Tour Guide

I started off wearing my saree around the house, using a diagram on the internet to learn how to drape it. The petticoat is the secret of the sari. The top edge of the sari and the pleats are tucked into a petticoat drawstring waistband. After a little trial and error and further study of women on the street I had it just right. I was surfing the web and washing dishes in my saree. I got used to the ways you had to hike it up to sit down, the ways it would loosen, and how to tighten and adjust it on the fly. I learned to unconsciously tuck the end that hangs down your back, the pallu, into my bra strap on the other side when washing dishes or cooking to keep it from falling into danger. I researched sarees on the internet studying fabrics, regional handlooms, and care. I bought a cotton Sri Lankan handloom for eleven bucks and wore that around the house also. The handloom didn’t have the heavy gold-thread zari work border and felt less bulky. I learned on the web that the gold zari thread usually aged badly after several washings, especially in cheap machine-made sarees.

When my friend Christine, about halfway through her NGO restructuring project, texted me for lunch and shopping with some of her friends I felt I was ready for a public saree run. For the outing I decided on the heartier Sri Lankan handloom saree, and with one safety pin for backup in the pleats I headed out for the half mile walk to town. For footwear I left my heavy Chaco sandals behind and wore my delicate new goat-skin gladiator sandals I had picked up for six bucks in the Alley of Many Things. Once out the door I could feel the wind blowing down my back causing the pallu to flutter across my body.

I met Christine, another British NGO import named Karen, and a Sri Lankan woman named Pushpa at the KFC next to the Food City. Christine had been in country for over a month and was wearing a bright red salwar. Karen had only arrived three days ago from England, and there wasn’t the slightest tan on her pale white British skin. She wore a white short linen tunic top with light khaki pants and was a blinding spectacle of clean. Pushpa was in her mid-fourties and worked with Christine at her NGO. She wore a tasteful saree with a matching choli top and a bindi on her third eye. I led the group to Flower Song for Chinese food. It was the first restaurant Dan had wanted to take us to in-country, but it had been closed for the Perahera on our first attempt. Since the Perahera we had been many times. I couldn’t take them to Rams for South Indian because I had been eaten alive by mosquitoes on my last visit. It is very dark inside Rams and they don’t have AC, so the restaurant is a day time mosquito reserve. The food takes forever there, maybe an hour to make a single veggie curry and rice. On more than one occasion I have seen them sending someone out for ingredients. Keep in mind that I never order from the menu; they just make me whatever they feel like anyway. The chairs are uncomfortable and one time when Dan and I went for dinner I saw a rat running around. Despite all of this, it is one of the three places in Kandy I would eat out and I know I’ll be back. I like the owner and the food is really good, but I wasn’t going to take my new friends there.

I led the way down the main street, drawing their attention to important places such as the good English language bookstore and the post office as we made our way down. Pushpa, although a native, had been living in India for several years and didn’t seem as familiar with downtown Kandy. She complimented me on my saree drape and told me that it looked very natural on me. “You have sort of, Indian features,” She explained. I thanked her and told her this was the first day I wore it out of the house. She laughed when I confessed that I had been wearing sarees around the house for weeks.

Flower Song’s AC environs, tatami mat walls, and waiters in tuxs were a world apart from anything else in Kandy. There were Chinese lanterns with small red tassels hanging down from the ceiling and tasteful framed Chinese prints on the walls. Christine and Karen gasped in surprise at such an elegant place hidden deep in the bowels of downtown Kandy. “I remember when this place first opened,” Pushpa commented. “It was like nothing else in Kandy, we used to bring houseguests here all the time before we moved to India.”
“So, was it always like this?” I asked as we took our seats.
“No, that was over twenty years ago, it is better now, they have made it nicer,” Pushpa replied. I was glad to hear that Flower Song was thriving.

