Cave temple, Mulkirigala. Same sorta thing. With grease.
Grease Yakas, grease devils or bhuthaya are (mythical) men that grease themselves up and break into homes and either steal or rape/kill women. The police have said it’s a myth, but the rumor has been blazing around the inter and outer webs like, well, greased lightning. Sri Lankans have been tying suspects to trees, and now there are rumors that two people were killed in Haputale. I think this has gotten out of hand.
First off, is a greased up robber/rapist so much worse than a non-greasy one, or one that merely moisturizes? I remember reading in some children’s story about a robber who greased himself to become more slippery, thus eluding his captors. It’s not an especially new idea. Somebody broke into my cousin’s house through a window the size of a shoebox. I hope he was using lubrication.
What’s new is that this idea of grease robbers has become associated with rapists, killers and also demons and the supernatural. Now this story has gone viral and people are freaking out a bit. The Special Task Force (military police, basically) has been deployed and mobs are taking justice into their own hands.
The police are denying that grease yakas exist, and then reporting that they’ve arrested grease yakas. So it’s like, not helping. While there may be robbers and they may be using grease, there are literally not grease ‘demons’. Demons don’t exists, at least not so obviously. There is also no organized group or theology to which the term ‘grease demons’ refers. This is not some flash mob organized via BlackBerry Messenger and sponsored by Vaseline. It’s a rumor attached to normal levels of crime, gone out of control.
I know a lot of people who are honestly freaked out, to the detriment of all the greasy men in their neighborhood. The cops are like WTF and even Nazly is like WTH but the rumor continues to course around the country.
It was funny for a while, but people are dying over what? Grease Yakas are not real. Crime is, and sometimes you have to tie people to trees, but when people are dying I think things have gotten out of hand.
The Mulkirigala paintings look more like a vampire attack!
True…. I really like those paintings though, they have their own style. If someone reproduced them on canvas and framed them nicely I would buy them — I think they make awesome “Sri Lankana”
They would look great as a three panel wall hanging
eg http://www.andyhahnstudio.com/photos/portfoliosamples/RedThreePanel_L.jpg
Now that you’ve banned Heshan, he’s taken to covering himself in skin lightening cream and terrorising innocent Sinhala villagers, as revenge for your actions.
I like the clean lines and limited use of colour too, but these might scare the children. Havent seen them in the flesh, but they’re supposed to be some of the best representations of Kandyan era painting, though the temple itself is much older. Really must visit the temple when I’m next in the vicinity of Tangalle.
LOL!
Yes, it probably would scare children — but there are ‘sedate’ murals as well, which are just as nice. I once visited this house and the owners had an awesome collection of Sri Lankan masks stuck up on their walls… it was brilliant from the horrifying to the beautiful. But even I would’ve been creeped out walking by that wall in the dark to get a midnight snack.
ZOMG:
http://www.monstersandcritics.com/news/southasia/news/article_1656392.php/Thieves-posing-as-ghosts-hacked-to-death-in-Sri-Lanka
I think they sell (painted) copies along Green Path. If not, they’re a fairly common motif and a sad amount of time in art school seems to be devoted to copying that or the other.
Don’t attempt to catch this so called grease yaka, just stab it with a knife…
BTW the STF are paramilitary police, not military police. The latter is a unit within the SL Army that polices the soldiers. They are not a combat unit. The STF definitely are.
yeah, hence the ‘basically’. Wasn’t using it as a definition, just a quick explain to people unfamiliar with SL
It’s all done by well trained specialized forces people, cause a a regular person can never climb on tall trees, run on sheeted roofs, have springs under their shoes so as to cling on tree branches…now after the end of the civil war all the forces people are jobless and have become dependant and burden on the govt’s revenue and the state has to incurr additional expenditure to maintain and spend money on these worthless crew.so house breaking,stealing, raping, is the only way that would generate a source of revenue plus quench their desire of Lust…I mean this is so unethical an inappropriate…lame freaks…savage and uneducated morons…shouldn’t they think about their own parents, sisters and brothers? plus some of them are self obsessed and sex perverts…but as of now the media and the state say it as all fake news and they try to put it under cover,trying to throw the blame on thiefs and the protect their crew..but in reality the crew members die for the thirst of lust and sexual pleasure, where they rape and do things by force…this is so sad to see things happening this way:(
This game is played by the military.All grease devils captured in the east were ethnic sinhalese.This is done in order to create an atmosphere that justifies the continuation of emergency law!
Are you embarrassed?
—
Sri Lanka’s president has announced the withdrawal of wartime emergency laws under which the country has been ruled for most of the past 30 years.
Parliament has extended the laws every month but President Mahinda Rajapaksa announced Thursday that there is no longer a need for them because separatist Tamil Tiger rebels were defeated more than two years ago.
http://www.brandonsun.com/world/breaking-news/sri-lankan-president-announces-withdrawal-of-wartime-emergency-laws-128371503.html?thx=y