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by Manik Sandrasagra

This attraction led me to being persuaded by wonderful stories of myth and magic to discard my Gucci shoes, my elegant shades, and my life support systems including what money could buy. So I joined German swami on this crazy pilgrimage to Kataragama in 1975 with a group of his friends he described as the Kopi Kuttam since they stopped intermittently for coffee. Swami's injunction to me was to walk from Pottuvil to Kataragama in not too difficult a sequence for me. Swami's letter that sealed my decision read as follows:

"The road is open for you, my dear! But time runs out for me. So, here is a new test and trial for you: a very hard one, I tell you: the karai-yatra. If you can do it, even in parts that means in not too hard a sequence for you it will be very good for your Guru and Mike, Aiyar and all those who are really sincere in following The Path! I gave you the timetable out of love for you. Now it is up to you, to act! If you come, I must warn you: it will be hard going for you. For me, too. It is my twenty-fifth jubilee pilgrimage, and with the help of the Mother's Grace (virgin Madre!) and yours, I hope to complete it at Valliamma's sacred hill. After this my "mission" in Lanka will be completed and I will set out to the 'Hieric Island' for the last "flight of the alone to the Alone".

He had never written like this before. He had admitted that he was our guru. He never confirmed such matters, although in a letter to me in September 1971, soon after our first mystical encounter he wrote, "You did really splendid and I am very, very happy indeed. Let us hope that the great Mother (Para Shakti) will bless you in your efforts to become a firm ring in the chain of our paramparai".

I now believed my earnestness in becoming a link in this chain of transmission had been rewarded and I joined the pilgrimage in Pottuvil with Chitrasena. There were about 750 people gathered there at the residence of Mr. Canageratnam an erstwhile devotee of the war God Skanda. It took us about ten days to walk to Kataragama through the jungle and at certain times the ordeal became too much for my lazy bones and I gave up preferring death to this agony. There were several kuttams.

I came to know some of them. From Jaffna there was Weerakatti and Muttukumaru while Kandiah and Hanuman were from the East Coast. Chelladurai, Kumaravel and Aiyadurai were my other comrades in the Kopi Kuttam which German swami led through the forest, propelled by great stories, lots of Jaffna cigars and a siddha preparation for extra energy called Suranam.

When walking barefoot gave me ulcerated feet, the crazy jnani Aiyadurai Swami took me for a walk and made me stand on fresh elephant dung and by magic my feet were cured. Such were the serendipitous discoveries I made on the journey!

The Kopi Kuttam

Chitrasena was a dancer and fit, while I was neither and together we were a comic sight, like Jeff and Mutt. We walked carrying a pole on our shoulders with our earthly belongings hanging from it. We allowed the Kopi Kuttam to totally dominate us and we did as we were told. We were too tired to think. The walking was killing us. When I had just about given up the fight, grace appeared in the form of a chanting group.

I joined the group and decided to move with them. Nobody waited for another on the Yatra specially, in the jungle, and one had to keep moving or be left behind. Joining this group and chanting with them induced a trance in which we walked effortlessly for over five miles in record time, with no effort. This was yet another encounter of serendipity.

On reaching the banks of the Menik Ganga the pilgrims piled up several logs and performed a fire-walking puja at night. everywhere there were shouts of Haro Hara. We were two days away from Kataragama. What impressed me most was the order in which everything was undertaken. The pilgrims were well disciplined. Every kuttam had a leader and he dictated the murai or order to be followed. They treated the forest as belonging to God. They harmed nothing. The animals knew this as well.

When an elephant was sighted the pilgrims would approach it and conduct a puja with a coconut and camphor. The elephant stood still. They knew this pilgrimage from inherited knowledge and had no fear. One incident remains in my mind. We came to a crossroad in the jungle. The pilgrims halted with indecision.

While seated we heard a voice singing: "Hallelujah, I'm a bum. Hallelujah I'm a bum again. Halleljujah give me a handout, to revive me again". It was German swami announcing his arrival. The pilgrims pouched on him with anticipation, with cries of "Swami, swami, tell us the way?" And Swami points at one of the paths and quietly sits down on the left, clear off the road to light his black Jaffna cigar.

The pilgrims leave shouting Haro Hara and Swami replies while he chews on his cigar. After a while swami decides to move and we follow him. He takes the other road. We ask him why? He answers, "I am German and they are Ceylonese. They don't know their own land. They should learn by walking a little more".

