The Flying Carpet

Monday, January 29, 2007

Captain Keerthi


6th Infantry Camp and Mihintale Part 2

It was 2:30 by the time we reached the entrance to the 6th SLLI camp. The soldiers on guard lifted the barricade immediately upon seeing the red Lancer, no questions needed. We drove straight through the small camp to the Officer’s Mess. Captain Keerthi was the only officer at the camp. He lived in one of the rooms off the small mess hall. I had seen pictures of Keerthi, but I was not prepared for his energetic demeanor. In his black Army T-shirt and camo pants, he seemed to always be in motion, shaking Dan’s hand, shaking my hand, shaking Thilak’s hand, ushering us into the mess hall, asking us to sit, gesturing for sesame cakes and ginger beer to be brought. Even when seated he was always shifting, moving, speaking, and gesturing. Dan translated snippets of the conversation for me. Keerthi relayed the success of his eggplant patch and the recent restoration on the tank bordering the camp. In the arid north country of Sri Lanka, huge earthen work reservoirs called tanks were constructed thousands of years ago. Rather than dig down to create the reservoir, the ancient local inhabitants built a series of forty foot embankments, each wide enough to drive a car down the top of, to flood entire plains. Most of the ancient tanks fell into disrepair when Anuradhapura was abandoned in 1017 in response to an invasion from the north. In the 19th century the British “rediscovered” the ruins and began restoration on some of the tanks. While the tanks were dry for hundred of years, Ironwood trees had grown in their beds. When the tanks were then restored to water-holding capacity whole forests had been flooded.

As Keerthi took us down the road towards the tank’s edge to point out a repaired section of the wall his soldiers had recently completed, Dan asked about some fresh ditches he saw on the sides of the road. Keerthi replied in English: “My friend Dan said if the roads in Sri Lanka were fixed, the troubles would go away. I do my part,” he finished, proudly gesturing to the new drainage ditches. Dan laughed. “On my camp,” Keerthi continued, “the roads will be fixed.”

“I can’t believe that you said that!” I admonished Dan, laughing.

“I must’ve had a bad trip up once,” he replied shaking his head and still laughing.

When we arrived at the edge of the tank the water was almost up to a small gazebo and two small resthouses. “Wow,” Dan said, “We used to be able to walk almost out to the middle,” he marveled. The embankment of the tank ran perpendicular to the marshy, gradual edge of the tank we now surveyed. I could see the fresh rocks plugging a large section of the embankment across the tank. Keerthi got out plastic chairs so we could all to sit in the gazebo on the water’s edge. I watched slender white herons regally stalk through the water, delicately picking at its surface as Dan, Thilak, and Keerthi talked in Sinhala. A strong breeze over the surface of the tank pushed up tiny little whitecaps just beyond the marshy area. In the middle of the tank the bleached branches of the dead Ironwood trees reached up like skeletal fingers. As I watched the water, one of the village people who worked on base walked down the water’s edge and proceeded to walk through the water near the gazebo to a trail starting on a small peninsula jutting into the water across the shallow marshy section. As the villager proceeded through the water up to her knees I realized that a trail of open water ran down the middle of the marsh grass and connected with the trail on the other side. The trail must have been used for many years as dry land when the water was still low. Now that the tank wall was fixed and the water rose, but the villagers still kept to the same path. Soon after the woman had crossed from the camp-side to the trail-side, two men crossed through the water from the trail to the camp. I wondered how long it would take the villagers to make a trail that looped around the marsh over to the camp or if they ever would.

After sitting for a spell at the gazebo, Keerthi hopped up and insisted that we go and see the eggplants. When I told him that eggplant curry was my favorite he broke into a big smile. We walked around the perimeter road of the camp to a large vegetable patch roughtly 100 by 100 meters. Keerthi vigorously checked each plant for fruit, harvesting all of the mature eggplants he could find for our dinner.

After the eggplants Dan and I unpacked in our resthouse room in the middle of camp, next to the rabbit pen. The rabbit pen was large and elaborate, about 20 feet in length and 10 feet in depth. A series of pipes and boxes with multiple entrances had been installed. The large brown and white rabbits hopped through all of the pipes and shelters at once, their movements permeating every corner of the pen. In the middle of the pen a huge pile of green alfalfa hay had been deposited in the morning. Our room was very basic, no hot water, no towels, no top sheets on the bed, only bottom sheets and pillow cases. It did however feature nice mosquito netting over the bed and a ceiling fan. We had brought towels but forgot sheets. “An important part of going on vacation was to make you miss and appreciate your home,” I commented to Dan. “I think this’ll do just the trick.”

“It’s not too bad though right?” he asked.

“Seriously, it doesn’t smell,” I agreed. “I’ve done much, much worse.”

After unloading our gear we set off with Keerthi to the local temple on the other end of the tank embankment from the camp. As we left the camp, Keerthi waved to the soldiers on duty at the gate. They replied by saluting and giving a ceremonial knee-lift-stomp gesture. We were quiet as Thilak drove the car down the embankment until Keerthi began singing what I could only guess was a Sri Lankan folk song. He continued singing until we pulled up in the parking lot.

In the packed-dirt parking lot the foundation of an ancient temple was working its way up from repeated sweeping of the area. Thilak parked next to the temple foundations and we piled out. A quarter of Keerthi’s men were staying at the temple and doing restoration work on its grounds. I mirrored Dan, removing my shoes and following him up a short flight of steps to a large flat rock with a white seated Buddha statue on its summit. The large Buddha statue was about fifteen feet tall and beautifully rendered, eyes half-open and hands resting in the lap.

Dan and Thilak bowed to the monk of the temple while I nodded my head. The monk looked like he had not taken a razor to his head in two weeks. Dan had recorded several complaints about this monk and his teacher from the villagers. It was said that the monk’s teacher, the previous monk of the temple, had gotten a village girl pregnant and went to the local female medium to secure an abortion spell. One of the villagers also warned Dan that “if the [monk] teacher pisses standing up then the students will piss while walking.” I didn’t understand the expression until Dan explained that monks have to sit down to urinate. Standing on the rock in my barefeet I thought about this expression as I examined the monk’s head of hair. An Army Colonel Dan had met at Army Day came over to greet us. After I was introduced I left the group to walk to the edge of the rock and capture a few pictures of the huge stupa of Mihintale silhouetted by the sunset across the tank. I then sat on the rock and listened to my iPod until Dan approached me and told me it was time to go.

Instead of getting back into the car, the group retired to the monk’s office and living quarters for tea and cookies. Since monks can’t eat after noon, the monk had only the tea. I sat next to Dan, Keerthi sat across from me, the Colonel next to him, and the local chief of police joined the group, chatting with Thilak in the monk’s bedroom. Photographs of monks of the temple decorated the walls of the residence. The older studio photos depicted monks in dignified head-shots. The photo of the current monk was twice as large and taken on location at the temple, showing the monk with a cleanly shaven head, eyes closed, meditating on the rock near the Buddha statue. Looking around the room I felt far, far away from the suburbs of Richmond, Virginia, where I had grown up until I spotted some fake flowers with glue-gun droplets of water on them and realized that some things transcend all cultures. When tea was finished Dan made an appointment to interview the Colonel the next day and Keerthi sung in the car all the way back to camp.

After our cold showers we put the fan on, pulled the mosquito netting down, and bundled ourselves into our sarongs for sleep. “You know,” Dan started, “Thilak was staying here when the LTTE hit that convoy of soldiers going home on leave. That night the villagers all came to the base terrified, saying that there were men with guns in the woods. So Keerthi brought the men out and they found a few hunters.”

“No kidding,” I replied, raising an eyebrow in the dark.

“Yeah, Thilak had a scare that night,” Dan replied.

“I could see that,” I mumbled before falling asleep, exhausted.

