Well, dear readers, once again we come to an important moment in this blog. I am writing now to announce something that may have been gnawing at your suspicions for some time as events have been unfolding, like when you're watching a cheap film late at night, but you missed the opening credits, and while you watch you slowly become more and more attuned to certain idiomatic expressions and turns of phrase, certain well-worn elements of plot, and you begin to realize that the film is almost certainly going to be a softcore porn, and the amply-endowed heroines are going to offer each other their breasts at any moment, and you wearily reach for the remote because, goddammit, you were actually hoping for an moving but accessible drama about sisterly bonding.
This is one of those moments; albeit a non-erotic one with nary an ounce of silicone in sight, where I announce what many of you have probably concluded: this blog, and the tale of Ghostface Buddha's journey in the kaleidoscopic mindscapes of southern Asia are soon coming to an end. No, this is not the last post. In fact, I have another one almost finished sitting in my 'drafts' box, and one or two little things down the line, but this is my last cable from the front. Aye, in but hours' time I shall be taking off from Colombo's international airport, and soaring brainlessly over the Arabian Sea, putting the patience of Royal Jordanian Airways' flight attendants to a mighty test. Since I have to, y'know, pack and shit, I have to leave this computer and sign off from the crappy realms of Indo/Ceylonese cyberspace one last time.
Keep reading in the next few days, when I'll be delivering a number of posts from American soil about my last adventures in Sri Lanka, at least one of which directly compares Sinhalese pilgrims to a woman's menstrual flow.
-GFB
Oct 29, 2010
Oct 28, 2010
WAR (What Is It Good For?)
Indeed, war: what is it good for? Rather than sit around and ponder the question I decided it was time to hop into Sri Lanka's recovering post-war areas and find out.
It being a mere year and a half since Sri Lanka's 26-year civil war came to an end, with the formidable rebel army known as the Liberation Tigers Of Tamil Eelam [a.k.a the Tamil Tigers] utterly crushed at last, access to some of the areas in which the war raged is still carefully controlled. For foreigners, some parts are completely off limits, but fortunately it was possible for me to fly over the devastated region known as the Vanni (which I had earlier been denied entry to) and land upon the Jaffna Peninsula, the extreme northern part of the island and the heart of Tamil Sri Lanka.
The flight was certainly memorable in its own way, since I had no choice but to travel on a plane operated by the Sri Lankan air force. It was a rather strange affair. Though I have been to many airports, Colombo's domestic airport at Rathmalana was the first one I've visited where the tarmac was surrounded by manned pillboxes. After much to-do about security in the pre-dawn hours, me and the few other passengers were loaded onto a small and silly old twin-propeller aircraft with the colorful roundel of the Sri Lankan Air Face painted on its side. Clearly, they had pulled this plane out of God knows what depot and refurbished it on the inside for taking civilian passengers, with a hilarious attempt at making it comfortable by adding quite good cushions while utterly neglecting the total absence of legroom that owed to the plane's tiny dimensions. It was a surprisingly slow and tedious flight as the plane got whisked about in every gust of wind and we proceeded painfully slowly over the sparsely-populated scrub of northwestern Sri Lanka. Finally I saw what I was looking for as the unmistakable form of the Jaffna Lagoon crept into view and the plane began to descend in a dramatic swoop over the Jaffna Peninsula. I could see a flat and densely-settled swathe of countryside, washed here and there with the strange glistening forms of the many inlets of the lagoon. Getting lower, we could inspect individual buildings and began to notice the signs of war: roofless farmhouses getting swallowed by scrub, country temples with tin sheets hastily tacked over gaping holes in the tile roofs, entire village streets abandoned to silent obscurity.
We landed on the north coast of the peninsula, at Sri Lanka Air Force Base Palali. On our final approach we could see that the entire area around the airbase was devastated and militarized for miles in each direction, with successive layers of bunkers, earthworks, and and other defensive emplacements engulfing a wide perimeter inside which whole villages had been swallowed by the contingencies of war. We touched down and waited for the Air Force to do whatever it was they needed to do, and while my fellow-passengers (a trio of menopausal German ladies) made a big fuss being strangely impressed by the soldiers, I sat around and waited for the Air Force to provide the promised bus escort to Jaffna. It came, and not only did we get an Air Force bus driver, but also a baggage handler, a liaison officer, and a beret-wearing soldier who hung out the door pointing an assault rifle at everything we passed. For quite a while we drove through the airbase's perimeter, one of the "high security zones" imposed by the military upon the people. Within the perimeter we passed through a village, every house devastated by bombs and artillery, and many of them bearing facades pocked with bullet holes from nasty close-up fighting. Outside the village, a trio of Sri Lankan soldiers in full blast gear were clustered around a spot in the fields, near a vehicle marked "De-Mining Team". As we drove further from the airbase and closer to the city, the devastation became less total and the familiar bustle of life in South Asian towns resumed, though through the thickets and at intervals along the road there was still almost always the shell of a ruined household visible.
My first task after arriving in Jaffna city was, of course, finding a hotel. These were not altogether easy to come by. I slung on my pack and began the long march through the heat to an area where accommodation was rumored to be found. Along the way I began to get a feel for the Jaffna environment. It is a town wholly unlike anywhere else in Sri Lanka, and as anyone could tell you it resembles more a small city of far southern India than it does any community on the island of Ceylon. Where the average Sinhalese town consists of a single, traffic-choked highway and an unrelenting string of buses and rickshaws passing through the one, ugly, cramped modern bazaar Jaffna was instead a proper grid of mostly quiet city streets, used mostly by maniacal throngs of bicyclists wearing silent expressions of serene calm interrupted by the jingling of bells. What motorized traffic there was could be detected from some distance since the drivers of Jaffna conform to the Indian courtesy of honking at anything and everything that comes within 20 feet of suffering a collision. I trudged up the main artery out of town, noticing mostly that it was reassuringly boring, save for the occasional miniature jungle growing on the plots of ruined homes. Approximately ever other intersection had a detachment of soldiers watching it from small guardhouses or bunkers, their ever-vigilant eyes and assault rifles guaranteeing the security of strategically vital grocery stalls. Near more important facilities, heavy fortifications could be seen down unlikely alleyways and canals, with gun-laden watchtowers keeping vigil on foul, barely-used waterways, and numerous layers of barbed wire covered in signs warning of landmines within the perimeter.
One of the odd things about Jaffna is that though it is the heart of Sri Lanka's Hindu area, there is an enormous Christian presence in town. I don't presume to comment on the percentage of people following the Christian faith, because I don't know, but I can tell you that Jaffna is chock-full of enormous colonial churches and seminaries. I walked into the city's main cathedral, a massive structure on the edge of town, and was greeted by the local Catholic bishop, who had much to say about the history of the nearby seminary, and then by the guests arriving early to a wedding. A young man in a blazer and a bright purple shirt and flawlessly gel-spiked hair with blingy earrings in each ear approached me. "Damn," I thought, "this fellow looks something straight out of a British television miniseries...". He reached me and shook my hand. "Hello, I'm David. I'm from East London." CALLED IT. Everyone in Jaffna has relatives all over the world, thanks to the Tamil diaspora that was provoked by such things as the bombings and that one time when the Tamil Tigers forced everybody in Jaffna to abandon their homes... Talk to anyone and odds are good they'll say "Oh, my auntie lives in Toronto... I worked in Iraq before the war (their one I mean, ha ha!)... We're actually from Bristol... I am doing maintenance in Abu Dhabi..." David's relatives came up to tell him he was needed for some aspect of the wedding preparations, so he excused himself, telling me that I "seemed like a good bloke, best of luck!"
Closer in to town I found myself in the old colonial-era streets of Jaffna. It is a charming area, sort of like the neighborhood within Galle's fort, a throwback of modest new buildings mixed in with a lot of charmingly crumbling Dutch-period manors and merchant firms, without the sickly preservative feel layered on by Galle's tourism industry. Where in Galle there would be an old villa touched up and aesthetically sanitized into a high-class cafe, in Jaffna there is an old villa in authentic (if slightly dilapidated) residential condition, albeit possibly with an artillery hole in the kitchen ceiling. I went past yet more grand churches and an increasing number of ever-more devastated homes as I drew closer to the city center, and almost by accident plunged myself into Jaffna's grim but bustling public market. This is the sort of place where despite the fact that the upper floors are blasted open to the sky and the crumbling stairways up are blocked by crude barriers of rusting shopping carts, the dark and dirty ground floor is a thriving place of business where the locals happily stroll about buying vegetables and perfuming themselves in the poorly-ventilated garage-like area where dozens of stallholders display their impressive variety of stinking fish, squids, crabs, and chunks of shark. Wholesalers pack into the dark corners with great heaps of dead aquatic creatures on the floor, crying their offers to the stallholders with the bizarre squawks and screams that only an Indian-cultured man with unlikely merchandise can produce; "cuttlefishcuttlefishCUTTLEFISH CUTTLEFiiiiiaasshhhh!!! C-C-C-CUTTLEFEEEESSHHHH CUUARRRQQQQKKK ZIIYEAACKKKKKACUTTLEFISH HEY HEY HEY HEY HEY HEY HEY HEY HEY HEY HEY HEY HEY HEY HEY HEY HEY HEY CUTTLEMOTHERFUCKINGFISH!!!!!"
Speaking of horrible smells, perhaps the single most Indian thing about Jaffna is the overpowering stench of stagnant water in litter-strewn, perpetually blocked drains. I will say this, however: unlike most cities in India, Jaffna has an excuse for a bit of poor sewage here and there, seeing that it has spent a notable portion of the past few decades under siege. The Sri Lankan Army, the Tamil Tigers, and the Indian Army (now there was an episode -don't even ask) all had their turns blasting the municipal infrastructure to hell. On the other hand cities in India just fucking smell.
I finally wandered through the old town to the edge of the lagoon, and found that I could not see the lagoon. Almost the entire coastline hereabouts has been fenced off in layers of barbed wire and all-concealing traditional palm leaf fences, presumably to thwart amphibious Tiger raids from their bases on the southern side of the lagoon. Even the local fishing jetty is a closely-monitored area, with its own little detachment of soldiers encamped in their diminutive fortress to keep this access point sealed. Not far from here I saw a wide empty field of some acres, and was puzzled why there should be unused land so close to the city center. Then when I drew closer I saw that the field was pockmarked with low ruins, and the rest of it covered in small chunks of rubble. I realized I was looking at the part of town on the approach to the fort that got the worst of it, being utterly and completely flattened by Air Force bombings and the raging battles that surrounded the fort itself. On one end of the field were the 'remains' of the Jaffna Town Hall, a single statue alone in the field, with bullet holes here and there and its entire head blown right off, leaving a gruesome steel spine jutting up to highlight the decapitation. Just beyond was the large but now almost hidden Jaffna Fort, a large and powerful Dutch "star fort", which finally got put to use in combat, suffering repeated dogged defenses and exchanges of control. Its centuries-old brick bulwarks seem to have done surprisingly well in the face of modern weapons, but the toll of many battles shows where artillery has blasted away pieces of the ramparts and the defenders of the fort have allowed a wild tangle of vegetation to grow around, making their layered defenses of wire, mines, and machine gun nests all the more unapproachable.
After having stumbled across so much, I almost forgot I hadn't yet visited any of the attractions which my vaunted Ministry of Defense travel clearance said I had ostensibly come to see. There are a number of medium-sized Hindu temples in town, and -surprise!- they were mostly like any other medium-sized Hindu temple from the south of India, but I saw that coming. There is at least a distinctively north Sri Lankan variation on the old temple design, which uses picturesque sloped tile roofs over the shrines, and also pleasingly incorporates Portuguese-style bell towers flanking the South Indian gopuram pyramidal gate tower. After a couple of these mildly interesting mediocrities I schlepped out to the suburbs to what was once the sacred village of Nallur to visit the renowned Nallur Kandaswamy temple, the largest and most extravagant place of Hindu worship in Sri Lanka. As with all 'large' Sri Lankan things, this term was revealed to be relative. Jaffna's great temple is nowhere near as impressive as the major shrines of Tamil Nadu just across the strait, though would fit in nicely with the temples there of secondary fame. That being said, it was worth a visit. I has a nice little gopuram-and-bell-towers facade and the hints of tile roof beyond, as well as a considerable red-striped perimeter wall where a huge south-facing gopuram is either being constructed or repaired (all over the Jaffna area, the end of the war is heralding a burst of temple expansion and restoration that was wisely put on hold while there was a good chance of the edifices just being bombed again). Within, the traditional Hindu layout includes an enchantingly decorated passage leading to the shrine of the god, with numerous interesting little shrines surrounding it. Up in the ceiling, the strange colonial influence manifests itself in the forms of chandeliers and hanging red drapery, which contrast oddly with the undulating piles of sand like a miniature desert that surround the dry pit which would be the temple's sacred tank. Following local tradition, men must take off their shirts to enter, which was a blessing in the sweaty heat, though the paleness of my skin beneath (in the Subcontinent it is almost always wildly inappropriate to take your shirt off) contrasting with the much darker skin of my arms and face drew a lot of odd looks from the assembled worshipers and the platoon of soldiers guarding the sandy square outside the gate. Thanks to hyper-exaggerated Indian inhibitions about the exposure of flesh, I now have a farmer's tan par excellence.