The lineage

'German swami, his guru Yogaswami, whose guru was Chellappa Swami, whose guru was Kadai swami, were all tantric siddhas from a Tamil Nadu lineage. The Adi Guru was Siva as Dakshinamurti, who sits in silence on the south face of every Shaivite temple in the world. Dakshinamurti is the southern face of Dharma, Kataragama has several lineages or paramparawas. Matara Swami, the current high priest at the Kiri Viharaya Vishnu Shrine in Kataragama, is a Sinhalese disciple of a Malayali teacher called Sankara Pillai.

He was a mantaravadin or magician and this knowledge he taught his disciples who revere his memory to this day. The incumbent of the Vedahitikanda shrine atop the central of the seven hills of Kataragama, Ven. Siddhartha is yet another disciple. In fact his custodianship of the hill shrine is based on his lineage. Lineage and the chain of transmission are the secret of the different guilds, castes or paramparawa - a kind of classification based on temperament. Summa Iru is the core teaching of our group. In Sinhala it is 'nikang inda'.

This is common-speak and is our Nirvana and Samsara, herenow transcending explanations. All contradictions are resolved in Kataragama, a seat that from time immemorial has attracted Rishis and Buddhas and which is only represented as a symbol and whose priests cover their mouths. In this dispensation there are several paths to the Divine.

As many paths as the God has faces - six in all: Hunter, Warrior, Swami, Beggar, King, Husband and Lover. Nothing is excluded here. Unlike the purity of other shrines in Kataragama venison is offered twice a week to the god and an Idumban puja includes alcohol and cannabis (kansa).

Karma Yoga

In recent times however intolerant urban planners have banned everything, including sex, in this age-old fertility shrine. Such is the ignorance of the blind. I was rescued from the Pada Yatara by the present Foreign Minister Tyronne Fernando who was a lawyer at the time. He came to Kataragama to take me back to Colombo to finish his film Colomba Sanniya that I was directing for him.

I never knew at that time how significant all these events would be later on. Several years later all that was forecast by swami in his letter to me had come true. I brought into being the Kataragama Devotees Trust and had gathered around all swamis' acolytes from 'the four quarters of the world'. We had made a trilogy on the Skanda story for television that had been very well received.

We revived the Pada Yatra from Jaffna to Kataragama in 1988. We also reinstated in the annual perahera the ritual ambush by the Veddas, which I first heard of from swami. This had gone into abeyance ever since Boranda the Vedda had died some forty years ago. We went in search of Boranda's decendents and found a son who could remember accompanying his father to Kataragama when he was just ten years old. He could remember what was done.

We were successful in obtaining the support of the Basnayake Nilame at the time, the late Jayawardene Attanayake who agreed to permit Bandya to carry out his rajakariya duties once more. Our own lifestyle and work still keeps the lineage active. As he had stated in his letter to me in 1975 his 'mission' in Lanka had been completed and he could depart!

The Pada Yatra revived

In 1984 Swami Gauribala passed away and Rose Collingwood, an American girl whom I had taken to Swami in 1971, had returned to light the pyre and destroy the evidence that there ever was a Gauribala. The next year I walked the same route again from Pottuvil to keep memories alive but it was discontinued the following year. Swami had never asked me to walk from Jaffna, suggesting that I do the Pada Yatra in parts and in not too difficult a sequence for me.

He always treated me with great affection and respect, although he teased me constantly in order to destroy my self-image. In 1988 when we re-started the Yatra that had not been performed from Jaffna for over four years, the IPKF was in Sri Lanka, the JVP active in the South, the LTTE in the North and East and our armed forces confined to barracks. We approached the Jayewardene Government with a request to continue the ancient tradition and President Jayewardene endorsed our request by ordering the National Security Council to give us all the assistance we needed.

Although Indian High Commissioner Dixit and General Kalkat were worried that mischief-makers would attack us, we were adamant that the pilgrimage could take place. We needed nobody's permission to carry out our ancestral rites and customs. The IPKF gave us every assistance and so did Sri Lanka's Army, Navy, Air Force and Police.

The World Association of Christian Communications (WACC) was a European Body doing well with Christian tithes. Neville Jayaweera was one of their flag bearers. He came to Sri Lanka with a colleague called Dr. A. D. Manuel and together with the Marga Institute they decided to set up COMPAR an acronym for 'Communications for Peace and Reconciliation'.

They wanted to wage peace, and they got together a team of communicators. We found ourselves sitting in the Marga boardroom listening to retired bureaucrats trying to be relevant. The road to hell is paved with good intentions and here was the origin of the urban 'Peace' lobby trying to teach natives about conflict resolution backed with cash. We needed some cash to launch a media campaign to remove the fear psychosis that had stopped pilgrims from walking to Kataragama from Jaffna.