The next morning Dan and I ran a few times around the perimeter of the base. We were waiting for breakfast when two soldiers, both in full uniforms, strode purposefully to the guinea pig hutch on stilts for a morning review of the animals. They stood for a few moments with their hands behind their backs seriously discussing the animals before moving on the officer’s mess. After breakfast Dan and Thilak went out to interview a gunner usually assigned to shoulder-launched rocket propelled grenades, or RPGs. The soldier was currently assigned to paint elaborate murals on a nearby temple. “I don’t like to waste rounds,” he told them. “I only like to shoot when I am sure I can kill someone.” When asked if shooting at the enemy was a sin he told them that life was good and bad actions both. While they were on the interview I went back to the gazebo with my books and iPod. After lunch they returned to the field and I returned to the gazebo, working on a survey of Hinduism.

All of our meals were served in the dinning room of the resthouse. Keerthi even gave special instructions to the camp cook to prepare a few bland vegetables to suit my American palate. After two days of interviews for Dan and days by the tank for me, we left on Friday afternoon for Kandy. When we went to say goodbye, Keerthi presented Dan with a bill for 23,000 Rupees, about 230 US dollars, explaining with a straight face that the new Army Commander had raised the rates before bursting into laughter. The total price for all three of us was actually 1,800 Rupees. After making plans for Dan and Thilak to return in February, we headed out in the Lancer back for the hills of Kandy.

Saturday, January 27, 2007

Rice Paddy

6th Sri Lankan Light Infantry Camp at Mihintale Part One

At the end of January I decided to accompany Dan and Thilak on a short trip into the field. Our base of operations was a small Army base near the cities of Mihintale and Anuradhapura. Mihintale was a small city near the spot where the Buddha alighted after his flight to Sri Lanka. Anuradhapura was the ancient capital of Sri Lanka from 250 BCE to 1017 AD. The camp, which housed a detachment of the 6th Sri Lankan Light Infantry, was .7 miles around according to my wrist GPS and housed 80 non-commissioned soldiers, one Captain, countless stray dogs, twenty rabbits in a pen, five deer in a pen, two guinea pigs, two roosters, and several chickens. This 6th SLLI camp was positioned at a crucial fork in the road, one road continuing on all the way to Jaffna at the tip of Sri Lanka and the other road splitting off to the right, traveling to Trincomalee in the east. The camp was originally intended as a staging area for the wars in the north and east, but the LTTE has blocked the road to Jaffna, forcing the military to re-supply the north via airlift. This camp became instead a rest and recovery base for soldiers injured in battle. Everyone quartered on the base from the Captain down to the Privates had a leg or an arm nearly blown off. While at this camp, the soldiers were engaged in various activities ranging from the Captain’s pet eggplant-growing project, to building and repair work on the local Buddhist temple, to tending the animals. The animal collection had begun with a single tame deer captured from an LTTE camp and brought to Mihintale. She had arrived pregnant and had started a small herd.

Near this 6th SLLI camp, at a temple in Anuradhapura town grows a Bodhi tree, described in the 6th century CE Mahvamsa, or "Great Chronicle" of Sri Lankan history, to be a sapling of the Bodhi tree under which the Buddha attained enlightenment. The Mahvamsa, the same source for the battle between Duttugemnu and Elara, explains that the sapling was brought to Sri Lanka by the Charavatri king Ashoka’s daughter, the nun Sanghamitta, in 288 BCE. The original Bodhi tree was subsequently destroyed in the 2nd century BCE by King Puspyamitra during his persecution of Buddhism. The Anuradhapura Bodhi tree is the oldest continuously tended tree in the world with records dating back to it’s planting date. Once a year the Army holds a flag-blessing ceremony at the Bodhi tree in which flags from each of the regiments are blessed by the monks. As a part of Dan’s project he and Thilak have attended several flag blessing ceremonies. At one of their first Flag Blessing Ceremonies a friendly Colonel recommend the 6th SLLI Mihintale base as a good area for research and introduced them to the Commanding Officer Captain, Cpt. Keerthiratna. Dan quickly realized that the camp near Mihintale was the ideal base for his research. All of the soldiers had combat experience, so Dan could ask them what it felt like to shoot at the enemy and if they considered this act a sin. The environment of the camp was relaxed and most of soldiers had plenty of time to talk, encouraged by the example set by their loquacious and forthright Captain Keerthi, who has always insisted that Dan use his real name in all of Dan’s research and documentation. Best of all, the 6th SLLI at Mihintale had a resthouse on base for soldier’s families to come and visit where Dan and Thilak could stay.

At 8:30 on a Wednesday morning we set out in the red Lancer, Thilak behind the wheel, me shotgun, and Dan in the back with the computers and cameras for the camp. In the cool morning air the car didn’t smell as horrible as I had remembered. I even brought along a spare sheet to sit on. “We’re going to do a few bus halts on the way,” Dan explained before we left. When a soldier dies his family receives his full salary for as long as his contract would have lasted, 10 or 20 years. Many of the families are uncomfortable spending what they consider blood money. Some families use the money to fund local temple restoration, purchase a new bell for the temple with the soldier’s name on it, or construct concrete bus halts on the side of major highways with a picture of their son embedded into the wall. Most bus halts also feature the phrase “Shelter for you, Nirvana for our sons,” painted in Sinhala near the photograph. By sheltering travelers from the equatorial sun and monsoon rains, the families hope that merit will be transferred to their son and grant him favorable re-births.

After clearing the Kandy morning rush we started down the hills to the arid plains of the north country. When we arrived at the first bus halt, a concrete camouflage-painted run-in shed in the bend of the road, Thilak pulled the car over. He and Dan jumped out of the car to ask the owner of the roadside hut shop where the family lived. I exited to car more slowly and looked at the waist-up photo of the boy. He was only seventeen years old when he died. Dan and Thilak seemed to be engaged in some sort of extended conversation with the shop owner, so I took the opportunity to photograph the bus halt from several different angles before returning to the car. When Dan and Thilak returned, Dan told me that the family lived just down a small dirt road to our left.

Thilak pointed the Lancer down the rugged dirt road, gingerly maneuvering it through ruts and craters in the road. The road was only navigable because of the recent dry weather. We parked next to a house where the road became a path straight up a hill. Dan and Thilak asked the old woman who came out of the house about the bus halt family. Another woman appeared and told them that it was just a short way up the hill. After a steep, treacherous, 400 meter ascent we arrived at a concrete house with a tin roof. “It must be a bitch to haul your groceries up this,” I grumbled to Dan as the path leveled out. He chuckled, but on further reflection I realized they probably didn’t have too many groceries. Thilak introduced us and explained the nature of Dan’s research to the women who came out of the house. They asked us in and the three of us sat on a couch with a wooden frame and upholstered cushions covered in thick plastic. Four women in their twenties crowded into the small room, but only one seemed to answer Thilak and Dan’s questions. I was just beginning to wonder how the couch had been ferried up the hill when Dan and Thilak suddenly rose to leave. “They are getting ready to go and visit at Kandy hospital,” he explained. “We’ll stop in again on the way home.” As we made our decent I wondered how a sick person could possibly be transported up or down the hill.

“So, most of the families live close to the bus halts?” I asked once we were back in the car. “I guess that makes sense,” I added.

“Yes, they usually live on a side road close by. We just ask a shop owner where the family is and they point us in the right direction,” Dan explained as we set out down the main road. An hour later we pulled off next to another sandy-colored bus halt. The interior space was covered in graffiti. The picture of the soldier showed a young man with a gun wearing a grey T-shirt that read in English “Death by Bullet.” Dan and Thilak quickly got directions from the nearby hut shop owner. We then started down a dirt road that was a bit bumpy, but a virtual interstate compared to the previous side road. We had to ask at several houses before arriving at a house with a three-wheeler parked in a carefully swept dirt driveway. Two old women sat on a concrete slab running the length of the side of the house. Two young women came out to greet us. Thilak explained Dan and his research on the bus halts. When one of the old women heard that Dan was researching the bus halts she pointed to her chest and told me proudly the soldier was her son.

We assembled in the first room in the house in a series of wooden chairs. I saw next to the old woman along the short wall of the house, Dan and Thilak sat in chairs along the long side of the house. The two younger women remained standing. Watching Dan conduct his interview reminded me of the time my father took me to see Wagner’s the Flying Dutchman at the Metropolitan opera. My viewing of this performance came before Met Titles were installed on the backs of all of the seats, and also coincided with an era during which very sparse sets were in vogue. As I watched the action unfold in the Spartan little room I knew the basic libretto, but I couldn’t follow any of the words.