I returned to my part of the city via a road known locally as "NGO City." Its sides were lined with the offices and staff houses of numerous UN bodies, Nordic refugee agencies, and other well-wishing groups. Nearly all of these had a sign on its front gate depicting an AK-47 or other assault rifle inside a big red "NO" circle. I must admit, I really wanted to steal one, and I would have if they weren't on the front of heavily-guarded UN enclaves. Anyways, I'm returning home to the Washington DC area soon, and if I put it up in my yard it would just be mistaken for a commentary on gun control laws, and I would wake up one morning to find my sign missing and my lawn covered in tea bags and flyers depicting Barack Obama in a Hitler mustache and a turban.
So I'd seen Jaffna and was soon ready to head off into the surrounding countryside, but something nagged me. I still hadn't discovered what, if anything, is war good for?
Lacking any particular evidence of laudable benefits, I came close to allowing that the only positive thing it produces is iconic, feisty, and melodious songs with direct and unforgettable lyrics about the worthlessness of armed confli... wait. Hold on. No. I'm thinking of that song by Edwin Starr. I just remembered that Sri Lankan protest music takes the form of MIA, so I'm going to have to revise my answer to
ABSOLUTELY NOTHING
It being a mere year and a half since Sri Lanka's 26-year civil war came to an end, with the formidable rebel army known as the Liberation Tigers Of Tamil Eelam [a.k.a the Tamil Tigers] utterly crushed at last, access to some of the areas in which the war raged is still carefully controlled. For foreigners, some parts are completely off limits, but fortunately it was possible for me to fly over the devastated region known as the Vanni (which I had earlier been denied entry to) and land upon the Jaffna Peninsula, the extreme northern part of the island and the heart of Tamil Sri Lanka.
The flight was certainly memorable in its own way, since I had no choice but to travel on a plane operated by the Sri Lankan air force. It was a rather strange affair. Though I have been to many airports, Colombo's domestic airport at Rathmalana was the first one I've visited where the tarmac was surrounded by manned pillboxes. After much to-do about security in the pre-dawn hours, me and the few other passengers were loaded onto a small and silly old twin-propeller aircraft with the colorful roundel of the Sri Lankan Air Face painted on its side. Clearly, they had pulled this plane out of God knows what depot and refurbished it on the inside for taking civilian passengers, with a hilarious attempt at making it comfortable by adding quite good cushions while utterly neglecting the total absence of legroom that owed to the plane's tiny dimensions. It was a surprisingly slow and tedious flight as the plane got whisked about in every gust of wind and we proceeded painfully slowly over the sparsely-populated scrub of northwestern Sri Lanka. Finally I saw what I was looking for as the unmistakable form of the Jaffna Lagoon crept into view and the plane began to descend in a dramatic swoop over the Jaffna Peninsula. I could see a flat and densely-settled swathe of countryside, washed here and there with the strange glistening forms of the many inlets of the lagoon. Getting lower, we could inspect individual buildings and began to notice the signs of war: roofless farmhouses getting swallowed by scrub, country temples with tin sheets hastily tacked over gaping holes in the tile roofs, entire village streets abandoned to silent obscurity.
We landed on the north coast of the peninsula, at Sri Lanka Air Force Base Palali. On our final approach we could see that the entire area around the airbase was devastated and militarized for miles in each direction, with successive layers of bunkers, earthworks, and and other defensive emplacements engulfing a wide perimeter inside which whole villages had been swallowed by the contingencies of war. We touched down and waited for the Air Force to do whatever it was they needed to do, and while my fellow-passengers (a trio of menopausal German ladies) made a big fuss being strangely impressed by the soldiers, I sat around and waited for the Air Force to provide the promised bus escort to Jaffna. It came, and not only did we get an Air Force bus driver, but also a baggage handler, a liaison officer, and a beret-wearing soldier who hung out the door pointing an assault rifle at everything we passed. For quite a while we drove through the airbase's perimeter, one of the "high security zones" imposed by the military upon the people. Within the perimeter we passed through a village, every house devastated by bombs and artillery, and many of them bearing facades pocked with bullet holes from nasty close-up fighting. Outside the village, a trio of Sri Lankan soldiers in full blast gear were clustered around a spot in the fields, near a vehicle marked "De-Mining Team". As we drove further from the airbase and closer to the city, the devastation became less total and the familiar bustle of life in South Asian towns resumed, though through the thickets and at intervals along the road there was still almost always the shell of a ruined household visible.
My first task after arriving in Jaffna city was, of course, finding a hotel. These were not altogether easy to come by. I slung on my pack and began the long march through the heat to an area where accommodation was rumored to be found. Along the way I began to get a feel for the Jaffna environment. It is a town wholly unlike anywhere else in Sri Lanka, and as anyone could tell you it resembles more a small city of far southern India than it does any community on the island of Ceylon. Where the average Sinhalese town consists of a single, traffic-choked highway and an unrelenting string of buses and rickshaws passing through the one, ugly, cramped modern bazaar Jaffna was instead a proper grid of mostly quiet city streets, used mostly by maniacal throngs of bicyclists wearing silent expressions of serene calm interrupted by the jingling of bells. What motorized traffic there was could be detected from some distance since the drivers of Jaffna conform to the Indian courtesy of honking at anything and everything that comes within 20 feet of suffering a collision. I trudged up the main artery out of town, noticing mostly that it was reassuringly boring, save for the occasional miniature jungle growing on the plots of ruined homes. Approximately ever other intersection had a detachment of soldiers watching it from small guardhouses or bunkers, their ever-vigilant eyes and assault rifles guaranteeing the security of strategically vital grocery stalls. Near more important facilities, heavy fortifications could be seen down unlikely alleyways and canals, with gun-laden watchtowers keeping vigil on foul, barely-used waterways, and numerous layers of barbed wire covered in signs warning of landmines within the perimeter.
One of the odd things about Jaffna is that though it is the heart of Sri Lanka's Hindu area, there is an enormous Christian presence in town. I don't presume to comment on the percentage of people following the Christian faith, because I don't know, but I can tell you that Jaffna is chock-full of enormous colonial churches and seminaries. I walked into the city's main cathedral, a massive structure on the edge of town, and was greeted by the local Catholic bishop, who had much to say about the history of the nearby seminary, and then by the guests arriving early to a wedding. A young man in a blazer and a bright purple shirt and flawlessly gel-spiked hair with blingy earrings in each ear approached me. "Damn," I thought, "this fellow looks something straight out of a British television miniseries...". He reached me and shook my hand. "Hello, I'm David. I'm from East London." CALLED IT. Everyone in Jaffna has relatives all over the world, thanks to the Tamil diaspora that was provoked by such things as the bombings and that one time when the Tamil Tigers forced everybody in Jaffna to abandon their homes... Talk to anyone and odds are good they'll say "Oh, my auntie lives in Toronto... I worked in Iraq before the war (their one I mean, ha ha!)... We're actually from Bristol... I am doing maintenance in Abu Dhabi..." David's relatives came up to tell him he was needed for some aspect of the wedding preparations, so he excused himself, telling me that I "seemed like a good bloke, best of luck!"
Closer in to town I found myself in the old colonial-era streets of Jaffna. It is a charming area, sort of like the neighborhood within Galle's fort, a throwback of modest new buildings mixed in with a lot of charmingly crumbling Dutch-period manors and merchant firms, without the sickly preservative feel layered on by Galle's tourism industry. Where in Galle there would be an old villa touched up and aesthetically sanitized into a high-class cafe, in Jaffna there is an old villa in authentic (if slightly dilapidated) residential condition, albeit possibly with an artillery hole in the kitchen ceiling. I went past yet more grand churches and an increasing number of ever-more devastated homes as I drew closer to the city center, and almost by accident plunged myself into Jaffna's grim but bustling public market. This is the sort of place where despite the fact that the upper floors are blasted open to the sky and the crumbling stairways up are blocked by crude barriers of rusting shopping carts, the dark and dirty ground floor is a thriving place of business where the locals happily stroll about buying vegetables and perfuming themselves in the poorly-ventilated garage-like area where dozens of stallholders display their impressive variety of stinking fish, squids, crabs, and chunks of shark. Wholesalers pack into the dark corners with great heaps of dead aquatic creatures on the floor, crying their offers to the stallholders with the bizarre squawks and screams that only an Indian-cultured man with unlikely merchandise can produce; "cuttlefishcuttlefishCUTTLEFISH CUTTLEFiiiiiaasshhhh!!! C-C-C-CUTTLEFEEEESSHHHH CUUARRRQQQQKKK ZIIYEAACKKKKKACUTTLEFISH HEY HEY HEY HEY HEY HEY HEY HEY HEY HEY HEY HEY HEY HEY HEY HEY HEY HEY CUTTLEMOTHERFUCKINGFISH!!!!!"
Speaking of horrible smells, perhaps the single most Indian thing about Jaffna is the overpowering stench of stagnant water in litter-strewn, perpetually blocked drains. I will say this, however: unlike most cities in India, Jaffna has an excuse for a bit of poor sewage here and there, seeing that it has spent a notable portion of the past few decades under siege. The Sri Lankan Army, the Tamil Tigers, and the Indian Army (now there was an episode -don't even ask) all had their turns blasting the municipal infrastructure to hell. On the other hand cities in India just fucking smell.
I finally wandered through the old town to the edge of the lagoon, and found that I could not see the lagoon. Almost the entire coastline hereabouts has been fenced off in layers of barbed wire and all-concealing traditional palm leaf fences, presumably to thwart amphibious Tiger raids from their bases on the southern side of the lagoon. Even the local fishing jetty is a closely-monitored area, with its own little detachment of soldiers encamped in their diminutive fortress to keep this access point sealed. Not far from here I saw a wide empty field of some acres, and was puzzled why there should be unused land so close to the city center. Then when I drew closer I saw that the field was pockmarked with low ruins, and the rest of it covered in small chunks of rubble. I realized I was looking at the part of town on the approach to the fort that got the worst of it, being utterly and completely flattened by Air Force bombings and the raging battles that surrounded the fort itself. On one end of the field were the 'remains' of the Jaffna Town Hall, a single statue alone in the field, with bullet holes here and there and its entire head blown right off, leaving a gruesome steel spine jutting up to highlight the decapitation. Just beyond was the large but now almost hidden Jaffna Fort, a large and powerful Dutch "star fort", which finally got put to use in combat, suffering repeated dogged defenses and exchanges of control. Its centuries-old brick bulwarks seem to have done surprisingly well in the face of modern weapons, but the toll of many battles shows where artillery has blasted away pieces of the ramparts and the defenders of the fort have allowed a wild tangle of vegetation to grow around, making their layered defenses of wire, mines, and machine gun nests all the more unapproachable.
After having stumbled across so much, I almost forgot I hadn't yet visited any of the attractions which my vaunted Ministry of Defense travel clearance said I had ostensibly come to see. There are a number of medium-sized Hindu temples in town, and -surprise!- they were mostly like any other medium-sized Hindu temple from the south of India, but I saw that coming. There is at least a distinctively north Sri Lankan variation on the old temple design, which uses picturesque sloped tile roofs over the shrines, and also pleasingly incorporates Portuguese-style bell towers flanking the South Indian gopuram pyramidal gate tower. After a couple of these mildly interesting mediocrities I schlepped out to the suburbs to what was once the sacred village of Nallur to visit the renowned Nallur Kandaswamy temple, the largest and most extravagant place of Hindu worship in Sri Lanka. As with all 'large' Sri Lankan things, this term was revealed to be relative. Jaffna's great temple is nowhere near as impressive as the major shrines of Tamil Nadu just across the strait, though would fit in nicely with the temples there of secondary fame. That being said, it was worth a visit. I has a nice little gopuram-and-bell-towers facade and the hints of tile roof beyond, as well as a considerable red-striped perimeter wall where a huge south-facing gopuram is either being constructed or repaired (all over the Jaffna area, the end of the war is heralding a burst of temple expansion and restoration that was wisely put on hold while there was a good chance of the edifices just being bombed again). Within, the traditional Hindu layout includes an enchantingly decorated passage leading to the shrine of the god, with numerous interesting little shrines surrounding it. Up in the ceiling, the strange colonial influence manifests itself in the forms of chandeliers and hanging red drapery, which contrast oddly with the undulating piles of sand like a miniature desert that surround the dry pit which would be the temple's sacred tank. Following local tradition, men must take off their shirts to enter, which was a blessing in the sweaty heat, though the paleness of my skin beneath (in the Subcontinent it is almost always wildly inappropriate to take your shirt off) contrasting with the much darker skin of my arms and face drew a lot of odd looks from the assembled worshipers and the platoon of soldiers guarding the sandy square outside the gate. Thanks to hyper-exaggerated Indian inhibitions about the exposure of flesh, I now have a farmer's tan par excellence.