I helped my friends peruse the menu and make ordering choices. Despite the plush surrounds the entrees were three or four dollars each. We decided to share a variety of my suggestions and I made eye contact with the waiter to indicate it was time to order. After ordering we dove into a conversation about the NGO landscape in post-tsunami Sri Lanka. “It’s like nobody gets it!” Christine exclaimed. “Pushpa here is the financial advisor and she is the only one that gets it, that you have to have a plan, that you have to organize.”
“Yes,” Pushpa responded. “People say ‘now it is time for Christine’s meeting,’ I tell them no, this is your meeting. In three months she goes home and we are still here trying to do these things.”
“Right, it’s like there is no ownership of anything,” Christine replied, frustrated.
“I’m having the same problem,” Karen agreed. “Everything is a mess. The project is a year behind. We are supposed to be installing toilets for the plantation workers and providing sanitation education. It ought to be a great project and help loads of people. Nothing has been done and they are still getting funding from the parent organization. There is no accountability.”
“That’s crazy,” I said, shaking my head in dismay. “So are you working in Kandy?” I asked Karen.
“Well that’s the thing,” she replied slowly. “They want me to familiarize myself with the organization here and then go to the site and work there. But there is no business plan here, nothing. It’s like everything was lost. They refer to it, but I haven’t seen anything in writing. I feel like I need to address the problem at the source.”
“So they just brought you in to go out to the plantations to do the dirty work because they don’t want to leave Kandy themselves huh?” I asked.
“I’m uh, trying to reserve that judgment for now,” she replied cautiously.
“I just don’t know what I am really accomplishing,” Christine said with dismay. “I really want to help these people bring a new structure to their organization and have something to show potential sources of funding. They have to divide into smaller individual organizations that each has their own funding because the overall donor has dried up.”
“That’s the thing about my organization,” Karen replied. “The people at the top are supposedly accountable to the parent organization. Then they hire other companies in the plantation area to actually do the installation and give those companies money, but they aren’t accountable in any way to the parent organization or me. Then they bring me in to get things moving on the ground but how can I get anyone to do anything? Nobody works for me.”
“You have to realize two things about Sri Lankans,” I explained. “First, nobody ever gets fired. That changes the professional landscape. Everything is based on these lifelong relationships in which people avoid conflict. Unless you do something really bad you can count on your job. There are no lay-offs even to save the company. Everyone sinks or swims together. As an outsider you have more freedom to give people a kick in the ass because you don’t have to live and work with them for the rest of your life. The second really important thing is that nobody will ever let on that they don’t understand something. They will just fake along and never ask for clarification...”
“Yes! I know exactly what you are talking about,” Christine interjected. “I was working on a project before this back home with some Bengalis. They would come to meetings and nod their heads. We would ask them if they understood and they would say ‘yes, yes, we understand, we can do it.’ When the deadline came they had nothing done. Nothing. It was a disaster.”
“You see,” I continued, “Nobody will ever lose face and admits that they don’t understand what you are asking them for when you request organizational information for example. You have to know people and watch them carefully so see when they are sort of glossing over the language you are using. They may not understand the vocabulary or the form you want the information in. Either way they will just shrug and move on,” I finished. I pulled on the pallu of the saree behind me to tighten it across my chest. The upper part of the border that should be in my right armpit was starting to sag.
“Yes, that is very true,” Pushpa agreed, adjusting her saree also. “That happens too when I do accounting work and I try to show people what I see in the numbers. It is hard for me to tell what they understand and what they don’t.”
“Right,” Karen replied, nodding. “I’m just assuming that if people don’t understand they will ask.”
“Yeah, that’s never going to happen,” Christine commented.

After lunch Pushpa returned to work. Christine and Karen had complemented me on my shoes, so I took them for a field trip into the Alley of Many Things. “You seem to know where everything is!” Christine exclaimed. “I’ve set up and maintain a household here,” I explained. “I’m out on these streets every week getting sponges, clothesline, food, everything,” I explained. I took them to the Ready-Made Choli Man, the Petticoat Man, and the Shoe Man. While they tried on shoes in the little stall I waited just outside the stall in the alley. An old woman in a saree approached me with her eyes shinning. Without a word she started to pet me by running her hand from my shoulders to the top of my butt all the way down my back in long strokes.
“You look so beautiful in saree,” she said as her daughter came out of another shop in Western dress. “See how pretty she is in saree?” she said to her daughter, clearly making a point. Just then Christine and Karen emerged from the stall with their wares. “Your friends must wear saree next,” she instructed me, still petting me. “I’ll work on it, I reassured her,” as she walked away with her daughter.

“Old women just have a real thing for me,” I explained to the slightly stunned Christine and Karen. “When I was in Turkey an old woman thought it was so cute that I had my own hijab on in the mosque she pinned me in there and physically took me through the entire salat during the call to prayer. Then she took me out into the courtyard and showed her friends how the little American had wrapped her hijab.”
“Did you cover your hair all the time when you where there?” Karen asked.
“No,” I replied, “I kept a yard square piece of silk in my bag and would break it out for the mosques,” I explained as we started out of the alley. They followed me in silence as we headed back up toward the Food City. “Well, you’ve been a great guide, but we’ve got to go before rush,” Christine said as we reached the top of the intersection.
“Sure, anytime!” I replied. “It was fun for me too. I have a pretty fluid schedule, so just text me next time either one of you is in town. I can walk down any time.” As they walked toward the three-wheeler depot I started back up the hill. Once the grade got steep the petticoat was a significant impediment. I had to hike the whole thing up in the front to achieve my normal stride. As I began to fight with the saree and its associated undergarments a bit I realized that this was the first time I had felt constricted or uneasy in my saree. I’d had to tighten the top by tugging on the pallu a few times during the day, but overall I felt very comfortable giving my tour of Kandy.