miscellaneous

Sri Lanka Diary

Everything in Sri Lanka is either sweet or spicy. Often both. Our people; our tea.

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Sri Lanka Diary
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Landfall to Indifference

I approached the east coast of Sri Lanka like a foreign invader, scanning her green coast across a narrow expanse of azure water that separated my rubber dinghy from the pale beach. Bodies turned to shiny black obsidian by the scorching sun and the cool sea ignored me as we cut our outboard and cruised in; too intent on splashing their friends or diving off each other’s shoulders into the gentle waves. A few, interrupted their day at the beach to look past me to the sailing yacht I had just left, anchored offshore, rocking peacefully. I was no invader, but after 30 years of war, I felt like a foreigner.

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I hit the road north out of Pasikuda, following the shoreline of Sri Lanka’s Eastern Province. The road was arrow straight for long stretches, though sometimes frighteningly narrow when meeting oncoming traffic. In many places, jungle that had been slashed and burned back from the road, to prevent ambushes, hadn’t grown back even seven years after the war. I wondered which side had done it. My memories of the battles in this area were a bit sketchy.

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The Giant's Tank, Adaikkalamoddai, southeast of Mannar, built by King Dhatusena in the 5th century.

Photograph by David Blacker

I flinched and tensed as metal flashed in the sun on the jungle’s edge. A light machine-gun would reach across the two hundred metres to the road with ease. The axe caught the light again as the two young women chopped firewood from a fallen tree. I increased speed, focusing on the true danger; lunatic Sri Lankan bus drivers barrelling down the middle of the road.

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Olive Greens and Tea

North of Trincomalee, I cut the corner of the North-Central Province where it jutted into the northeast, stopping for a late afternoon break in the border area of Welioya. Once a Tamil area known as Manal Aru until the government started its colonisation programme in the 1980s, it was now decidedly Sinhalese. Lush paddy fields spread to the horizon under the blazing sun, watered by the reservoirs built throughout the area.

I stopped at a small kadé—a roadside shack—looking for a cup of tea. The kadé was run by local men, most of them wearing a mix of civilian garb—sarongs, sleeveless undershirts—and military uniforms like camouflage t-shirts and olive green shorts. Farmers by day, for a generation they had put down their farming tools each sunset and picked up government-supplied assault rifles to guard their fields from the Tiger guerrillas who had regularly decimated these hamlets. The last time the LTTE had made a determined assault had been in 1995, when hundreds of guerrillas were killed in a futile attack on the heavily defended area.

The men in the kadé were hard andweathered, suspicious of strangers, but the tea was hot, sweet, and spiced with ginger. Eventually softened by my questions and cigarettes, they cooked up delicious coconut rottis over a woodfire, serving them up with magma-strength lunumiris—a spicy onion relish. Yes, everything in Sri Lanka is either sweet or spicy. Often both. Our people; our tea.

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A little boy cycles to school through Trincomalee.

Photograph by David Blacker
Gone But Not Forgotten

The war had all but disappeared from the Northeast, at least from the main roads. At its peak, in the 1990s, I was a regular visitor to the East, visiting friends in Batticaloa or holidaying Nilaweli, north of Trinco. In the weeks, months, and years after the 2004 tsunami, I had visited several times, ferrying church aid to the devastated coastal communities. I hadn’t been back to the East since the war ended. The checkpoints and fortified military outposts—army and LTTE—straddling the main roads were gone, leaving broad, circular clearings, like scars that had ripped back the green fur of the scrub jungle to reveal the torn ochre flesh beneath. If you looked hard, an occasional bullet-pocked building revealed itself—like the derelict Punani railway station. The scars might run deep in Sri Lanka, but the surface was untroubled.

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Mannar Meanderings

I stayed the night in a small motel just south of Vavuniya, obviously built after the war. The food was mediocre, and there was no beer but, surprisingly, the coffee was exceptional, dark and Italian. Topped up with a shot of arrack from the bottle that lived in my toilet bag, it was good company that evening as I sat on the porch of my log cabin, smoking and watching the ducks splash their way across the pond that was slowly turning red with the lowering sun.

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Calappenburg Bay, Trincomalee

Photograph by David Blacker

The next morning I was back on the road, racing up the southern edge of the Wanni, heading for Mannar, on the west coast. By lunchtime, I was crossing the long causeway across the shallows onto Mannar Island. In contrast to the excellent roads on the mainland, on the island itself the main road was horribly potholed. It was also very crowded, and I was kept busy, dodging bicycles, children, the omnipresent tuktuks, and hundreds of goats.

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Cheerful but deserted housing scheme built after the war on Mannar Island.

Photograph by David Blacker

Eventually, the road ran out, swinging north to the Talaimannar Pier where, before the war, a regular ferry service crossed the Palk Straits to Rameswaran. I turned off the main road and kept driving, trying to go as far west as I could. When this was no longer possible, I walked, through the blazing noonday sun and into the sand; past huts built of palm fronds, through the reek of karawala, Mannar’s famous sun-dried fish, until the Palk Straits stretched before me, magically blue and inviting.

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I took off my sandals and walked across the burning sand and into the cool, welcoming surf, sighing with relief. The tears of Mary Magdalene on the feet of Jesus could not have been more pleasurable. I squinted to the horizon. Somewhere out there, beyond my sight, was Adam’s Bridge, the Sethubandhanam of the Ramayana, built by the invading Rama, determined to wrest back his Sita from the Rakshasa king, Ravana of Lanka. The 50-km chain of tiny islands, connecting Sri Lanka to Mother India like a lacerated umbilical cord, feels representative of our relationship—fractured but undeniable.

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Hot Sri Lankan tea and rotti

Photograph by David Blacker

Last week...

The roads are often very good in the Sri Lankan Northeast, open and free of traffic, inviting that heavy right foot. But the ­policemen are hungry. I was charged twice.

A former soldier, David Blacker is a novelist, ­photographer, illustrator and adman based in Colombo.

E-mail your diarist: spookylead [AT] hotmail [DOT] com

A shorter, edited version of this appears in print

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