I returned to my part of the city via a road known locally as "NGO City." Its sides were lined with the offices and staff houses of numerous UN bodies, Nordic refugee agencies, and other well-wishing groups. Nearly all of these had a sign on its front gate depicting an AK-47 or other assault rifle inside a big red "NO" circle. I must admit, I really wanted to steal one, and I would have if they weren't on the front of heavily-guarded UN enclaves. Anyways, I'm returning home to the Washington DC area soon, and if I put it up in my yard it would just be mistaken for a commentary on gun control laws, and I would wake up one morning to find my sign missing and my lawn covered in tea bags and flyers depicting Barack Obama in a Hitler mustache and a turban.
So I'd seen Jaffna and was soon ready to head off into the surrounding countryside, but something nagged me. I still hadn't discovered what, if anything, is war good for?
Lacking any particular evidence of laudable benefits, I came close to allowing that the only positive thing it produces is iconic, feisty, and melodious songs with direct and unforgettable lyrics about the worthlessness of armed confli... wait. Hold on. No. I'm thinking of that song by Edwin Starr. I just remembered that Sri Lankan protest music takes the form of MIA, so I'm going to have to revise my answer to
ABSOLUTELY NOTHING
Oct 24, 2010
The Jaffna Travel Permit (M.O.D. Clearance)
This is a guide for non-Sri Lankans who wish to travel to the Jaffna area. At present, (October 2010), there are various restrictions and permits pertaining to travel in this area. Since in my own experience I found a dearth of useful information on the internet, I will post a proper guide here. (Note to my regular readers: this is in no way meant to be entertaining, merely informative. You may skip this one if you like). My sources for this information are primarily myself, having gone through the process successfully, as well as conversations with the officers-on-duty at the Omantai checkpoint, Ministry of Defense HQ, and the Colombo and Jaffna airfields.
Do You Need A Permit To Travel In The North?
In short: yes.
If you are a Sri Lankan citizen, you may travel freely. If you are a foreign citizen "of Sri Lankan birth", you may travel anywhere but some areas (i.e. the Vanni) will still require permits. Other foreigners, meaning tourists, may get permits for some areas and not at all for others. Note that if you are with an NGO or somesuch, the rules are different, and I can't help you here.
What Areas Require Permits?
You must obtain a permit to travel anywhere in the Jaffna peninsula. The "Vanni" region from Omantai (just north of Vavuniya) to the Elephant Pass are completely off limits for now. You may however travel freely, without permit, to Mannar Island and along that road.
Can I Get A Permit To Travel To Jaffna By Road?
No. At present, only foreigners "of Sri Lankan birth" may use the A9 highway to the north. All other foreigners must get permission to travel to Jaffna by air.
HOW TO GET M.O.D. CLEARANCE FOR AIR TRAVEL TO JAFFNA
Set aside a day or two for this at least, and do it as far in advance as you can, or you may encounter complications that make the process take longer.
To apply for M.O.D. Clearance, you must apply in person at the Ministry of Defense checkpoint in Colombo. In theory, you can also apply via fax, but this involves communicating via phone with whichever Defense Ministry flunkie is on duty when you call (the numbers, should you wish to try, are 0112430880, 0112430881, etc.), and is also regarded as a special circumstance which they may not wish to indulge in your case. Best to go to Colombo. The "office" is the security checkpoint at the entrance to the Defense Ministry compound, at the extreme northern end of Galle Face Green, just before a short bridge crosses a water channel towards the Fort neighborhood and the Secretariat.
Take with you your passport (for ID proof), a photocopy of your passport (to hand in), and a pen and paper. You will be asked to produce a "Letter of Request", which is a simple statement saying who you are, where you want to go, the dates of your travel, and why. This can simply be written on a scrap of paper before the soldiers' very eyes, and needs say no more than "My name is Mr. James Jameson, citizen of Jamesland. I wish to travel to Jaffna on dates January 1 to January 17, for reason of tourism." You must also give your passport number. When citing your reason for travel, simple tourism will suffice. There is no need to be elaborate, and you will do yourself no favors by saying "I am filled with passion by the plight of the Tamil people, who inspire my gut-wrenchingly realistic and widely-published poetry..."
After you apply, ask when to come retrieve your permit, which should be given as a matter of routine. If you come early in the day, you may receive it that same evening, otherwise the next evening is likely.
Now you have permission to fly to Jaffna, all you need is your ticket.
GETTING A TICKET TO FLY TO JAFFNA
Currently, the only air service flying to Jaffna is the Sri Lankan Air Force's own "Heli Tours" service. There are only three flights a week (MWF) in each direction, and the plane is quite small, so book a ticket as far in advance as possible, or you may find yourself forced to travel on different dates, sending you back to the Defense Ministry for permission again (you may guess that this happened to me).
Reputable travel agents, which can be found conveniently nearby in the Fort and Kollupitiya neighborhoods, should have the contacts to get the ticket. Otherwise, ask at the Defense Ministry checkpoint when you apply and they may furnish you with the card of a local agent who does business with them. In order to get your ticket you must have your M.O.D. clearance first. Make photocopies of this as well, because your travel agent will need them, along with the usual passport copies etc. to procure the ticket. The price of a round-trip ticket is approximately 18,000 Sri Lankan Rupees (~$170), plus your agent's commission.
ON THE DATE OF TRAVEL
Show up punctually by the check-in time printed on your ticket. Remember, aside from South Asian bureaucratic tendencies, you are dealing with military notions of time here. You must go to the Rathmalana domestic airport (not the international airport), in the southern suburbs of Colombo. A hired driver will have no difficulty getting there. At check-in, your bags will be searched (perhaps repeatedly), and then weighed. Note that you may take only 15kg of luggage, which is not that much, so you may want to leave bulky items in the care of your Colombo hotel or some such arrangement. Then, for obscure reasons, you yourself will be weighed on an old-fashioned scale with an enormous gauge that everyone within fifty yards can read, providing mirth all around.
When finally, after a series of waits in the airport, you board the plane, the flight is about an hour long.
The airport on the Jaffna side, called Palali, is a much more militaristic affair than the one in Colombo. It is also quite far from the city so the Air Force provides a bus to take you to Jaffna.
On the date of your return flight to Colombo, present yourself at the appointed check-in time to the Heli Tours "office" (in reality a small concrete box with a desk inside), located across from the military's Civil Affairs Office at the corner of Hospital Rd. and 3rd Cross Street in Jaffna, and a bus will come to take you to Palali. Once again, if you get a rickshaw or car, this will be very easy to find.
OK, I think that's everything you really want to know, bizarre circumstances excepted. If you need further information you can always try the Ministry of Defense phone line (0112430880, 01124300881, etc.), but don't count on being well understood.
-GFB
Do You Need A Permit To Travel In The North?
In short: yes.
If you are a Sri Lankan citizen, you may travel freely. If you are a foreign citizen "of Sri Lankan birth", you may travel anywhere but some areas (i.e. the Vanni) will still require permits. Other foreigners, meaning tourists, may get permits for some areas and not at all for others. Note that if you are with an NGO or somesuch, the rules are different, and I can't help you here.
What Areas Require Permits?
You must obtain a permit to travel anywhere in the Jaffna peninsula. The "Vanni" region from Omantai (just north of Vavuniya) to the Elephant Pass are completely off limits for now. You may however travel freely, without permit, to Mannar Island and along that road.
Can I Get A Permit To Travel To Jaffna By Road?
No. At present, only foreigners "of Sri Lankan birth" may use the A9 highway to the north. All other foreigners must get permission to travel to Jaffna by air.
HOW TO GET M.O.D. CLEARANCE FOR AIR TRAVEL TO JAFFNA
Set aside a day or two for this at least, and do it as far in advance as you can, or you may encounter complications that make the process take longer.
To apply for M.O.D. Clearance, you must apply in person at the Ministry of Defense checkpoint in Colombo. In theory, you can also apply via fax, but this involves communicating via phone with whichever Defense Ministry flunkie is on duty when you call (the numbers, should you wish to try, are 0112430880, 0112430881, etc.), and is also regarded as a special circumstance which they may not wish to indulge in your case. Best to go to Colombo. The "office" is the security checkpoint at the entrance to the Defense Ministry compound, at the extreme northern end of Galle Face Green, just before a short bridge crosses a water channel towards the Fort neighborhood and the Secretariat.
Take with you your passport (for ID proof), a photocopy of your passport (to hand in), and a pen and paper. You will be asked to produce a "Letter of Request", which is a simple statement saying who you are, where you want to go, the dates of your travel, and why. This can simply be written on a scrap of paper before the soldiers' very eyes, and needs say no more than "My name is Mr. James Jameson, citizen of Jamesland. I wish to travel to Jaffna on dates January 1 to January 17, for reason of tourism." You must also give your passport number. When citing your reason for travel, simple tourism will suffice. There is no need to be elaborate, and you will do yourself no favors by saying "I am filled with passion by the plight of the Tamil people, who inspire my gut-wrenchingly realistic and widely-published poetry..."
After you apply, ask when to come retrieve your permit, which should be given as a matter of routine. If you come early in the day, you may receive it that same evening, otherwise the next evening is likely.
Now you have permission to fly to Jaffna, all you need is your ticket.
GETTING A TICKET TO FLY TO JAFFNA
Currently, the only air service flying to Jaffna is the Sri Lankan Air Force's own "Heli Tours" service. There are only three flights a week (MWF) in each direction, and the plane is quite small, so book a ticket as far in advance as possible, or you may find yourself forced to travel on different dates, sending you back to the Defense Ministry for permission again (you may guess that this happened to me).
Reputable travel agents, which can be found conveniently nearby in the Fort and Kollupitiya neighborhoods, should have the contacts to get the ticket. Otherwise, ask at the Defense Ministry checkpoint when you apply and they may furnish you with the card of a local agent who does business with them. In order to get your ticket you must have your M.O.D. clearance first. Make photocopies of this as well, because your travel agent will need them, along with the usual passport copies etc. to procure the ticket. The price of a round-trip ticket is approximately 18,000 Sri Lankan Rupees (~$170), plus your agent's commission.
ON THE DATE OF TRAVEL
Show up punctually by the check-in time printed on your ticket. Remember, aside from South Asian bureaucratic tendencies, you are dealing with military notions of time here. You must go to the Rathmalana domestic airport (not the international airport), in the southern suburbs of Colombo. A hired driver will have no difficulty getting there. At check-in, your bags will be searched (perhaps repeatedly), and then weighed. Note that you may take only 15kg of luggage, which is not that much, so you may want to leave bulky items in the care of your Colombo hotel or some such arrangement. Then, for obscure reasons, you yourself will be weighed on an old-fashioned scale with an enormous gauge that everyone within fifty yards can read, providing mirth all around.
When finally, after a series of waits in the airport, you board the plane, the flight is about an hour long.
The airport on the Jaffna side, called Palali, is a much more militaristic affair than the one in Colombo. It is also quite far from the city so the Air Force provides a bus to take you to Jaffna.
On the date of your return flight to Colombo, present yourself at the appointed check-in time to the Heli Tours "office" (in reality a small concrete box with a desk inside), located across from the military's Civil Affairs Office at the corner of Hospital Rd. and 3rd Cross Street in Jaffna, and a bus will come to take you to Palali. Once again, if you get a rickshaw or car, this will be very easy to find.
OK, I think that's everything you really want to know, bizarre circumstances excepted. If you need further information you can always try the Ministry of Defense phone line (0112430880, 01124300881, etc.), but don't count on being well understood.
-GFB
Sri Lanka Boredom Relief Guide
If, as fate may have it, you find yourself stuck for an extended period in the dull, southwestern part of Sri Lanka, you are likely to find yourself bored. Fortunately, Ghostface Buddha is here with a number of suggestions for Fun Things To Do in the area from Colombo to Galle. All of these have been road-tested and found satisfactory by GFB himself
The Pizza Hut Discourses
Materials: ~$12
Find a Sri Lankan Pizza Hut outlet (KFC will do in a pinch), preferably during a slow business hour. Engage the staff in conversation, then deliver a stunning lecture on the history and variety of pizza, methods of cooking, recipes, etc. Then, expand this monologue on the vast, diverse scope of world pizza as compared to the Sri Lankan pizza experience into a larger commentary on the vastness of Planet Earth, and the need to cast one's mental eye beyond the exaggeratedly significant confines of one's own island. Both you and your audience will be better for it.
The Clash Of Civilizations
Materials: A pair of French nudists
Check into a hotel where the only guests besides yourself are a perpetually naked child, a similarly naked Frenchwoman, and a strange, clothed French husband. If the naked woman provokes your desire, you may have trouble looking the French husband in the eye, but he is not really necessary for this activity. Now, go to the nearest English-language bookstore (you won't have many to choose from) and head to the romance section, where you should find a trio of headscarved Muslim girls giggling at a shelf of serial novels whose female protagonists seem to exclusively wear oft-torn lace bodices. Repeat this step over several days, until you have ridiculed the Muslim girls enough to have befriended them. Then, invite all three of them to your balcony for innocent conversation. Upon returning with the headscarved trio to the hotel, wait for the critical moment when naked French people walk into the hallway and marvel as the wide-eyed Muslim girls freak the fuck out and the French waver between passive-aggressiveness and outright apoplectic fits at the sight of headscarves.
