Early morning images at Unawtuna. Photographs©Chulie de Silva

 Unawatuna is a respite from the over crowded hippy beaches at Hikkaduwa.  a ten minute drive from Galle, we opted to stay at Unawatuna during a  a family reunion  — a sort of R&R.  We missed Hikkaduwa, but  away from the noisy crowded Hikka beaches, Unawatuna was balm to that loss.

Unawatuna has an interesting past. Some trace the roots of the village to the great epic Ramayana. This is the spot where monkey-warrior Hanuman accidently dropped a part of the Himalayas he was carrying. You may ask how on earth did that happen?  Well, Hanuman asked to fetch  medicinal  herbs to heal Lakshman from the Himalaya’s failed to identify these herbs.  So  he took off with the entire mountain and carried it to the battlefield to try to save Lakshman, but in the process, a chunk of it “fell-down” in the location of the present day Unawatuna. Thus the name of the village derives from “Una-watuna” meaning “fell down”.

Derrick Schokman  writing int the Sunday Observer says “Yes indeed, something did fall there in prehistoric times, not on the land but 100 km away from Unawatuna in the sea. It has caused a huge deep pit into which the whole island of Sri Lanka seems ready to slide.”

“Sir Arthur Clarke in one of his books has stated that whatever fell is still there disturbing the gravitational field of the earth. It is labelled Terran Gravitic Anomaly I, 110 metres below the zero reference on the Goddard Space Flight Centre’s 3 D map of the Earth’s Gravimetric Geoid.”

Unawatuna was also the suburb where the Dutch commanders and merchants resided and had their “Buiten Plaatsen — Country residences.  So between Hanuman and the Dutch, there are some more interesting places to explore on the next visit.

Photographs©Chulie de Silva

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Gokarneshwar (Lord of Gokarna) Temple at dawn. Photographs©Chulie de Silva

Temples bathed in the early morning soft sunlight shrouds a spiritual aura that is difficult to describe in words. The aura sort of envelopes you filling you with a refreshing  peaceful calm. The air was cold and sharp and made  my fingers go numb.  But the slowly rising  sun was warming us as it rose in front of this triple roofed  Gokarneshwar (Lord of Gokarna) temple built in 1582 on the banks of the Holy Bagmati river.

On the way, my Indian friends had wanted to know if I wanted milk for the puja. Not knowing exactly what it was I had said yes. I was more interested in photographing but it was a case of first things first. So we took off shoes and climbed a few steps with my friends for the puja. The inner sanctum enshrined a particularly revered Shiva lingam. The milk packets were opened and poured over the lingam by the priest. No photographs there,  so after a quick recital of the Buddhist verses I knew I came out. 

Monkeys walked among the statues brazenly picking up offerings to eat and soothsayers, and horoscope readers were seated in the periphery of the temple. Prayers were said, offerings made and the sound of bells being rung tingled through the cold misty air.

The temple bells  were everywhere, from the huge one at the entrance to little ones near statues.  I too followed my friends and rang the big bell as we went in.  You need to do it to mark your presence,  I was told. There are steep steps that lead on to what is possibly a little arm of the Bagmati river where the worshippers  cleansed themselves.  The river considered holy in the Kathmandu valley is supposed to flow from the mouth of a tiger known as Baagdwar.

Morning images at Gokarneshwar Temple. Photographs©Chulie de Silva

The temple is famous for its collection of sculptures and reliefs that are all around the site. Some date back more than a thousand years.   I am told that the sculptures illustrate an A to Z of Hindu mythology, including early Vedic gods such as Aditya (Sun God), Chandra (Moon God), Indra (on an elephant) and Ganga (with four arms and a pot on her head from which pours the Ganges). Shiva appears in several forms, including as Kamadeva, the God of Love. Apparently, Lord Shiva came to live and hide in the Gokarna Forest disguised as a deer – albeit a deer with a golden horn.  I suppose gods also need a break from the usual work. I wished I too could have absconded from work and stayed a lot longer at the temple.

