The soft rain of neighbourliness ~ Malinda Words

May. It’s the month of the themagula. Hard to miss. Vesak is also the name of the month. In English, ‘May.’ It is the name of a month, a tree and its flowers: maei gas, maei mal. Brings to mind Milton Mallawaarachchi.

Phoenix Flower, Flame of the Forest, Flamboyant and Maei Mal. Appropriate names, all. It’s already June, but even the recent torrential rains haven’t exactly doused the flames. Flames, yes, but not the kind that burns. Delights instead.

Thanks to the majestic and flaming tree in the garden of my neighbours, Angelo and Nilu, I get a red carpet welcome as I come home. Sometimes I walk out of the house just to look at the redness that has tinged the gravel road. The tree, as I said, is majestic. It is beautiful. I am sure a good photographer with the right kind of camera and at the right time of day and angle could capture it well. I cannot. I just think of the blessings.

There are things that no fence or wall can contain. Good and bad. It’s all good in my case. I receive largesse intended and unintended, loveliness that reaches up and over the wall of my neighbours and droplets of delight that fall as though determined to paint the section of the lane just outside my gate.

This morning, I took some pictures of the red carpet. I couldn’t capture ‘welcome’ but felt it certainly. I didn’t call Angelo or Nilu. I don’t have to. They know.

One day, I was sitting at the back of his house (which is on a higher elevation with an entrance from a different lane), having a cup of tea with Angelo. This is what he had to say:

‘I come here and it is so soothing to look towards your house. It’s all green.’

True. There are the walls of course, but there are so many trees that our house is hardly visible. It wasn’t always like that. A largely empty property, overgrown with weeds, was transformed over the years thanks to the diligence of my wife. So many fruit trees, so many leafy greens, vegetables, spices, jak, breadfruit, coconut, puvak and all kinds of herbs. Some planted and some growing wild. Butterflies, bees, birds and other creatures too. And the occasional reptile as well.

Angelo and Nilu offer us red. My wife has given them green. We don’t say ‘here, this is for you.’ We don’t say ‘thanks for the colours.’ We don’t have to. The butterflies, bees and squirrels don’t thank her for the mangoes, pinijambu, ambarella and other fruit. We don’t say ‘thank you for dropping by,’ and yet we delight in their presence, ever conscious that we and not they are the transgressors.

Another neighbour, the late T D K Dharmadasa, chatting with me not long after he moved into their new house, asked me about neighbourhood crime.

‘There are thieves. There are some kudukaarayas. Walls, however, will not stop them. It’s the hitha-honda-kama that might.’ Essentially, good neighbourliness. That was my contention. He smiled, understood and agreed.

Our place is flanked by two lanes. Angelo and Nilu lie across one of them, Dharmadasa Aiya and his family lived across the other. There are others too, all good neighbours. Their hitha-honda-kama doesn’t come with a shout, but there’s assuredness that’s unspoken. It is not stopped at the gate. It is not detained by a wall.

June will end. I don’t keep track of these things, but I know there are red-less seasons. No red carpet welcome. But I know Angelo and Nilu live next door. I know Dharmadasa Aiya is no more, but he is ever-present in his family, his home.

Hitha-honda-kama wafts over walls, dressed in green. It descends from above, soft as the softest rain, red-tinged and lovely.

['The Morning Inspection' is the title of a column I wrote for the Daily News from 2009 to 2011, one article a day, Monday through Saturday. This is a new series. Links to previous articles in this new series are given below]

07 June 2023

The soft rain of neighbourliness

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