Quis ut Deus

Batticaloa lagoon and Mississippi

I sometimes wonder to what extent the Batticaloa lagoon would have reminded Father of the mighty Mississippi; in the environs where he was born and raised. The network of mangroves, shrimps, crabs, clams, mussels, fresh water fish; the rich sediments each flood water brings to enrich the surrounding paddy fields; the fishermen clutching their lanterns and nets for their nightly catch. Being an accomplished player of saxophone, trumpet and anything in between, would he had sensed the ‘second line’ drumming and the ‘blues’ type musical melodies from the many literary musicals staged in the surrounding villages across the lagoon. The calm nightly breeze over the reflective lagoon did always contain the desire to carry those musical melodies in its wings – probably its path included the 2nd story Jesuit residences at St. Michael’s College, with little resistance. These are some of the remnants of tantalizing memories that would always linger around.

Back in the Pacific, somewhat geographically in between Sri Lanka and the United States, the lost American souls off Pearl Harbor are being remembered through the oil droplets from the still leaking fuselages of the sunken ships, named as ‘black tears’. River Mississippi has its own ‘black tears’ - some through the act of God, like the hurricanes and others through man-made oil spillages in the Gulf.

Underneath the green algae and certainly below the gently overlapping, white frothy waves, the Batticaloa lagoon conveniently hides an inconvenient truth. When would it get redeemed from the ‘black tear’ - the still languishing question on a gentle soul that disappeared closer to its shores? 

Written by B. Nimal Veerasingham