Dan and Thilak got only basic information from the family. After they left the house they filled out their question sheet on the roof of the Lancer while I went to look at the adjacent terraced rice paddies. When I stood still I could hear the green rice shafts rub together in the wind making a soothing “shhh…” noise. I wandered around taking some pictures of the paddy until Dan waved me back to the car. “They were pretty closed,” he told me once we were underway again. “These families have money and people know that. There’re lots of people who run memorial scams to get money out of these grieving families. So the families get paranoid. That’s why it helps to be white, it puts most of them at ease and they can see that we represent something different,” he explained.

After lunch we stopped at another camo-themed bus halt, but the locals told Dan and Thilak that the family lived far away. We then passed a few bus halts that Thilak had already researched before arriving at a well-maintained cream-orange bus halt with burgundy accents. The photo inside showed a full-length image of a young man in a military dress uniform holding his hat. Dan and Thilak asked the hut shop owner for the location of the family while I photographed the bus halt. We then proceeded down a well-maintained dirt road to a house at the end. Nobody emerged from the house to greet us and all the doors and windows were shut. Undaunted, Thilak started off into the adjacent rice paddy with Dan clutching the questionnaire in tow. I could see the white paper of the questionnaire through the heavy brush, flapping in the bright sun as they walked out of sight. “That’s true fieldwork,” I thought to myself as I got out of the car to stretch. I did a few standing half sun-salutations in the driveway followed by a few backbends. I was working my way into gentle twists when Dan and Thilak returned. “I got the guy out spraying his crops,” Dan reported. “He is the brother, but he said to come back on Saturday when his mother and sister would be home, that’ll be good, sisters usually give the best information,” he told me as we headed back to the main road.

Tuesday, January 23, 2007

The Gallery Cafe

Our House

Dan and I walked down the curving driveway on an evening in early January to pay our rent and to inquire for some friends about other apartment options. I had only been down to the main house once before, on our previous rent-run. Originally the house was meant to be entered from this bottom floor through tall highly polished teak double doors with concentric half-moon patterns carved into them. The Madam ushered us inside and asked us to have a seat on the white leather sofa. The Mahattaya, the master of the house, was home from his job as a professor of Geology at the University of Peradeniya. He was a tall, lean, high caste Kandyan with excellent English. When he went to work he carried a briefcase, wore tailored trousers paired with an ironed dress shirt. This evening he was dressed in a T-shirt and faded tartan sarong while the Madam wore her casual Western clothes, a synthetic cream button-down shirt and long, pleated, brown synthetic skirt. When the Madam went out she wore solid-colored sarees with gold or silver zari borders draped in the Kandyan style with tailor-made blouse pieces. After Dan and I settled ourselves on the couch the Dissanayakes sat down in the matching white leather overstuffed chairs across from each other.

“Would you like some tea? And how was your trip to Colombo?” the Madam asked us. We nodded “yes” that we would like some tea and the Madam disappeared into the kitchen building attached to the main house by a small interior door.

Dan told Mahattaya that we had a nice time staying at the Galle Face, but security was very tight.

“Ah yes,” he replied, “The LTTE is going to do something awful in Colombo, I just feel it. Our daughter is in school there and I worry about her. Our other daughter, she is in Paris, so I don’t worry as much,” he finished visibly distressed.

“Were you here in the house when the LTTE truck bomb hit the Temple of the Tooth back in 1998?” I asked since we were already talking about terrorism.

“Yes,” he replied. “All the windows shook. That window shattered from the blast,” he told us, pointing to an interior window set into the French doors leading to the bedroom.

“Wow,” Dan and I replied in unison, looking at the window.

“That was a very sad day for me,” Mahattaya continued. “My teacher died that day.”

“Was he at the temple?” I asked.

“No, when he heard about the bomb his heart stopped. He died of a heart attack,” he finished sadly. We were all silent for a moment.

“So, how long have you owned the house?” I asked.

“Oh, since 1983,” the Madam replied, walking back into the room with a tray of tea paraphernalia. “We were living in some apartments over there, they aren’t there anymore,” she continued. “This house was built in the 50’s by a surveyor, so he could get all the timber and such,” she explained. “He built the house below also, it is a hotel now. He died and left his wife with seven children. Then the whole upper road washed out and the hill behind collapsed. The whole house was filled with mud this high,” she told us, holding her hand two feet off the floor. “The wife, she was done with it here I think. I was working as a lawyer at the time and I helped her with the paperwork for the city to fix everything, but she was done and wanted to go home,” she explained with a head-waggle.

“So we got a good deal then,” Mahattaya finished. I pictured the whole bottom floor filled with mud, submerging the rounded, fanned out lower treads of the grand staircase leading up to our annex.

“Did you always rent out the top floor?” Dan asked as he dumped milk and sugar into his tea.

“Yes,” Mahattaya replied. “All we have ever needed is the downstairs.”

“The British Council started up there for awhile,” the Madam mused as if trying to recall of their tenants over the past 24 years.

“Yes,” Mahattaya agreed, “And we had a writer, an Irish poet lived up there for a year.

“What about the apartment under the yard?” I asked, sipping my tea.

“Oh, that was us,” Mahattaya told us with pride. “When be bought the place we needed to do something with that part of the hill. I knew this man who told us that he could build that. My father had just died and we needed a place for my mother.”

“You would not believe that a nice apartment it is!” the Madam told us enthusiastically.

“She’s got windows down there that look out right?” I asked.

“Yes,” Mahattaya confirmed, “And it is very quiet down there. She does a lot of meditation down there.”

“But there is an intercom to us up here if she needs us,” the Madam explained, getting up to show us the intercom on the opposite wall. I often saw the grandmother out in her housecoat sitting on the bench under the mango tree. She walked with a cane and would sometimes wander the compound when the rest of the family wasn’t home. Whenever I was hanging laundry or saw her from the kitchen window I would wave to her. As soon as she saw me her expression always changed from foggy concern to radiant happiness.

Dan then began to explain that other scholars were coming from America who also needed a place to stay for a year. He and the Dissanayakes discussed several venues in our neighborhood that were often rented as I drained my tea. I tried to imagine the whole downstairs filled with mud, psychologically overwhelming the poor widow with seven children. I saw the mud flowing through the two sets of French doors to the bedrooms, around the dining room table, and out to the kitchen. Even though the story was tragic, the house had a magical, protective feel for me. The red solid concrete floor, white concrete walls, white iron window casings, and bottle glass windows had stood for 60 years surviving mudslides and truck bombs and everything else Sri Lanka had to dish out. I was struck by a feeling of loss again, knowing that our time here was limited. I wished that we could buy the place from the landlords and keep it for ourselves.

Tuesday, January 16, 2007

Kickin' It at the Galle Face Pool

Run-In

Dan and I occasionally went for mid-week runs at the Gardens when he needed a break from translation. After a grueling opening to 2007, Dan decided to take a Wednesday morning off. Manju dropped us at the Botanical Gardens in his three-wheeler with instructions to return for us in an hour. Dan was in the process of selling his car to his research assistant, so I no longer had to maneuver my way out of riding in it. As we ran we discussed Dan’s long range research objectives, focusing on a Muslim-Buddhist relations project. “I know that this is the next hot thing,” Dan commented.

“Yeah, I was reading on the Tamil.net page about how the Tamils kicked all of the Muslims out of Jaffna in 1989,” I replied. “On the website the Tamils just say ‘um, sorry about that.’ Even they can’t spin it.” If Sri Lanka was a teardrop hanging off of the triangular Deccan of India, then Jaffna would be the apex of the teardrop, still almost clinging to India.

“They just perform a lot of really interesting functions in society,” Dan went on. “The Sinhala will never kill animals, but if the Muslims kill the animals then they will eat them. That’s ok for the Sinhala because they aren’t getting the sin from killing,” he continued.

“But not cows,” I commented.