Early morning sun on Lotus Flowers. Photograph© Chulie de Silva

 

All the heights of the high shores gleam
   Red and gold at the sunset hour:
There comes the spell of a magic dream,
   And the Harbour seems a lotus-flower;

A blue flower tinted at dawn with gold,
   A broad flower blazing with light at noon,
A flower forever with charms to hold
   His heart, who sees it by sun or moon.

Its beauty burns like a ceaseless fire,
   And tower looks over the top of tower;
For all mute things it would seem, aspire
   To catch a glimpse of the lotus-flower.

Men meet its beauty with furrowed face,
   And straight the furrows are smoothed away;
They buy and sell in the market-place,
   And languor leadens their blood all day.

At night they look on the flower, and lo!
   The City passes with all its cares:
They dream no more in its azure glow,
   Of gold and silver and stocks and shares.

The Lotus dreams ‘neath the dreaming skies,
   Its beauty touching with spell divine
The grey old town, till the old town lies
   Like one half-drunk with a magic wine.

Star-loved, it breathes at the midnight hour
   A sense of peace from its velvet mouth.
Though flowers be fair — is there any flower
   Like this blue flower of the radiant South?

Sun-loved and lit by the moon it yields
   A challenge-glory or glow serene,
And men bethink them of jewelled shields,
   A turquoise lighting a ground of green.

Fond lovers pacing beside it see
   Not death and darkness, but life and light,
And dream no dream of the witchery
   The Lotus sheds on the silent night.

Pale watchers weary of watching stars
   That fall, and fall, and forever fall,
Tear-worn and troubled with many scars,
   They seek the Lotus and end life’s thrall.

The spirit spelled by the Lotus swoons,
   Its beauty summons the artist mood;
And thus, perchance, in a thousand moons
   Its spell shall work in our waiting blood.

Then souls shall shine with an old-time grace,
   And sense be wrapped in a golden trance,
And art be crowned in the market-place
   With Love and Beauty and fair Romance.

Roderic Quinn

Roderic Quinn was born in Sydney. His Irish parents had migrated, in 1853, to Australia. He received his education in Sydney together with his life long friends C.J.Brennan and E.J.Brady. He studied law for a while, then worked as a country schoolteacher. When he returned to Sydney he took a position as a freelance journalist. He wrote short stories for the ‘Bulletin’, and made a modest living from his poetry from the 1890s to the mid 1920s. His work was extremely appreciated by his contemporaries. He was linked with Victor Daly as poets of the ‘Celtic Twilight’. 

“What good is all the reconstruction, when we have no parents” — orphaned boy in Hambantota Photograph©Chulie Kirtisinghe de Silva

Emotions have a mind of their own.  It doesn’t respond well to reason or logic.  You can suppress them, hold them, seal them but once a year about this time the lid flies open, the jack-in-the box horror spills out. 

Prasanna Kirtisinghe

Cresenta Fernando

Prasanna, my brother and Cresenta my colleague are but two out of the hundreds the sea devoured that day.  For the many I met  in these 5 years the scars of that wound go deep.

The wound is just below, a little scratch and the wound bleeds– a person that from the back looks like Prasanna my brother, a girl playing tennis reminding me of Cresenta’s jokes about the view from my office.  

As the 26 Dec. draws near, the images gradually become more vivid, intense, horrifying.

My eyes were the video camera that I didn’t possess.  Like in a slow moving movie, they appear — the early morning walk on the beach;  the smell of sulphur in the water as I bathed in the sea at Hikkaduwa; the boys playing cricket on the beach; the time on the clock on the dressing table and above all the image of Prasanna in a red  and white striped T-shirt, a gift from my niece Ranmali and her husband Aaron.  I can still hear his voice “What time are you going back, give me your car keys, I’ll wash your car.  Your Sunday papers are on the table in the kotu midula. .. what? you still don’t know how to check the radiator water – want to do it now or later?” I wish for the millionth time, we had gone to check the radiator water at that time.  Then we would have been at the front of the house.

