Mooching around: Sri Lanka

So it's been more than 24 hours since I left Sri Lanka and I'm still finding sand everywhere. Not that I'm complaining though. It's been a holiday straight out of a postcard.


(Time spent well at the beach in Nilaveli)

More than a few eyebrows were raised when I spread the word that I was heading south for a holiday. "Sri Lanka?" "Isn't it raining there?" "Aren't there landmines around?" I almost reconsidered my trip given that all the critics (amusingly, none of whom have ever been to the country) proceeded to warn me about my destination that was beginning to sound like a poor man's Seychelles or Maldives.

To everyone who suggested otherwise, it was fantastic. Hah.

Prabhakaran is dead, long live Rajapaksa


(A cut out of Rajapaksa close to Colombo International Airport)

Sri Lanka may be a democracy on paper but if one went by the huge cutouts of its president Mahinda Rajapaksa, that are found everywhere, you'd be fooled into thinking it was an autocratic state. Our tour guide Prageeth, who also happened to be Lasith Malinga's cousin (degree of separation unknown), chattered on incessantly about the state of corruption in the country but the narcissism of the ruling government was apparent even if Prageeth had been a mute. Mahinda was everywhere, on 1000 rupee notes to hoardings for his airline Mihin Lanka(Mihin is another word for Mahinda), and the only thing more frequently spotted would have to have been the 7/11-like retail store, Cargills.


(A Rs 1000 note. We shit you not.)

That said, the government's work in providing world class infrastructure to the nation that had been ravaged by civil war and natural disaster, was remarkable. Most of our time was spent in Trincomalee, a city that had been disturbed for years by LTTE commandos, but had seen rapid development since 2009 with smoother roads than the Bandra Worli Sea Link, in even the most remote, rural parts. We stopped at a street stall in Kantale on our way back to Colombo for the yummiest yoghurt (laced with palm treacle) that I have ever had, and the owner told us stories of how they had to hide in the jungles every time LTTE soldiers passed by. The dark days may be over, but according to locals, not much has changed for the Tamil people who call several parts of the island their home. Prabhakaran may be dead, but some say that it's only a matter of time before another like him rises and civil unrest grips these paradise-like locales again.

We aren't in Kansas anymore

People in Mumbai are a lot to be pitied. Our idea of the beach is wading in ankle -deep into the always-gray waters at Girgaum, Juhu or Manori, or walking along the shore on a concretized walkway , turning our noses up at the smell of salt mingled with rotting trash. I grew up in Abu Dhabi where trips to the beach on Friday were common enough but even I don't remember a beach as pristine as the one I saw at Nilaveli. Folks may argue that the south of Goa has virgin stretches belonging to prominent resorts that would do us proud but this here in Sri Lanka, wasn't a fenced off part but an all-access public area where families and tourists rubbed shoulders comfortably without touts leaping at you or beggars heckling for alms. Our accommodation, the Nilaveli Beach Hotel, was a bit of national park in itself with langurs, squirrels and even the odd peahen, jostling for space outside our door that opened up to the sand and private hammocks. I'm a city girl; I like to stay on the promenade when others are getting their feet wet, but even I couldn't resist the draw and have returned with a fugly tan.

I'm also proud to say that I had the chance to snorkel in the waters of the Indian Ocean minus a lifejacket. I'm an exceptional Goan since most take to water like fish. However after nearly drowning in the DPC pool at Dubai when I was 10, I wasn't ever comfortable in the deep side again and petrified when it came to the ocean. It wasn't too much better when I jumped off the speedboat. Apart from vomiting violently in water that was several metres deep, I turned sharply for shore when the instructor pointed out a blacktip reef shark (harmless to humans, so they say) and nearly squished a bunch of fish when attempting to swim against a current, but I'm still telling the story to anyone who cares. Me! Alisha! Swimming! In the ocean! Woot!


(Fat chance trying to convince me that this isn't a dangerous animal)

Pigfest!

