My first spontaneous interaction with my Sri Lankan neighbours came on my second day in the country. I walked up the road to the East, past the IT Centre and Indrani’s shop and into the jungle. When I turned around, a group of locals called me over to the side of the road where they were decorating a large wooden cylindrical structure.
The group grew quickly as the men called for a daughter who spoke English well. ‘It’s a game for New Year called katuru onchillawa,’ she told me when she arrived. ‘You must come back on the 14th.’ I looked over the contraption trying to understand its purpose. Spokes protruded in 4 places to create 4 parallel wheels on a single hub, which were in turn quartered by four thick poles. The men were joining the middle two wheels in a circular ladder and tying long folded leaves to the rims.
When I walked past again the following day, the men were bending long pulpy wood segments to ring the central section. They held up some string on the quartering poles and I understood that these were to be seats. That would mean that the central section was a hamster wheel for someone to turn the whole system.
I missed the 14th because I was at the Kalutara festival, but I returned as soon as I could. The locals saw me and called for all the families from the area to come and join. Soon I was sitting in one of the seats along with 7 others and a thin man was running us around. He only lasted 5 minutes before needing a break, so I offered to have a turn. Then the hilarity began.
Here was a strange white man, taking the central role of the game, trying to run on the spot in a device designed for people with a much shorter stride. I began to lose my stride and imagined that if I stopped suddenly, centripetal force would send me over the top like a cartoon mouse. I’m guessing that I only lasted two minutes, urged on by cries of ‘Come on, come on!’, before I was flat on my face in a pool of sweat. The previous man then seemed like a marathon runner.