 

The sea behind our house where I bathed on 26 Dec.2004. Photograph©Chulie Kirtisinghe de Silva

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A s I work in the office my mind shifts gears and I plunge into thoughts of the day that started off with so much laughter and joy and how it turned into a twilight zone horror  — the unimaginable scenes of death and destruction–bodies in trucks piled high,  bodies twisted and foaming at the mouth,  the body of Prasanna on the verandah at the  rural hospital in Arachchikanda, and the terror and helplessness in my mind in the face of this colossal tragedy.  Outside the perimeter of the hospital it is pitch dark.   There’s no electricity, no petrol, no mobile telephones and I have no money.  A Doctor cautions, “animals might come in the night for the smell of blood.”  We move Prasanna’s body further inside and leave a note on his body as an identification tag with instructions not to take it  to a mass grave. One of his faithful workers stand vigil while I get a lift back to the Annasigala Farm where we sought refuge.

There my friend Laleeni was up waiting for me and had kept dinner for me.  I eat a bit but the food has no taste. My mother, not knowing her favourite son was gone sleeps on the bed with my nephew Mathisha and his mother Padmini.  Later I learned that throughout the night Mathishsa had been touching his mother’s eye lids gently to check whether she was crying.

Lying on the hard mat on the floor, every bone in my body cries out. I dare not shed any tears for fears that I might not be able to stop.  Bats cry, an owl hoots, the changing wind brings the smell of a dead rat on the roof somewhere. The film of the day’s events run and rerun in my mind’s eye. I keep repeating over and over a mantra I learned from my father “even this day will pass into memory”.  Daylight is a long way coming.

The next day ,  my younger brother  Pradeep finds an old school chum and his car takes us to my brother’s cinnamon plot where we plan to bury him.  There we had to carry Amma in a chair across the padi fields and up the terraces to the cinnamon peeling bungalow where the funeral was to be held.  In the hastily given instructions the previous day, I had asked for the coffin to be closed but the villagers had left it open as is the custom here.  My mother wails “this is not my handsome son, “when she sees the bloated distorted body.We hastily closed the lid.  Mathisha later said it was easier for him to handle it as he didn’t look like his father. Our family friend and scholar priest Rev. Thilaka is there. The sermon tries to assuage the grief – life can get snuffed out like the wind blowing out a lamp. …

A week later,  Rev. Tilaka directs me to the undertaker’s house.  The undertaker had burned Prasanna’s clothes fearing infection and found my car key in the ashes.  I meet him and introduce myself.  No words are spoken. He quietly gets up from his almchair, and searches between the rafters on the roof and fish out the singed key.

 Five years down the line how have we handled this tragedy?

Tsunami orphans in Hambantota. Photograph©Chulie Kirtisinghe de Silva

I wonder how the orphaned kids I met in Hambantota are doing. 

Then there is Shanika that Shahidul Alam photographed and wrote about. couple of years later.  Last time I saw her she was growing up into a beautiful girl.

Then I despaired as to how we would manage without Prasanna’s larger than life presence in our lives.  I underestimated our strength and the human spirit. 

Now I can look back and say thank youto Upal Soysa , Laleeni, and many in the family who helped us get back on our feet. 

 

Amma on her 87 Birthday with Mathisha. Photograph©Chulie Kirtisinghe de Silva

Kanishka, Prasanna ‘s elder son graduated and took his oaths as a lawyer and is working now.  Mathisha  the younger has got through his ‘O’ levels  with flying colours . He is studying for his “A” levels and loves cars as much as Prasanna did but wants to be an accountant.  With the sons doing well, I see smiles on Padmini’s and Amma’s faces.  My mother at 87, is more fragile, more keen on the Dhamma but can still sing from memory the song that my father wrote to her in a letter in the 60’s. 

My tsunami experience is my own private epic tear jerker movie.  Hollywood or CNN are poor imitators.  Every year the reels come out, gets re-edited, viewed from a different angle.  It’s cathartic, it never grows old.

2005:  Ashes of thoughts what the tsunami took away

2006:  A look back twenty four moons after the tsunami

2007:  Tsunami 3 years on: Remembering Prasanna Kirtisinghe

2008: How Blue was my sea at Hikkaduwa

Guardian at the entrance to a shrine, Kalutara, Sri Lanka. Photograph©Chulie Kirtisinghe de Silva

“Happily, we do not need to be perfect in order to feel good,” said a horoscope guru on the web . This is perfect I thought as the reading got even better when it said “Nor, even more happily, do we need to live perfect lives.”  Misery apparently stems neither from some lack of personal perfection nor from the existence of a less-than-ideal situation, but from the IDEA that things ought to be better than they are.

