which the monk needed to eat. The driver pulled off the road and puttered up a driveway toward a graceful white building adorned with art deco swirls. Straight out of colonial times, it oozed refinement.
Stopping outside the gleaming entrance, our driver hooted the horn and waited. A smartly dressed waiter hurried out to the car with a menu for the monk to inspect. A cluster of staff gathered anxiously around our vehicle to await his verdict.
Although he thought there was a better restaurant further up the hill with a more open feel, the monk decided this one would do. Visibly relieved, the staff ushered us into their establishment.
A gracious building with a foyer bedecked with columns and armchairs, the place was straight out of another century. I admired the high pressed-metal ceilings as we scaled wide stairs to an empty dining room overlooking the hills. Lydia and I were escorted to a table near the window. The monk and the driver were shown to another table several metres way. I was getting used to this arrangement. In fact, I’d decided that separate-gender dining had the potential to enliven some social occasions back home. The blokes could drone on about sport while women exchanged free-range gossip.
Lydia and I ordered soda water and waited our turn to choose from the buffet. I was beginning to realise local food was far more delicious and safer to eat than Sri Lankan interpretations of Italian cuisine. The delicate flavours, as well as the variety of textures and colours of Sri Lankan cooking, had me hooked.
As we sat at our table admiring old photographs from Empire days, the driver approached us. He seemed almost distraught.
‘I’m sorry to say this, but your teacher is not well,’ he said.
We glanced across at the monk gazing thoughtfully out the window. He didn’t appear in extreme pain.
‘He must go to hospital immediately,’ the driver continued. ‘It may be something to do with his blood pressure. He has been too busy lately.’
We offered to help, but the monk and driver assured us there was nothing we could do. The monk stood up and said there was probably nothing to worry about. He seemed okay, but I knew that people can feel much worse than they look. The monk swept out of the restaurant with the driver in his wake.
Lydia and I exchanged glances across the table. Being abandoned in the Sri Lankan highlands hadn’t been on my itinerary. The old control-freak me would’ve had a meltdown under these circumstances. Phone calls would’ve been made. Taxis called. But if being in this country had taught me anything, it was to chill out and let things evolve. It was a perfectly pleasant restaurant.
‘How long do you think we’ll be here?’ Lydia asked, smiling.
‘If he gets admitted to hospital it could be a while,’ I replied. ‘They might forget about us altogether.’
The lightness of not knowing what was going to happen was surprisingly liberating. We finished lunch and ordered a large pot of tea. A visit to the bathroom (Wow! Flushing toilets!) was followed by another pot of tea.
An hour or two later, we talked about finding our own way to the hotel, figuring it was probably only about four hours’ drive away and that getting there wouldn’t be impossible. Just as we were about to leave, there was a flourish of maroon at the entrance to the dining room and Lydia’s teacher sailed toward us, benevolent and trouble free as ever.
‘There is absolutely nothing wrong with me,’ he confided.
The driver reinforced the hospital doctor’s diagnosis. After careful examination the conclusion was that the monk was in perfectly good health.
‘We will now go straight to the tea plantation,’ the monk added.
‘You can’t possibly take us,’ I said, thinking wistfully of sinking into a hotel swimming pool. ‘You need rest.’
But the monk would have none of it. We climbed back into the car to wind on up and over more hills to Mackwoods Tea Plantation which had ‘Over 165 Years of Excellence’.
At the tea plantation car park we had our first glimpse of tourists. Staring out of their white flabby bodies through designer sunglasses, they resembled creatures from another planet. Disgorging from buses and hire cars in khaki shorts, stout walking shoes and 50 UV sun hats, they huddled in fearful groups. In almost any other circumstances I’d have been just like them.
Travelling in some kind of cultural submarine, they snatched bite-sized glimpses of the sights around them before turning their attention back to each other, reassuring themselves theirs was the Real World.
They worked themselves into a frenzy inside a shop selling alluringly packaged tea, as if there might soon be a world shortage. In the canteen they drained pots of tea and chocolate cake down their white saggy gullets. Hungry, always hungry for food and shopping.
In the Buddhist Wheel of Life, Hungry Ghosts are tormented by cravings that can never be fulfilled. Not fully alive, they’re incapable of appreciating the present moment and are therefore in a constant state of rage and desire. Whoever painted Hungry Ghosts with thin necks and bulging bellies must have been thinking of tourists.
Outside the canteen we saw a rarity in Sri Lanka – an overweight child. Pasty faced with eyes like raisins, the young boy waddled about in a brand-name T-shirt and a cap that was too small for him. Weighed down by the consumerist society he came from, he was a pitiful sight.
While tourists took photos of themselves buying tea, drinking tea and standing outside the tea factory, Lydia’s teacher started feeling much better. He was keen for us to embark on a guided tour of the factory, which exuded a sweet, trippy aroma.
A charming young woman explained the tea manufacturing process, which was surprisingly unencumbered by modern technology. It took less than twenty-four hours from leaf to packet. After admiring conveyor belts of green leaves destined to end up brewed in pots all over the world, we headed back to the car park.
While the others visited the bathrooms, the driver took me aside and fixed me with an earnest look. He would, he said, give me a house with furniture and everything, if I could find a nice man to marry his daughter. I’d want for nothing if I could find her a man with a good heart.
Struggling to respond, I thought of all the women I knew, ages ranging from sixteen to seventy-five, who lamented the difficulty of finding a decent bloke, and assured him it was a universal problem.
With the tea tour completed, we assured the monk and driver we’d be more than happy to be taken to the hotel now.