leaving yet again.

I just met a lady who was cleaning the bathrooms here at the airport. Sri Lanka tour over? She asked. Yes, I said. Going back to London. London. Ah. She said. Have you been there? I asked. But really, I knew the answer to that one. So I jumped in with India. Have you been to India? Nooo. Live Negumbo. She said. It is the city closest to the airport.

A lot of people have never left Sri Lanka. Most of the people I have met. The cultured and multi lingual guide on my tour, Lakshen, had only been to India because his girlfriend, now his wife went to university in Poona. The owner of the hotel I have just been staying in Bentota told me that it is very hard for anyone from Sri Lanka to get a visa anywhere outside of South East Asia. So Europe or America is a pipe dream for them.

I have three passports. I think it is legal. I always had a British one. I got an American one when I had been living over there for a number of years and felt that it was important to vote. I got an Irish one, based on my having been born in Dublin, last year. Because the sadness I felt over the Brexit Vote to leave Europe has not subsided. I don’t take it for granted. I remember the hard process to get my American passport and I had a lot going for me. And the present world is full of people risking everything on boats or through deserts to get to a land where they have no sure way of being able to stay. It is one of the great things about traveling the world is that the ground under you never stays stable. If you steer clear of the 5 star living, then the ground rules of the community you are visiting will show themselves quickly.

Most Sri Lankans are just so happy to smile and push their children forward to shake your hand and try out their school English.

I met a woman yesterday who got off her pink bike and after finding out where I was from wanted my address. Why? I said. Are you going to write to me? Then she started to say that she wanted to repair her house. I didn’t have much with me. What do mean? I asked. Money for a new roof? She smiled and tilted her head. I don’t know you, was my response. She didn’t seem fussed. I went on walking. She passed me on her pink bicycle and waved, saying Good bye. Smiling as she went. Odd really. Just trying it on I think. Charming in it’s own way.

Sri Lanka is really trying, with a new hard working primeminister, to take care of their own. There are no pensions and there probably will never be enough money in the depleted kitty to have any. The pay is low. The lovely lady who gave me a couple of Ayurvedic treatments works daily at a fancy shmancy hotel where she does at least 7 female customers a day and she is paid 18,000 rupees for the month. ( $61/ 48 pounds GBP)

The noble and wonderful Shiva who took us for Hikes in the mountains around Heptale used to work as a salesman in the textile industry. Before he came back to take care of his wife after she had gone into depression after losing a baby. His pay then was 3,600 rupees ($ 12.20 /10 pounds GBP) He has built his house out from a one room hut into a house with a separate kitchen and two bedrooms. So now with his salary of 600 rupees a day for the hiking ($ 2./ 1.61GBP) he told me with a quiet pride that now he was middle class.

There is an echo here of the dignity I found in the Cambodian people. Self contained. Honest. Proud. Trodden on, but intact. Gentle. Kind.

The children all go to school from 7.30 till 1.00. School is free for everyone. As are the unforms. Every child gets two every year. Here in Sri Lanka the uniforms are white , white white. Symbol of their optimism that every thing will work out somehow.

eating like a native

I remember many years ago I had a Tibetan family living next door to me for a few months. They were truly lovely. They set up a shrine in the bedroom. They allowed me to join in their New Years Celebration when everything you wore and ate off had to be new. And you made these dumpling things and hidden inside each one was an element which would indicate how your next year would go. Charcoal - not good. Coral - jolly good. I also remember because they were Buddhists that I assumed they would not eat animals for food. They did have yak cheese and yak butter, but they also ate an enormous amount of red meat. They answered my question by explaining that there were almost no vegetables that grew in the high altitudes of Tibet… what was I thinking…. So here I am in a predominantly Buddhist country where the national symbol is a cockerel. Coconut Oil abounds.

They have 72 varieties of bananas.

Rice is with almost every meal. But chicken, fish and mutton ( which is actually goat) are on every menu at home or in a restaurant. Cows aren’t sacred over here. They are not wandering the highways like they do in India. No one eats the many dogs. And the cats are very skinny. And elephants have always been herbivores.

They drink coconut milk. In hardware stores, you can buy machines that will scoop out the coconut flesh. They fry bananas. They pull mangoes and papayas off the trees in their gardens or lean over to their neighbours. They believe lemons are not good for you and ayurvedically Limes triumph every time. They grow the real cinnamon… not the cassia that is like bark and should be sucked not chewed. This cinnamon dissolves. The vanilla pods are long and bendy. That is apparently how you tell if it is not old and therefore devoid of it’s essential oil, you just wrap it round and round your finger. (I will be trying that the next time I visit Wholefoods.) Pepper grows as a vine up the trunk of other trees. Tamarind is used medicinally along with limes and hot water to start your day. And of course there is Cardamon. And cloves. Which should be green and light brown respectively otherwise they are useless.

