For ten nights Kandy has not slept. On the morning after the Maha Randoli, before dawn, the procession walks a final time — shorter, quieter, and unwitnessed by most of the city — to the Mahaweli river at Getambe, west of town. There, at the first light, the Diya Kepeema is performed.
What happens
The Kapurala of each of the four Devalas — the chief priest of Natha, Vishnu, Kataragama, and Pattini — wades into the river holding a sealed pot. The pot contains water taken from this same river a year earlier, at the last Diya Kepeema. The Kapurala holds a sword; with it, he describes a circle in the water, marking a section of the river as ritually consecrated. He empties the year-old water into the circled section, then refills the pot with fresh river water from within the same circle. He returns to the bank, the pot sealed again, and carries it back to his Devala. It is replaced in the sanctum, where it will remain until the next Perahera.
The act takes perhaps ten minutes. There is no music, no drums, and only a small, silent audience of temple officials and local residents. A videographer and a news camera may be present. There is nothing for the spectator to applaud. The ceremony has not been walked for an audience.
Why
The explanation given by the custodians is that the act renews the power of the Devala — that the water, drawn fresh each year from the sacred river, reconstitutes the deity’s presence in the sanctum for another twelve months. The old water, returned to the river, rejoins the current. Nothing accrues; nothing is kept; the Devala is made new by the river each Esala, and the river is given back to itself.
This is a ritual of renewal, not of preservation. The Perahera has been a public event for ten nights — spectacle, procession, celebration. The Diya Kepeema is private, functional, and solitary. It is the work the rest of the Perahera has been walked for.
The place — Getambe
Getambe is a small town on the Mahaweli west of Kandy. The stretch of river used for the Diya Kepeema runs close to the main road; a footpath descends to the bank from a modest landing. The site is not monumental. There is a Devala nearby, but the river itself is unadorned — a wide, brown, rapid current, swollen in August by the monsoon upstream. It is precisely this unshowiness that gives the Diya Kepeema its character.
The moment after
By the time the four Kapuralas return with their pots to their Devalas, the sun is up. The city of Kandy is waking. The Kap tree at each Devala is removed in the course of the day. The streets along Dalada Veediya — where tens of thousands stood the night before — are being swept. The Perahera is over.
For the visiting spectator, this is the point at which Kandy is most worth seeing. The scaffolding used to sell seats along the route is coming down. The sellers of miniature elephants and torches are packing up. The lake is quiet. The Maligawa has returned to its usual timetable of morning pujas.
The ceremony is a round: one full turn of the year from Diya Kepeema to Diya Kepeema. For the next eleven months, the Kapuralas’ pots will stand in the sanctums, holding their river water, waiting for the next Kap Situweema to begin the work of carrying the Perahera forward by another year.
