“You have never seen such a beautiful topaz, have you?” a stubby man asks me with a shrewd smile. He is the first to speak up among the eager gem traders hanging around the mines.
“Nice stone.” I’m turning it, looking at its color, inclusions, then touch it to my cheek to feel its coolness. A tactic I have learned from my master, Sunil, who never gets tired of teaching me how to identify the stones correctly.
“This is a nice beryl, unfortunately it’s worth only one-tenth of topaz.” I give the stone back.
“She knows!” he laughs turning toward the others. Since that happened, news spread quickly of my advanced knowledge of stones, which is a strong exaggeration even now after fourteen years, when compared to that of Ratnapura’s gem miners.
However, I did visit most of the Gem City’s mines. I accompanied Sunil’s kattie to these mines with extreme diligence, which intrigued the Singhalese so they invited me time and time again. I have not only witnessed, but also experienced firsthand, that the whole process of gem mining in Sri Lanka has gone unchanged since the time of the Pharaohs. Nothing, in fact, except the usage of water pumps.
Unlike any other part of the world, gem mining is environmentally friendly here. They dig a two-meter wide, maximum 6-meter-deep pit and pad it with wood or bamboo, then cover it up afterwards.
Each member of a 5-6-person kattie has his own job to do. Two of them go down into the pit, one tears up the soil with an iron bar that’s end is hammered flat and sharp. The man beneath the earth collects and deposits the precious mud into small baskets and then throws it up to his partner who is standing on the scaffold, legs wide apart, for a few hours until they change roles. The one on the surface throws the empty basket back with the most efficient timing, orchestrating the two baskets to gracefully whip past each other with extreme precision. Being freed of their million-year-imprisonment in the depths of the earth, the first journey of the gems is a “flight of air” dance.
Every motion of the miners has been polished over thousands of years. However, tradition is much more than a collection of useful skills; it also shows how to live your life if you happen to be a sapphire-miner`.
Toward the end of the shift, for example, there is always someone who strikes up a song. Even in these moments, everybody takes an extra step, gives a little more than he really has to. That is part of the tradition too. One cannot hope for good fortune without a pure heart, presence in harmony with others, and the Gods.