Because Sri Lanka has coast upon coast that belongs to them they have fishermen. Who bring their catch in and sell it at the markets, or on the docks, or it is caught and frozen ready for export to foreign lands. Tuna, sardines, butter fish, crab, and many that have names I can’t pronounce.

Fishing is a family tradition but it also a dangerous game. Some men just wander around with a bended stick or a small round net that they hurl into the waves from the sea shore. Some larger nets are thrown out over night and then pulled in by groups of men in the morning light. But there are also boats that go out for a week or three. That can hold 7 tons of fish. Young men go out to make quick money. But seemingly many don’t come back and the main reason is that they go to relieve themselves over the side of the boat holding onto the ladder and they lose their grip and bam. The poop death.

They love dal and fish curries. They often make them with the much prized dried fish which have a overwhelmingly salty taste. They make salads with onion, tomato, grated coconut, lime juice and salt. The favourite condiment is Sambal, which is coconut, red chilli, lime and salt.

They have hoppers which is rice batter swirled around in a small round pan and is turned out as a perfect bowl for you to fill with dal or curry. And there is Kottu. Starts with vegetable, grows with an egg and can end up with chicken ( bones and all ) and the most important ingredient, Roti, which is a chewy kind of bread. And the whole thing is chopped at speed and with some noise on a hot metal plate, and then piled like a Cobb Salad on a plate.

They even make their alcohol from the coconut flowers. These extraordinarily agile men climb high into the trees and walk between them on taut ropes and hit the flowers which release the liquid into the waiting coconut shells. Refined it becomes Arrack. But they call it toddy. And the men are called ToddyTappers. They use what they have. Like those Tibetans next door.

17 miles from India..

Sri Lanka is separated from India at it’s closest point by 17 miles. But it could be. 170 miles. You can’t lump cities here as being representative of the country. As you can’t with almost any country. But one of the first things I noticed was the lack of garbage. And I don’t really understand how 17 miles could make such a difference. But there it is. Inexcusable really. In Mysore, which was the cleanest city I visited in India, apparently the Royal Family have given money to fund a programme to clean up the streets. And you do notice it…a bit. But over in little Sri Lanka, you may have unfinished buildings and bumpy pavements but you don’t have the piles of rotting vegetables, or mountains of plastic bags.

There are many street dogs, and an occasional one with mange, but they are amazingly calm. And they look much more nourished than those in India. All the male dogs are running around with their balls hanging. Actually, that’s where I’d start, if anyone asked me. A quick nip would relieve a lot of confusin at street level. I started in Negombo which is a city just north of Colombo and what I lost in those 17 miles was the colour. The saris are no longer blasting your eyes at every turn. There are lungis on men and some occasional pretty dresses on women, but there are a lot of T shirts and jeans, which don’t make a feast for the eyes. But the vegetables and fish compensate a lot.

The main religion by far in Sri Lanka is Buddhism. There are Protestant churches from the Dutch. Catholic Churches from the Spanish. There are mosques, there are Hindu temples. They all seem to rub along together.

There are the tea plantations originally planted by a Scotsman. The centre of the island is the high country where, as in India, the tea is picked by women from India. But here,these are Tamil women from the south of India. They live in those same tiny huts. They carry the same bags on their head. They have to pick 18 kilos of the leaves to get their daily wage of 2000 rupees. ( which is five pounds or six dollars 50 cents)

The north is where the civil war took place. The south is where the beaches start. And they continue up the south west coast and that is where the tsunami hit on the day after christmas in 2004. The roads are remarkably good. They were made with Chinese loans. And there begins a tale that rivals science fiction. The Rajapaksa family came to power in 2006. Mahindra Rajapaksa then gave his brothers the best jobs and billions were siphoned out of the country… Hmm doesn’t that sound familiar? They lost power in 2015 briefly, which is when the inflation rate went sky high and they grabbed the power back in 2019 until they were thrown out of office by an angry mob in 2022. So not only is the country in unending debt to the Chinese, the family oversaw a project called Port City”..which is 2 sq. Kilometres of reclaimed land just south of the original and totally functioning port of Colombo, but this one belongs to the Chinese. And I mean really belongs. No leases here. It is sovereign land in the middle of the Country’s capital that belongs to the Chinese. They originally released prisoners from China to work on the construction, but the Sri Lanka lifted a hand and now the labor comes from the local workforce. Port City, when finished, will make the original Colombo port outdated and it will die. And it seems all the beaches on the south western part of the island will be so affected by this new outcrop that the ocean patterns will change, and they may die too. It is estimated that 18 billion was slipped into foreign offshore accounts by the Rajapaksas. It truly makes me want to cry when people do it their own. So heartless. Unspeakable.

