Meet Samuel, who linked the Sinhalese village and a “Laima”

Nimal Abesinghe

With the stature to match his physique, this giant of a man possessed arms of steel. Stiff was his means of walking. Sporting a white cross strung around the neck with a black yarn combined with his ever-present smile, sporting his pearly whites gave him the impression of a Catholic priest.

Samuel is of Tamil descent and had won many a heart in Sinhalese villages in the Kegalle area and was a well-known, loved character among the village folk. Almost everyone was privy to the fact that he wouldn’t utter a single word to hurt or make another person feel bad. 

He lived in a “Laima”, a closely built line of houses which almost gave the impression of a small colony which was about seven villages away from ours. His day starts well before dawn as he sets foot en route to perform his duties as a well-skilled lumberjack. 

It was almost a daily hobby of the children and youngsters of the villages to observe him at his place of work. As they get ready to fell a tree, he always makes it a point to not let his second in command climb the tree and cut and drop branches and such. 

“Brother, wait! I will climb the tree. When we cut down the next one you can climb that one no?” is a common phrase you can hear him say just before work begins. But never does he let the other person climb the tree as he always takes on the risky, energy-consuming tasks for himself to spare others the trouble. 

“Samuel, it is always you who climbs trees. Let me do this one!” says Gamarala, his second in command.

“No brother….you have kids and all that also. I got this!” was his response to his partner showing his familiar and endearing smile. 

Samuel climbs the tree and cuts off branches and drops them down with great skill and precision. It also comes naturally to him to drop branches and such to the ground without harming, damaging or even touching another tree. But if his usual audience of village kids are present at the scene, he almost never forgets to shake a branch or two in a way where the nearby king coconut tree drops a few ripe ones down for his audience to enjoy. Even before Samuel descends the tree, ignoring the earful the Gamarala is handing them, the children eagerly proceed to collect and clean the king coconuts and drain the sweet nectar and eat the fruit inside as well. 

“Oi! Children, at least keep one for Samuel to drink too without finishing it all!” says Samuel’s friend, the Gamarala.

“No brother, that is okay. Let them finish up all the coconuts. Let’s you and I heat up some tea for ourselves”

After carefully trimming and dropping down all the branches and leaves, Samuel proceeds to slide down the rope tied to the top of the tree heading towards the ground giving the impression of a well-skilled circus performer. By the time he reaches the ground, Gamarala has already set up a makeshift stove with three large stones and some firewood and boiled a clay pot full of water ready for tea. 

Samuel is now on the ground and dusting himself off with his hands and cleaning up. Once he is done he walks straight to the tree branch where he had previously kept a loaf of bread safely wrapped in newspaper and retrieves it. He then cuts it in two and hands Gamarala the bigger of the two pieces and proceeds to devour it as it is. A well-earned meal after, he adds tea leaves to the boiling pot and brews the tea and pours some into a coconut cup (a scraped out coconut half, turned into the cup) and hands it over to Gamarala and pours himself one as well and enjoys it with some sugar on his palm. One teacup later, he lights up a “Beedi” (hand-rolled tobacco) and enjoys the smoke, the ringlets his smoke is making, and the clouds moving by in the sky. 

While all this is happening elsewhere, the children have now taken over the work area and are taking turns riding a makeshift swing made out of the rope which is tied to the trimmed tree. Samuel never had an enemy in any of the villages nearby or far. Whenever there is a “Thoivil” (demon repelling ceremony/ritual) he is always the one to volunteer to offer one of his chickens as a sacrifice. When there is a wedding in a village close by, he always makes it a point to gift them a full harvest of bananas from one of his trees. 

Samuel never forgets to visit his friend Gamarala’s house during Sinhala and Tamil new year along with a banana harvest almost as tall as him as a gift. The bond and friendship existing between the two of them were unmatched. He also maintained equally strong relationships with almost all the villagers. He was Samuel to the adults and to the children of the villages lovingly dubbed him Uncle Samuel. Apart from the obvious information and his whereabouts, no one really knew or had the need to know about him further. This person who hails from the “Udakanda Laima” located in the Pindeniya estate was close as family to everyone who knew him

About 10 – 15 years pass by and Samuel is compelled to leave this area and move a bit far off to continue his profession there. Whenever he returned to see his friends, he always wore a familiar smile all the time. It is not a secret that he enjoyed and cherished the love and care he received from almost every Sinhalese person he knew in the villages. 

As time passes by Samuel’s visits reduce gradually and then suddenly stop. It was then his friend Gamarala and one of his sons decided to go find Samuel and the reason for his disappearance. They walk all the way to Pindeniya estate and finally arrive at Udakanda and there they start looking for Samuel’s “Laima”. With the mention of Samuel’s name, the people around direct them to a 10×10 foot room. The only difference in this house was that it was cleaner than the others but the other aspects remained pretty much the same, and here they find an elderly lady.

She observes them carefully as they walk into her home.

“Where is Samuel? I am a good friend of his” said the Gamarala. 

“Oh….Brother, you are a friend of my husband? It has been more than three months since he passed away. He suddenly had a heart attack. He passed away even before we could take him to the hospital.” She says

Tears filled the Gamarala’s and his son’s eyes upon hearing this immediately going on a journey down memory lane. 

“Take a seat brother. We have no idea about his friends, many people came in search of him. It has been three months since they did. We had no idea that he had so many friends.”

Further along into the conversation, they find out more details about Samuel which they had no idea about. It seems that Samuel and his wife had lived a very joyful life and enjoyed every bit of it without any fights or arguments. Even if he smoked the occasional Beedi, He never engaged in any illicit activity or chose to take any intoxicants. Whenever Samuel takes a chicken from his wife’s coop and whenever he takes a harvest of bananas from his wife’s farm, he never pays her for either. If she questions this from him at all, the response would be “Amma, the right hand should not know what the left hand gave no?”. He never really answered her straight when she brought it up. An era where the words “peace” and “reconciliation” were unheard of, a society filled with the likes of Samuel and Gamarala, A time where everyone truly lived in harmony. There are countless times I wonder how and when I can go back in time to an era as Samuel’s and cherish the level of understanding and love people had for one another. 

(Based on true incidents that occurred between 1970 – 1980)

சமல்; சிங்கள கிராமத்தை தமிழ் லயன் வீடுகளுடன் இணைத்த ஒரு மனிதர்

සිංහල ගමත් ලැයිමත් යාකළ සාමෙල්