Meditations

An old Sinhalese woman handed me her prayer beads when I was on a train returning from my mother’s funeral in the hills of Nuwara Eliya. I was twenty and working in Colombo, and thought I had grown out of such childhood comforts as tears. Streaks of vibooti lined my forehead from the temple, and the gesture of her beads was unusual, but I accepted them, too run down with grief to refuse. And when they sat in my hands like a sullen worm, she moved my thumb clockwise and spoke to me in quiet Sinhala, and though I understood only pieces of her words, I could tell she wanted me to pray.