“No, not cows. People say that the Tsunami happened because the Christians ate all that beef on Christmas. Beef is still a no-no,” Dan replied.

“That’s clearly such a Hindu thing, it’s weird,” I remarked as we started our second lap. As we passed the Great Lawn I saw one of the tour guides leading a school of tourists across the lawn. A dog I had seen several times in the Gardens bounded near him. The dog had a collar and always looked well-groomed. Stray dogs were strictly off-limits in the Gardens and it was virtually the only place in Sri Lanka where I never saw them.

“There’s your friend again,” Dan remarked as the dog bounded up to us in a slightly confrontational way. It seemed to me that I saw that dog with that tour guide fairly often. The dog always made me nervous because it didn’t seem afraid the way normal Sri Lankan dogs seemed afraid. I tried to ignore it but it ran next to me, jumping up and nipping my left thigh slightly. I immediately reached down and got a rock to throw at it, my heart racing and the dog ran back to the tour. I knew that the dog was just playing and didn’t even snag my pants with its teeth, but I still felt terrified and angry that this dog clearly had some sort of special status in the Gardens and it wasn’t safe. I stopped running and quickly turned around to the tour guide on the path behind me.

“Is this your dog?” I yelled at him with my right hand raised to the level of my eyes, index finger out, other fingers clenched in a fist. The whole tour of Europeans stopped dead in their tracks. “This dog just bit me,” I yelled, approaching him. Dan was behind me, backing me up. “Why do you think this is my dog?” he replied once he stood next to me. “This dog is a stray.”

“Maybe because I see the dog with you every week,” I replied. “That dog has a collar and is healthy, he’s no stray,” I said, pointing to the dog standing next to him in the grass, just off the pavement.

“I am the main tour guide for the Gardens,” he explained with pride. “Some of the tourists, they feed him some chocolate or something so he gets excited, you know,” he finished, shrugging his shoulders.

“If I see this dog again I am going to feed him some Mace,” I told him angrily, “so get control of the damn thing.”

“This dog is a stray,” he repeated. “Go and complain at the front and they will have it killed.” When he said this I knew he was really lying, no Sinhala ever killed an animal in Sri Lanka. I turned and continued my run.

“Unbelievable,” I said to Dan as we continued running, “That dog is no stray.”

“It probably belongs to the head gardener or something,” Dan replied, “That dog has no fear.”

“I know that guy was lying, I just hope the owner gets the message,” I answered. I started thinking about a guy I knew in college who had been attacked by a dog while running. He showed me the long white scars on his lower back. He warned me that I should always run with Mace or pepper spray to protect myself against animals if nothing else. Now I wished I had followed his advice.

We started running along the back, more deserted part of the Gardens perimeter trail and I felt more peaceful. I focused on my stride and my breathing. As we rounded a corner I noticed that we were gaining on a gaggle of teenage boys in a tight knot of ten across the path. Even by Garden standards it was an unusually large band. Dan and I quietly picked up our pace. They heard us coming and silently parted into two packs. As I ran by I heard the usual snickers and comments. When we passed them I heard them running after us. We ran faster. I could hear some of them stopping, maybe half. So we ran a little faster, I was powered by adrenaline. I wanted stop and turn around and yell to them “why do you think you can do this to us?” But I didn’t. I just listened as the running footsteps and jeers dropped off one by one.

When we came out of the forest we saw one of the Garden police men. “Let’s stop and complain,” I said to Dan, “Sometimes you have to take a stand. I really want to feel comfortable here.” Dan agreed and we stopped. Dan explained the situation in Sinhala to the officer. As he was talking, several of the gardeners began to literally come out of the bushes and the trees to gather in a muster to back us up for the coming confrontation. The way they emerged out of the shrubbery and fell into formation behind the police officer made me think that they might suddenly start dancing like a scene from Jerome Robbins’ West Side Story. But I knew this was no musical. I had a fleeting fear that they would find us on that back stretch on the next Sunday and beat the shit out of us. The gaggle of boys tried to branch off onto a side road, so our troop followed them. The police officer told them in Sinhala to “Come Here!” and the gardeners behind him echoed him. The boys obeyed. The police officer proceeded to speak sharply to the boys in Sinhala. He allowed Dan to have his say also. Dan told me later that he went for shame. The boys were very quiet when the police officer and Dan were talking to them.

“I told them that if they were the future of Sri Lanka I was very sad.” He reported when we had resumed our run. “I asked them if they wanted their little sister treated that way,” he continued.

“I wear these long Capri-length pants to run in,” I said, “And I wear these loose, high-neckline, dri-fit T-shirts over my sports bra,” I pleaded. “I don’t know what else I can do. I’m not out here in a tank-top and shorts. My shoulders and knees are covered. I even wear this hat so they can’t really see my face or look me in the eye. I don’t know what else I can do except run in a burqua or just not run,” I finished.

“They were unusually bad,” Dan consoled me.

“In the ISLE handbook it tells you to stay away from other students who persist on doing the things they used to do in the States,” I said. “They say that’s unhealthy and those people are psychologically stuck back in the States. It tells you to try and do things that you couldn’t do back home. I just don’t know what that would be.”

“Yeah, I don’t know,” Dan replied as we walked out of the front gate.

Manju was already faithfully waiting for us in the roundabout. Riding home and looking at the back of Manju’s head I could not believe that he and his brother were cut from the same cloth as the boys in the park. They were both young men and not too much older than the boys at the Gardens, but I could not imagine them in an idle group harassing foreigners. Then I realized they weren’t in an idle group doing anything because they both worked all day long. “What are those boys doing at the park on a weekday?” I asked over the roar of the three-wheeler’s two-cycle engine.

“Well, they aren’t in school and they obviously don’t work,” Dan confirmed my train of thought. “I don’t know what to tell you on that one, they are just hood-rats and the Garden police need to get control of them.”

Sunday, January 14, 2007

Sunset on Galle Face Green

Academic Function

Dan began his Sri Lankan journey by spending a semester studying on the Inter-Collegiate Sri Lanka Education Program or ISLE Program in 1996. The ISLE Program draws its students from a consortium of eight private colleges. A professor from one of the member colleges accompanies a group of fifteen to twenty undergraduates for a semester of study in Kandy, Sri Lanka. Two students from previous years accompany the group as “assistant directors.” Each student lives with a local host family for the duration of his or her studies. Students study Sinhala as well as courses on topics ranging from History, to Buddhism, to Environmental Studies in a trimester system. The courses are conducted by faculty of the local Peradeniya University either on the University campus or at the ISLE Program center, a converted mansion in Kandy last owned by a murdered political official. Classes are also conducted at a Kandy-based think-tank, the International Center for Ethnic Studies. The first trimester of study is devoted to Sinhala language and archeology, including a tour of the ancient cities of the north. The second two trimesters allow the students to select two of the five available topics each trimester.

To learn more about the program and Dan’s experience I perused the online handbook for the ISLE students. I paid particular attention to the “Homestay” section. Most of the items were common sense, but some of the points clearly rose from particular incidents such as item thirteen, “do not adopt stray dogs and bring them into the host family’s home.” In Asia animals are strictly kept outside of the house. I could see a nineteen-year-old ISLE student’s heart break the first time she saw a dog engulfed by mange suffering in the street, then horrifying the host family by bringing it into the home. Item number three also spoke to a particular incident, “If your host family leaves you alone for the weekend do not see this as an opportunity to party with other ISLE students.” The handbook also included a section on friendships with the opposite sex, warning the ISLE students that past ISLE students of both sexes had received marriage proposals.

Founded in 1982, the ISLE program was celebrating its Silver Jubilee while Dan and I were living in Kandy in January of 2007. As a Fulbright-Hayes scholar, Dan was one of their graduate luminaries and was invited to attend a fancy lunch at the Vice Chancellor’s Lodge at Peradeniya University. Representatives from some of the member colleges were flown in from the States and the US Ambassador was in attendance. After standing through a blur of speeches we started mingling. When Dan went off to network with some of the senior scholars I started introducing myself to random people from America. “Hi, I’m Sara,” I said, extending my hand toward a well dress, middle-aged, fair-skinned American woman in a light-blue skirt suit, baroque pearls, cream-colored panty-hoes, and cream-colored heels.