Doesn’t that thought drive most of us most of the time? But our high levels of expectation, based on some spurious, superficial comparison with an imaginary standard, equals pain, say the horoscope guru. OK, time to stop dreaming about the Merc-benz SLS AMG that costs a cool 120 million LKR in Sri Lanka. Oh!shoot! Why did I call to find out what it cost – so, I’d know how much I can’t afford!

Forget the dream cars, enjoy the holidays, have high levels of acceptance, based on tolerance for that equals joy.

 Wishing all good tidings of comfort and joy this holiday season.

 

INTIMATION OF THE NEXT MEETING

of the

Ceylon Society of Australia

 Colombo Chapter

 

Ambition, Disunity and Conspiracy and the Tragedy of 1815.

Mr. Haris de Silva

Retired Director, National Archives

 

Questions and discussions will follow

Date: Saturday, 5th December 2009 at 5.30 p.m.

 

Venue: Lions Activity Centre, Vidya Mawatha, Colombo

 

Directions:

(Vidya Mw, which joins Wijerama Mw to the Independence Square, is now accessed from its Wijerama Mawatha end. Proceed along Bauddhaloka Mw, turn into Wijerama and then turn left –  towards Independence Square – at the lone tree junction.

Enter the Lions Activity Centre through drive-way on your right between the SLAAS and the Institute of Engineers buildings)

Interested ? Please contact persons below. No fee for attendance.

Chulie de Silva, (President)

Tel:  077 777 2220; e-mail: chuls201@gmail.com

Daya Wickramatunga

Tel:  077 317 4164 ; e-mail dawick@sltnet.lk Mike Udabage, (Treasurer)

e-mail: mike_udabage@itechne.com

About the Ceylon Society of Australia (CSA):

The CSA is a non profit organization, incorporated in Australia. Its main objectives are to foster, promote, and develop interest in the cultural heritage of Sri Lanka, especially the post-medieval period when this country was first exposed to, what we now call, globalization.  Apart from publishing the journal- The Ceylankan which has attracted much international appreciation, the Society holds meetings quarterly in Sydney, Melbourne and Colombo. Most importantly, it is non-political and non partisan, and studiously steers clear of political and similar controversial issues. CSA is not a formal, high profile Society but, rather, a gathering of like-minded people, open to receiving and imparting new ideas, who would enjoy a quarterly meeting in reasonably modest and intimate surroundings. The Colombo Chapter caters to CSA members in, and passing through Sri Lanka, and the Sri Lankan public. ! 

 

A strong woman from Neeliyamoddai village in Vavuniya who is rebuilding her life after being displaced by the conflict. Photograph ©Chulie de Silva

I had written this piece about Closing the Gender Gap in the “End Poverty in South Asia” blog after seeing that the Annual Global Gender Gap Index gave a higher rank to Sri Lanka that Australia. In that post I raised the question whether we Sri Lankan women were better than the Sheila’s ( Aussie slang for the ladies) in Oz and caused an  interesting debate.

Pala  (from Oz I presume),  gave an emphatic NO and said ”There is no comparison between the women in the workforce in Sri Lanka and Oz. The majority of women in the work force in SL are in poverty based jobs -plucking tea, working in garment factories and living away from home or literally in slavery in the Middle East. My heart bleeds for these sisters. Global Gender Gap Index fails to see these glaring inequalities which even Blind Freddie can see.” Fair enough….

Sujata pointed out in the direction of the Lanka Women and the Political Representation  for Women site and said that “empowerment of two Bandaranyakes does not in any way reflect the political empowerment of women in Sri Lanka.”

While it is apparent now that we shouldn’t go into an euphoric state about the status of us women in Lanka, for me the issues are still of discrimination, the stereotyping, the need not to rock the boat and be that  good little girl. Good behavioue was rewarded with love, and if deemed bad you sat in the corner alone ostracized.

Just think, gender didn’t exist for three billion years when we were all single cell creatures. Then came the  XX and the XY sex choromosmes, and a  host of complication not entirely  algebraic .

