On the Joys of Living Next to a Buddhist Temple

The third weirdest place I've wandered to while drinking in a suit.

As anyone who's ever heard me talk knows, I like to whine about things.  I generally don't have any serious issues with the subjects of my bitching, for some reason it just makes me feel better to openly rant about whatever minutiae seems to be sticking in my craw at any given moment.  Which is why up until now my retelling of the various forms of noise pollution emanating from the Buddhist temple next door have remained playful and somewhat in jest.

Those days are behind us.  Forever.  Buddhist temple upped the ante, and I'm too stubborn to let them bluff me out of the game.

A couple nights ago, I sat in my hallway area having a little leftover kotthu for the fourth night in a row and enjoying the dulcet tones of monks praying over loudspeakers for hours on end.  After three straights nights of their aural assault, I had grown used to their incessant preaching and resigned myself to doldrumatically accept that I was eventually going to go mad as a direct result of their diligent proselytizing.  I polished off the kotthu and deftly avoided the rat who lives in my kitchen by throwing out the box from the safety of the stairs ten feet away (swish!).  Seeing as how I had to be up at 6am the next morning to get out to Ratnapura for a legal aid presentation, I chitter chatted online a bit and shut down a smidge earlier than normal.  The prayer speaker box kept droning on about this and that, so I buried my head between my pillow and my mattress and hunkered down for the night.  Shockingly, I was able to fall asleep with relative ease for what I assumed was to be a nice peaceful evening of sleep.

Then the Buddhists starting firing off a fucking cannon.

No. No, I'm not exaggerating.  Right around 2am, I stirred from peaceful rest mid-REM cycle to the unmistakable sounds of heavy artillery.  Apparently the prayers weren't reaching people, so the Buddhists decided to squeeze off a few mortal shells to let everyone know they meant business.  Buddha, as well armed as I had ever heard him, trumpeted his call across my bow about 2 more times, each shot shaking the house and rattling the teeth in my skull.   I awoke, confused and scared because I was pretty sure we stopped fighting cannon-firing pirates a long time ago, especially on land and in the comfort of my own bedroom, and quickly ascertained that I was going to die.  Thankfully this allowed me to make peace with my sins and lay back down, assured of my imminent destruction.  Shockingly at ease, I slipped back to sleep to await the inevitable, but the Buddhists decided to spare me.

For two hours.

Then of course, at the ever more reasonable hour of 4 in the frigging morning, the Buddhist monks vaulted a few more pecks of black powder in my general direction, most likely to remind me to support Buddha in the upcoming "Deity's Got Talent" competition airing later this month.  I would later learn that they weren't really firing projectiles, just blasting off cannons full of gunpowder cause they-like-a-da-pop, but it was no less bone-jarring to hear in the middle of the night.  My ears felt as if there were about to bleed.  I was dazed. I was confused. I was downright terrified.  I was so terrified, in fact, that I went directly back to sleep.

At this point you're probably thinking, jeez Eric, you're going to run around like a sissy everytime you spot a rat but you'll shake off cannon fire like it's a light rainfall?  The answer is yes - clearly I am more afraid of a rat scratch than I am of death by cannon fire.  This is because you survive a rat scratch, and then you have to deal with a whole host of annoying shit, like rabies shots, and going to a Sri Lankan hospital at midnight to get said rabies shots.  At least under heavy skirmish artillery I assumed I would be dead before I knew what happened.

That's what I like to call an end game scenario of risk assessment.  Since I am super unlikely to survive, I don't really need to worry about the consequences of my actions.  Like skydiving. If it goes south, I'm probably gonna die so I really don't have to regret my decisions for very long.  This is the same reason you won't catch me mountain climbing. Knowing me, I'll fall about 100 feet but survive, then get pinned under a tree or something and have to cut off my own arm in the woods, hauling my bloody stump for miles and miles through endless forest before help finds me emasciated and dehydrated three days later.

So yeah, when I heard cannon fire next door to my bedroom at 2 am, I rolled over and went back to sleep. Besides, what other option did I have? Go out in the hallway and deal with the rat?

Nooooo thank you.