But there are trains and buddhas and elephants and many, many many smiling people.

A question about children

I had an Ayurvedic oil massage. It involves being hit with a cloth covered stick all over your body and lying on your back and having aromatic oil poured on your forehead for about 30 minutes. Then you sit in this box filled with steam and watch the lovely girl who did your massage clear up the room. She is slight with dark hair, long in a ponytail. Skin like cream. . We have communicated in smiles during the two hours. Hers is wide and exquisite. Now she says to me, “ Auntie, you marry?” “ No” I say. “ Good thing” she says back at me , smiling. I learn that she lives in a hostel here in Thekkady. She is twenty three. She works seven days a week and her home is in a village some 30 miles away. She gets back once a month for four days and she really loves her job. I ask her, “ are you married’ “ Oh no “ she says. “ But I will marry. Fixed.” “ Ah, “ I say. “ when will that be? “ “ April 28th, she says. “ Have you met him? “ I ask. “ No” she says. “ Fixed. We text.” I know the answer to this next question, but I ask it anyway. “ will you work after marry?” “ No” she says. “ No more this work.” “ you will live with your husbands parents. yes?” I ask “ Yes.” She says. “ That will home from now.”

I knew the answer because the woman who was taking our tour was a beautiful strong independent woman called Usha Mary. She is now 42. She was brought up Roman Catholic. She is the older of two girls. Her mother died a year ago from cancer. Usha is married to a man called Aardi. He is Hindu. He is also a guide and they married for love some 14 years ago. She has converted to Hindu in principle. And she lives with his parents. Because that’s what brides do in India. She said she was grateful for the British for bringing in school uniforms. It meant that for all of her happy schooldays she never knew she was poor. or that many of the girls in her class were of a higher caste than she. Her husband is of a higher caste than she. That is a problem. But the bigger problem is that she hasn’t had a child. In India, you marry. You move into your husbands home. You learn to cook from his mother. You have babies, ideally boys. Because girls involve the expense of a dowry and they don’t look after you in old age. Female infanticide is now outlawed. But when Usha was growing up it wasn’t. She has a problem getting pregnant. Five years ago at the beginning of Covid she sold all her jewelry and special sarees to pay for a course of IVF. She learned she was expecting twin girls. There was a big party with a banner that read. “ Prayed for one. Blessed with two.” She carried them to term and then they died in the hospital; one after a few hours and the other after six days. Her father in law, who once came in and burned his wife with a hot poker because he had called her name three times and she hadn’t answered him, wanted his son to dump Usha and get a second wife. Usha told him she would be happy to step aside and that any child he had with another woman she would give love to. Aardi said he didn’t want another wife. And the mother in law stood up to her husband and said she would kill herself if he made Usha leave.

She told me that when she was at the hospital after the death of her babies there was another young woman whose baby had also died. She was abandoned there. Her husband and his family just left her there as he went to find a new wife. So they still live in a small house in a village outside Madurai. Usha and Aardi at least have their own room and not the curtain that was drawn across the bedroom to separate the two sleeping quarters. Usha wanted to adopt, but her father in law would not sign off on the paperwork. She told me that many women of her mother in laws generation will never say their husbands name because they are like a god. They will sometime have the husbands name tattooed on their arms and when they are asked the name of their husband they will lift up their arm to be read so as not to sully his name by speaking it.

Usha has AARDi tattooed on her arm. Because she loves him. She is a rockstar. She is changing the world because she is talking about what women like her have to go through. I hope she keeps going. India needs her.

