Sri Lanka: Overlaying Impressions of Radio Ceylon

I grew up listening to Binaca Geetmala every week. And hearing Devika pronounced differently. Radio Ceylon was a staple of my adolescence. And then came LTTE in my adult days. Going to Sri Lanka for two weeks was the beginning of a third phase of connections to and impressions of the island.

Arrival in Sri Lanka

Did I feel important! When I landed, an official appointed by Dr. Hemamala Rattwatte was waiting by, who ushered me through immigration, customs and into a cab, which flew through the city. There was a slight hiccup in neither the cab driver nor I knew where I was supposed to go and I didn’t have Hemamala’s phone number. But that was soon resolved and I reached Open University of Sri Lanka safely. My host Dilini Walisundra came by to discuss my schedule and take me out to a real Sri Lankan dinner of kottu and curry. And my first shopping trip to buy – a towel!

My presentations

I had two presentations to university faculty, at OUSL and the University of Jaffna, and three to English teachers in Kurunegala, Jaffna and Zahira College, Colombo. A total of 5 which involved travelling across the country and meeting very different groups of people. Each workshop was attended by 30-60 teachers.

Kurunegala - The workshop was in closed room, 50 people and no air-con. But the participation was enthusiastic. Though the day began with one participant who fainted as we were talking. No, I didn’t scare her; she forgot to take her blood pressure medication.

I am even more convinced, if I needed to be, that teachers over the world are asked to be doers and not thinkers. And then we complain that students and our young people are getting less and less capable of critical thinking. What I do not practice I will not teach. And while all teachers may not be from the top of their class, they are capable of thinking, they have definite ideas of who they are as teachers and if we don’t value their beliefs and expect them to articulate them and act on their beliefs, which are mostly conducive to commitment to teaching and students, we will be left with an uncritical, unthinking, unmotivated group of people who treat teaching as a career and will be content to remain the warm bodies in the classroom that we allow them to be. Our loss, in effect.

Galle

I went there the day after the England-Sri Lanka match, pity. But I was able to see the grounds which are in the shadow of the fort. It was amusing to see boys and girls in a mixed team playing cricket just outside the fort walls against a magnificent background of the Indian Ocean. The spectators sat on the walls of the fort in the blazing sun.

My enduring memory is of drinking wood apple juice, which I haven’t seen since I was a child. I remember my grandmother scolding us for picking unripe wood-apples, which tasted sour, if not bitter. But we couldn’t wait for the ripe ones which we would have mixed with jiggery. Delicious.

Sigiriya and Dumbulla

Kandyan Reach in Kurunegala has to be the best value for money. The hotel was clean, the room spacious and clean, and the food good. Most welcome after a hot day out. In case you don’t know, I am not at my physical fittest right now. And climbing umpteen steps at both places was taxing but worth it, if only because I could pride myself on having done both places in a single day, which I advised not to. The frescos at Sigiriya reminded me that buxom is good and I don’t have to worry about not being reed-thin, a hangover of living in the US. Dambulla with it myriad statues of the Buddha was impressive. After the climb, done in the full glare of the afternoon sun, I needed to rest my feet. As I sat on my haunches and cross-legged in turn in each of the caves, other visitors presumed that I was praying and walked around me softly. And I can hear my family and friends cackling at my projection of piety.

The bus rides were fine and cheap. I paid more for each auto ride than for the bus rides put together. And if I was getting fleeced, it was no more than I could afford.

Kandy

I had many claims to interest in Kandy: the elephant orphanage in Pinnewala; the Temple of the Tooth; the train ride. All of them lived up to my expectations. Hemamala had provided contacts to finalize a car for the day (and it took 3 attempts and four people to pull this off) and it was most useful. If I had had to take a bus to Pinnewala, I may have taken a rain check on it, it was so hot.

Meeting Deepika was meant to be a pro forma, my sister’s friend. But we were in the car for 7 hours and didn’t stop talking (No, I don’t want to hear So why is that a surprise?)

Jaffna

I am the first Fulbright scholar to go to Jaffna in recent times sponsored by SLELTA (no pressure, folks!). Just getting here was an adventure and quite fraught. Dilini tried to prevent me retracing my steps from Kurunegala to Colombo but I had no choice. So that day was a 4 hour Kurunegala-Colombo bus ride followed a couple of hours later by another 10 hour Colombo-Jaffna ride. Fortunately, the second was a very comfortable air-conditioned bus. I went into my presentation without much rest but was enthused by the faculty of U of Jaffna ELTC department.