WACC would only finance newspaper advertisements and a media blitzkrieg. This was okay since our Pada Yatra pilgrims moved through faith and needed no inducement to go on pilgrimage to the festival of their beloved Murugan. We needed only to announce the pilgrimage and the rest would follow.

There were no leaders and no fixed agenda like praying, meditating silence etc., which urbanites find important. To these pilgrims who had received a call from their God, life itself was amaiti or peace. To them all conflict was irrelevant and the only battle svaraj - the inner battle of self-control.

Nagadipa

The only way to travel is the Government way and no small wonder that people seek political power. Thanks to the JRJ Government we went to Nagadipa/Nainativu in two hours from Colombo. A plane to Jaffna, a chopper to Gurunagar and a speedboat to Nagadipa, The Navy met Dominic Sansoni and I at Nagadipa and politely asked us our requirements.

We asked for two bicycles and rode off on them having patiently dismissed warnings of the LTTE being behind every bush. I told these most concerned Navy officers that I had a secret weapon - an anti-terrorist device. Dom and I rode off on our bicycles and within ten minutes we were stopped by the 'podiyans', who claimed that we were riding their stolen bicycles.

There was only one response that was possible and that was laughter, and this the boys least expected. Very soon I had my secret weapon out and we were being treated with great respect bordering on veneration. My secret weapon was a photo album with three photographs. One was of Murugan the god of Kataragama beloved to all, the other a picture of German Swami whom everyone in Jaffna recognised and the last picture was of me with the South Indian film star M. G. Ramachandran, who had even inspired LTTE supremo Velupillai Prabhakaran. My anti-terrorist kit was all the permission required for us to spend two memorable days in Nainativu thanks to local hospitality.

Mullaitivu

We then proceeded to Vattappalai or Mullaitivu. This time I had Mudiyanse Tennekoon and Sunil Situnayake with me. Once again the Air Force flew us in and the commanding officer of the camp drove us some distance before dropping us off as it was out of bounds for the military. We walked a few miles and reached Mulliyawelli. Here we witnessed another wonderful sign.

We knew nobody and we were standing self-consciously in the crowded temple courtyard when Sunil walked up to me with a stranger who wanted to know who I was. I asked him why, and he responded that he had seen and heard me laugh and that it reminded him of a friend he revered. I asked him who his friend was and he said German Swami Gauribala. I laughed aloud once more and showed him my album, and told him that he had sent me. The man was overjoyed and his home became our home for our two-day sojourn.

Patrick Harrigan

When we left all the women folk gathered in the compound to wish us farewell, especially to Mudiyanse Tennekoon, the Sinhala Goviya whom these Tamils had learned to love. This was the beginning. The media campaign continued.

When we got to Trincomalee there to greet me was Patrick Harrigan. Patrick had arrived the previous summer to help me write the script for the Kataragama-Skanda Trilogy that I had already documented on video for Frank Jayasinghe and the Worldview International Foundation. We needed the material that I had videotaped under the guidance of the Kataragama Guru Paramparawa, especially Matara Swami, to be understood and presented in a script format that could be narrated by Vijaya Kumaratunga and Swarna Mallawaratchchi in Sinhala and Richard De Zoysa and Michelle Lembruggan in English. When Patrick returned in 1987 he was an UC-Berkeley grad student who had spent time with German Swami between periods of study. Now he got to know my merry band and me.

Like the 'kuttis' around German Swami learning of Yogaswami, the process continued with the next generation sharing the same stories. Only the storytellers had changed. This is how Patrick documented his experiences in the Sunday Observer in September 1987. "So when Sri Lankan film director Manik Sandrasagra extended an invitation to spend the summer holidays in Sri Lanka helping in the completion of a three-part television series about the legends of Kataragama, I gladly took the bait. Little did we know what would arise from this little work of ours. 'Our work' in the sense that many have been contributing for a long, long time. We were all devotees of God, in one form or another. All just do what comes naturally.

"Not only Manik, but also others, like Farmer Mudiyanse Tennekoon, have allowed me to accompany them to places like Munneswaram and Kataragama. Through them, I was introduced to many facets of traditional lore, and came to meet other like-minded people, all luminaries in their own light, all models of humanity.

"I spent long days and evenings in the company of characters like Selladurai, Kumaravelu, Sam Wickramesinghe and Bhikkhu Nyanakhetto. Often we would just sit cross-legged by the light of a campfire or oil lamp, exchanging stories and jokes, of which not infrequently I was the butt. Just to understand all the stories, puns and remarks, one would have to know at least three languages.

