The Grand Canyon painted green

Aditha DISSANAYAKE

Ever wondered how the Grand Canyon would look if there were trees in it - trees, lakes and bushes of tea in every shade of green imaginable? Wonder no more. Make it to Haputale on a clear day, travel along the Dambethanna road for 1 km and you will see it - a sight more beautiful than a picture or more breathtaking than a painting of Monet, Turner or Cezanne.

Yes, you too would be as breathless as I am, as I raise my eyes upwards and search the horizon trying to identify Ambilipitiya, Lunugamvehera, Handapanagala and the light blue line which might indeed be the Indian Ocean ever so far away.

Breathless too, like me, when you move your eyes downwards to look at the precipice only a few inches away from your feet, so deep it reminds you of an image of a crater on the moon.

Looking down at the tiny white spots 5000 feet below me, I recall a scene in an Indiana Jones movie where passersby stand peering into a deep ravine thinking Jones had fallen into it, and has breathed his last, when he suddenly appears behind the crowd and taps one in the back to ask what they are so solemnly gazing at down below.

Just as I begin to smile recalling the smug look on Jones’ face, someone taps me too, on the shoulder. I jump, backwards (had I done otherwise I would not be here to tell you the rest of the story) almost into the arms of an elderly gentleman - my host - who has so graciously invited me to experience the cool, lugubrious surroundings of the Haputale mountain range on this brilliant sun kissed day.

Ganaraja Rajakrishnan, who prefers to call himself an ‘agriculturist’ who loves the soil and who believes like Thoreau “we can never have enough of nature”, points his finger at the eastern sky and tells me there, on that far mountain top called Poonagala is the famous Lipton’s seat, the favorite view point of Sir Thomas Lipton. He wonders aloud if I have seen the Bogoda Bridge, which is about 40 km away from Haputale.

When I shake my head to say no he says, the bridge said to be built during the 16th Century has a wooden roof over it and is considered the oldest surviving wooden bridge in the world. He ends his lecture with an accusation.

“Sri Lanka is such a small country, but you have not even visited half of it”. I make a pledge to myself as well as to my host that I will remedy the situation as soon as time permits. “Good” he nods in approval.

“When you come next time I will show you a tunnel built by British soldiers which is said to run underground from Haputale all the way to Ella”. Has he been inside? “No” he gives one of his rare smiles. “No one who goes inside has ever come back”. Perhaps they emerged at Ella and decided Ella is a far better place than Haputale and lived there happily ever after!

“No”, this time the answer comes from his assistant K Mervyn Perera who has worked as a field officer in almost all the tea estates surrounding Haputale. “This is the most beautiful place I have lived in,” Perera insists. He should know.

With over 57 years experience as a field officer, having worked with 27 European planters and an equal number of Sri Lankans, Perera recalls the ‘good ol’days’ when planters rode on horseback and kept an uncountable number of dogs as pets.

“One Manager had over 40 dogs who went around with him wherever he went. Another, a retired war veteran, P L Powell, always had a pipe in his mouth. He kept mumbling incomprehensible phrases and lost his temper if anyone dared to say “I beg your pardon”.

Perera shows me a row of roses he had planted way back in the early 1990s, roses which still look as young and healthy as though they were planted only a few months ago. “Can you think of a product made with the roots of roses?”

Since I am in tea country the first and the only answer I can think of is “rose tinted tea” - wrong answer. Not only wrong but far off the mark. When I give up he shows with gestures the act of smoking a pipe. There you have it. Pipes (the kind you smoke with) are made of rose roots.

Time to fall in step once more with my real life Thoreau. The sky which had till then looked like well worn denim, once dark, now faded into a lighter blue, suddenly turns gray. The mist descends on us like a white curtain as if Mother Nature’s magnificent performance has come to an end, but not my lessons on nature and the power of observation.

“Do you see those two patches of mist above those rocks?” He asks.

“Yes”.

“Do you see the difference between them?” He asks again.

“No”.

“Look closer”. When I still fail to see anything more he tells me. “The colour of the mist on your right is different from the colour on your left. This side is darker, the other side lighter”.

I lose my breath (again). As I watch the colours of the sky change, the colours of the landscape in front of me too begins to change: from dark green to light green to green-yellow.

Thus ends my day in Haputale with an unforgettable lesson etched into my mind. Observe. Look beyond the obvious. See what is really there instead of what is expected. Helen Keller hits the nail on the head when she said the biggest calamity that could fall on someone is “to have eyes and fail to see”. From now on, no cloud will ever be just a cloud. Thank you, Uncle Rajakrishnan.

[email protected]