Kanda-kanda
bangalhis
"Whose
coconut tree is this?"
Asked
the Bodu-sarudaaru with a hiss.
"It’s
mine," said a man, "and nothing is amiss."
"Will
you give up the tree for this?"
"No"
said the man, for it was his,
"Give
it or not, it would be kanda-kanda-bangalhis"
*
* *
The
ancient Maldivians did never fight
But
slew seven kings in one night
And
ruled the land with a might.
*
* *
A
child who danced for Mohamed Farid
And
loved to play and feed
Did
become today’s Abdul Rasheed.
*
* *
The
Greek philosopher Aflaatoon
Came
to the world as a boon.
He
once saw a racoon
And
found in it the entire nature’s Kaanoon.
*
* *
The
blind man caught a crow by night,
One
that was missed by the daylight.
*
* *
Milk
is often withheld from a child who never cries
And
attention to a man who frequently lies.
*
* *
Simmie
the cat in the sun, on a Sunday noon
Lay
warming himself like a quarter moon.
*
* *
A
"Parrot Scholar" learns by rote
What’s
in a book or any Quote.
His
pen is ever ready to make a note
Of
any sound that comes out of a teacher’s throat
*
* *
The
scratching fowl finds no particular appeal
In
a diamond that turns up with an onion peel!
*
* *
Darkness
is dispelled by a light that’s bright
But
a fire is never put out by dynamite
Two
wrongs never make a right
Thus,
is hatred countered by love, not a fight.
*
* *
Author’s
annotation:
"Kanda-kanda-bangalhis"
was Maldivian child’s idiom of the early to mid-twentieth
century and meant cutting down a tree with vigour and
felling it with much noise. "Bodu-sarudaaru"
literally means "big-foreman". The particular
Bodu-sarudaaru in Abdul Rasheed’s verse was an actual
person, an over-zealous employee of the Maldives government
in Malé in the mid-twentieth century, and the verse
was based on historical fact. Mohamed Farid,
a distant cousin of ours, was our paternal Aunt Tuttudon
Goma’s and our first cousin Fowziyya’s brother-in-law,
later to become Sultan and reigned until the monarchy
was abolished in 1968. He was a frequent guest at our
house until he died. "Aflaatoon" was
the Arabic, and Maldivian name for the Greek philosopher
Plato. "Kaanoon" literally means Canon
or Law