Wanderers in Eternity – Chapter 9 (Page 1)
9
ALL
1993
There was a celebration in the village named Bisoweva in the Yan Oya valley where thirty new houses had been built and several dislocated families and orphans were settled in as residents. The entire environment appeared refreshed and new washed clean by the previous night’s rain. Still there were dew drops on the grass and upon the trees. While the sun was gradually rising and while so many were participating in the activities of the celebration whole heartedly, Ajith who was among them felt very restless.
In an open space beyond housing scheme, the chairs and mast placed in rows were all occupied to capacity by people that had arrived from near and far. Beyond this area under the shade of the trees were more people listening and watching. They were all facing a wooden stage where there were several speakers. Some of them had come all the way from Colombo and other far off areas. Some had worked very hard to bring this project to fruition.
Ajith who was seated in a chair amidst the crowd looked at his parents and his older sister and her husband. He still felt an emptiness. They were not here yet.
An army brigadier named Weerarathna started to talk. “Today is the day that the flowers are blossoming in the dreams born out of this project. Now we are getting aid not only from our own people but from many other countries to rebuild the villages that were destroyed just like this one was. Like I mentioned before, we are not doing any of this hoping to gain profit, publicity of fame. Our only aim is to do some service to our people. today I feel like we have won. We did not win today by fighting with weapons such as bombs and guns. Our victory is what we can do to help these orphans and the displaced to stand on their own. Our victory is being able to tell the world what these people have suffered through. Winning hearts is the victory. Winning hearts is not something we can do by fighting with weapons…”
After this, Ajith did not hear most of what the speaker said. Ajith got involved in the rebuilding of the villages project because of reverend Subuthi. His service done with relentless courage and dedication was not for a particular race or a religion. This was a service to the entire mankind.
Ajith came to realize how very little the people in Colombo and the South knew about what was really going on in the Northern war only after he had started working with reverend Subuthi. The last few years he had spent with those who had come from far away places, helping the displaced and the orphans from the war by providing them with housing, clothing and money and rebuilding the road of the North Central, North East, and the east, were the most productive years of his entire life.
I there was any good he could do in this lifetime, which was only one stopping in his journey through eternity, he was ready and willing to do that. He also learned to meditate under the guidance of reverend Subuthi. Through relaxation and self hypnosis he brought his mind to one pointedness and learned about several of his previous lives. Just as he was the Tamil man named Sundaram in his last ;ife, he found out that in many other lifetime, he had been born into many different races, believing in many different religions and practices. He lost his pride of being born to a particular race in this lifetime. He realized that he belonged to the human race but not to a particular branch of it which man had created out of his ego. He also realized that men were fighting and killing each other, they were putting down each other and hurting and torturing each other because of an ignorance of not understanding the temporary nature of these thought attachments. Thanks to reverend Subuthi Ajith was no more attached to one lifetime.
It was true that Janaki was his daughter in one lifetime. But in so many different lives, how many different attachments he must have made? he wondered. He realized what was important in this journey through eternity was not the attachments but the separation from those attachments. Now his whole life was spent in helping others.
He helped in the rehabilitation of the Tamil prisoners of war. Some of them were learning meditation from reverend Subuthi. They also learned to took into their past lives. They realized that the race they were born to in this lifetime was not theirs to hold onto forever.
During this time, Ajith got very close to Vasantharaja who was in the Vauniya prison camp. After the hypnotic regression session, Vasantharaja also realized that in his previous life he had been Ajith’s older brother named Lionel.