Enhancing Your Cultural Sophistication
Materials: none
Think about going to the National Museum, then smoke a joint and cruise the internet instead.
Girls Gone Sort Of Wild
Materials: none
Hang out on a beach where both foreigners and Sri Lankan people are known to visit on the weekend. At some point a man will walk up to you and invite you to a party, coveting your hard currency. "Come, this afternoon, over at this beach cafe..." he says. You nod that you might consider maybe possibly going. "There will be six hundred girls" he says. Your ears perk, but then your mind catches hold and tells you it will be damn unlikely if there are more than 6 girls at this promised 'party'. Later, somewhat tipsy in the mid-afternoon, you go to see what all the fuss is about, and by God, there ARE six hundred Sri Lankan girls there. You have stumbled into a Sri Lankan, family-friendly Saturday beach concert. In addition to the various fat, shirtless old men waddling around, there are legitimately girls by the busloads. But as one fellow explorer commented, "Zees man did not say what type of girls..." We are dealing here mostly with teenagers, which is already a bummer, but they are also thoroughly wholesome Sri Lankan teenage girls. Most of them are involved in chaste but joyous unisex dancing in front of the stage where a horrific Sri Lankan "rock" band is playing Sri Lankan pop staples. None of the band members are moving much, but the guitarist is playing a bright-orange V-shaped "hard rock" guitar on tunes that would make Justin Bieber call him a giant pussy. The singer is wearing an open vest over his shirt, and around his neck are both an untied bow-tie and a pair of designer sunglasses dangling from his collar. This would be bad enough if he weren't also wearing a second pair of designer sunglasses on his actual face. Behind the girls are a legion of stern-faced matronly chaperones making sure that nobody gets any funny ideas, and a handful of wobbling drunk police inspectors who've assigned themselves to "security duty" at a beach bar where they get free arrack and watch teenage girls. In addition to the girls on stage, a great many will be dancing in the ocean itself. Once again, this is a massive dissapointment, because Sri Lankan girls swim wearing jeans and t-shirts of such astounding frumpiness that one imagines it is specially reserved as antisexual beachwear. Then, you shuffle away and continue drinking, which brings us to our next activity...
Getting Tanked On Arrack
Materials: Arrack.
Arrack is the ubiquitous Sri Lankan booze. It kind of tastes like rum, but is usually gentler. However, since Sri Lanka is a nation of sissies who go to bed early and are afraid of all big and powerful things, even the serious alcoholics usually take the drink with coca-cola or some sort of soda water or horrific Sri Lankan soft drink. To hell with this. Just finish the arrack, get good and drunk, be merry.
It's Sri fucking Lanka. You have nothing better to do.
The Pizza Hut Discourses
Materials: ~$12
Find a Sri Lankan Pizza Hut outlet (KFC will do in a pinch), preferably during a slow business hour. Engage the staff in conversation, then deliver a stunning lecture on the history and variety of pizza, methods of cooking, recipes, etc. Then, expand this monologue on the vast, diverse scope of world pizza as compared to the Sri Lankan pizza experience into a larger commentary on the vastness of Planet Earth, and the need to cast one's mental eye beyond the exaggeratedly significant confines of one's own island. Both you and your audience will be better for it.
The Clash Of Civilizations
Materials: A pair of French nudists
Check into a hotel where the only guests besides yourself are a perpetually naked child, a similarly naked Frenchwoman, and a strange, clothed French husband. If the naked woman provokes your desire, you may have trouble looking the French husband in the eye, but he is not really necessary for this activity. Now, go to the nearest English-language bookstore (you won't have many to choose from) and head to the romance section, where you should find a trio of headscarved Muslim girls giggling at a shelf of serial novels whose female protagonists seem to exclusively wear oft-torn lace bodices. Repeat this step over several days, until you have ridiculed the Muslim girls enough to have befriended them. Then, invite all three of them to your balcony for innocent conversation. Upon returning with the headscarved trio to the hotel, wait for the critical moment when naked French people walk into the hallway and marvel as the wide-eyed Muslim girls freak the fuck out and the French waver between passive-aggressiveness and outright apoplectic fits at the sight of headscarves.
Enhancing Your Cultural Sophistication
Materials: none
Think about going to the National Museum, then smoke a joint and cruise the internet instead.
Girls Gone Sort Of Wild
Materials: none
Hang out on a beach where both foreigners and Sri Lankan people are known to visit on the weekend. At some point a man will walk up to you and invite you to a party, coveting your hard currency. "Come, this afternoon, over at this beach cafe..." he says. You nod that you might consider maybe possibly going. "There will be six hundred girls" he says. Your ears perk, but then your mind catches hold and tells you it will be damn unlikely if there are more than 6 girls at this promised 'party'. Later, somewhat tipsy in the mid-afternoon, you go to see what all the fuss is about, and by God, there ARE six hundred Sri Lankan girls there. You have stumbled into a Sri Lankan, family-friendly Saturday beach concert. In addition to the various fat, shirtless old men waddling around, there are legitimately girls by the busloads. But as one fellow explorer commented, "Zees man did not say what type of girls..." We are dealing here mostly with teenagers, which is already a bummer, but they are also thoroughly wholesome Sri Lankan teenage girls. Most of them are involved in chaste but joyous unisex dancing in front of the stage where a horrific Sri Lankan "rock" band is playing Sri Lankan pop staples. None of the band members are moving much, but the guitarist is playing a bright-orange V-shaped "hard rock" guitar on tunes that would make Justin Bieber call him a giant pussy. The singer is wearing an open vest over his shirt, and around his neck are both an untied bow-tie and a pair of designer sunglasses dangling from his collar. This would be bad enough if he weren't also wearing a second pair of designer sunglasses on his actual face. Behind the girls are a legion of stern-faced matronly chaperones making sure that nobody gets any funny ideas, and a handful of wobbling drunk police inspectors who've assigned themselves to "security duty" at a beach bar where they get free arrack and watch teenage girls. In addition to the girls on stage, a great many will be dancing in the ocean itself. Once again, this is a massive dissapointment, because Sri Lankan girls swim wearing jeans and t-shirts of such astounding frumpiness that one imagines it is specially reserved as antisexual beachwear. Then, you shuffle away and continue drinking, which brings us to our next activity...
Getting Tanked On Arrack
Materials: Arrack.
Arrack is the ubiquitous Sri Lankan booze. It kind of tastes like rum, but is usually gentler. However, since Sri Lanka is a nation of sissies who go to bed early and are afraid of all big and powerful things, even the serious alcoholics usually take the drink with coca-cola or some sort of soda water or horrific Sri Lankan soft drink. To hell with this. Just finish the arrack, get good and drunk, be merry.
It's Sri fucking Lanka. You have nothing better to do.
Oct 17, 2010
Quickie 10/17
Once again, dear readers, it is time for you not to hear from me for a week at least, but this time I actually have a good reason. Early tomorrow morning, owing to my dogged perseverance in dealing with the security/military Establishment, I will be flying on some sort of Sri Lankan Air Force craft to the city of Jaffna, in the northern extreme of Sri Lanka beyond the totally-off-limits Vanni region, where the recently-ended war ground to its brutal conclusion.
I have absolutely no idea what I am going to find in Jaffna and the surrounding areas, but I do know this: I'm not stupid enough to write about it while I'm still there. If there is anything the Sri Lankan military hates, it is terrorists, followed shortly by "journalists". And, seeing that the phrase "journalist" can be used rather expansively, and the fact that Sri Lanka ranks 162nd out of 175 nations in Press Freedom (just ahead of, let's see.... scroll down until you get to the bright red bit... YES! They just beat SAUDI ARABIA!), I think I'll just handle these things later.
So to recap: Submitting myself to the custody of the Sri Lankan military, exploring war-ruined towns and villages, back in a week. Don't worry about it being dangerous. I've done my research. The most explosive ordnance I'll be handling is the pickled chillies. They've killed better men than me. No, that's untrue. There is no man better than me.
-GFB
I have absolutely no idea what I am going to find in Jaffna and the surrounding areas, but I do know this: I'm not stupid enough to write about it while I'm still there. If there is anything the Sri Lankan military hates, it is terrorists, followed shortly by "journalists". And, seeing that the phrase "journalist" can be used rather expansively, and the fact that Sri Lanka ranks 162nd out of 175 nations in Press Freedom (just ahead of, let's see.... scroll down until you get to the bright red bit... YES! They just beat SAUDI ARABIA!), I think I'll just handle these things later.
So to recap: Submitting myself to the custody of the Sri Lankan military, exploring war-ruined towns and villages, back in a week. Don't worry about it being dangerous. I've done my research. The most explosive ordnance I'll be handling is the pickled chillies. They've killed better men than me. No, that's untrue. There is no man better than me.
-GFB
An Account Of Travels To And Beyond The Buddha's Brain
Dirty South, Pt. 2, as transcribed by Konstantinos Mecheliarches, Anachronarch of Crete
"Konstantinos, will you be my scribe?"
"If that is how you wish my debt shall be repaid..."
"Indeed it is, for I have a tale of faraway lands, of marvels and tragedies and comedies such as you have never heard, and it falls upon us with the grave force of destiny that it should be recorded for all to see. You shall honor your debt by transferring my words onto the finest vellum, that which we call cyberneticus, and post it on the church-doors of St. Googliades' and St. Yahoo's.
"I should have thought the liberties you took with my daughter would be enough..."
"And perhaps they would be if your talents with the quill were even close to matched by her deficient talents with... begin writing or I shall elaborate."
In the year of our Lord, 2010, that is to say 7519 years since the Creation of the Earth, Ghostface Buddha-
"Begin again."
In the year of our Lord, 2010, that is to say 7519 years since the Creation of the Earth, the merciful, wise, and magnanimous Ghostface Buddha was stranded on the distant isle of Ceylon. As the annals show, Ghostface was at one time moving westwards along the southern coast, and did not find it entirely worthy of his attentions-
"Bunch of fish-eating fishfuckers."
-"A land of unlettered fishermen", he proclaimed. Nevertheless, finding himself in Tangalla he sought to amuse himself by visiting the laugh-worthy temple of Wewerukannala.
Arrivi-
Arriving at-
In fact he did no such thing, for the most interesting bit goes at the end , which a scribe would know if a scribe weren't such a bloody Byzantine cockup of a human being and didn't narrate events so damn literally. Ghostface Buddha was in Sri Lanka's southwest corner at the colonial city of Galle. While much of Galle city lies outside of its old confines, the new bit consists largely of the cricket stadium. The heart of the city retains its pristine colonial air by being isolated within its pristine Dutch ramparts.
"How's it so far?"
"Sir, I must warn you, the more I transcribe about Galle, the less perfectly I shall remember the copious and well-phrased remarks you have already made about Wewerukannala."
"But, sir?"
"Well do it small to leave some white space in the middle."
Galle, Ghostface Buddha reported, was enticing enough for those craving a taste of the old colonial flavor. There is the fort, sturdy and suitably scenic as it projects into the sea. There are old churches, merchants' stores, a lighthouse, the retooled mansions of the dignitaries of the successive European powers amid the quiet and scattered coconut palms. All, in essence, of what the well-heeled expatriate or wealthy visiting touriste desires most of a historic locale in the tropics; a trip to Gale engenders the faux-nostalgic satisfaction of admiring the achievements of the White Man's civilization alongside the climate earlier most undeservedly enjoyed only by the (so it is said) more sloth-ful and swarthie peoples. Its greatest architectural curiosity is its principal mosque, the dominant structure of the town's southernmost end, and which looks quite convincingly like a baroque Portuguese church, save that they've written in Arabic all over the front and added diminutive minarets. Therefore Ghostface mused that the edifice must have been a case of architectural mimicry rather than an attempt at concealment, though it could have been a brilliant example of hiding in plain sight since the British, who were the masters there at the time of the mosque's construction, would have regarded anything Portuguese as heretical anyways. It is one of the many unique flourishes that have graced Galle over the centuries, since its ancient origins as the fabled city of Tarshish -oh, by the saints, I'm running out of space.
"Well get on to Unawatuna then."
"But how? There only remains a sliver of blank space!"
"Listen, I'll be happy to rebuild the entire damn Colossus of Rhodes just to hang you off it from your oily Greek balls, you hear? Now be half that resourceful and get to scribbling."
Unawatuna: not far from Galle, G.F.B. says this ex-backpackery beach haven is scenic enough, and a decent place to hang out, but not that exciting. Pretty temple @ end of bch. Food prices ridiculously motherfucking inflated, worse than a walrus's prick after half a week of ru- SHIT... Fd.$$ too high.
"Your new-found gift for summation is an inspiration to us all."
The temple of Wewerukannala, aside from the weak chuckle it earns for being located just outside the town of Dickwella, is a hilarious and monumental sight in its own right. It is in fact not a lone temple, but a complex of various Buddhist shrines. There are of course a pair of modest dagobas sitting gracefully on the ground, and
"I say, old chap, why is that bit written so fucking small?"