Being a woman I muse about our lot. Etched in my mind is my favourite play of Henry Jayasena — Kuveni. the legendary iridescent foremother of Sri Lanka. Her story takes us back some 25 or so centuries.   Kuveni was Sri Lanka’s first queen of the original inhabitants of Sri Lanka and was indeed a woman in control of her tribe.   the first power woman?  However, history branded her as a “she devil” who bewitched the Indian Prince Vijaya, who landed in Sri Lanka,. Vijaya apparently saw this beauty weaving and was mesmerized by her.  (Incidentally, Vijaya, the Son of King Sinhabahu was banished from India as a problematic prodigal son).  

Kuveni was in turn supposed to have been “tamed” by the prodigal Vijaya, and they had ruled the country as partners.  But in this story as old as time, Kuveni was thrown out of the palace with her two children when Vijaya replaced her with a princess from India.  Legend says Kuveni,  banished from the palace went  back to her own people, who killed her as a traitor. She had the last word or words – a legendary lasting curse on the island. So according to legend she was powerful enough to leave a casting spell that has lasted and been effective for  25 centuries or more but she was not powerful enough to save herself.

Kuveni’s story resonated with the sensitive playwriter Jayasena was who saw her beauty, the wronged mother, the  wife , and cleverly juxtaposed her  through the ages  as the wronged woman betrayed by her husband.  As she was so are we . Embedded in all of us are hopes, desires, curses, condemnations, peace, love, beauty, power and freedom.

The question for me is do we stay swathed in curses, forever saddled by karmic genes, stuck in roles imposed on us? Or can we women break free from the age old moulds we have been cast into , be strong enough to shape our lives and be the persons we’ve always wanted to be?

No truth the eye can see

In a world that darkness fills

Unreal was the past –

Can the future bring truths at last?

In the darkness that prevails

The eye can only see

Dreams and drifting delusions

Caught in the net of illusion

Our eyes are tricked by its veils

Which mould only magical visions.

 (Translation by Lakshmi de Silva from the play  Kuveni by Henry Jayasena)

Tharindu Udaya Kumara and Niroshani Dilki. Photograph© Chulie de Silva

Saturday mornings are for lying in – there’s birds chirping on the lawn, noisy squirrels on my barren avocado tree,  and I can just about see the “Thalagoya” (monitor lizard) sunning on the wall.  I am slow to emerge from layers of sleep, trying to hold on to the view in my head of the breathtaking beauty of the Knuckles range, the Randenigala dam, the glimpse of Adam’s Peak on the edge of  a blue sky – an aerial view from flight to Batticaloa. Breaking this lazy morning reverie, the door bell rings. Mentally, making yet another note to get that door bell changed, I was ready to chase a salesman.  Doe like eyes, hesitant not sure of the reception, he stood there, the ubiquitous plastic bag in one hand and in the other a bunch of greens. 

Would you please buy this last bunch of gotukola?

What’s your name?

Tharindu Udayakumara

Do you grow them?

No, my mother buys them and we sell them again to make some extra money for the family. This is only Rs.10 (1 US$=LKR 115 approx)

How much do you make a day?  Oh, about Rs.200

A little girl puts her head through the door and smiles coyly.  She is a little princess – Is she your sister? 

Yes, her name is Niroshani and she is nine years old.

She corrects the brother — It is Niroshani Dilki

How old are you?

I am ten and she is 9 years.

Go to school?

Yes to Revatha , I want to be a doctor.

And  Niroshani Dilki?

The smile is wide and the eyes light up

I want to be a teacher.

Any more in your family?

Yes, eight – eight kids?

No, there is my mother and  father, and my elder brother , and baby sister and grandfather ( that only makes 7 but  I didn’t add properly at that time).

 Achchi – where is she?

She died.

Where is your brother?

She is looking after my baby sister who is three as my mother has to wash clothes and cook.

And your father?

He is a labourer

Do you help your mother?

Yes, we wash dishes, sweep the garden, the hand goes protectively round the sister.

May I take your photo?

Yes.

No smiles for me?

The smiles are enough to warm the cockles of my heart.