Mad dogs and Englishwomen

I am struggling with the heat. Wearing sunblock, wearing mosquito repellent. But frankly not sure what is left on my skin after I have been walking from the hotel to the temple, or from the promenade to the restaurant. I have two hats. A large blue thing which would be shot down by the fashion police. And a small neat straw thing. But sweat is a great leveler. Your hair sticks to your head. Your hat helps not at all. Your face has rivulets of salt that run down from your hairline to your chin. Your trousers cling to your legs even though they are made of the lightest cotton. Your shirt, which should be two sizes larger than your frame, gets damp around your neck and under your arms. You have sprayed your ankles with mosquito repellent. You have also sprayed any areas of your arms that are exposed. You are careful to wash your hands before you touch your face or any food because it lends a chemical overtone to everything. We have dress code instructions every morning. For temples we need to cover our shoulders and our knees. It is called the modesty code. For the sun we need to cover our heads and have our water bottle full and close by. It is the survival code. For rural areas or walks at night we need to to have trousers that cover our ankles. It is called Beat the bloody bugs code. Sometimes we are biking and then we need to wear a hat that shades us from the sun and have to fit the helmet on top of it. Luckily it is so hot I don’t even think how ridiculous I look. When you are dodging the mosquitos and avoiding the sun you don’t look in a mirror. You don’t care. You truly don’t. Then someone takes a photo and sends it to everyone. And I discover I look like a tired convict in polka dots. I have seen photos of fashion shoots on beaches on the Maldives. There are women who flow past me in gauzy fabric that create wind patterns as they move. I have stood next to people who glow and glisten as I scratch and melt. I wish to award myself a medal. For succumbing to the layers of unwanted clothing, the coatings of sunscreen and bug spray. For forging on through as the heat and the mosquitoes win the battle and all grace and beauty passes me by.

Hooray for damp and drizzle . That’s what I say.

Not finding peace in Puducherry

I have been a lover of contemplative places all of of my remembered life. I love unexpected soft patches in forests. Quiet bays where you can watch the waves go in and out and in and out. Old stone churches where feet have worn down the paving stones that lead to the wooden altar. And now I am in the land of temples. Well…there are Hindu temples but there are also monuments , which are no longer used for worship and there are Roman Catholic Churches left behind by the many invaders. I was in Pondicherry. Or Puducherry as it is now known.

It is a separate and small union State. It is the place of French influence. The description is that it is like Nice in the south of France. Just to let you know…it is nothing like Nice. There is a black town and a white town. The black town is much like it’s neighbours north and south. It is crazy, with an ever flowing sea of street dogs, tuk tuks, motorbikes, garbage and unidentified hanging wires.

the white town is very different. It is clean. There are trees. There are tall policeman in smart khaki uniforms walking around. The houses are solid, painted in greys and pinks. It is almost shocking to the system not to be checking for cow pats and uneven pavements underfoot. I am not going to get this right, but it seems that 80% is owned by the ashram that has it’s headquarters there. There was the Indian teacher Sri Aurobindo and then his disciple, a French woman called “ The Mother”, who came to join him and with her considerable wealth bought the majority of white town to preserve it. There are schools and libraries. There are restaurants with open terraces, government buildings white and sparkling. Parks where Napoleon Third built some structure to honor some brothel owner who had to give up her place of work…I didn’t promise accuracy here. And churches. I went to the Sri Aurobindo Ashram. Shoes off. Phones off. Bossy men keeping you in line. A large plinth covered in a painting of flowers. Women and men kneeling, arms outstretched. A bookshop with books by him and by her. Another room of photos of him and of her. And then back out to put on your shoes again. It seems the main ashram is some 50 miles north, where a community of people live and work. the less well off subsidized by those that are wealthy. And the commitment is to doing good work. I am sure there is wonderful work done there , but down here it left me cold.

I went to the temple for Ganesh. A big brightly painted hall. Smooth marble floors. A central structure where you line up to get a sight of a statue of the deity, receive the Darshan from the sight and then, the monk will wave the flame around in an “ Aarti ‘ style manner and if you choose, you get a swipe of white ash on your forehead. Turns out the white ash is powdered cow dung , so although I appreciated the thought, I wiped it off . There are other smaller chapels where you can collect yellow and red ash.That will go close to the hairline..again, not going attempt to be accurate here, but it does seem that part of the red ash and the Bindi wearing is to ensure the good health of your husband. Widows don’t get to partake. Nor it seems, would I.

Ended up at the Roman Catholic Church. Which was a calm haven of blue and white and if there were no crucifixes and signs saying that donating online with a QR code would be acceptable, it would have been a pastel place of contemplation. Ended up going for a delicious supper at a place called the Coromandel Cafe. Had the best vegetarian pad Thai type salad. And a bottle of beer. and walked back to the hotel on the promenade past a statue of Gandhi, which didn't really look like him.

Obviously I didn’t find peace in a plate full of food. But it certainly cheered me up. So I continue to look.