“Oh, Sarah!” she said enthusiastically, “I’ve heard so much about you!”

“No, no you haven’t heard about me,” I assured her.

“Aren’t you a Fulbrighter?” she asked, confused.

“No, that’s the other Sarah,” I replied, pointing to a young woman in a brand-new teal salwar across the room.

“Oh, ok,” she replied, collecting herself. “So you are with the ISLE program then?” she replied with a shadow of her previous enthusiasm.

“Uh, no,” I replied. “I’m with Dan,” I replied nodding my head in Dan’s direction.

“So, what do you do here?” she asked with only the barest polite interest.

“Nothing,” I replied with a smile.

“Hmmm….” She replied, looking at me perplexed for a second before moving off.

The food was a buffet with seating at round-top tables seating eight. The US Academics formed a unit and the Sri Lankan Academics left before the food to attend to funeral of a university faculty member killed by a LTTE suicide bomb detonated on a bus over the past weekend. The ISLE people took up two tables. Two of the Junior Fulbrighters, both ISLE grads, drifted over to our table. They were both young men in their early 20’s fresh from college graduation. They both wore light blue button-down shirts with the sleeves rolled-up, khaki pants, and sandals.

“The ISLE program was incredible,” they told us, glowing with enthusiasm and nodding in agreement. Both had recently arrived in-country and were planning on pursuing projects they had begun during their independent study on ISLE.

“Some of the Peradeniya professors were just as good, if not better, than my professors back home,” the one next to Dan told us earnestly.

“It’s true,” Dan agreed with sincerity. “They do have some really amazing teachers here.”

“So, what are your projects on?” I asked them both.

“I’m looking into religious responses to the Tsunami,” the one next to Dan reported.

“That’s good stuff,” Dan replied and proceeded to relay some of the religious expressions he had seen in the immediate aftermath when he was on a Tsunami relief tour. The Tsunami Fulbrighter seemed really interested and engaged in discussing his topic with Dan, so I turned to the other new Fulbrighter across the table and asked him about his topic.

“I’m planning on researching rural Buddhist practices,” he told me quietly. I began to ask him about his Sinhala, his contacts, and if he had a village or shrine of focus. “I just want to look at karma, and how they think that affects everything,” he explained.

“You know, they see us that way too,” I told him. “They see us as being drawn back here, like we were Sri Lankans in our past lives. They see us as a part of it too because we’re here and not back in America,” I furthered, remembering reading that idea in some of Dan’s old notes. The Rural-Interest Fulbrighter nodded his head in interest. I then asked him if he had applied to graduate school and if so in what field and he shook his head “no.”

Looking past the Rural-Interest Fulbrighter I saw the US Ambassador in the dessert line almost alone and I knew I had my chance. “You’ll have to excuse me, the gelatin is calling,” I said to the Rural-Interest Fulbrighter, getting up. As I approached him I realized that the Ambassador was extremely tall and thin; I estimated 6’5”. He wore a grey suit clearly tailor made for him. The fabric had the subtle variation and sheen of high-quality light wool. He had a polished, but slightly lopsided smile. He had mastered the art of looking people not in the eyes, but focusing his eyes on the bridge of the nose of the person he was speaking to.

When I reached the dessert table he was talking to another young woman about his previous posts.

“So, my last post was India,” he began as he considered the colorful array of gelatin-based desserts. “It was very different from here,” he continued. “I was the acting Ambassador there for awhile and people asked me every day about all sorts of things. Things that related directly to India and things that didn’t. Here, nobody cares about anything except for what directly relates to Sri Lanka here and now. This is a true island culture that way.” His comment reminded me of being quizzed about “Operation Iraqi Freedom” by a random rickshaw driver on my last trip to Delhi.

“That’s really interesting,” I replied. “But what about the Patriot Act?” I asked.

“They care about that because it affects them,” he replied, taking a heaping dollop of lavender-colored frothy gelatin with chunks of dark purple solid gelatin embedded into it.

“But what about the Patriot Act and the PTA?” I asked quickly, seeing that he was losing interest in the dessert offerings. I imagined the poor man thinking “I can’t even get a shitty gelatin dessert without someone pestering me.”

“I brought that up to them,” he corrected me. “I made that connection for them to make a point about civil rights,” he confirmed as he politely moved back to the table with the US academics.

The woman who was next to the Ambassador in the dessert line turned out to be an ISLE graduate who was back in Sri Lanka working for an NGO addressing human trafficking and living in Colombo.

“So, how’s that? Living in Colombo?” I asked.

“It’s tough. When I go places by myself people assume I am a Russian prostitute,” she replied. “They think ‘she is a foreigner but she is not in a hired car, she is here on the bus all the time. So she must be a prostitute.’ That is the role they assign you. Here they assume you are a tourist, or if they see you around more, a student. That is the role that you get here in Kandy,” she finished.

I looked at her blue eyes, boy-cut dirty-blond hair, and fushia kurta top paired with tight acid-washed jeans and thought to myself, “Man, she does look exactly how I would think that a Russian prostitute in Sri Lanka would look.”

“Hmm….” I replied.

“But maybe it would be different for you,” she replied, shrugging her shoulders encouragingly, “everyone has different experiences,” she finished. She spoke with the accent of someone who had modified their speech to help the Sinhala understand them. Because the Sinhala would rather hear British English, Americans that worked directly with the Sinhala sometimes pick up a slight accent fed by being understood better when they spoke a certain way. Dan would also drop into this affected-sounding accent also when he addressed Sinhala people in English, but he would snap out of immediately afterward.

“Well,” I replied, “We are thinking about living for the last month in Colombo. But if we do that, then it’ll be in a good neighborhood where I can feel comfortable taking a walk, I’ll tell you that right now” I said, raising my right index finger to put some emphasis on my point, ghetto-style.

“That would make a big difference,” she admitted, “I live south of the city, it’s not the nicest neighborhood,” she agreed.

“To me, living here, walking here and running here, is like being in middle school again,” I replied. “People think that they can say all sorts of rude things to me, vaguely threaten me, and generally bully me. Every time I go out it’s like walking down the hall to my locker and having to go through crowds of older boys who taunt me and I just have to keep quiet and take it,” I finished as she nodded in sad agreement. “But I have to say,” I continued, “I have made real progress on my street. On my street there are some hotels so there are touts, men selling coconut monkeys, and three-wheeler drivers. On my own street nobody ever bothers me anymore. They know me. It’s like a little victory.”

“Yes,” she replied, smiling knowingly, “you have to focus on those little victories,” she finished as we were being herded into a group photo with the Ambassador to mark the end of the party.

Monday, January 08, 2007

Tea Factory Pictures


















Our Guide

The trail



















Before the cloud rolled in

Up Country New Years

“So, what do you want to do for New Years?” Dan asked as he helped me do the dinner dishes.

“Well, we just went away,” I started, “And we have to go back to Colombo on the first week of January to go to that Fulbright thing.”

“I know, I know,” Dan conceded, drying a zip-lock bag I had just washed out, “but wouldn’t it be good to do something different for New Years, for our first New Years together?”

“Yes, it would, what did you have in mind?” I asked, repeating my mantra in my head “I like to challenge myself.”

“I thought we could go up to Nuwara Eliya and stay at one of those nice hotels,” Dan replied brightly. Nuwara Eliya was a town invented by the British as a hill station getaway from the summer heat in the early 19th century. Kandy was situated at 1650 feet. Nuwara Eliya soars above it at 6200 feet in the shadow of Sri Lanka’s highest peak, the 8281 foot Mt. Pidurutalagala.

“And how would we get there?” I asked, carefully articulating every word, trying to conceal the fear in my voice as I grabbed one of my mom’s leftover delivery Chinese food storage containers to clean out. The less than 2000 foot drop from Kandy to Colombo by car was tough on me, the prospect of 4550 feet in elevation change over the 50 mile road, trip terrified me. I knew that it would take three hours to travel those 50 miles.