They turn towalk away hand in hand. He turns back and repeats I want to be a doctor. My thoughts ping back to another boy I met at the Kotmale Internet Radio Station. He too had walked up the hill selling gotukola and stayed on fascinated to learn about computers.  By the time I met him he was posting information on a website in Sinhala, Tamil and English and for a good measure was teaching the rudiments of flash to his buddy. Both his parents were estate labourers. He too had a dream. …

P.S.  Gotu in the Sinhala language is conical and Kola is leaf .  Scientific name Centella Asiatica. In Sri Lanka it is made into a finely finely sliced salad with onions, fresh coconut,  flavoured with  lime and a pepper dressing. It is also cooked into a curry with coconut milk and is popularly taken in the morning as a local watery porridge  –Gotukola Kanda –made with red rice, coconut milk and the extracted juice from the leaves. My gym serves this and is great after a workout. There is at least one posh restaurent in Colombo that has on the menu as an elegant upmarket soup — no doubt flavoured with cream.

Mine went into a not so finely sliced salad and it tasted pretty good with my crab curry — ahh to be in Lanka:-))

No matter that I had to drag myself out of a cosy house, drive through pelting rain, the perpetually  maddening Colombo traffic ,  to get to the Cinnamon Grand.  It was worth the effort to see the E-Swabhimani awards  by the Information Communication Agency  (ICTA).    As the name Swabhimani  means it was   certainly a night of “Our Pride,” a night to be a proud Sri Lankan,  a night to remember.  ICTA lived up to its tag line of Smart People, Smart Island to spring on an unsuspecting audience the creative and innovative talent of Sri Lanka’s digital content developers/producers from its e-Society program.  This was even more satisfying for those of us who had listened to much criticism being leveled at ICTA.  But that’s another story  –this was a night of the winners.

 Minister Tissa Vitarana was pleased as Punch. He was unstinting giving credit to the creative talent of the ICTA staff.

 There were eight e-categories and 27 winners.  They came from near — Colombo University Department of Computing as well as from far away interior places with exotic names — Galenbindunuweva, Sooriyaweva, Tantrimalai.

Here’s some that caught my eye. Please note that this is only a selection and is not a comprehensive list of the winners.

For me the most interesting was the e-inclusion and Participation category where the winners were:

Techkatha (Technical Chats) is really cool and uses cross media and a friendly chatty environment for learning from peers the techi stuff.  It is in the Sinhala local language, community driven, podcasted discussion about solutions to technical problems one encounters daily,tech news, new inventions etc.  Every Thursday at Sri Lanka time 9:00 pm you can join techkatha.com/chat via real time web chat.  Google Group, Skype, SMS, email or phone.  So far they have had 40 program chats.

ICT for teaching the hearing impaired ( www.lankasign.lk):  A multi media based interactive DVD and e-learning website to teach sign language in Sinhala and Tamil.

Ganidu Nanayakkara. Photo reproduced with permission ICTA agency

“Watch” the invention of young Secondary school student Ganidu Nanayakkara which features  a specialized hardware and software to enable people with disabilities  to use a computer with a key pad of only four keys.  So a finger, a toe, a head the hand or even the tongue can be used and the software and hardware system can be customized to cater for  specific needs of a disabled user.

E-entertainment & Games section had two interesting winners. One was the Ranasara Internet radio  from the Balangoda Nenasela ( IT/Knowledge Centre)  which partnered with an IT company microimage to set up   a commercial quality broadcasting studio in the Nenesela.  Using commercial quality broadcasting software and drawing and training  announcers from the community they provide an interesting service enabling many working abroad to stay connected with their communities. Other  district telecentres too get one hour time slots per week to produce news and programs from their districts.

The other winner in this category, the Toppigala/Jamis Banda, Sri Lanka’s equivalent no doubt of James Bond is  a locally developed PC Game by Games Core.

The e-Learning & Education sector had three very useful contributions reaching out to educate through ICT , primary, and tertiary learners and farmers in the agriculture sector.

e-Curriculum Master: Mastering the Primary–an easy to use interactive educationla software for children sitting the Grade 5 Scholarship examination.

