Wrong side up

Here in the paradise isle, where the sea breeze calms the weary soul and the sand is like brown sugar that massages the worn soles of your feet, cheap beach side motels provide the perfect getaway. My story today takes place in the mythical back drop of Rumassala, at one such motel. Maybe this is what was told to me by the main character in my story or maybe I just made this story up. Who knows. 

Known as Bueno Vista or ‘pleasant view’ by the Spaniards during colonial times, Rumassala then and now offers what are arguably the best coastal views along the southern coast of Sri Lanka. Legend tells the story of Hanuman, the monkey soldier who was sent off to find a medical plant from Himalaya mountains. Unable to find it, he carried a chunk off the mountain instead but accidently dropped a piece on his way back, after which this particular drop point was known as Unawatuna (‘here it fell’).  The Portuguese pirates made good use of the jagged edges of the rocky shore line plus their ‘skills in their trade’ and used false light signals from Rumassala to eliminate competition from the Arab traders. 

But that’s only a bit of lore from the pages of time. This is today. 

Lasitha was a businessman, nothing too shiny or too shabby. He wasn’t a ‘show off’ and he liked to keep things simple. Like any other worn out individual, he enjoys personal time alone away from all the hustle and bustle of everyday hype. Wine and women sometimes didn’t just cut it for him. He has to get away, alone. Living in the island of many places to see, he likes to wander off somewhere, nowhere expensive, or alluring or posh. Just somewhere serene where he can have his tea in peace, read his newspaper and focus on things around him. 

A cheap motel in Rumassala was where he found himself after a tedious business deal was sealed.  It wasn’t classy, but more like a house turned into motel type of setting housing about 2 - 3 cozy rooms and nice homemade food. “It must have been a Thursday night. Can’t remember the time. Must have been evening”, he says looking thoughtfully at his toes. He had been sipping his tea in the lounge. The TV was on but inaudible. Being off season, there hadn’t been anyone in the motel except for him. It confused and surprised him when a silhouette of a woman appeared from the corridor. It wasn’t the the wife of the land lord and maker of the fabulous food. No. This was someone else. 

Distinctively, this woman had been upside down. Her head was where her feet should be and her feet were where her head should be. And she was sort of walking, like a mirage, or a mirror apparition, towards a room adjacent to Lasitha’s. “She was very short, say about 5 feet and her hair was in a messy bun with strands falling on her face. It…She seemed pretty solid and nothing like the ghosts I see in movies” He was confused because this woman seemed so very out of place, mostly the fact that she was upside down, unsettled him. For a few good long minutes, his mind had done what any other bewildered mind does. 

The mind is very strange thing in itself. When something like this, a strange event that doesn’t match with the rest of what the brain can process happens, illogical as it may be, the mind tries to make sense of it. Most of the time, when it can’t make sense, it just skips this piece of information like a computer  glitch, and ‘skip’ it. Few classic excuses would be ‘a trick of the light’, ‘I must have been dreaming’ etc. 

In this case too, his mind did the same thing. He watched this image going into the room and disappear inside the wall, but he kept on gaping at it, with his eyes and mouth wide open, his brain whirring at a 120 cycles per second trying to process what happened. “I must have looked like an idiot”, he admits. But it so happened that the land lord who had been in the vicinity, had seen it too. After a few awkward minutes of silence, Lasitha had plucked up his guts and the use of his tongue to inquire after this. After a few hesitant minutes and feeble attempts at changing the topic, the land owner owned up to a story that had been circling this particular motel. 

There had been an incident come time ago, where an abusive husband (the previous owner of the house, during construction and long before it was turned into a motel) had constantly beaten up his wife. After a particular ruthless session of fists and kicks, the husband had, - accidently I might add- , killed the wife. Fearing the consequences, but more out of hatred and indecency, he had hung her from her feet behind a wall in that particular room and cemented her into the wall. If murder can be simply erased out of existence just like that, the presence of a legal system would be quite useless wouldn’t it? The authorities had connected one and two, recovered the body from behind the wall and arrested the culprit eventually. But it seems the figure hasn’t really moved on even after numerous religious rituals and cleansings.

“It…she doesn’t really harm anyone, or does anything bad. She just is….and occasionally does her upside down trick apparently. I was the only guest who had seen this stunt though”, says Lasitha with a reassuring nod. Nothing much to worry about. Just that she’d once in a while show up and disappear into the wall in that particular room.