Easter

Easter Sunday dawned on Germany, exactly as bright and promising as such a metaphor for Christ’s resurrection should be. The same had happened around four hours earlier in Sri Lanka. Separated by a difference of mere hours, people in these two countries prepared for the Pascha in both similar and different ways. Eyes blinked open, teeth were brushed and for those Christians amongst the populace I imagine there was the donning of the Sunday Best, pressed shirts and special occasion shoes brought out as the first ritual on this holiest of holy days.

This was where Sri Lanka and Germany started to differ. Traffic in Sri Lanka remained as unruly as ever and the citizens navigated their way through the dust and the fumes in sandals. In Munich, where I was waking up to the prospect of finally unwrapping my chocolate bunny, Easter was a quiet affair, the streets more empty than normal for a Sunday. Two countries, three and a half hours apart, similar but different, with little to bring either to the attention of the other.

And then Sri Lanka was connected to every other country in the world in the worst possible way.

“Bomb blasts reported at Sri Lankan churches and hotels,” flashed the news bulletin. It was a one line snippet, a cursory summary of the overnight news, something that usually revolved around non-developments in Brexit and was anodyne enough to wake up to. This, however, was different. This news story came from the country of my parents’ birth, the country where I spent my summers and where my grandmother and aunts, uncles and cousins still lived. Suddenly Sri Lanka was transmitting distress signals to every country in the world after a series of terrorist attacks.

Frantic calls ensued. Yes, everyone we knew was fine. No, no one knew if there were more bombs. Yes, everyone would stay at home. And then after I hung up what was there left but to click refresh on the news? Pictures of bloodied buildings and broken windows were familiar from reports of Middle Eastern conflicts but how many times had I scrolled past these with a mere shake of the head? And now the pictures were of familiar road junctions, places I had been to lunch and worst of all, wailing women, who looked terribly liked loved ones. The lead horror story on the news was my own personalised cross to bear.

I sat with my phone in my hand feeling utterly powerless. What could I do from Munich of all places? After the 2004 tsunami, another awful occasion when Sri Lanka made world headlines, I remember heading to the local temple to help with packaging goods for the relief effort. Natural disasters lend themselves to boy scout-like manouveres and bake sales to boost aid funds. Terrorism, however, casts a different shadow on the aftermath. Carnage caused by human hand is doubly superfluous. There is no physical or meteorological inevitability to it, just pure malice. So what was I to do with an excess of emotion and no real outlet for it? I did what thousands of Sri Lankans had done a few hours earlier - I went to church.

This is how I, a British-Sri Lankan Buddhist, found myself walking beneath the pepperpot towers of Munich’s emblematic church, Frauenkirche, in order to attend the Easter service. On the outside it would seem utterly unremarkable to see a slightly nervous, brown-skinned woman walking into the Frauenkirche but for me it was my own personal fuck you to the terrorists that had sought to deter Sri Lankans from attending religious services.

Of course, the practicalities of attending a foreign-language church service conducted in an echoing hall proved challenging. Straight off I made a rookie mistake by hurrying to the pews without collecting a hymn book. This meant I stayed silent for all the songs, something my school music teacher would have found intolerably rude. Unaware of quite what was going on or what the priest was saying meant that I spent most of the service anxiously looking at the elderly couple next to me for cues as to when I should stand or sit or sing. Both appeared to be suffering from osteoarthritis though and thus, stayed sitting for the majority of the mass. Unwittingly following their lead, I too stayed seated, when I could have easily knelt or stood. Again I fear to think how insolent it looked like from a devotee’s point of view. I only pray God didn’t take it personally. In the end I gave up on trying to copy cat the congregation and closed my eyes, concentrating on my thoughts.

As I sat there a male voice called out lines of prayer in a disconcertingly high-pitched alto. These lines were followed by a rumbling “amen” from the audience, a call and response interlude that brought wandering minds back to the present. As I refocused on the content I heard the priest sing out a prayer for the people of Sri Lanka, Christians and non-Christians alike. Suddenly two very different parts of my personal history were connected, united through heinous circumstances but the concluding message being that of love.

I imagine Sri Lanka featured in quite a few Easter sermons across the world that day. I wonder if the terrorists could have anticipated that? Their will to destruct people and their faith had in actual fact sparked solidarity in so many different countries and across different religions. Small skeins of support and messages of love had been cast to Sri Lanka from places as far removed as Bavaria. What a repudiation to those who sought to destroy. The world is more connected and supportive than ever.

Amen.