Boiling milk and worrying about the Iran war: A New Year dawns in Sri Lanka

A New Year began on April 14 for Sri Lankan Buddhists and Hindus. One custom is to boil fresh milk in a new clay pot and allow it to overflow, seen as a way of invoking blessings. Sanka Vidanagama/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Sanka Vidanagama/NurPhoto via Getty Images

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — In her home in a tidy working class alley, Shiranti Rambukkana has set up a literal bonfire in her narrow living room. At precisely 10:51 a.m. she strikes a match to get a fire going under the wooden kindling on a metal pan in her living room. She throws fire starters to feed the flames, and soon a clay pot of milk resting on bricks boils over — to bring on prosperity and good fortune in the New Year.

The day that marks the New Year differs from culture to culture. In this island tucked at the tail end of India, the Buddhist majority and Hindu minority celebrate on April 14. The date marks the end of on solar year and the start of another, according to local astrological traditions.

On this day, tradition holds that there are auspicious times to perform certain rituals to bring prosperity in the new year.

Those times are different each year –- astrologers decide when they should be, the Ministry of Culture announces them.

So for the New Year, nearly everyone does the same things at the same time.

And that's why Rambukkana lights her hearth for the boiling of the milk, facing southward and wearing red at exactly 10:51. Then her husband, Kasoun,covers his hands in towels and picks up the metal tray with the kindling, bricks and clay pot and places it outside. Time for the next ritual: she rushes back to the kitchen — a nook behind the staircase — and squeezes shredded coconut that she's been soaking to extract the milk. It goes into her rice cooker. That's for a traditional coconut rice dish that's eaten at 12:06 p.m.

There are other food rituals. Rambukkana's table groans with sweets —- from traditional fried lentil and rice flour balls smothered in sticky syrup, to shop-bought chocolate cakes. Her four children — ages 2 ½ to 22 — eye them but know not to touch. Much of the display will be plated and distributed to neighbors — Christians, Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists who live up and down the streets of this working class district of Maligawatta.

Being anointed with oil is part of the New Year's ceremony in mid-April for Buddhists and Hindus in Sri Lanka. Gayan Sameera/Xinhua News Agency via Getty Images

Gayan Sameera/Xinhua News Agency via Getty Images

The milk, the coconut, the sweets, the new clothes, the cash gifts for family — it cost her over $300 — all her year's savings. "I've been secretly saving money without my husband knowing," she laughs. She pulls out her cash from her bank — an empty tin of milk powder, a slot cut into it, and sealed furiously tight with tape.

Rambukkana says she had to show her kids a good New Year — "we wanted to celebrate this time" — because last year was so sad. Her brother had just died. Her husband was in the hospital for heart surgery. One of her daughters, an athlete, was offered a scholarship in Japan but they couldn't even afford basic expenses for her so they had to turn it down. Her medals hang on a hook above the table — 400 meters, 800 meters, long jump, netball, volleyball — anything she touches, she wins, her brother proudly boasts, as he takes them down and jangles them.

Saving became much harder for Sri Lankans after America and Israel declared war on Iran in late February. That's blocked a key shipping route, the Strait of Hormouz, and it's pushed up the price of fuel and of fertilizer. It's had a cascading impact in Sri Lanka, which relies on imported energy from the Gulf. And that's pushed up the price of everything.

So the Rambukkanas are eating less, because food is more expensive. They're opting for cheaper food: watery curries, dried fish, rice. They cook less, because she says, cooking gas cylinders are up 20%.

Still, they count themselves among the lucky ones. In Sri Lanka, the World Food Program says a third of all children are malnourished, and experts here say there'll be more hunger, and more poverty, as the war grinds on.

Rambukkana's toddler plays with her mum's phone as the minutes tick over. It's 12:06. Rambukkana pulls out her tray of coconut milk rice. It's the first food folks should eat on the New Year, symbolizing purity, peace, prosperity and abundance. Her husband scoops it with his fingers and pops a bit in Rambukkana's mouth, then in the mouths of their four children. They respectfully touch his feet. He gives them money – gifting is another New Year tradition.

An aunt walks in — she lives across the road. Indrani Rambukkana, 70, tells us she's watching her son and daughter-in-law cut themselves to the quick to keep up with rising prices. She tries not to lean on them too much, but she's got her own problems: her heart medicine used to be available for free at the government hospital. After the war began, it became scarce. Now she's got to buy it from pharmacies, with her precious, diminishing savings.

She tells us she doesn't speak English but does speak Farsi. Because for 20 years, she cared for an older Iranian woman who lived in the Gulf state of Bahrain. She still keeps in touch with the family. She says they're doing fine. "They don't have problems," she says. "We have the problems."