Anyone who knows me, knows I like bacon and the hotel did not disappoint. Every morning we woke up to a fantastic spread that included all the bacon you could eat. Of course, this proved disastrous on day two when I stuffed my face so full to put even Adam Richman to shame, and then threw up on the snorkelling instructor in the middle of the ocean. I ate in moderation thereafter, still keeping carbohydrates to a bare minimum but allowing for at least two hours before I went back into the water.

Sri Lankans eat a lot of Kankung (spelled most often and pronounced as 'Kankun'), a Chinese spinach that they serve sauteed with whole cloves of deep fried garlic. We happened to eat a lot of it and it was most often accompanied by chicken/pork/beef served 'devilled' or cooked in a spicy gravy. The other local delicacy we tried were hoppers, a sort of crispy appam with a soft centre that you ate with a garlic and chilli paste. I particularly liked this, it was everything a common man snack was supposed to be - fresh, flavourful, filling and most importantly, cheap.


(Kankung served 'devilled' with garlic at Trinco Village Cafe in Trincomalee)

Our brushes with seafood were strictly pedestrian, which was disappointing considering all we'd heard about the Lankan love for fish. The best thing I had was a grilled fillet of seer fish topped with garlic butter at our Trincomalee hotel but the rest was entirely forgettable.

Spice in Sri Lankan cuisine isn't designed to simply add flavour. It's meant to nuke your taste buds. A coconut sambol we had was the kind that made my friend break out into a sweat on a particularly pleasant morning. The sambar at the buffet, made presumably for the Indian guests at the hotel, was unbearably spicy and we had to swallow huge bites of bacon, not out of greed, but because we needed something oily and salty to help put out the fire in our mouths.

Okay. But maybe we were a just a little greedy too.

Dude, where's the dirt?

As Peter Rourke said, cleanliness becomes more important when godliness is unlikely. That bit of wisdom is wholly reflected in the streets of Colombo, and even the toniest suburbs of Mumbai would hardly be able to hold up a candle to it. How did this nation do it? It's less than a tenth in size in comparison to India with a population only a little more than Mumbai and yet their public systems seemed to be far superior. My friend argued that the comparison was unfair and that Mumbai had many more people to look after and care for that the local authorities in Colombo did. But I don't buy that theory. We have the richest municipal authority in the world and we are the largest contributor to the national exchequer, and yet we fall short.


(A street in downtown Colombo)

I have two hypotheses about why Sri Lanka does it better. The first is about having the chance to make a clean start. The tsunami of Christmas 2004 and civil war virtually reduced the livelihoods of citizens and infrastructure of the resource-rich country to smithereens. They have since had the chance to improve upon mistakes of the past, to make better what was worse and to rise, as corny as it sounds, like a phoenix from the ashes, much like Japan did after World War II and is continuing to do so after the tsunami from earlier this year.

The second is that of how autocracy, no matter how despicable it is sometimes, works to bring about efficient progress. We've seen how the world's largest democracy bungled up the Commonwealth Games and it's little wonder that FIFA awarded Russia and Qatar the rights to host the tournaments in 2018 and 2022 respectively, ignoring bids from countries like Britain and the United States. The press in the 'free world' might have gone to town with conspiracy theories about how these privileges were 'brought' by cash-rich nations but I suspect (and Time magazine does too) that they simply do a better job because when absolute rule is in play, there's a firm hand cracking a cruel whip, but the job gets done.

My wistful musings apart, I couldn't have asked for a better getaway - one done quite cheaply with great discounts offered by Kingfisher airlines and the absolute darling duo of Prageeth and our driver Michael (who'll have you know that he used to perform at Al Nasr Leisureland in Dubai and has cut an album) who were incredibly helpful.


(Here's a copy of Michael's album. We were luckier - we heard him in the flesh.)

Cheers to a bunch of memories that hopefully will live on long after all the sand's gone.