Aloysius Hettiarachchi

Continuing with the above theme on which we all seem to be affected one way or another in our everyday life, I would like to give my own explanation as given below. This includes my own belief on ‘Rahu Kalaya’, and the extraordinary  climate changes that we all are experience all over the world as of today:

In the recent past we had very hot weather and we saw some prestressed concrete beams placed on top of piers on a part of the central expressway suddenly collapsing. Since the contractor who carried out the construction works was a well experienced one with good reputation, certainly it can not be attributed to a construction fault. Few days ago, similar thing has happened in Germany where a section of their autobahn which was pride of their engineering skills (on which I will elaborate later in this write up) come crashing down. A couple of years before that another section of their autobahn crashed with many fatalities. They attributed that catastrophic disaster to design error to a bearing pad on one of the piers to support the concrete beam. Perhaps that too was wrong. In Germany they have gloomy weather conditions without high temperatures. But the clouds in the sky or moisture in the air doesn’t seem to stop what is being sent by the sun god, and I have some proof of  this which I plan to discuss with our academics if they are interested, later on.

Now about the Raahu Kalaya, only we Sri Lankans seem to be talking about and trying to avoid on important occasions. This is my personal experience on that mysterious phenomenon:

One day in the early fifties, I must have been around 8 years old and my little siter about three at the time, around 6.30 pm, my mother sent me to fetch something from my aunt who was living couple of hundred meters away from our wattle and daub house (there are some advantages in living in that kind of dwellings as opposed to concrete or baked bricked ones as described in my previous write ups in this forum). When I returned no one was in the house. My sister had walked to the kitchen where she had fallen with head into a hot water container. Few days later she had died in a hospital. I can attribute this accident to something that came from the heavens that disturbed everybody’s minds resulting in her death. My father was very upset and was trying to find why it happened. Though a Catholic, he had some belief that the Buddhist priest in the village across the river may have some explanation. What he had made my father to believe is that, it is her karma that had affected her and that he should protect the other children by getting their charts read and do some ‘shanthi karma’. He also was to make some protection around the house we lived in. He had then assigned someone to come and carry out his instructions. Few days later we saw one elderly gentleman coming and spreading mustard seeds (aba seeds) around the house while chanting something, quietly . A couple of weeks later there were thousands of mustard plants around the house. We let them grow to full height and wilt away. So, that was ‘aba sarana’ that we hear often these days.  In my view it should not be taken to be a joke as whatever he did protected all of us till this day from accidents or evil deeds of others.  Everything happened exactly how that gentleman predicted in our charts (one exercise book for each) in coloured pen. His writing style had stark similarity of that of my father’s (veda akuru) who used to write to governments on behalf of those in the village, always bringing positive results. This also is a pointer to the fact that colonial governments tried to educate those in the villages, but it may be our leaders at the time that may have obstructed it purposely or inadvertenly.

 I am not trying to popularise the craft practised by astrologers, ola leaf readers, etc. etc. in any way, but giving a narrative exactly how it happened.

Now about Highways and Autobahns:

Autobahns have been created around mid-80s to prove the excellence of German Engineering skills where they could test the ultimate driving machine- BMW and the Mercs, it seems. They would hit 240-250km/h range on it.

I was employed in a wealthy South East Asian country to supervise a road project which was already designed, tendered and awarded. Every household in that county had many cars, BMWs included, and good roads were a pleasure to drive on. However, when I saw the drawings after assuming duties, what I noticed was that the alignments were not suitable for that kind of driving. And I offered to redesign if the owner of the company could give me the software used for the original design. Unfortunately, the guy who designed the road had left the company with the software package with him, perhaps it was not an authentic one. The authentic software available at the time was one British product (developed by English guys known as three musketeers) costing around US$ 380,000. Since my boss said he could not afford that amount of money, I offered to use my skills gained in Sri Lanka in an AI language called LISP. The job was done, the project completed on schedule. I developed my package to included the horizontal alignment as well. This was used to design a section of a Highway/Expressway. Though it was designed for a speed of 120 km/h the guys with BMWs and Mercs would do double that. Within a period of 15 years on that four-lane highway there was only one fatal accident, that too when the driver had fallen sleep in the wee hours in the morning. The Lagos-Ibadan expressway in Nigeria that was constructed aa few years before where they were also doing similar speeds was known as a slaughterhouse (like our Sothern Expressway which actually can be rectified with minimal costs). I am not sure about the statistics of the Autobahn. But I give below the link to a video the drivers doing 240 on autobahn listened to while driving on it. They were proud of their resurgence and technical prowess. They sing about a Lotus blume. Lotus is one of our national symbols, too; it portrays excellence.