Vidupiyasa — the virtual campus for ICT education from the University of Colombo’s School of computing.

Wikigoviya – The Agriculture Wikipedia, an interactive web tool for agriculture development.

Then there were the winners e-commerce for SME’s; project e-Diary; Farmernet in the e-business and Commerce category.

Nenasakmana Mobile Library of Sooriyaweva Nenasela. Photo reproduced with permission from ICTA

Having been a librarian in my previous incarnations I loved  the Nenasakmana Mobile ( can be loosley tranlated as “strolling knowledge”) Library of the Sooriyaweva Nenasela from the Hambantota district. It serves remote villages who can not afford internet facilities in a converted “buddy” lorry with four laptop computers powered by a solar panel and with connectivity through a dongle.

Inside the Nenasakmana Mobile Library. Photo reproduced with permission ICTA

“It’s not easy providing this service on rainy days when there is no sun,” says Deepika who runs the service.  Then it is only a reading library and we carry newspapers and magazines in addition to books. But on good days in addition to Internet,  users can access educational CDs, games. etc.”

The Juror’s special mention  is another worthy project.  The Centre for Women and Development, Jaffna’s “Violence against Women” website, documenting violence against women. The aggregate anonymous information collected from this website has been shared with other civil society and government organizations to help them better understand the extent of the issue.

 

Puttalam, situated about 80 km north of Colombo, has been lashed by severe storms today that damaged over 1000 houses, destroyed completely another 500. I am not sure if  it was a storm like this that drifted the sailing vessel of one of the greatest Arab traveler of the medieval times to land in the Puttalam lagoon in 1344.  He was non other than Ibn Battuta,  the  native of Tangiers in Morocco.  He had set out for the traditional pilgrimage to Mecca,  got bitten by the travel bug and continued to roam for some thirty years a  record 75,000 miles covering all Muslim countries except central Persia, Armenia and Georgia.  

Travellers in the desert. Photograph© Chulie de Silva

Battuta’s  record of his travels the Rihla is one of the most famous travel journals.   

“First, though the book is commonly referred to as “the Rihla,” that” is not its title, properly speaking, but its genre. (The title is Tuhfat al-Nuzzar fi Ghara’ib al-Amsar wa-’Aja’ib al-Asfar, or A Gift to Those Who Contemplate the Wonders of Cities and the Marvels of Traveling.) The Prophet Muhammad’s traditional injunction to “seek knowledge, even as far as China” had the effect of legitimating travel, or even wanderlust, and, in the Islamic middle ages, gave rise to the concept of al-rihla fi talab al-’ilm, travel in search of knowledge. In Islamic North Africa in the 12th to 14th centuries, as paper became increasingly widely available, educated men began to pen and circulate first-hand descriptions of their pilgrimages the Holy Cities of Makkah and Madinah. ( Editors of the Longest Hajj by Douglas Bullis)”.

In medieval Sri Lanka  travellers’ rest stops were called Ambalama’s and were made of stone and wood pillars. The peripatetics  may have  cooled off in a nearby stream, had their home wrapped parcel of food , chewed their packet of betel, snoozed on a stone slab in an Ambalama before proceeding on their journey. 

 Now, couple of centuries down the line from Battuta’s day, we are spoilt for choice. There are inns, cafes, the good old colonial relics the Rest Houses and an abundance of little kades or  wayside boutiques that carry name boards grandly denoting it is a  Hotels.  These please note are quite different from the star class variety.  “Hotel” is a term used  quite generously on name boards, but basically they are pitstop cafes catering for travellers, truckers -lodging is not always available.  This one we stopped at was on the Puttalam- Anuradhapura  road. 

Fresh young coconuts compete with Coca Cola to quench the thirst of travellers. Photograph© Chulie de Silva

The first to catch my attention in the “Hotel” was Somaratne.   He was a little shy. I put it down to to a reluctance to be photogrpahed and he did gradually thaw out to tell me that he was 71 years old and that he was from Wariyapola and had migrated to Puttalam for work. I asked “why” and he looked at me as if to say you shouldn’t be asking that question and replied “you go where the work is.” I was too busy trying to focus on him, I didn’t  notice his injured eye at first, and saw it only when I had a look at the photograph I had taken.  “I fell on a sharp object, and although Dr. Seimon, the famous Kandy  doctor tried to save it, he couldn’t do much,” he said with a wry smile. 

