Coconuts and avurudu

People are actually a wee worried this year. The word on the streets (usually the blokes at the market and the tuk tuk joints) is that apparently, this year poya falls on the parana awurudda i.e. on the 13^th Sunday. “It has never happened before! In the history of all history!” said some dude at the tuk joint today, lookin at me all wide eyed and with his head bobbing up and down (like those bobbin ornaments) in order to emphasize its effect.  I dunno, maybe they’re expecting some kind of extraordinary moon shaped like a kavuma or something. That’d be the darndest sight wouldn’t it? I mean, ours is a superstitious lot to begin with. For example, if a gecko falls on a particular part of our body, there are professionals in this country who can predict a range of impending doom that may fall upon that particular person (on which that poor demented gechko fell on) to their family members’ next-door neighbors’ cousin’s dog. Imagine if something really awesome/ weird / earth shattering happened on avurudu (apart from the usual 86% increase in road accidents due to drunkards and fire crackers), people would be up to their elbows in the gossip and hoo ha of it all till next full moon avurdu.  

It's a girl!!

To site another example, I was in the kitchen today trying to crack open a coconut in half to make a pol sambol, when my grandmother (who is 93 years old btw! Bless her dear soul!) comments from the side line saying “scrape the female part first” which sounds way sexist but it so happens that apparently this poor pol gediya in my hand, the one that was perfectly gender-less before it was crookedly cracked open in the middle, is now a fully functional man and woman coconuts (ok, at this part, I couldn’t help but feel a bit like God with Adam and Eve). And now I’m trying to figure out which part is which? Unlike in human / animal scenarios where the physical dissimilarities are quite ‘in yo face’, in a coconut that was un-gender biased a few minutes ago, it’s kind of hard to tell. It’s apparently the part with the three holes in it (hint hint) that is the female part and the one that “will rot soon if we don’t use it first”. (again, a sure sign that we are not only superstitious but also way sexists. Even with our own goddamn coconuts) But apparently “also the tastiest” my aunt chips in trying to soften the feminist scowl off my face. (I stubbornly scrapped the male part of the coconut, just fyi. Ha! Take that you sexist bastard of a coconut!)  

Coconuts also happen to be another important part of avurudu. To which I am not that partial to, anyhow. No, I do not hold grudges against innocent gender confused coconuts but……*sigh*. Okay fine. It is not the blinking coconuts. Its avurudu! Urgh! I cannot fathom the distaste that I have towards avurudu. I do not know why! It’s not that avurdu has personally done anything mean to me or given me anything contagious like the mumps or stupidity. Au contraire, it gives nice long nationwide vacations which I absolutely adore. It’s just..I dunno…I feel. I don’t know what to feel actually. 

I wondered whether it was the avurudu commercials. And now that I come to think of it, yes. It’s partly got to do with the bright red and the bright yellows. It’s bad enough that I see those two colors artificially enhanced and forced in my face by those nasty nestermault adds and that Mrs. Perera woman in that Lakthi add. But during this time, all commercials are that. Accompanied none other than with the sound track of a morphed artificial sounding koha, a bird under normal circumstances, I'd like to listen to. It’s a bit like the first snow ball of the December to most kids in the western countries but like an awesome alive one with a beak and shit. But then again, that also only for a few days though, and then that bastard starts annoying the hell oughta me. Mostly cuz I hear that shit a gazillion times on the blooming TV.( It’s also droll when everyone gets to comment on a koha cawing in mid-December and be like “adho, check yo damn calander”)

No wait. I think those darned ‘reddai hattei’ things that village women wear. When I was a kid and I was sent to Sunday school at the temple, I used to wear a ‘lama sariya’ which was a two piece suit which was, two pieced. It had a top part which was like 1/4^th of a slim fitting buttoned blouse. I mean, who in their goddamn mind would design such an ironic costume on a woman to a ‘supposedly’ spiritual place where the whole point was to wear decent cloths in the first place so as to not arouse the monks who practiced celibacy and trying to refrain from material things like wine and boobs.  Can anyone please tell me, what part of that tiny piece of slim fitting cloth on a girls upper body (where the boobs are, if anyone’s got confused) is decent? I mean yeah sure, back then when I used to wear it I hadn’t even started to develop any boobs worth mentioning or seeing but still, it left me paranoid. Like that one time, I might have been aged 8 ish, I had gone an entire day at the daham pasala, where there were boys also, mind you, with my entire set of buttons (there might have been like 6 in all) open! Yes, open. Without my knowledge! Ok, maybe not the entire set of buttons but the buttons except the top and the bottom one so that it held the silly peace of outfit just barely on to my torso but all the ones in the middle were open. I hadn’t developed anything much to worry about but still! Imagine the embarrassment of walking around with your chest all exposed! Back then, this would have made a traumatic soul-shattering experience in my childhood and let to memories that haunted me in my nightmares. And subsequently to my utter distress in the women’s traditional garment of avurdu. Could be.  