"Sir, you told me to-"
"Well take this last bit and copy it BIG like a regular damn person. No, wait. Leave this first bit of this bit short to show what an olive-brained cretin of a Hellene I had to contend with. Do remember to use ink instead of tzatziki there, Achilles."
Wewerukannala, continued: There are of course a pair of modest dagobas sitting gracefully on the ground, and the usual bodhi tree shrine where groups of white-clad Buddhist ladies come with their more cooperative children on the weekends. There is also, for some reason, a small Buddhist shrine inside a water tower of sorts, which is weird, but really mere chump change in the context of the glorious freakishness of Wewerukannala. The main shrine itself, beautiful in its own curious way, belongs to that uniquely Sri Lankan school of architecture that produces Buddhist temples in the shape of small Catholic missions, where you half expect not be find a sleeping Buddha inside, but some angry, unsexed Spanish woman in nuns' dress cracking a ruler across the knuckles of insufficiently diffident native girls.
Across the plaza, not far from a fine little dagoba, lies the entrance to a subterranean chamber. Thankfully, for I might otherwise have blown a gasket, this subterranean chamber was not an ancient temple, but merely a reconstruction of the inner fires of Hell. Buddhist Hell, it appears, is not all too different from Dante's version of the underworld, populated largely by unjust kings and hypocritical monks, all of comically awful plaster construction, screaming in the agonies of hellfire with side-splitting hilarity. In one corner, the fat and red-bellied king of Hell pronounces judgment on a sinner, and nearby his demon minions are busy at work cooking screaming unfortunates in pots and impaling them upon pikes. The Catholic influence in Sri Lankan Buddhism, it appears, runs a bit deeper than temple architecture. Beyond the statues, for those who really seek an education in the price of sin, lies a dark tunnel containing literally hundreds of extremely shitty murals depicting people performing myriad sins, accompanied by a depiction of the corresponding infernal punishment and commentary in Sinhala. For the foreigner not fluent in Sinhala, it can be a bit confusing, since in most of the pictures it is hard to discern what sin is being committed, leading one to believe that, say, shaking a woman's hand in the poultry market leads to being torn apart by lusty sodomite devils, while shaking a woman's hand near a mango tree merely leads to being sliced in half and left to the dogs. The lesson I took home from all of this is that if you want to stay out of Hell, the refrain from speaking to anyone, take nothing but holy wafers for food, and avoid touching women at any cost unless you are dragging them out of their homes for floggings. But I was an altar boy when I was young, so I already knew that.
I have not yet described Wewerukannala's main attraction, and what an attraction it is...
Looming quite noticeably out of the clearing is a sitting statue of the Buddha. Remarkable? Perhaps not, if the Buddha weren't like SEVEN STORIES TALL on leaning his back against a horrendous concrete tower calling to mind the apartment blocks you would build for the workers at a Bulgarian state fertilizer factory. While the tower he leans on stands in barren ignominy echoing a mixture of ideological purges and babushkas' contraband sheep, the Buddha itself is resplendent in a million mosaic fragments of bathroom-tile glory. A sign pleads the visitor to contribute to the temple upkeep fund, which is in dire straits attempting to replace the thousands of tacky, easily-dislodged "gold" (i.e. orange) tiles that have so far fallen off the Buddha's robe. To top it all off, as there should be, is Buddha's halo of enlightenment, which for reasons that surely only the Enlightened One can understand, looks exactly like a 15-foot twist of strawberry- and vanilla- flavored frozen yogurt. Forget about the American restaurant chain, this is the real TCBY: The Cosmos' Best Yogurt.
Best of all, you can climb the stairs within the Bulgarian apartment block, passing even shittier murals depicting various episodes of the Buddha's past lives, and enter a chamber directly behind the Buddha's head. From here not only are there great views across the endless palm trees, but you can get close enough to Buddha's head to inspect his curls for dandruff. Fortunately, either by divine power or merely the slickness of bathroom tile, the crow droppings that cover this entire island slide right off the Buddha's untarnished locks, leaving it to reflect the afternoon sun in all the radiant glory of that bit of wall above the counter in my aunt's house between her refrigerator and her microwave. Within this final chamber, one wall is replaced by a strange, studded black surface, which I realized was nothing other than the tile "hair" growing out the lower part of the back of the Buddha's gargantuan head, and between two of these curls was a small glass porthole...
A PORTHOLE INTO THE BUDDHA'S BRAIN
I waited in queue behind a number of Buddhist ladies who were curious about what the window might reveal, but did not seem to be aware of the absurd magnificence of LOOKING INTO THE BUDDHA'S FUCKING BRAIN, which I was almost jumping in glee at the anticipation of seeing. When my turn came and I pressed my face to the glass, what I saw was
I'm not telling.
Pondering the recent revelation, I descended the tower and left the temple area, returning by foot to the highway through the goat-choked Muslim quarter of Dickwella. When, wearied by the tropical sun I stopped in a local bakery-
"Oh dear, what's that ringing of a bell? Can it be your daughter returning home from the poultry-sellers'? Why, it is! Penelope, darling, why don't you leave those fowls with your dear old father here so that he might pluck them after he is done transcribing this chapter of my Travels? -Why, yes, I think I should come up and aid you with that, ummmmmmm, bedeviled carpentry problem in your bedchamber immediately! Konstantinos, to the end of that bit, please. Do as you will."
Do as I will, he says. What have I left to do? Compose the rest of this drivel on his barbarous terms? My honor forbids it! Nay, the hemlock leaf, late the friend of Socrates and other honest men, shall be by my last companion. And this tale? And Ghostface Buddha? To the Turks with them!
"Konstantinos, will you be my scribe?"
"If that is how you wish my debt shall be repaid..."
"Indeed it is, for I have a tale of faraway lands, of marvels and tragedies and comedies such as you have never heard, and it falls upon us with the grave force of destiny that it should be recorded for all to see. You shall honor your debt by transferring my words onto the finest vellum, that which we call cyberneticus, and post it on the church-doors of St. Googliades' and St. Yahoo's.
"I should have thought the liberties you took with my daughter would be enough..."
"And perhaps they would be if your talents with the quill were even close to matched by her deficient talents with... begin writing or I shall elaborate."
In the year of our Lord, 2010, that is to say 7519 years since the Creation of the Earth, Ghostface Buddha-
"Begin again."
In the year of our Lord, 2010, that is to say 7519 years since the Creation of the Earth, the merciful, wise, and magnanimous Ghostface Buddha was stranded on the distant isle of Ceylon. As the annals show, Ghostface was at one time moving westwards along the southern coast, and did not find it entirely worthy of his attentions-
"Bunch of fish-eating fishfuckers."
-"A land of unlettered fishermen", he proclaimed. Nevertheless, finding himself in Tangalla he sought to amuse himself by visiting the laugh-worthy temple of Wewerukannala.
Arrivi-
Arriving at-
In fact he did no such thing, for the most interesting bit goes at the end , which a scribe would know if a scribe weren't such a bloody Byzantine cockup of a human being and didn't narrate events so damn literally. Ghostface Buddha was in Sri Lanka's southwest corner at the colonial city of Galle. While much of Galle city lies outside of its old confines, the new bit consists largely of the cricket stadium. The heart of the city retains its pristine colonial air by being isolated within its pristine Dutch ramparts.
"How's it so far?"
"Sir, I must warn you, the more I transcribe about Galle, the less perfectly I shall remember the copious and well-phrased remarks you have already made about Wewerukannala."
"But, sir?"
"Well do it small to leave some white space in the middle."
Galle, Ghostface Buddha reported, was enticing enough for those craving a taste of the old colonial flavor. There is the fort, sturdy and suitably scenic as it projects into the sea. There are old churches, merchants' stores, a lighthouse, the retooled mansions of the dignitaries of the successive European powers amid the quiet and scattered coconut palms. All, in essence, of what the well-heeled expatriate or wealthy visiting touriste desires most of a historic locale in the tropics; a trip to Gale engenders the faux-nostalgic satisfaction of admiring the achievements of the White Man's civilization alongside the climate earlier most undeservedly enjoyed only by the (so it is said) more sloth-ful and swarthie peoples. Its greatest architectural curiosity is its principal mosque, the dominant structure of the town's southernmost end, and which looks quite convincingly like a baroque Portuguese church, save that they've written in Arabic all over the front and added diminutive minarets. Therefore Ghostface mused that the edifice must have been a case of architectural mimicry rather than an attempt at concealment, though it could have been a brilliant example of hiding in plain sight since the British, who were the masters there at the time of the mosque's construction, would have regarded anything Portuguese as heretical anyways. It is one of the many unique flourishes that have graced Galle over the centuries, since its ancient origins as the fabled city of Tarshish -oh, by the saints, I'm running out of space.
"Well get on to Unawatuna then."
"But how? There only remains a sliver of blank space!"
"Listen, I'll be happy to rebuild the entire damn Colossus of Rhodes just to hang you off it from your oily Greek balls, you hear? Now be half that resourceful and get to scribbling."
Unawatuna: not far from Galle, G.F.B. says this ex-backpackery beach haven is scenic enough, and a decent place to hang out, but not that exciting. Pretty temple @ end of bch. Food prices ridiculously motherfucking inflated, worse than a walrus's prick after half a week of ru- SHIT... Fd.$$ too high.
"Your new-found gift for summation is an inspiration to us all."
The temple of Wewerukannala, aside from the weak chuckle it earns for being located just outside the town of Dickwella, is a hilarious and monumental sight in its own right. It is in fact not a lone temple, but a complex of various Buddhist shrines. There are of course a pair of modest dagobas sitting gracefully on the ground, and
"I say, old chap, why is that bit written so fucking small?"
"Sir, you told me to-"
"Well take this last bit and copy it BIG like a regular damn person. No, wait. Leave this first bit of this bit short to show what an olive-brained cretin of a Hellene I had to contend with. Do remember to use ink instead of tzatziki there, Achilles."
Wewerukannala, continued: There are of course a pair of modest dagobas sitting gracefully on the ground, and the usual bodhi tree shrine where groups of white-clad Buddhist ladies come with their more cooperative children on the weekends. There is also, for some reason, a small Buddhist shrine inside a water tower of sorts, which is weird, but really mere chump change in the context of the glorious freakishness of Wewerukannala. The main shrine itself, beautiful in its own curious way, belongs to that uniquely Sri Lankan school of architecture that produces Buddhist temples in the shape of small Catholic missions, where you half expect not be find a sleeping Buddha inside, but some angry, unsexed Spanish woman in nuns' dress cracking a ruler across the knuckles of insufficiently diffident native girls.
Across the plaza, not far from a fine little dagoba, lies the entrance to a subterranean chamber. Thankfully, for I might otherwise have blown a gasket, this subterranean chamber was not an ancient temple, but merely a reconstruction of the inner fires of Hell. Buddhist Hell, it appears, is not all too different from Dante's version of the underworld, populated largely by unjust kings and hypocritical monks, all of comically awful plaster construction, screaming in the agonies of hellfire with side-splitting hilarity. In one corner, the fat and red-bellied king of Hell pronounces judgment on a sinner, and nearby his demon minions are busy at work cooking screaming unfortunates in pots and impaling them upon pikes. The Catholic influence in Sri Lankan Buddhism, it appears, runs a bit deeper than temple architecture. Beyond the statues, for those who really seek an education in the price of sin, lies a dark tunnel containing literally hundreds of extremely shitty murals depicting people performing myriad sins, accompanied by a depiction of the corresponding infernal punishment and commentary in Sinhala. For the foreigner not fluent in Sinhala, it can be a bit confusing, since in most of the pictures it is hard to discern what sin is being committed, leading one to believe that, say, shaking a woman's hand in the poultry market leads to being torn apart by lusty sodomite devils, while shaking a woman's hand near a mango tree merely leads to being sliced in half and left to the dogs. The lesson I took home from all of this is that if you want to stay out of Hell, the refrain from speaking to anyone, take nothing but holy wafers for food, and avoid touching women at any cost unless you are dragging them out of their homes for floggings. But I was an altar boy when I was young, so I already knew that.
I have not yet described Wewerukannala's main attraction, and what an attraction it is...
Looming quite noticeably out of the clearing is a sitting statue of the Buddha. Remarkable? Perhaps not, if the Buddha weren't like SEVEN STORIES TALL on leaning his back against a horrendous concrete tower calling to mind the apartment blocks you would build for the workers at a Bulgarian state fertilizer factory. While the tower he leans on stands in barren ignominy echoing a mixture of ideological purges and babushkas' contraband sheep, the Buddha itself is resplendent in a million mosaic fragments of bathroom-tile glory. A sign pleads the visitor to contribute to the temple upkeep fund, which is in dire straits attempting to replace the thousands of tacky, easily-dislodged "gold" (i.e. orange) tiles that have so far fallen off the Buddha's robe. To top it all off, as there should be, is Buddha's halo of enlightenment, which for reasons that surely only the Enlightened One can understand, looks exactly like a 15-foot twist of strawberry- and vanilla- flavored frozen yogurt. Forget about the American restaurant chain, this is the real TCBY: The Cosmos' Best Yogurt.