For me, motion sickness was a cumulative problem. I could handle any roller coaster because it is quick. I could even ride roller coasters all day, but put me in a vehicle on a Third World mountain road or small boat and after half and hour things are going to start to add up. As a result of this condition I have vomited on some of the world’s most stunning scenery including but not limited to Mt. Nemrut in the Turkish hinterland, the Cambodian countryside, and the Cape of Good Hope.

“I figured we’d get a car and driver from Malik,” Dan replied. “Maybe he can get us a good deal on a hotel also,” he added excitedly.

“Ok, I like to challenge myself,” I repeated my mantra out loud, “See what Malik can get for us.”

On New Years Eve morning the driver pulled up in a clean, silver Nissan. When he popped the trunk I saw a huge removable cylinder built into the trunk, indicating this was a natural gas car. “It’s really pretty neat,” Dan explained. “You just pop that cylinder out and fill it up just like our cooking cylinder.”

“I’m sure that’s cheap and easy,” I replied, “too bad it’s basically a bomb on wheels if there is a collision.”

“But look!” Dan replied enthusiastically, “at least there are seatbelts!”

“Great,” I replied sarcastically. Actually, the gas cylinder in the trunk did not really trouble me. I knew that if there was an accident on this road it would all be over no matter if you were in a Pinto or a Volvo.

On the way out of town we saw the chunk of the hill that had pulled away to create a landslide destroying ten shops. Further up into the mountains, we saw another place where a huge section of earth had come unglued. The driver told Dan in Sinhala that 5 people had been killed at this location and five cars had been submerged. Other than to see these two earthslip landmarks, I kept my eyes closed and listened to music my iPod. I did not try to listen to podcasts to occupy my mind, but instead focused my thoughts on relaxing my body. I visualized my body like a bead of mercury, oozing around the corners of a glass manometer as we rolled back and forth around the switchback turns.

My strategy worked well. Dan would try to rouse to me see the tea plantations or a waterfall, but I felt heavy and drugged. Once we reached the town of Nuwara Eliya I opened my eyes and started to get excited. I felt a great sense of accomplishment that I had been able survive the trip intact. “We’re almost there,” Dan told me happily. “Just eleven kilometers out of town to the Tea Factory Hotel.” Once we left town and started to go up more I suddenly realized that I had roused myself too soon. I felt queasy and the car rumbled around an unpaved turn. Then my mouth started to water. I told Dan I needed to get out of the car at that very moment, which he relayed to the driver in Sinhala. I stumbled out next to a leak paddy and leaned against the dusty car sweating. I was able to only hiccup violently and not throw up entirely. After standing in the breeze for a few minutes I felt that I could get back into the car, provided that I could keep my window down for air and as a safety valve. “Just a little bit more to go,” Dan whispered encouragingly.

I was able to relax myself again and make it the rest of the way to the hotel. Once we pulled up to the white timber building all traces of nausea vanished. The five-storey building dominated the terraces of tea around it. The factory had been built in the 1930’s as a drying and withering facility for the surrounding tea plantations. The factory was closed in 1973 and stood unused until 1993, when it was purchased by the Aiken Spence hotel and tour company. The Tea Factory required six years of renovation before it could be opened in 1999 as a part of the Aiken Spence chain.

Wide polished beams with brass joints made the floor of the lobby, the former drying area of the tea leaves. The withering lofts had been made into the rooms. A bellman brought our one little bag up to our cozy room. I was impressed by the clean, cream colored carpet and slate-tile bathroom. “Look at this,” Dan said in a tone of awe, “There’s a heater in here. I’ve never seen in Sri Lanka before. We’re probably going to need to tonight way up here.”

“The blankets look good too,” I commented, assessing the bed. Further inspection of the room revealed a deep garden tub set directly into a floor-to-ceiling window as wide as the bathroom. You could pull the curtain to take a shower, or soak in the tub and look out over the terraces of tea. “Farming is spectator sport here,” Dan remarked as we looked out the window, watching the small herd of Tamil women moving through the rows picking the new tea leaves.

After a tasty lunch we went for a guided walk on the estate. We were to only guests with the lean, dark-skinned, Tamil guide with deep scar on his left cheek. He wore green a canvas jacket and matching pants. “I have been leading walks here for eight years,” he explained as we started down the road.

“How long has the hotel been here?” I asked.

“Eight years,” he replied.

“How has business been lately?” I asked.

“Good. Business is good. Mostly people from Europe,” he answered.

“How long do they stay?” I asked, surprised.

“One night, mostly, then they go on to Yala in the South,” he explained.

“Mostly tours then?” I asked.

“Yes, tours,” he confirmed. As we walked our along the red-clay road a cloud rolled in over us. The terraces of tea disappeared down the hill into the fog. Trails and irrigation ditches vanished ahead of us. “These bushes are 60 years old,” he told us, carefully patting a bush. All of the tea bushes were in full leaf and stood about three feet tall. “Ever six years we cut them back, like that,” he told us, pointing to a section of bushes cut down almost to the ground. After the pruned section we came to a section of new cultivation. “The new bushes are planted here,” he told us. “For the first year they are covered with lemon grass,” he continued. He grabbed some grass growing out of the side of the hill, shredded it, and handed it to us. “Lemon Grass,” he said. I smelled it. It smelled like good Thai food.

“Yup, that’s lemon grass,” I commented.

“After three years the bushes are ready to pick,” he told us.

As we continued on, two local children joined us just before we broke off the road and headed out of the fog and into the forest on a wild buffalo trail.

“Wild cows are a problem,” our guide told us. “They come into the village at night to eat the vegetables.” I could see the buffalo hoof prints in the muddy trail as we continued along under tall conifer trees and thin, delicate bamboo bushes. We came of the forest into a clearing at the edge of a Eucalyptus tree plantation. “Eucalyptus,” our guide said, pointing. “We grow the trees for the oil now,” he explained, tearing down some leaves, shredding them, and putting them in our hands. They smelled like the bath products section of my local hippy-crap store.

“Yup, that’s Eucalyptus,” I commented.

After the Eucalyptus plantation we headed back into the forest. We could hear some crashing around on the ridge above us and we all stopped. I saw two grey bodies bounding through the trees. “Elk,” he told us. A little farther down the trail our guide stopped. “Look,” he said, carefully pointing as though not to offend, “There, a big group.” I stepped up next to him quietly and could see four wild buffalo standing in a small clearing, looking at us quizzically. “They are probably saying to each other ‘look, there’s a big group,’” I remarked. The buffalo did not seem to be in any hurry, so I had time to snap a picture of the biggest one.

We exited the forest back onto a red-clay road and followed it back to the tea bushes. . Dan and I both picked some of the newest, most delicate tea leaves and ate them. They tasted like eating a bush. I could only detect a slight tea flavor as an after taste. The fog was patchy over the tea terraces and the moon was out even though it was only five in the afternoon. The effect was surreal and otherworldly. Shade trees for the tea faded in and out of the fog. Ridges and whole hillsides would present themselves and then disappear. I never wanted to leave the fog. I wanted to wander along the road through the tea with Dan forever.

Suddenly I recognized our surroundings and was disappointed to realize that we were almost back to the hotel. As we came back to the driveway of the hotel I consoled myself with the idea of taking a bath. Back in the room I ran the hot water and poured in the hotel-provided bubble bath. Once I was in the tub I pulled back the curtain to the outside window and watched the sun set violent pink and orange on 2006 through the mist over the cultivated hills of tea.

After my bath I put on my favorite saree and we went down to dinner. The meal turned out to be a nice but rather ordinary buffet affair. We were both exhausted from the two hour trek and long road trip, so at 10 PM we went back up to the room. Even the fireworks at midnight barely roused us. My next conscious thought was awareness of the Green Bay Packers game on TV. “Is that the game?” I asked.

“It sure is,” Dan said proudly. “I knew that if we were going to get it, it would be on now, at 7 AM.”

“Awesome,” I replied, rolling over so I could see the TV. For the next three hours we watched one of my favorite teams, the Packers, beat the hell out of the Bears. It was an excellent way to kick off 2007.