See, even their mid region is exposed! Seriously. Is that what our folk call decent??! All bundi exposed and shit. 

Or wait. Is it the relatives? Yes. *shudders* I think it’s the relatives. Apart from a fear of that dreadful piece of reviling clothing, I think another aspect of avurudu that scares me, are the relatives. *Sigh*. The ones that I managed to avoid for a perfectly peaceful 365 days since the last avurdu. The ones that when encountered, I had developed a severe case of the diarrhea because of which I could not talk with them at length around the cheery avurudu kavili pingana they bought. The ones that compare a younger version of myself with the now version of myself and then a few other version in between on my physical appearance and how fat or thin I am getting each year and how much I scored for my Ordinary levels and Advanced levels from way back in the year 1998. Yes, those ones. Those are the relatives that I do not mind not seeing on avurudu. Okay, do not get me wrong. I am a social extrovert who manages to keep a lively conversation with normal human beings  that. does. not. include. comments on a person’s physical appearance. Seriously. Is it that difficult? To not comment on a persons’ physical appearance? “ahne oya mahath/ kettu welane” (ahhhhneee, you’ve grown fat / thin!) And I’m like “Really? You came all that way and bought all that kokis to ask me why I am now fat?”

Well, yeah I suppose the food is good…. It’s really really good. Have you ever tried one of those rare kavums that just melt in your mouth like it was a rainbow in itself, dissolving and absorbing in  to you, the freshly yumminess of it? If you haven’t, I’m sorry to say, but you need to come on out of under that rock and go in search of some of them avurudu nick knacks before your body gets too old to cope with all that oil and sugar. The two things about avurudu that will kill you slowly and very expensively. I say expensive because have you recently been to the hospital? The price of medicine and appointments are so damn high that they might as well be snapping pictures of Earth and calling it a cute blue dot. The doctor’s appointment is 2000 Rs and you’re only in his room for four minutes. That has to be the most expensive four minutes of my entire life.  I don’t know about you guys, but I ain’t got that kind of money now, or plausibly in the future for when I am old, overweight and so darn up in my sugar levels that I’d be swatting ants every now and then. Ever notice how people gain extra weight during April and December around here? Well yeah. Avurudu is one reason. Christmas is another. I suppose Christmas is harmless enough. I mean, I don’t have to go through the trauma of your house being repainted all over again.  That’s another thing people do during the avurdu. They be up trying to raise all sorts of hell in trying to get new stuff of, basically everything. Including that cute little clay pot that you heat the milk in and you watch it pour over the side in a particular direction for good luck. But not if it’s at 3 o clock in the frickin morning!?!? There was that one time I remember that that particular ritual fell at some time during the witching hour aka the hour that normal people sleep.

oh yeah, that’s actually another thing that makes avurudu one of a kind. Everyone gotta do almost everything (except maybe poop) at the same time. Cook, eat, sleep, go to the temple, apply oil in hair, go to work at the same time. Yep, an entire nation (well most of it atleast) does several things at the same time according to the stars or the planets. Or some such hocus pocus. See, what'd I tell you about our lot being superstitious? But okay, I admit that, that’s somewhat cool. Imagine that. Having control over a nation in that level for at least a few hours a day can have real potential there, for a super villain or some such. I’m thinking someone thought real hard about this, somewhere. 

I do like how the avurdu food table doesn’t consist of meat things though. That’s pretty thoughtful of them. It’s usually a mass of sugar and oil that’ll kill you –eventually- as opposed to you killing something else and having them for lunch. Although I did notice that the usual egg prices that were 12.50 wooped on to being somewhere between 14 – 15 rs. So there’s business there too. Coconuts got a lot to do with avurudu too btw. And flour, and sugar. And all that yummy goodness that will satisfy you now, but you know, eventually konk you out if you don’t watch your mouth properly. But hey, all jokes aside, avurudu has got plenty of nice positive parts to it too. Like how it’s celebrated by both Sinhala and Tamil individuals in a country that used to be torn by a civil war that went over 30 years.  It signifies the unity and the peace and the et cetera et cetera among people but eh, you already know all that. I’m just here to shed some light on to the whole affair in the sights of a twenty year old something and how coconuts got a lot to do with it. 

Peace out y’all!  I mean,    Suba Aluth Avuruddak Weva!!!

(P.s. I ain’t gonna have my phone on that day so I will not be wishing each and every one of you with a gooey personalized individual text message or call. Ima just update a status and be done with it. )

Author's note - The author had had a particularly bad day at the salon where a devil woman straight outta the depths of hell, had run amok all over the precious few strands of coil she calls hair. That annoying wench! Silently mutters something like *I hope she dies of avurdu kavili influenced deceases. okay, not really.* The author is a happy person and sends happy vibes towards that monstress. She condolences herself to the can of open milkmaid in the fridge. It's like ice cream for break ups, this milkmaid shiz, is the bomb.