Best of all, you can climb the stairs within the Bulgarian apartment block, passing even shittier murals depicting various episodes of the Buddha's past lives, and enter a chamber directly behind the Buddha's head. From here not only are there great views across the endless palm trees, but you can get close enough to Buddha's head to inspect his curls for dandruff. Fortunately, either by divine power or merely the slickness of bathroom tile, the crow droppings that cover this entire island slide right off the Buddha's untarnished locks, leaving it to reflect the afternoon sun in all the radiant glory of that bit of wall above the counter in my aunt's house between her refrigerator and her microwave. Within this final chamber, one wall is replaced by a strange, studded black surface, which I realized was nothing other than the tile "hair" growing out the lower part of the back of the Buddha's gargantuan head, and between two of these curls was a small glass porthole...
A PORTHOLE INTO THE BUDDHA'S BRAIN
I waited in queue behind a number of Buddhist ladies who were curious about what the window might reveal, but did not seem to be aware of the absurd magnificence of LOOKING INTO THE BUDDHA'S FUCKING BRAIN, which I was almost jumping in glee at the anticipation of seeing. When my turn came and I pressed my face to the glass, what I saw was
I'm not telling.
Pondering the recent revelation, I descended the tower and left the temple area, returning by foot to the highway through the goat-choked Muslim quarter of Dickwella. When, wearied by the tropical sun I stopped in a local bakery-
"Oh dear, what's that ringing of a bell? Can it be your daughter returning home from the poultry-sellers'? Why, it is! Penelope, darling, why don't you leave those fowls with your dear old father here so that he might pluck them after he is done transcribing this chapter of my Travels? -Why, yes, I think I should come up and aid you with that, ummmmmmm, bedeviled carpentry problem in your bedchamber immediately! Konstantinos, to the end of that bit, please. Do as you will."
Do as I will, he says. What have I left to do? Compose the rest of this drivel on his barbarous terms? My honor forbids it! Nay, the hemlock leaf, late the friend of Socrates and other honest men, shall be by my last companion. And this tale? And Ghostface Buddha? To the Turks with them!
Oct 13, 2010
Dirty South
Pt. 1
The south coast of Sri Lanka is not a large place. It's about 200 kilometers long, and the southern plains are only a few kilometers deep. In this space are quite a few towns, some of which you may feel the desire to visit, particularly if you have been subjected to enormous heaps of disinformation telling you that southern Sri Lanka is a good place to go to the beach. I will comment on these towns in turn.
But first, however, I will take a brief digression to describe what lies between the towns so that you might have a feel for the coast as a whole. The space between towns on the south coast of Sri Lanka consists of:
We begin our discussion of southern towns on the eastern end of the coast.
Kataragama
Covered in the previous post
Tissamaharama
Hardly worth the effort to spell, and even less worth spending an afternoon in.
Hambantota
Getting a sunburn here would count as one of the town's most exciting recreational possibilities. Honorary suck points for being the hometown of President Doucheface Rajapakse, whose eminently slapworthy mug I am tired of looking at.
Tangalla
Finally, a town with some potential. Conveniently located for a number of nearby attractions, and said to have a pleasant, low-key beach atmosphere. What is the truth? In reality Tangalle contains about 80 hotels and 5 tourists, possibly because there are 0 restaurants. OK, well there are places that say "restaurant" on their signs, but they suffer from the common Sri Lankan confusion about serving food. In a single night I walked into no less than four so-called eateries which were unable to conjure even a plateful of rice. "Can I have a kilo of cocaine then?", I finally asked. The proprietor looked at me in bewilderment, and reported that he did not have any cocaine either. I was expecting this, and bellowed "THEN WHAT THE FUCK IS YOUR SO-CALLED RESTAURANT A FRONT FOR?!?!... If your darkened kitchen isn't full of hookers, blow, or fake passports -any of which I would consider accepting- then you'd better turn on a stove and cook some rice pronto if you don't want me to tell the world never to come to Tangalla!"
This failed to produce rice. Don't go to Tangalla.
Mulkirigala
South Sri Lanka's main ancient historical attraction is... *drumroll* a big-ass rock with Buddhist cave temples! Now, as a big-ass rock it isn't as good as Sigiriya, and as a collection of cave temples it isn't as good as Dambulla, but it's definitely worth a visit for its own unique charms. Chief among these is the utterly ridiculous Kandyan art that covers so many of the caves' random surfaces. The caves rather look like someone kidnapped a wagon full of second-rate baroque painters from a sheep-herding provincial village in central Europe, then forced them to paint every square inch of the Mulkirigala caves at gunpoint, substituting the standard subject matter of European art of the day (cherubs), for more Buddhist-specific material. The result, which never fails to bring a smile to my face, was Buddhist cherubs. This theme is epitomized in one cave where a statue of the dying Buddha is praised by the myriad Buddhist and Hindu gods in heaven, painted on the ceiling in plump glee with billowing robes, fluffy clouds, and goofy faces that make you want to punch them back into some Bavarian granny's tea-cupboard where they belong. There are also paintings from earlier periods, which look more typically Sri Lankan and have a great attention to detail and a profusion of demons and elephants, but really it's the wafting ribbons and Asian gods in neoclassical robes that stick in your mind.
Well, well, look at that. I actually have to be off. Paperwork beckons. I will smite the perpetrators of official obstructionism with my dogged and stubborn perseverance. We shall have to pick this up some other time. Happy travels, and don't let the huge, beetle-like flying things bite. Believe me...
The south coast of Sri Lanka is not a large place. It's about 200 kilometers long, and the southern plains are only a few kilometers deep. In this space are quite a few towns, some of which you may feel the desire to visit, particularly if you have been subjected to enormous heaps of disinformation telling you that southern Sri Lanka is a good place to go to the beach. I will comment on these towns in turn.
But first, however, I will take a brief digression to describe what lies between the towns so that you might have a feel for the coast as a whole. The space between towns on the south coast of Sri Lanka consists of:
- Palm trees, and other miscellaneous fruits
- Tsunami graves
- Rice, one imagines, though it's surprisingly hard to find
- Fish kiosks
- Fish carts
- People on bicycles selling fish
- Piles of drying fish
We begin our discussion of southern towns on the eastern end of the coast.
Kataragama
Covered in the previous post
Tissamaharama
Hardly worth the effort to spell, and even less worth spending an afternoon in.
Hambantota
Getting a sunburn here would count as one of the town's most exciting recreational possibilities. Honorary suck points for being the hometown of President Doucheface Rajapakse, whose eminently slapworthy mug I am tired of looking at.
Tangalla
Finally, a town with some potential. Conveniently located for a number of nearby attractions, and said to have a pleasant, low-key beach atmosphere. What is the truth? In reality Tangalle contains about 80 hotels and 5 tourists, possibly because there are 0 restaurants. OK, well there are places that say "restaurant" on their signs, but they suffer from the common Sri Lankan confusion about serving food. In a single night I walked into no less than four so-called eateries which were unable to conjure even a plateful of rice. "Can I have a kilo of cocaine then?", I finally asked. The proprietor looked at me in bewilderment, and reported that he did not have any cocaine either. I was expecting this, and bellowed "THEN WHAT THE FUCK IS YOUR SO-CALLED RESTAURANT A FRONT FOR?!?!... If your darkened kitchen isn't full of hookers, blow, or fake passports -any of which I would consider accepting- then you'd better turn on a stove and cook some rice pronto if you don't want me to tell the world never to come to Tangalla!"
This failed to produce rice. Don't go to Tangalla.
Mulkirigala
South Sri Lanka's main ancient historical attraction is... *drumroll* a big-ass rock with Buddhist cave temples! Now, as a big-ass rock it isn't as good as Sigiriya, and as a collection of cave temples it isn't as good as Dambulla, but it's definitely worth a visit for its own unique charms. Chief among these is the utterly ridiculous Kandyan art that covers so many of the caves' random surfaces. The caves rather look like someone kidnapped a wagon full of second-rate baroque painters from a sheep-herding provincial village in central Europe, then forced them to paint every square inch of the Mulkirigala caves at gunpoint, substituting the standard subject matter of European art of the day (cherubs), for more Buddhist-specific material. The result, which never fails to bring a smile to my face, was Buddhist cherubs. This theme is epitomized in one cave where a statue of the dying Buddha is praised by the myriad Buddhist and Hindu gods in heaven, painted on the ceiling in plump glee with billowing robes, fluffy clouds, and goofy faces that make you want to punch them back into some Bavarian granny's tea-cupboard where they belong. There are also paintings from earlier periods, which look more typically Sri Lankan and have a great attention to detail and a profusion of demons and elephants, but really it's the wafting ribbons and Asian gods in neoclassical robes that stick in your mind.
Well, well, look at that. I actually have to be off. Paperwork beckons. I will smite the perpetrators of official obstructionism with my dogged and stubborn perseverance. We shall have to pick this up some other time. Happy travels, and don't let the huge, beetle-like flying things bite. Believe me...
Oct 12, 2010
The Dance Of The Deluded Peacock
First of all, forgive the infrequency of my recent posting. My time around computers lately has been constantly interrupted by the need to go to the phone booth and make convoluted inquiries with the Sri Lankan Air Force, an organization even less noted for its achievements in conversational English than its achievements in aviation.
So where were we?
Ah, yes, I was riding a bus on a narrow highway leading from Sri Lanka's east to its southern coast, passing through the fringes of Yala National Park, an extremely well-protected bit of nature. So well-protected, in fact, that there were small bunkers, rows of barbed wire, and a classic clear-cut field of fire stretching for miles, in case poachers attempt to enter the park in a tank. This is the first national park I've ever seen that looked like a military front, though in true Sri Lankan fashion the bus had to stop at every other bunker and chicken-fenced barracks to drop off some guy with a badly-faked Tommy Hilfiger shirt and a polythene bag full of okra.
I was on my way to Kataragama, the inconveniently located and highly confusing pilgrimage village that Sri Lankans visit to pay homage to the god Kataragama, or something like that. Really, as you'll see, Sri Lankan pilgrimages are things that one does without deeply questioning the whys and wherefores. Kataragama (the god, not the village), is basically a Sri Lankan village god that somehow got important for reasons unknown, and became much endeared to Buddhists because he helped them in war against Hindus. Then, just because this is how religions work, Sri Lankan Hindus also started worshipping him, saying that he is in fact the same entity as Murugam/Karkkiteya/Subramianan, the South Indian war god. The fact that the Buddhists "already had him", so to speak, was no detterrent. Sri Lankan pilgrim shrines are like the Super Bowl. It doesn't occur to the worhsippers that God is being invoked by both sides. That and there is likely to be a lot of wild dancing at halftime.
The village of Kataragama has the distinct feel of a small community that gets an annual inundation of visitors but is currently out of season, criss-crossed by enormous roads (by Sri Lankan standards), hordes of craptacular pilgrim hotels, hundreds of merchants selling colorful trinkets for a living, and hardly a visitor to be seen. I quickly left the village itself behind me, feeling like it was some strange, Sri Lankan-scaled version of a horrific modernist city built under the auspices of Order and Progeess, but then realized it was probably just a normal town and this pathetic island has messed with my mind, accustoming me to settlements consisting of twenty houses, ten mobile phone shops, and a guy selling fish from a bicycle.
On the edge of the village I had a good wander in the kitsch religious bazaar, which is possibly the best place on the entire island to go shopping. If you need a small statue of Lord Buddha within a light-refracting prism within a snow globe, this is where to be. Amid the various psychedelic, flashing trinkets of Lords Kataragama and Ganesh posing by peacocks while Lakshmi floats around in her lotus leaf and pours money on their heads one can also find the sort of pilgrimage goods that have not much to do with either Buddhism or Hinduism (and are some of the least Buddhist things you will ever find in a Buddhist curio shop), but do have a lot to do with general Sri Lankan-ness. I mean, of course, to heaps and heaps of militaristic childrens' toys such as guns and helicopters emblazoned with the slogan "Sri Lankan Army - The Greatest Army In The World!".... Bitch, please. This is a country where recruiting posters for the Special Forces beckon with the image of men in ski masks handling the elite, 21st century tactical device known as the "Dirt Bike". No wonder the war lasted 26 years. If only the Tamil Tiger defenses had consisted of a row of wrecked Chevy Impalas, the Army could have jumped right over them.