After the game we went down to breakfast. I ate heartily on the premise that if you are going to vomit, it is better have something on your stomach rather than to just dry-heave green bile. “Now all we have to do is go down,” Dan said encouragingly.

“Down is usually way worse than up,” I replied gloomily. For the descent I plugged myself back in and visualized myself as a bead of Mercury again, rolling down, down, down the side of the hills. I know that I missed stunning scenery. I did not open my eyes for waterfalls, or new tunnels being built, or mudslide locations. I relaxed my body and kept my window open for the entire dusty three hour trip and was able to comfortably flow back home.

Wednesday, January 03, 2007

A Little Mishap at the Galle Face hotel

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The Bride About to Walk Down the Aisle at the Galle Face

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Christmas in Colombo

Our four days at the Galle Face were wonderful. Spectacular South Asian weddings took place all day every day at the hotel. In the mornings the lobby teemed with women in sumptuous sarees waiting for the day’s festivities to start. I loved circulating through them, studying the fabrics, regional patterns, and draping styles of their sarees. While we ate breakfast on the verandah we watched the wedding parties posing on the black and white checkerboard dance floor in front of the ocean-side palm trees. The brides wore stiff, ivory, silk sarees with elaborate gold floral embroidery draped in the Kandyan style. Each bride wore a version of the Nalapata, the traditional gold-link bridal headgear. The Nalapata is placed on the middle of the forehead with one stem extending down the middle parting of the hair and anchoring to the top of the bun over the occipital skull. Another two branches extend across the forehead down the hairline to the ears and anchor back to the bun on the sides. Some brides wore gold florets pined to the hair in the parietal regions of the skull. They all wore gold filigree earrings shaped like upside-down teacups. Around their necks they wore a mass of seven chains and pendants. The jewel-studded pendants were floral, or featured a goose or swan. Watching the weighed-down brides I remembered my conversation with Farhath about her wedding jewelry and smiled recalling how she explained that less would not be enough for the grandparents.

When we ventured away from the hotel we found a few pockets of café culture where we could have leisurely lunches and linger over cups of loose-leaf green tea and cappuccino. Inside these shady courtyards we could forget about the sweltering heat, filthy dust, and dead dogs rotting on the side of the road that we had to travel through to these sanctuaries. The wait staff at our favorite place, the Gallery Café, was attentive and professional. The all-male waiters wore white button-down shirts, black pants, and long black aprons. They did not loiter at our table telling us about their village. Neither the wait staff nor the other patrons gave me so much as a second glance. “It’s like they had some sort of cultural training intensive before working here,” I commented to Dan once over crisp gazpacho soups. Wrapped in our comfortable anonymity we would spend hours at the Gallery Café with our journals, books, and computers.

For our afternoon swim back at the hotel, the pool attendant provided us with Navy blue and white stripped beach towels to cover the blue canvass pads on the teak lounge chairs. The chairs were arranged to face the Indian Ocean on a patio built on the sea wall. After a few laps in the infinity pool we would dry off watching the huge cargo vessels inch along the bright horizon in the Gulf of Mannar. Despite the manned neighboring guard tower of the Indian High Commission next door and the taller tower with the small manned surface to air rifle 50 yards away, I felt very comfortable resting in my bikini watching the enormous waves cycling in to the sea wall.

For Christmas Eve dinner we went to the Hilton for a five-course set menu meal. Even though the Hilton was only about a mile away, we decided to take a cab for safety reasons. We had done the walk along the sea wall next to the chain-link fenced-in Galle Face Green polo grounds many times during the day, but it was lined with permanently rusted-closed food stalls that seemed sinister to me at night. The sidewalk next to the Galled Road along the other side of the polo grounds was utterly deserted at night except for soldiers on patrol and stray dogs running in large packs.

Once at the Hilton we sat at a candlelit table for two by the pool under a waning moon. Our waiter efficiently noted our selections for the set menu and took our drink order.

“This is amazing,” I remarked to Dan, taking his hand across the table.

“We’ve had a really great time haven’t we?” he replied smiling. Before I could answer, a young man brought bread to the table said “Welcome! Where are you from?” Dan explained in English that we live in Kandy. “Oh, Kandy!” he replied; “My wife, her family is from Kandy…” he began. He proceeded to detail the exact location of the village. He then told us about all of the different area hotels where he had worked in the last seven years.

“That’s a lot of hotels,” I commented flatly.

“Yes, yes, many hotels,” he echoed me in a jovial tone. He seemed to be waiting for some sort of feedback from us. When faced with our minimal replies he drifted away.

“He must sell drugs,” I commented to Dan as soon as he was gone.

“You think?” Dan asked.

“Sure.” I said. “We’re probably the right profile, young couple, no kids. If you were a guest at the Hilton how would you get your stuff? You’d have to ask someone who seemed friendly in the right sort of way. This guy does his friendly routine and puts himself out there. That helps to open people up and then they say ‘hey mate, do you know where we can get some hash?’ or whatever. He was totally over the top, but I felt like it was for a reason, just something in the way he approached us.”

“You’re probably right,” Dan replied with a sigh.

The Intrusive Bread Man did not resurface for the rest of the meal. We were served the rest of the excellent meal by our regular waiter. We talked about a new project Dan was planning on researching at the end of our stay focusing on Muslim-Buddhist relations. When we walked back into the snow-white marble lobby there was a European jazz band playing and we sat down to listen. The set of jazz standards was well-planned with only short organizational breaks between tunes. They were led by a clarinet player who took furiously arpeggiated solos. The piano player and drummer also had impressive solos. The bass player played a great walking bass line but did not solo. The pianist would sometimes sing the tune at the head of the song but otherwise the group was acappella. Listening to the group I realized it was the first time in months I had experienced live music that did not involve a Casio keyboard with a bossa nova beatbox loop playing. “Man I miss this,” I remarked to Dan wistfully.

“Yeah, these guys are pretty good,” Dan agreed. We listened for the rest of the set, waited out the break, and then listened to the whole second set. The lobby area was packed. Some people were talking, but the majority of the crowd seemed to be listening to the music and clapping for the solos. Only after the band had introduced themselves again, plugged their CD, and were starting to pack up did we get a cab back to the Galle Face.

We had to return to Kandy on the day after Christmas. After a final lunch at the Gallery Café, we took a cab to the Colombo Fort train station for our 3:30 train. We showed our tickets and entered the station through the security checkpoint. As soon as we established our position on the platform the thin mute man appeared again indicating that we should stand somewhere else. I noticed that he was clean and wearing a different shirt. When I started to open my purse he seemed very interested, but when I got out my camera to photograph him he waved his hand in my face and walked away. Malik had recently advised me that touts do not like to photographed, so I made a habit of keeping my little Olympus Stylus Epic camera with me at all times to encourage people to leave me alone. Once the mute man left Dan walked 10 feet to the one of the station guards to complain in Sinhala to one of the station guard about the man, but she just brushed him off with an amused little smile.

Looking around I noticed three or four blind beggars walking along with their tapping sticks working the various platforms. Because they were blind they were not able to single Dan and me out, so I could observe them in action on others. They clearly had the locations of the benches memorized and they would lean down into the faces of the people sitting on the benches rattling a few coins in their hands. I recognized one blind woman I had seen begging last week.

When the train arrived at the platform another mute man attempted to grab our bags to put them on the train for us and usher us onto the train. He was also clean and well dressed. We did not allow him to “help” us. Once we were situated on the train I said to Dan “Security obviously allows this since only ticketed passengers are supposed to be allowed on the platform.” Then the thin mute man boarded the First Class car and started working only the other non-Sinhala passengers for money, skipping the Sinhala in the First Class entirely. He showed the tourists a photo copy of some sort of document, perhaps a school. When he came to us I had the urge to take his piece of paper and tear it up, but I decided this would be mean. He was just a mute man in a Sri Lankan train station after all. I felt bad for having such a cruel thought.

“You know,” I remarked to Dan once the train was in motion. “I think part of what you mean when you say you hate it here is that you hate yourself here, that’s how I feel right now.”

