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by Mallika Wanigasundara

The Ven. Atambagaskada Kalyanatissa speaking to members of SUCCESS. At extreme left is Gamini Perera, President SUCCESS (Colombo). (Pix: Garvin de Silva)

He is unfazed by any of the practical difficulties he faces. He cheerfully tackles the many problems, as they arise, and in this village of Atambagaskada there are many sympathisers who help him. He is the Ven. Atambagaskada Kalyanatissa of Sri Sudharmaramaya, Atambagaskada, Vavuniya.

He is a bhikkhu who is looking after 71 children, all of them orphaned, abandoned, found in refugee camps or handed over to him by one parent due to the conflict in the Northern and Eastern provinces. They are all Tamil children.

When he visited a refugee camp in 1995, a Sinhala woman married to a Tamil handed over to him a one-and-a-half-year-old whimpering bundle and asked him to look after the child. Let us call him Nesan. He is still in the temple.

This was the beginning of almost an avalanche of desolate parents who left their children in his care. Since that day in 1995 around 300 children have passed through his hands - all of them Tamil. Generally one parent or both come along when they have resettled in their villages and claim the child. I dialled 024 20756 (Vavuniya) and a perky child's voice answered. 'Can I please speak to the 'swamin vahanse' I said.

'He is busy now and he cannot come to the phone. He is bathing the small children and he has put soap on them! The well is far away'. (I know that - there is a well and a tank that is filled for the children to bathe).

'What is your name'? 'Su-da-in' he enunciated it phonetically. It was about 6.30 p.m. So what will you have for dinner? I asked.

We will have rice, dhal and cabbage. Do you get any fish? Yes, for lunch. Did you help the 'archchi' (the bhikkhu's mother) to cook? Yes. Can you remember me? I came with some visitors and sat in the office last Saturday and spoke to the bhikkhu. Yes, of course, he said. OK I will call the bhikkhu later, I told him. Sudain has been living in the temple for about four years and goes to school.

The Ven. Kalyanatissa's mother shoulders most of the workload with some help from the bigger boys and from outside. Somehow the bhikkhu finds the food and the clothes for the children. He is both mother, father and disciplinarian. The bigger boys help him to look after the toddlers.

He settles their quarrels, comforts them when they cry, or are sad or frustrated. He scolds them when they misbehave, but they seem to be totally dependent on him. When a one-and-a-half year-old was found whimpering and crooning the bhikkhu picked him up; spoke softly to him, fed him and put him to sleep.

Children - they like to pose for the camera.

While we spoke to the bhikku he had to baby-sit as well. He put three of them down at his feet, between the desk and the wall. The three toddlers sat on the floor, making a din, quarrelling amongst themselves, and fighting off bigger boys who tried to grab some of the toys SUCCESS had brought for them.

They hugged the toys, dragged toy cars along the floor, continued with their shindig and took not much notice of the bhikkhu's half-serious injunctions that they be quiet.

They are happy children. One just escaped being sold for Rs. 4000. There he was sitting on the ground and rattling his toys. Another was taken away by his mother. He cried for two days, refused to eat and ran a temperature. The mother brought him back. He stood beside the bhikkhu's desk, trying to run a car along the top of a small cupboard.

Later they took me to show their proudest possession - a TV set which some kind lady had gifted to them. They were sitting quietly watching a cartoon strip. Soon they would drop off to sleep on mats laid out in a hall.

They speak Tamil amongst themselves, but have picked up enough Sinhalese to speak to outsiders. Later in the evening they ran off in the drizzle to bathe. They came running back in batches to the temple, three of the small ones starkers. For some reason some of them huddled under a tree nearby and were having a discussion. The bhikkhu came along and bundled them all off to the temple.

Part of the SUCCESS team of doctors held their clinic here and could escape for lunch only around 6 pm. The lunch was cooked by the bhikkhu's mother and the bigger boys. Two 15 year-olds, I should think, dressed nicely in white sarongs and shirts served the food.

Ven. Kalyanatissa is performing an act of compassion. These are somebody's children. He will look after them till the parents claim them or they grow up and can go out into the world. He also thinks that his kindness would wipe out from the minds of these children at least, that the Sinhalese are not brutish and oppressive, as has been painted.

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