Across the small river from the village is the "Kataragama Sacred City". Once again, this is a city by Sri Lankan standards, meaning that absolutely nobody lives there, but there are a cluster of mighty temples, some so mighty that they even have two rooms. The only architecturally imposing structure in the sacred city is its dagoba, but enormous whitewashed brick titties are the one type of large structure that Sri Lanka has for a dime a dozen. The first thing you come across is a lousy little Shiva temple, and across the square from that is the Muslim enclosure - yes, even the Muslims come here. The Muslims at least are doctrinally coherent and aloof in their monotheism, having nothing to do with the rather more flashy pagan activities going on nearby, but you can't help but remark that they've succumbed to every religion's childish inability to just ignore other religions' sacred cities and not try and claim them as their own. I actually rather liked the Muslim area, as they keep their strikingly green-painted mosques in the cool shade of palm trees, and because I just like the fact that they have a tomb of a saint that came to Sri Lanka from Kyrgyzstan, of all damn places. I like to imagine that his lengthy journey was well worth it, having passed all the way through the Afghan mountains, the Pakistani plains, and the sweltering expanse of India to finally reach an island where his co-religionists have a cuisine that isn't centered on goat.
From the Muslim area I headed north towards the heart of the sacred precinct, passing by numerous tacky little Hindu/Buddhist/whatever shrines, where the priests groaned and grumbled because I was not impressed by, say, an eensy-weensy Durga shrine made out of kitchen granite and decorated with plastic clocks from the 99-cent store. Nearing the very center of the city I finally found a shrine to Lord Buddha, and what a shrine it was. For starters, its interior was apparently done by an MS Paint enthusiast determined to use all 256 colors, and somebody had taken it upon themselves to make sure Lord Buddha was surrounded a multitude of red string lights, a flashing multicolor halo, and vividly cheesy posters of figures deeply important to Sri Lankan"Buddhists" Buddhists, such as Lord Ganesh. People were praying to the Buddha inside. I've always found this activity curious. The whole point of Buddha being Buddha is that he's not a mere god, having found the way to nirvana and more or less ceased to exist in any form (or something like that), which to me seems like it would make him the last entity you'd want to pray to. But anyways, there's a picture of a wish-granting elephant man who rides around the heavens on a mouse only a few feet away, so debating about the likelihood of divine intervention by liberated beings is perhaps splitting hairs, all considered. Outside of here, pilgrims filed by on their way to the main Kataragama shrine carrying large platters of assorted fruits. I would say that only about 60% of the fruit ever makes it to the god. The other 40% are the casualties of the unashamedly piratical Hanuman monkeys that charge at the pilgrims, tails held high, and directly assail the bearers of the goodies, leaving the pilgrims to stare in either amusement or horror as the rest of the money troupe darts in to snatch spilled coconuts, papayas, mangoes, bananas, and other Sri Lankan produce I'd be at a loss to name. Belive me, you can pass quite a bit if time watching this scene repeat itself.
I pressed on beyond the Kataragama temple (because as I've hinted it ain't much to look at and all the exciting stuff happens after dark) and took a stroll on the wide, sandy avenue leading to the dagoba. I wasn't expecting to get much out of this visit, since you don't have to see too many dagobas before you've effectively seen them all, but just as I was getting ready to leave I noticed a procession forming at one end of the boulevard. It was about this time that I learned for certain how to tell apart a Sri Lankan Buddhist and a Sri Lankan Hindu if they are coming to the same shrine to worship the same god. You can extrapolate from this observation as neccesary. It goes like this: If a group of worhsippers are quietly forming an orderly queue in the mid-afternoon and solemnly walking in unison to the accompaniment of rigorously-trained musicians, they are probably Buddhists. If a group of worshippers appears after dark, wildly flailing in every direction with various peacock-related accessories as shouting men haphazardly bang cymbals, drums, and play the trumpet while trying not to fall down, they are probably Hindus.
The proccession I was witnessing was of the Buddhist sort. Two rows of white-clad pilgrims, overwhelmingly women, formed on the boulevard and held at shoulder height a long, rainbow-striped Buddhist banner. They began to shuffle slowly and reverently in the direction of the dagoba. At the head of the procession were five figures. One was a Kandyan drummer wearing white pantaloons, a silly hat, and a red belt, and bearing a certain phsycial resemblance to Pumba from The Lion King. He was accompanied by another, slightly less ridiculous percussionist, and a Kandyan flautist in similar attire whose bearing of overwrought scowls and grimaces revealed the bitter knowledge that an overweight shirtless man playing a glorified Sinhalese kazoo in a silly hat faces an uphill struggle to be taken seriously. The fourth figure was a bespectacled monk in a brilliant orange robe, and the fifth was a mere dog which I only mention because that dog really started some shit. It was the sort of dog that likes people, and remains wholly ignorant of religious ettiquette, finding nothing but this utmost delight in distractingly hopping onto drummers' feet, getting shooed by the flapping of monastic robes, and causing one of the pilgrims to drop a loudspeaker unit with an ear-ripping squeal of electronic protest. Having a dog around was perhaps appropriate though, since the whole affair looked a lot like a large jury of little old ladies at a Buddhist dog-and-stupa show, getting ready to drape an enormous technical color ribbon on the Kataragama dagoba for having won in the category of Biggest Thing That Looks Like A Nipple.
The ending of this whole business came around just in time for me to get back to the main Kataragama temple for the much-lauded evening worship ceremonies, with a potential sighting of the famed "peacock dance", which the locals reccomended entusiastically. Night fell and I found myself in the rather modest enclosure, little more than three brightly illuminated shrines in a sandlot with some bodhi trees tucked around back. The local police and a few soldiers from the army were on hand to provide security, looking a touch preposterous standing around with dull brown assault rifles slung over their shoulders but no damn shoes on their feet. I can see the news now: "Four servicemen were wounded today by an IID -improvised incisive device- reportedly consisting of several pieces of broken glass in the sand. The Chief of the Army has placed the nation on its highest terror alert. Report anyminorities suspicious charachters, especially those carrying bottles, immediately."
The ceremony, as they tend to be in this country, was a wildly boring affair in which huffy-puffy priests in front of a curtain concealing all the interesting bits, reciting long obeisances which I'm sure wouldn't have been an iota more interesting had I known the language. People lined up to pay their respects. In the sandy courtyard, some visitors clustered around a tiny, fenced-off pit where they prayed to the god somewhat more dramatically by setting coconuts on fire and then smashing them against rocks. Fair enough, I say, if you want to worship a god who rides around on a peacock then by all means throw flaming coconuts around for him. I just can't help but think, however, that up in the cosmic planes Lord Kataragama might be wearying of hearing for the millionth time "My Lord, I offer you this coconut..." "Great! Now this time don't -*CRACK*- sigh.... I just wish I could get offered some fruit that wasn't shattered and immolated first. HEAR, YE MORTALS. God proclaims that henceforth thou shalt offer thine coconuts in the form of daquiris. Thus shall I be honored."
Then as yet another pilgrim mustered the intense concentration required to make a brittle coconut husk break when thrown against rock after having already been set on fire, the peacock dancers arrived. At first I just heard the random shoutings of a mob, looked out of the shrine area and saw a gang of men carrying hoops of peacock feathers being swung this way and that. "Ahh, some unruly worshippers," I thought, "perhaps this will be a preamble to the elaborate, well-ordered 'peacock dance' that the Hindu pilgims will soon....oh, right". It still sometimes takes me a moment to remember that where people of Indian descent are concerned, waving around madly and shouting while people bash away on instruments they've apparently just been acquainted with is considered religious dance. There are of course myriad forms of Hindu worship, but the Tamils have long gone in for spectacle, intensity, and ecstatic participation. And by ecstatic participation I mean "doing insane things with your body like driving skewers through your face or just spinning around and around until you pass out." Tellingly, the most devout practitioners of this peacock dance performed it almost identically to the way the children did. I could make a caustic remark about religous faith in general here, but I will instead merely say that many of the more 'ecstatic' forms of worship in the world are essentially activities for strange people whose inner child never stopped saying "Look! I can dance so crazy I faint!", and proving it. The main difference is that an adult proclaims "I was overcome by God!" while a child says "That was awesome! Not let's trying doing it and glue at the same time!" Such extremes off devotion/delusion are however a step removed from the dancing of the general multitude. Most of the charachters in this flailing human tempest merely wore faces of resignation that said "I have to keep going. If I don't continue to adequately interpret the jumping of a mythical warrior peacock through the sublime medium of spontaneous dance, then I will really look foolish."
As I slipped back through the curio bazaar late that night I couldn't help feeling that I had not been incredibly edified by my visit to Kataragama. All told it merely graphically illustrated my increasing conviction on the nature of religions in general, that people will just believe anything so long as it's convenient. But then, why the hell not? OK, so a wee bit of education and pausing to think about the history of your deities or whatever, or taking a moment to look for glaring contradictions in the dogma you follow might reveal that it all doesn't make a terrible amount of sense. But once again, what the hell. In Kataragama, where just about every mish-mangly-mixing thing in sight is a reminder that the gods are our own creations, and sometimes rather silly creations at that, at least nobody is getting all up in arms about the details. Perhaps being surrounded by contradictory elements of technicolor nonsense has a soothing effect; maybe when you don't particularly expect your own creed to be possessing of rigorous mortal logic you don't have to go around proving to the rest of the world that you're right all the time. I turned about in bed a lot trying to glean something more useful than the two other foreign tourists I met had ("It's such a vibrant spectacle! yada yada, something about cultural diversity...), but as you can see I still haven't come up with much. I ain't got any answers for ya. I dunno... try setting some coconuts on fire and see what happens? I'll leave you to it. Me and Lord Kataragama (he's a notorious pimp) are taking some girls out for daquiris. Peace.
So where were we?
Ah, yes, I was riding a bus on a narrow highway leading from Sri Lanka's east to its southern coast, passing through the fringes of Yala National Park, an extremely well-protected bit of nature. So well-protected, in fact, that there were small bunkers, rows of barbed wire, and a classic clear-cut field of fire stretching for miles, in case poachers attempt to enter the park in a tank. This is the first national park I've ever seen that looked like a military front, though in true Sri Lankan fashion the bus had to stop at every other bunker and chicken-fenced barracks to drop off some guy with a badly-faked Tommy Hilfiger shirt and a polythene bag full of okra.
I was on my way to Kataragama, the inconveniently located and highly confusing pilgrimage village that Sri Lankans visit to pay homage to the god Kataragama, or something like that. Really, as you'll see, Sri Lankan pilgrimages are things that one does without deeply questioning the whys and wherefores. Kataragama (the god, not the village), is basically a Sri Lankan village god that somehow got important for reasons unknown, and became much endeared to Buddhists because he helped them in war against Hindus. Then, just because this is how religions work, Sri Lankan Hindus also started worshipping him, saying that he is in fact the same entity as Murugam/Karkkiteya/Subramianan, the South Indian war god. The fact that the Buddhists "already had him", so to speak, was no detterrent. Sri Lankan pilgrim shrines are like the Super Bowl. It doesn't occur to the worhsippers that God is being invoked by both sides. That and there is likely to be a lot of wild dancing at halftime.
The village of Kataragama has the distinct feel of a small community that gets an annual inundation of visitors but is currently out of season, criss-crossed by enormous roads (by Sri Lankan standards), hordes of craptacular pilgrim hotels, hundreds of merchants selling colorful trinkets for a living, and hardly a visitor to be seen. I quickly left the village itself behind me, feeling like it was some strange, Sri Lankan-scaled version of a horrific modernist city built under the auspices of Order and Progeess, but then realized it was probably just a normal town and this pathetic island has messed with my mind, accustoming me to settlements consisting of twenty houses, ten mobile phone shops, and a guy selling fish from a bicycle.
On the edge of the village I had a good wander in the kitsch religious bazaar, which is possibly the best place on the entire island to go shopping. If you need a small statue of Lord Buddha within a light-refracting prism within a snow globe, this is where to be. Amid the various psychedelic, flashing trinkets of Lords Kataragama and Ganesh posing by peacocks while Lakshmi floats around in her lotus leaf and pours money on their heads one can also find the sort of pilgrimage goods that have not much to do with either Buddhism or Hinduism (and are some of the least Buddhist things you will ever find in a Buddhist curio shop), but do have a lot to do with general Sri Lankan-ness. I mean, of course, to heaps and heaps of militaristic childrens' toys such as guns and helicopters emblazoned with the slogan "Sri Lankan Army - The Greatest Army In The World!".... Bitch, please. This is a country where recruiting posters for the Special Forces beckon with the image of men in ski masks handling the elite, 21st century tactical device known as the "Dirt Bike". No wonder the war lasted 26 years. If only the Tamil Tiger defenses had consisted of a row of wrecked Chevy Impalas, the Army could have jumped right over them.
Across the small river from the village is the "Kataragama Sacred City". Once again, this is a city by Sri Lankan standards, meaning that absolutely nobody lives there, but there are a cluster of mighty temples, some so mighty that they even have two rooms. The only architecturally imposing structure in the sacred city is its dagoba, but enormous whitewashed brick titties are the one type of large structure that Sri Lanka has for a dime a dozen. The first thing you come across is a lousy little Shiva temple, and across the square from that is the Muslim enclosure - yes, even the Muslims come here. The Muslims at least are doctrinally coherent and aloof in their monotheism, having nothing to do with the rather more flashy pagan activities going on nearby, but you can't help but remark that they've succumbed to every religion's childish inability to just ignore other religions' sacred cities and not try and claim them as their own. I actually rather liked the Muslim area, as they keep their strikingly green-painted mosques in the cool shade of palm trees, and because I just like the fact that they have a tomb of a saint that came to Sri Lanka from Kyrgyzstan, of all damn places. I like to imagine that his lengthy journey was well worth it, having passed all the way through the Afghan mountains, the Pakistani plains, and the sweltering expanse of India to finally reach an island where his co-religionists have a cuisine that isn't centered on goat.