“I know what you mean,” Dan agreed. “Sometimes it can really just get to you.”

Monday, January 01, 2007

View From our Window at the Galle Face

Christmas Vacation

We decided that for Christmas it was finally time for me to see a Sri Lankan beach. The plan was the beach for two nights, then come back to Colombo for two nights. Due to the tourist lull, room rates were very reasonable at Colombo’s colonial-era grande dame, the Galle Face Hotel. A lavish buffet breakfast was included in the price of the room and the location in Colombo 3 was easy walking distance to many of our primary interests such as the US Embassy, Dan’s favorite on-tap beer, and my jewelry store. More remote and residential Ratnavale’s in Colombo 7 featured a white-bread toast breakfast with marmalade or vegemite and a heavily pepper egg made any style. During our last stay we skipped the breakfast and took a cab over to the Galle Face and paid for their breakfast.

Our trip started at 5:45 AM when our driver Manju pulled up in the three-wheeler to take us to the train station. The train ride was scenic and pleasant. We had bucket seats next to each other and kept the window open. The express train gently rolled along the side of the Kandy hills, through rubber plantations, and three hours later into Colombo. We snacked on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches I had packed the night before.

In the Colombo Fort train station Dan left me with the luggage in the ladies waiting room to go and buy the onward ticket to Matara. “This is not the Intercity Express like the last train,” he warned me, “There are no tickets in advance.” Dan had to exit the train station to buy the tickets. I had a seat and was very comfortable in the ladies waiting room until He returned. “They told me track 5,” he reported, indicating we had to go up and over to the middle platform. As we descended the stairs to the middle platform we were greeted by a very thin mute man. He gestured vigorously that we should wait at that spot, near the stairs. Dan told him in Sinhala to leave us alone and we walked past him down the platform.

We had about 30 minutes to wait for the train and we easily found a clean bench on the middle platform entirely free of bird excrement. “I’m going to go and check the monitor,” Dan remarked and headed back down the platform to the TV monitor mounted on a supporting column. Once he left I scanned the train station. I saw a man on the platform across the tracks wearing a brown shirt and brown pants. He looked exactly like a UPS man, as I looked at his clothes searching for a corporate UPS logo I accidentally looked him in the eye. He smiled a revolting and pleased smile and proceeded to stare at me. He was a middle-aged man with a wide face and the darkening under the eyes and on the neck indicating poor blood sugar control. He stared directly at me for the next 20 minutes as we waited on the bench, even after Dan had returned.

While we were waiting and the UPS-like man was staring, the thin mute man followed us to the bench and began to gesture wildly for us to go back down the platform. Dan told him again to leave us alone and he wandered off. Then a young man approached us. He positioned himself between us and the track with his arms folded across his chest casually. He stood with his legs locked and feet slightly wider than his shoulders. He had a trucker hat resting lightly on top of his thick, curly hair. “So, where are you from?” he asked in English, acting concerned. Dan told him to leave us alone in Sinhala. “How did you learn to speak Sinhala so well, were you born here?” he asked in English, surprised. “None of your business, leave us alone. You won’t get any money from us” Dan replied angrily. “That is not what I want,” the young man replied, acting hurt as he walked away. I glanced across the platform away from the young man and accidentally saw the “UPS man,” he caught my eye and made a “call me” gesture with his thumb and pinky raised to the side of his face.

Dan figured that the better cars would line up with the other end of the platform, so with a few minutes left we gave up our seats and walked back down the platform. I positioned us next to a middle aged Aussie couple. The woman was deeply tanned and wore only a blue tie-dyed spaghetti-strap mini dress and flip-flops. She gave the impression of someone walking from their bungalow to a nude beach who just wanted a little cover up until she got there. The man had peroxided spiky hair and had a compact, muscular build. They exuded an air of confidence, like they were on to the routine. A train pulled up on track 6, on the other side of our platform. The mute man re-appeared and tried to gesture us onto that train. Dan said something to him in Sinhala that made him issue a sort of squawk from his throat. He left the Aussie couple alone. Despite Dan’s Sinhala, he could sense our lack of familiarity with the situation like a shark smelling blood in the water.

Minutes later a train pulled up next to platform 5. It was completely full of people. People were sitting on top of each other and standing in the aisles. As soon as the train pulled to a stop people started to pass babies and small children through the windows. I followed the Aussie couple as they began to push their way on as people got off. We got as far as the space at the end of the car between the one of the external doors and the bathroom. I was next to the Aussie woman who faced the Aussie man. Dan was behind the Aussie man, right at the door of the bathroom that emanated a revolting stench. The Aussie couple looked pleased with their position and immediately sat on their rectangular rolling suitcases. “At least we can smoke here,” the woman commented to the man in a thick Australian accent. “No worries,” the man replied, taking out a cigarette. I turned my back to them and looked into the car. I realized that nobody else was getting off. More people continued to squeeze on. Two women put an enormous bag on the floor in the main aisle and sat on it, diverting the thronging people into me. When I turned around to look into the other car I came face to face with the “UPS man.” He had a very happy and hopeful smile on his face. When he saw the look of utter horror on my face he suddenly turned and left the car before I could start screaming.

At this moment I was done. There was no way I was standing on that train under those conditions for any length of time, let alone three more hours. I caught Dan’s attention and said loudly over the general din “That man is stalking me,” and tried to point him out. “He’s wearing all brown, like a UPS man,” I told him. Dan nodded his head and did a scan back out onto the platform. “We don’t have to do this,” I said. “I don’t want to do this. Let’s just go to the Galle Face or something. Anything. Let’s just get off this train.” Dan nodded in agreement and we fought our way back out to the platform.

“That was the worst public transit I have ever seen,” I said to Dan once we were on the platform.

“What was going on with that man?” Dan asked.

“When you were looking at the monitor I saw him on the other platform across the tracks,” I started to explain, “he looked like a UPS man and I looked at him a minute too long, you know? Then he started staring at me, the whole time we were sitting there. But I just thought ‘creepy Third World man right?’ I just forgot all about it until we were on the train. When I turned around and he was standing right there I nearly lost my shit.”

“Well, you’re the prettiest girl in the train station, just like the prettiest girl at the prom. Who could blame him?” Dan teased.

“Well, I guess now I’ve been both,” I replied sarcastically, “and prom smelt at lot less like piss.”

“I can see that you’re not too traumatized,” Dan laughed. “But where did all those people come from?” he mused. “I thought that the train would empty out, but they were all going south and got on at an earlier stop.”

“Yeah, that is totally what was going on,” I replied as we hustled our way up over the tracks towards the exit. “And what was with that Aussie couple?” I asked. “They seemed to think everything was just fine,” I finished.

“It probably makes them feel young,” Dan remarked. “You know, young and just roughing it in the Third World.”

“When I’m their age I hope I’m staying at the Paris Ritz,” I grumbled back. Before exiting the station into the outer chaos, we made our plan. We decided to take a three-wheeler to the Galle Face and hope they could give us our room two days early.

When our three-wheeler pulled up at the Galle Face entrance where the iconic bellman KC Khutton, greeted us. He had worked at the hotel since WWII. Khutton's picture was featured in the Lonely Planet as well as with glamorous women in a series of ads of a local jeweler. His heavy Victorian moustache moved into a gentle smile for each visitor. His elegantly aged face and kind eyes radiated genuine warmth and I gladly smiled back. He graciously showed us to the reception desk and asked us to sit as another bellman handled our bags. Because we arrived early the desk staff needed to look into the status of our room. While we were waiting we were served fresh-squeezed passion-fruit juice. “Just think,” I remarked to Dan after a sip of delicious juice, “We could be wedged onto that train right now between the smoking Aussies and the urine-soaked toilet.”

“I just hope they have a room,” Dan said worriedly. “If they are going to be booked, then it would be this time of year.” He had just finished this thought when the bellman took our bags and indicated that we should follow him to the room. The room was beautiful, antique Burmese teak floors, high ceilings, a huge teak-cased window with a view of the sea, and an immaculate bathroom. I touched the fluffy white towels, looked out at the ocean, listened to the waves, and felt pure happiness.