Love and longing in Lanka

Wed, Jun 11 01:00 AM

Hi! Are you Indian?" a boy passing by asked. I smiled in reply and began walking back to the resort.

"You sure?" he shouted over the waves. "Not Sinhalese?" I just shook my head at the sand.

A week later, riding pillion on a friend's pretend Harley (a moped actually), with the sea of Marine Drive, Colombo, streaked with slivers of gold on our right, I finally figured it out. "You'll pass off as a rather fair Sri Lankan," she shouted out to me from under her helmet.

Living, leaving An hour before I was to leave for the airport for my return flight, we were sitting around her table sipping Elephant Ginger Beer, eating a delicious Burgher preparation called lampraise (rice with a magical combination of chicken, prawns, fish, cooking plankton and onions), talking of sundry stuff like crushes on lecturers and telephone bills. That and how poor we lot are.

But there's no competition if it's cost of living we're comparing. None of the four mobile service providers operating in Sri Lanka (Dialog, Mobitel, Sri Lanka Telecom and Hutch; Airtel will be entering the market soon) are cheap.

Incoming calls are charged at certain hours, and on STD and ISD calls; outgoing charges are quite high, too. A recent survey found that half the mobile phone users in Sri Lanka are confirmed ring cutters, and rely on disconnecting calls to communicate.

With the Indian rupee two-and-a-half times the Sri Lankan rupee, converting a 600 LKR lunch to INR doesn't quite drive home the point. What does, however, is that the previous night, the price of petrol went up by 30 LKR - 'A record fuel price hike' according to a headline in The Sunday Times, a national weekly.

Fifty-three-year-old Hasanthi Pereira runs a confectionery. The current inflation is the worst she has ever seen.

"My overheads are high. By the end of the month, there's hardly anything to live by," she said.

But she's certain things will get better. "I try to stay detached," she smiled as she stroked the kitten that had sneaked in to grab an illicit piece of croissant.

Attaining nirvana We arrived at Beruwala just in time for the Vesak celebrations. Much like Diwali or Durga Puja, Vesak is a very community-oriented festival, and everyone from district headquarters officials to neighbours on the street get together to celebrate the Buddha's birth, enlightenment and passing way (parinirvana).

We're taken to a monastery located on an island which is a two-minute boat ride away from the resort we were staying at. The serenity of the monks and his attendees listening to him in rapt attention was unmistakable.

Attending a press conference jointly organised by the Hoteliers Association and the Sri Lanka Tourism Board the same day, I realised that the officials are doing their best to promote an industry that was all set to take the economy by storm in the '80s before the civil war began. From those sitting behind shop counters to those sipping Scotch in well-furnished drawing rooms, everyone agrees the war has bled the nation, and drained resources.

Yet, like Hasanthi, everyone's hopeful. Later that night, after attending a lantern competition in a nearby park, we sat huddled under the thatch of a tea shop on the beach.

Strains of a Sinhalese song in the tune of the Diwana Hua Baadal came from a radio playing far away and the words of Dilip Mudadeniya , managing director the Sri Lanka Tourism Promotion Bureau, came to my mind. "The tourist is turning into a discerning traveller who wants experiences.

Sri Lanka is meant for the likes of him." A country with a population of 20 million, of which more than 14 million are Buddhists, finally setting out to enlighten the rest.

Hope and a little faith In some time, I will have visited a church that has three layers of history dug deep into its foundations (Portuguese, Dutch and British), and I will be told in Tamil to return to where I've come from by a group of Sinhalese fishermen at the pier, when they learn that Tamil is my mother tongue. The price of diesel will rise, and two bombs will be defused on two buses.

But the hills and the sea will still provide the peace and calm this land follows as its official religion. And the people will live in hope.

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