From the Muslim area I headed north towards the heart of the sacred precinct, passing by numerous tacky little Hindu/Buddhist/whatever shrines, where the priests groaned and grumbled because I was not impressed by, say, an eensy-weensy Durga shrine made out of kitchen granite and decorated with plastic clocks from the 99-cent store. Nearing the very center of the city I finally found a shrine to Lord Buddha, and what a shrine it was. For starters, its interior was apparently done by an MS Paint enthusiast determined to use all 256 colors, and somebody had taken it upon themselves to make sure Lord Buddha was surrounded a multitude of red string lights, a flashing multicolor halo, and vividly cheesy posters of figures deeply important to Sri Lankan
I pressed on beyond the Kataragama temple (because as I've hinted it ain't much to look at and all the exciting stuff happens after dark) and took a stroll on the wide, sandy avenue leading to the dagoba. I wasn't expecting to get much out of this visit, since you don't have to see too many dagobas before you've effectively seen them all, but just as I was getting ready to leave I noticed a procession forming at one end of the boulevard. It was about this time that I learned for certain how to tell apart a Sri Lankan Buddhist and a Sri Lankan Hindu if they are coming to the same shrine to worship the same god. You can extrapolate from this observation as neccesary. It goes like this: If a group of worhsippers are quietly forming an orderly queue in the mid-afternoon and solemnly walking in unison to the accompaniment of rigorously-trained musicians, they are probably Buddhists. If a group of worshippers appears after dark, wildly flailing in every direction with various peacock-related accessories as shouting men haphazardly bang cymbals, drums, and play the trumpet while trying not to fall down, they are probably Hindus.
The proccession I was witnessing was of the Buddhist sort. Two rows of white-clad pilgrims, overwhelmingly women, formed on the boulevard and held at shoulder height a long, rainbow-striped Buddhist banner. They began to shuffle slowly and reverently in the direction of the dagoba. At the head of the procession were five figures. One was a Kandyan drummer wearing white pantaloons, a silly hat, and a red belt, and bearing a certain phsycial resemblance to Pumba from The Lion King. He was accompanied by another, slightly less ridiculous percussionist, and a Kandyan flautist in similar attire whose bearing of overwrought scowls and grimaces revealed the bitter knowledge that an overweight shirtless man playing a glorified Sinhalese kazoo in a silly hat faces an uphill struggle to be taken seriously. The fourth figure was a bespectacled monk in a brilliant orange robe, and the fifth was a mere dog which I only mention because that dog really started some shit. It was the sort of dog that likes people, and remains wholly ignorant of religious ettiquette, finding nothing but this utmost delight in distractingly hopping onto drummers' feet, getting shooed by the flapping of monastic robes, and causing one of the pilgrims to drop a loudspeaker unit with an ear-ripping squeal of electronic protest. Having a dog around was perhaps appropriate though, since the whole affair looked a lot like a large jury of little old ladies at a Buddhist dog-and-stupa show, getting ready to drape an enormous technical color ribbon on the Kataragama dagoba for having won in the category of Biggest Thing That Looks Like A Nipple.
The ending of this whole business came around just in time for me to get back to the main Kataragama temple for the much-lauded evening worship ceremonies, with a potential sighting of the famed "peacock dance", which the locals reccomended entusiastically. Night fell and I found myself in the rather modest enclosure, little more than three brightly illuminated shrines in a sandlot with some bodhi trees tucked around back. The local police and a few soldiers from the army were on hand to provide security, looking a touch preposterous standing around with dull brown assault rifles slung over their shoulders but no damn shoes on their feet. I can see the news now: "Four servicemen were wounded today by an IID -improvised incisive device- reportedly consisting of several pieces of broken glass in the sand. The Chief of the Army has placed the nation on its highest terror alert. Report any
The ceremony, as they tend to be in this country, was a wildly boring affair in which huffy-puffy priests in front of a curtain concealing all the interesting bits, reciting long obeisances which I'm sure wouldn't have been an iota more interesting had I known the language. People lined up to pay their respects. In the sandy courtyard, some visitors clustered around a tiny, fenced-off pit where they prayed to the god somewhat more dramatically by setting coconuts on fire and then smashing them against rocks. Fair enough, I say, if you want to worship a god who rides around on a peacock then by all means throw flaming coconuts around for him. I just can't help but think, however, that up in the cosmic planes Lord Kataragama might be wearying of hearing for the millionth time "My Lord, I offer you this coconut..." "Great! Now this time don't -*CRACK*- sigh.... I just wish I could get offered some fruit that wasn't shattered and immolated first. HEAR, YE MORTALS. God proclaims that henceforth thou shalt offer thine coconuts in the form of daquiris. Thus shall I be honored."
Then as yet another pilgrim mustered the intense concentration required to make a brittle coconut husk break when thrown against rock after having already been set on fire, the peacock dancers arrived. At first I just heard the random shoutings of a mob, looked out of the shrine area and saw a gang of men carrying hoops of peacock feathers being swung this way and that. "Ahh, some unruly worshippers," I thought, "perhaps this will be a preamble to the elaborate, well-ordered 'peacock dance' that the Hindu pilgims will soon....oh, right". It still sometimes takes me a moment to remember that where people of Indian descent are concerned, waving around madly and shouting while people bash away on instruments they've apparently just been acquainted with is considered religious dance. There are of course myriad forms of Hindu worship, but the Tamils have long gone in for spectacle, intensity, and ecstatic participation. And by ecstatic participation I mean "doing insane things with your body like driving skewers through your face or just spinning around and around until you pass out." Tellingly, the most devout practitioners of this peacock dance performed it almost identically to the way the children did. I could make a caustic remark about religous faith in general here, but I will instead merely say that many of the more 'ecstatic' forms of worship in the world are essentially activities for strange people whose inner child never stopped saying "Look! I can dance so crazy I faint!", and proving it. The main difference is that an adult proclaims "I was overcome by God!" while a child says "That was awesome! Not let's trying doing it and glue at the same time!" Such extremes off devotion/delusion are however a step removed from the dancing of the general multitude. Most of the charachters in this flailing human tempest merely wore faces of resignation that said "I have to keep going. If I don't continue to adequately interpret the jumping of a mythical warrior peacock through the sublime medium of spontaneous dance, then I will really look foolish."
As I slipped back through the curio bazaar late that night I couldn't help feeling that I had not been incredibly edified by my visit to Kataragama. All told it merely graphically illustrated my increasing conviction on the nature of religions in general, that people will just believe anything so long as it's convenient. But then, why the hell not? OK, so a wee bit of education and pausing to think about the history of your deities or whatever, or taking a moment to look for glaring contradictions in the dogma you follow might reveal that it all doesn't make a terrible amount of sense. But once again, what the hell. In Kataragama, where just about every mish-mangly-mixing thing in sight is a reminder that the gods are our own creations, and sometimes rather silly creations at that, at least nobody is getting all up in arms about the details. Perhaps being surrounded by contradictory elements of technicolor nonsense has a soothing effect; maybe when you don't particularly expect your own creed to be possessing of rigorous mortal logic you don't have to go around proving to the rest of the world that you're right all the time. I turned about in bed a lot trying to glean something more useful than the two other foreign tourists I met had ("It's such a vibrant spectacle! yada yada, something about cultural diversity...), but as you can see I still haven't come up with much. I ain't got any answers for ya. I dunno... try setting some coconuts on fire and see what happens? I'll leave you to it. Me and Lord Kataragama (he's a notorious pimp) are taking some girls out for daquiris. Peace.
Oct 6, 2010
The "Arid Zone" Is A Malicious And Despicable Misnomer
The climate of Sri Lanka is a mystery, suffused with perplexing and wicked secrets. Sri Lankan meteorology is a black art of deception and lies, made all the more vile by the frequency with which the dark spells used in its occult science go horribly and unpredictably wrong. You see, despite having the modest dimensions of, say, New Jersey, Sri Lanka has about four completely different climate zones. Traditionally, these are labeled by geographical boundaries, such as the hill country, east coast, etc. This is hogwash. I can sum up the four coasts of Sri Lanka in a single, bullet-pointed list.
In reality the climate zones of Sri Lanka are purely relative areas. Allow me to illustrate. Sri Lanka's four climate areas are as follows:
- East coast: a back-asswards province with no economy that the government actually pays people to move to.
- West coast: a huge strip of congested, urbanized hell, kind of like India but with fewer trash fires and lamer pop culture.
- South coast: a 200km promenade of fishmongers' kiosks separating the actual ocean from a figurative sea of tedium.
- North coast: a minefield.
In reality the climate zones of Sri Lanka are purely relative areas. Allow me to illustrate. Sri Lanka's four climate areas are as follows:
- Where you are at this very moment.
- Where you are going to be in the near future
- Anywhere you may be lured by the promise of good weather
- Anywhere you have sensitive electronics.
The forecast for all these regions is rain.
I complain about the weather (yet again) now because I was supposed to be going to an area noted for its dryness, but noooooooooooooo, this is Sri Lanka. Little did I know, I was straddling some sort of magical weather line. The last feeble rains of the monsoon had fallen on the coast and the dry season was upon the isle, so I descended from the perpetually-damp mountains to enjoy the sunny tropical atmosphere. That was when I discovered that the east coast, which people have the gall to call "arid", suffers from the other monsoon, and the very instant that the rains are ending elsewhere, the east gets wetter than a school of tuna in wool trousers. Second monsoon.... I walked right on into it.
I was in the city of Monaragala, which is notable for absolutely nothing, purely as a matter of convenience heading towards the east coast with a stop at the nearby village of Maligawila, which promised an "Olde Lankan Bricks"-type experience of some grand Buddha statues in the forest. Getting to Maligawila proved to be something of an adventure in itself, a lumbering bus ride through a convoluted and narrow series of backcountry roads and unmarked turnings in obscure hamlets where the only sign of commercial activity was people very slowly bargaining over individual coconuts. I actually like this sort of journey because I enjoy getting a feel for the countryside, wandering around at a snail's pace on old rustbuckets through villages where the passage of an outsider, foreign or otherwise, is enough for the locals to make for a few minutes' conversation in between examining and commenting upon yams.
I arrived in Maligawila and sure enough it was primarily a patch of forest with heaps of ancient bricks lying here and there, albeit with one very impressive Buddha statue, and another butt-ugly Buddha statue that happened to be sitting on some sort of Sinhalese ziggurat lost in the jungle. So, for your information, that's what Maligawila has to offer. That and completely unnecessary and unwanted torrents of rain which converted the entire village from a sandpit with a few shacks in it to a swishing mud puddle with a few shacks in it. I took shelter inside the last bus back to the civilized world, and sat waiting for the driver to decide that the roads were likely to be passable again. Since no local in their right mind was going to travel at the time (and, let's be real, probably didn't have anywhere compelling to go) I was the lone passenger on the vehicle, affording me the luxury of stripping to my underwear and hanging my shirt and pants to drip from the luggage racks. Eventually, when the rains subsided and a handful of passengers did get on for a short hop home with their shopping, I got some very curious looks. I explained. "Rain. It is problem." Nobody could find any grounds to disagree with this statement so I was left in the relative comfort of my half-dry semi-nudity, though nobody sat within six rows of me. When, at long last the bus rolled into Monaragala station and I reluctantly wriggled into my clothing for the public slog back to my hotel, I felt ever so slightly oppressed. Damn this weather. As I walked, everybody was looking at me like I was some sort of idiot. "Look," I wanted to say, " I didn't want to be soaked head to foot, but I was in the middle of nowhere when your awful weather came to get me. What was I to do?"... I later realized that I was shuffling through the bazaar with my fly flapping open, exposing a pizza-slice sized triangle of purple boxer shorts with polar bear silhouettes on them.
Around this time somebody explained the oddities of Sri Lankan monsoons to me and I nodded a dripping, mop-like head in comprehension. I quickly decided that I didn't want to go to the east coast all that much, especially since the main highway involves ferry crossings (for readers who don't know, I hate ferries). Furthermore, nobody seemed able to name a single compelling place to visit besides one surfers' outpost and "elephants", which isn't really a place, is it? So, on to the south coast it was, and I gotta say, it has been appreciably less wet here, such that the fleet-footed and alert traveler can sprint back to his hotel room and dry laundry in between showers. I have to do a lot of laundry because there is a lot of sweat and sand, and the only place that doesn't smell like fish is a strange village where people of all religions come to set coconuts on fire... but that is a story for another time. OK, I have to go. The local gem merchants have all figured out what little tourist shop I'm lingering in and if I don't run soon I'm going to be torn about by clawing hands trying to force baggies of "sapphires" on me. It's wild out there....
-GFB
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