And yet, however simple they might be, everybody drank their fill at these beggar's banquet - wit and common sense, not sophistication, are what distinguishes this community of seers and jokers. They are called Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims, Christians or frauds by others, but they all speak a common langauge and discuss the same issues. As diverse and motley as their appearance might be, they all share in a common deep-seated faith in the ultimate harmony of all things. For them, there is justice inherent in everything that happens, and real conflict is nowhere to be found. They recognize that we are all Muslims, surrendered from the very beginning to the will of the One Being. On this sublime plane, all conflicts are resolved".

Patrick was my alter ego.; German Swami had crafted it so. His was the pen and mine was the voice. Together we would keep the torch lit even after the others had gone.

We were hooked from 1971 and Swami knew it. His letter to me confirms this. At Trincomalee all our friends met the pilgrimage that I had brought down from Jaffna. Now my job was done. Patrick would take over the rest of the pilgrimage and become my partner in this journey. Later he would become the first and only doctoral student at Berkely's prestigious South Asian studies department to be told just prior to submitting his thesis that his views based on the oral tradition was unacceptable to them.

He left the US and would spend the rest of his time here and in India. Denzil Kobbekaduwa, Clancy Fernando and British High Commissioner David Gladstone and his wife April met us at Swami Rock and attended our pujas. I got to Swami Rock in three Morris Minor taxis packed with pilgrims in order that we meet the awaiting dignitaries. At that time there were only 15 pilgrims in our group. The police stopped us on our way to Swami Rock and asked us to clear the road as thousands of pilgrims were due any moment. We told the police that we were the pilgrims!

Murugan's kingdom

When we got to Kataragama the pilgrimage had grown to 60 pilgrims. Ignorant sections of a straight-laced media displaying an urban mindset based on a false morality and paranoia that did not understand the ways of the mischievous Kataragama God chastised me for flying around in helicopters. In fact a COMPAR review of the Pada Yatra sent to WACC stated the following:

"The overwhelming question is, did the Pada Yatra lose its pristine spirit on account of the rather sophisticated trappings like paid commercial advertisements and helicopter travel by the organizers?" However, the pilgrims thought it magic that God had provided helicopters and planes to facilitate the Yatra. Urban sentiments are alien to true devotees, and as a result of the 1988 revival, in 2001 some 10,000 pilgrims walked to Kataragama, with no help or inducement from politicians and with hardly any noise in the media.

The next year we expected many more, and that was reason for us to appeal to Foreign Minister Tyronne Fernando, who already knew of the Pada Yatra and our work. He had addressed us in 1992 when he delivered the Sixth Ananda Coomaraswamy Oration.

He had visited Ulpotha Sanctuary that we founded, designed and built. He had met David Bellamy with whom we made the series 'Routes of Wisdom'. Now Tyronne saw the opportunity for Sri Lanka to benefit from the Pada Yatra and its wisdom culture, and agreed that the Foreign Ministry should facilitate the 2002 Pada Yatra. Patrick Harrigan returned from South India where he was adding all the other Murugan shrines to our rapidly growing portfolio of 'Living Heritage' web sites. We entered into a strategic partnership with the Galadari Hotel thanks to the vision of the truly Sri Lankan Manager Chandra Mohotti, and we were given telephones thanks to Lanka Bell.

We needed little more. We now do not need to persuade people and offer them inducements to join the Yatra. Last year over 30,000 pilgrims are said to have walked the yatra and this year we expect many more with our own group which walks first consisting of over 350 pilgrims with Patrick in the lead in his 16th Pada Yatra.

Our efforts were to show others this sacred tradition and instill upon would be pilgrims the ethic of the walk. This is not a picnic. It is a spiritual exercise. Sri Lanka desperately needs re-education as it enters a new phase of peace. Every religion has failed. The teachers have failed.

We have replaced spirituality with materialism, and have more faith in theory than in practice. Paid advertisements and hype have replaced truth, while the Reign of Quantity that Rene Guenon warned of is now embedded and we ourselves witness the disintegration of civilization as we knew it and replace it with deceit and lies. Saiva Siddhanta Jaffna and village Lanka have always been another world. Sri Lanka has several different worlds.

This is part of our cultural diversity that needs protection as much as our bio-diversity. Preserving the difference should be the real war cry and the renewal of wisdom alone the victory, for God forbid what an illusory peace can bring in its wake - uniformity, mass-mediocrity and plastic.

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