How could such a mundane event as crossing the road measure up as one of the supreme moments of my life? At this point, just to gain your own understanding of what I’m talking about, you must watch this video clip of someone in India named Kumar crossing the street.

 

Watching the video and feeling the emotion rise up within you, you can almost feel your whole life flash before your very eyes as your breath catches and you struggle to control your flight instinct.  Fear and the desire to freak-out rise up within you as you watch but the truth is that in real life, it is ten times worse.  The sounds, smells and turbulent air thrust against you by noisy, rushing trucks belching black smoke add to the confusion and you find yourself having to desperately grasp for some idea or plan that will enable you to survive the experience.  But what?

What the people who live on the sub-continent tell you is that you need good luck to be safe.  Actually, you need the best of luck, the kind of luck that is only attainable as part of local religious activity.  If you are in India, the Hindu rites can help.  If you’re a Buddhist in Sri Lanka, and you’ve accumulated enough Merit, as the Sri Lankans call it, you’ll get across that road unscathed.  Earning that Merit isn’t so easy for a Sri Lankan as it may require a pilgrimage to the tomb of Buddha’s tooth. Frankly, the concept of a lucky tooth getting you safely across the road runs quite contrary to my upbringing, to say nothing of my keenly honed reflexes for fight or flight.

As a youngster growing up in England, I got my introduction to the correct method of crossing the road in school.  In my class, the subject of “Crossing The Road” was given due respect and was taught as Safety First for Children.  With baited breath and eyes wide, we learned about the Belisha Beacon and the Zebra Crossing and that their sole purpose on earth was to save children’s lives.  For those of you unfortunate enough to have grown up in America, let me explain.  A Zebra Crossing is a pedestrian crossing of alternately painted black and white stripes (vague but child-friendly reminders of a zebra’s stripes). Remember the cover photo of The Beatles, “Abbey Road” album?  They were crossing the road on a Zebra Crossing.  The Belisha Beacon is a black and white pole with a flashing orange ball on the top.  It was named after Leslie Hore-Belisha, the Minister of Transport in England who started putting them up all over the world in 1934. 

In my school days, in case I was ever called upon to cross a real road, I had learned by heart the mantra that was taught to all road-crossing children in England, “Look right, look left, then look right again before you cross the road.”  This we repeated in class as often as any multiplication table and we drilled it on the playgrounds until we became experts.  If there were an Olympic event called “Road Crossing”, England would win all the medals. As youngster I was never certain as to which was left and which was right so my mother helped me out by sewing tags that said L and R on my mittens.   Thus, I hoped never to have to cross a road when it was too warm for gloves.  That’s exactly what fate led me to, a road crossing experience in Indian heat.  What rotten luck.

From Calcutta to Colombo, Zebra Crossings abound but incredibly, what they mean seems open to local interpretation.  Quite an amazing concept, local interpretation, and one that tears at the very roots of my formal British education and thorough grounding in the technology of how to cross the road.  In Sri Lanka, where road rules are often taken as suggestions rather than the law of the land.  To many devoted Sri Lankans, especially the road crossing types, the Tooth of Buddha is worth more than all the volumes of legal mumbo jumbo stacked on shelves in their supreme court.  With the luck bestowed upon them after visiting the Temple of the Tooth, they can safely cross any road they wish.  I left the Galle Face Hotel one evening and decided to cross the main road. View the Kumar video again http if you need a reminder of what I experienced.  In the oppressive heat of the Colombo night, I had no mittens to guide me.

Sri Lanka is and has been many things to many people. That’s part of the problem. It is a large, beautiful, tropical island off the East coast of India. The island has a long history of strife and violence, warring local kings and waves of colonial invaders.  Like most newly independent former British colonies, it seems to have mixed emotions about its colonial past, despising parts of it, including, I suspect, the history of Zebra Crossings and Belisha Beacons.

 

A train ride from Colombo, the capitol city exposed me to an old and decrepit railway system that still works.  Bursting with passengers packed back to back and belly to belly, the ancient trains creak and groan their way past the tea plantations, and elephant orphanages until they arrive at the jewel of Sri Lanka’s Buddhist crown, Kandy.  The main attraction is the Temple of the Tooth.  Legend has it that when Lord Buddha died in Kusinara, India, some 2500 years ago, among his Sandalwood cremated remains, some of his teeth were found intact.

 

The devoted followers of the Buddha eventually attributed great powers to his right lower molar which found its way to Sri Lanka. The tooth is now safely in its shrine in The Temple of the Tooth, where thousands of visitors file past its casket every week.  While the tenets of Buddhism do not call for the worshiping of a god or creator, there is no doubt that the mere presence of the tooth as a religious relic of the Buddha evokes a passion in many of his followers. On visiting the tooth relic, some simply collapse, overwhelmed with joy or deep emotion while others make offerings which they pray will bring them good fortune. I simply wanted good luck as I knew I would be crossing many roads in my life.  I got it.

Geoffrey

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