I was sleep-deprived since I cannot sleep on a bus, and our accommodation that night was in a fairly clean but closed-in room in which the electricity went off at least three times. The second night the accommodation at the Christian Theological Seminary in bucolic surroundings with birds chirping was very pleasant, once Dilini got the rooms cleaned and dusted, and arranged for fresh bed sheets.

Hearing Tamil widely spoken, and being able to connect to the Tamils here through the language is exhilarating.

The effects of war are to be seen everywhere. There are portions of the outlying areas that are still abandoned, and have been since 1990. Locals point to all the derelict buildings that had been occupied by the army for more than a decade. The railway line was torn up by the LTTE for girders to build bunkers and the train station looks neglected and forsaken. Roads are being re-laid but the progress appears to be slow. 

We met one family that had lost all its male members. The women had spent 22 years in and around Jaffna, staying in no place longer than a year, and finally came back to their house a year ago. They have set up a small roadside shop selling sweets and crisps with the government compensation and are hoping to be able to settle back into their own lives.

There is a lot of residual fear. We had taken an auto to see the areas that had been cleared out by the army. I temporarily lost sight of two of my friends. The auto driver drove back and forth along the road frantically peering into every disused building and overgrown bush. His sigh of relief when we spotted them was audible and heartfelt.

There are still a lot of regrets. Every person we met had lost a family member, from the auto driver to university personnel. The scars have not healed and it is unrealistic to expect them to forget their losses, even if they have moved on in certain ways. We also happened on an orphanage attached to a temple. The girls there are orphaned or certainly do not have a mother. They looked well-groomed. One of them sang in the temple and looked the picture of devotion. The head of the orphanage is a retired principal of a local school and his wife works at the U of Jaffna. Another woman has opened her house to blind children. One of her protégés is now a lecturer at a local university.

Signs of regeneration and growth are slight but promising. Schools were permitted to be re-opened in cordoned off areas about 10 years ago, and now everyone has access, not just students and teachers. The school we visited was the first missionary co-ed school in South Asia. New buildings have been built and they are well maintained. There is a kitchen garden in the centre of the ground, and growing something so eminently practical and home-oriented was indicative of how much normalcy the people ache for.

War-affected children were provided counselling in schools for a year or so early in the millennium but nothing since. And they have no help in processing their memories and their losses as they grow up. Teachers feel the need to address issues related to the effects of the war but are not encouraged to do so. No one talks about it professionally. They have to input into how to deal with suicidal children. The English curriculum and materials are bland and devoid of all mention of the war or its effects. How can we talk about authenticity in such an approach to teaching and learning which ignores such powerful personal experiences of teachers and learners?

If the Sri Lankan government means to integrate Tamils into the society, they should move faster. Destroying all reminders of the 30-year war such as cemeteries and statues of LTTE leaders may be convenient in the short run but the Tamils are resentful that they are being wiped of all historical landmarks. The events are too close to them yet to renounce their past, though they do not want to go back to being war-torn. And the psychological scars of war must be addressed faster and more specifically, with both short-term and long-term plans.

Sri Lanka is tidy and clean, and that to me was the main difference from India. I could walk around without having to watch my step, wary of stepping on rubbish and filth. Even the restaurants and rest rooms in the areas more remote from Colombo are clean.

The food in SL is heavenly, and I have been very lucky, especially in Jaffna. My insistence on no-onion-no-garlic prompted about four queries of whether I am a Brahma Kumari. I had to regretfully claim personal preference and whimsy rather than a mandate by religion. In Jaffna, I had two delicious home-cooked meals. Jaya and Prof. Bhavan provided idlis with the works, chatnis, molagai podi and madras sambar. Vani cooked up a storm with two sauces, vegetables, chatnis, rice, pittu, curd and a delicious home-made lemon pickle.

However, in one respect it reminded me Indonesia – Like Jakarta, Colombo appears to be the only major city in the country. Sophistication is confined to the capital with its choice of cuisines, shopping arenas and transport. All the other places are more like smaller towns in India; in fact a Tamil compared Jaffna to Trichy. The further you are removed from Colombo the less modernity is evident. And it doesn’t look like the Sri Lankan government plans to share elements of modernity with Jaffna, which may be one way of healing the wounds of war.

The people who made my visit possible (Dilini, Hemamala and Shyamani) and those I met by chance (Vimansha, Paranthaman, Prof. Bhavan, Killi, Daniel, Deepika among others) were responsible for my thorough enjoyment of SL. (No, this is not a vote of thanks, though ti is starting to sound like one.) The place was beautiful and the people ever so helpful. How else would I have been able to attend a doctoral defense back at UWG? I worked hard, played hard, and came back with a tan my grandmother would not have approved. 

And now to find my way back...