The economic migrant Somaratne. Photograph© Chulie de Silva

Any takers for veg rolls? Photograph© Chulie de Silva

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Uvais making the popular Gothambas ( Roti Chanai in Malaysia), on the other hand is a native of Puttalam. and is a Muslim.  He was rolling out the dough but not as with so much flourish as I have seen in Malaysia. Some of these flat dough “Gothas” were  stuffed with  a veg mixture made of local yams ( cheaper than the potato) and shaped into triangular patties.

Then there was the young, hip and talkative Rajin who made us tea sans milk,  hot and sweet.  He wanted his photo taken at the fruit stall by the road side.   Without missing a beat or his pose he said ”Why not buy some passion fruit or this Papaya, naturally ripend on te tree.”   I ended up buying the papaya and promising to send a set of photos. 

Rajin was bilingual and was talking in Tamil and Sinhala  both. Trading seams to come naturally to him.  There we had a  trio of of Sinhala, Tamil and Muslim workers, garrulous Rajin, quiet Uvais, and the pensive Somaratne,  all happily working together. 

 

  Rajni of Sudeera Hotel. Photograph© Chulie de Silva

 

Mosque in Puttalam. Photograph© Chulie de Silva

 

This mosque built near the spot where Ibn Battuta was supposed to have landed, is a proud land mark in Puttalam. Apparently Battuta’s writings describes  pearl fishing in Puttalam, a visit to Adam’s Peak, Dondra (Dewinuwara), and Galle, the other town in the South where many of the Arab traders landed. Batutta after his travels in Ceylon is supposed to have sailed back to India from Puttalam.

Crumbling shop house close to the spot where Battuta landed. Photograph© Chulie de Silva

 

 

 

Was Puttalam  and Galle then rich markets where traders of many nationalities roamed?  Did the Sinhalese. Tamils and Muslims live together amicably? 

A unique trilingual slab found in Galle in 1911, now in the Colombo Museum has inscriptions in Chinese, Persian and Tamil. The inscription is dated  1403 AD, the tenth regnal year of the Chinese Emperor, Ying Lo. the slab is said to have been installed in Galle by Chen Ho (1371-1435).

Did Battuta determinedly set out to have a good time, or did he just take off with only the adventure lust and stars to guide him?  We as travelers  cannot hold a candle to him. Sometimes, we spend a lot of money, select destinations carefully, and yet the magic eludes us. Sometimes, in life too we think we’ve got it all right to have a good time and someone or something moves the goals or puts a spoke in the plan. Often the nicest experiences in my life have come my way more subtly, when I am least expecting them. They don’t seem like much to write home about, but then I am here writing because this is precisely what I’d like to remember. 

What better than a pile of sand to play in? Photograph© Chulie de Silva

 

Please  read: The Longest Hajj: The Journeys of Ibn Battuta by Douglas Bullis, Saudi Aramco World (July/August 2000). This article is worth about as much as all other material on the web, and something of a find as the search engine’s don’t think much of it yet.. This first link is the editor’s excellent introduction to the three articles, which mix recitation, translation and commentary. The parts are:

Part 1: From Pilgrim to Traveler—Tangier to Makkah. Bullis discusses Ibn Battuta’s unique, 58-page account of Mecca (Makkah), with a nice footnote on authorship problems pertaining to some of the sections.

Part 2: From Riches to Rags—Makkah to India. “All through the Rihla Ibn Battuta’s personal character comes out in hints and fragments. Today he might be regarded as a bit of a fussbudget or a meddler, evidenced by the rather too generous outrage he expresses at minor lapses in others’ behavior.”

Part 3: From Traveler to Memoirist—China, Mali and Home. “[I]n China, his reliability is so maddeningly variable that one can argue for or against his having been there at all.” Has good sections on Spain and sub-Saharan Africa.

 

Wikipedia: Ibn Battuta. This is an exemplary Wikipedia page, a lengthy, authoritative and hyperlinked

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