SERENDIP
The sad day of departure had dawned, and as I lay in
my very comfortable bed in Colombo's Galle Face Hotel, sipping early morning tea
and watching the radiant blue sky grow lighter as the sun rose higher, I
remembered the day of my arrival, a scant year ago, on what is surely one of the
world's most beautiful island: an island that had been
known in recent years as
Ceylon until, on May 22, 1972, it proclaimed itself the Republic of
Sri Lanka. But Lanka was also one of its earliest names, and it was so
referred to in ancient Brahmanic literature; the earliest adventurers
from the
West, the Greeks and the Romans, called it Taprobane, while to Mohammedan
traders it was known as Sarandib, which is thought to be a corruption
of the
Sanskrit Sinhaladvipa.
For speakers of English, of course, the
Mohammedan transliteration has become part of the language, thanks to Horace
Walpole's coming of the word "serendipity" from the title of the
Persian fairy tale, The Three Princess of Serendip.
As one who spent a most agreeable year on the island of Serendip, I can
testify that the Oxford dictionary definition of the word as "the faculty
of making happy and unexpected discoveries by accident" is a highly
satisfactory one. Indeed, as I lay
luxuriously in bed that last morning and drank the good tea of Sri Lanka, I
myself felt like one of the three exalted princes, for to me, as to most
Japanese, tea drinking in bed seems rather a sybaritic habit.
I acquired it, however, I must confess, with the greatest of ease.
In the sixteenth century the conquering Portuguese
decided, for reasons of their own, to call Lanka Ceilao; then came the Dutch and
finally the British, by which time Ceilao had become Ceylon.
Now Ceylon has once more become Sri Lanka, the resplendent Land, but
despite its many changes in name and dominion, it remains the same enchanted
island that inspired Walpole to coin his happy word.
Resplendent indeed it is, and by no means lacking in serendipity.
Partir c'est mourir un peu: so goes the familiarly mournful French adage,
which had never seemed to me quite so ominous as it did that morning of my
departure. Leaving Ceylon would, I
knew, be for me more than just dying a little.
As most travelers do, I suppose, I usually feel a
sense of apprehension mingled with anticipation when I come to a strange country
for the first time. I remembered,
however, with a kind of surprise, that as I left the plane that had brought me
to Bandaranaike International Airport a year ago and as I stepped into the
golden all-enveloping sunlight, hope was undiluted by fear, and nothing that
happened during the ensuing months destroyed my euphoric state of mind.
The inevitable petty exasperations of travel would vanish like early
morning mist in the sunlight playing over the old cities, over the rich greens
of plantations and parks and over the white sand and clear blue water of the
beaches.
Colombo, the capital, a bustling port with a
population of over half a million, is a soothing blend of old and new, of broad
avenues, modern cars and red double-decker buses, of tall buildings and
comfortable hotels that serve as a background for the immemorial ways of the
island folk, who come from the country in their oxcarts to hawk their wares
beside the show windows of flashy modern department stores.
The way in from the airport seemed, as I recall,
disconcertingly narrow at first, with coconut palms on either side that
threatened to usurp the road’s function of helping people get to the capital.
They came in diverse fashions, in taxis and buses and oxcarts, while many
chose shank’s mare, walking casually by the side of the narrow road, in the
shade of the palm trees, the men wearing sarongs, the women in saris.
It was on the airport road that I first saw a scene that was to become
very familiar to me during my year in Sri Lanka: a flock of crows scavenging in
the midst of the traffic. The
vehicles moved straight on, paying no heed to the birds, which hopped casually
out of harm’s way and then returned to their task.
The crows are as common, and as tame, in Sri Lanka as they are in India
and serve, in that tropical climate, a similarly useful function.
As we drew nearer the city, the oxcarts grew fewer
and the cars more numerous. The
main north-south artery of the city, the Galle Face Road, parallels the coast,
and here, I noted with relief, just a few steps from my hotel, stood the head
office of the government tourist board. I
anticipated that I would be a frequent caller there and hoped I would not make
too great a nuisance of myself.
The Galle Face, a three-story hotel, is one of the
largest in Colombo and was evidently put up during the time of the raj, for it
has the tremendously high ceilings one associates with tropical British
colonialism in pre-air-conditioning days. I
was surprised to note that although the Galle Face has the trim look of
prosperity one expects of a first-class hotel, its bellboys were all going about
barefoot. At the same time,
however, they did not appear to me to be under the apprehension that the
hotel’s well-shod clients were to be treated with servility.
This was an observation that I found vastly reassuring as an omen of my
future relations with the people of Sri Lanka.
Obviously, my first call, which I made the following
day, was upon Mr. Rex Jansen at the Ceylon Tourist Board, who could not have
been more helpful. Like many
developing nations, Sri Lanka looks to tourism as a prime source of imported
currency, and the tourist board is doing everything it can to encourage foreign
visitors and to make their stay pleasant and rewarding.
It arranges many sorts of tours, not only in Colombo itself but all
across the country, some of the tours lasting as long as six or seven days.
There are also special air-conditioned luxury trains to sites of
touristic interest and even a number of tours
by helicopter. It was thanks to Mr. Jansen that I later accompanied him on a
helicopter flight over Colombo to take aerial photographs of the city.
Meanwhile, that first morning, I had a long and
profitable chat with him about my plans for the coming months and
left him at
last, loaded down with handsomely printed pamphlets and brochures.
He recommended that I study them
first, then come back
for another visit, at which time we would plan detailed itineraries.
That same evening I had a chat over drinks with Mr. Bandu de Silva,
formerly a first Secretary of the Sri Lanka Embassy in Tokyo.
What we drank was arrack (distilled coconut toddy) – a liquor
deceptively mild in flavor but just as potent as vodka.
By the time the evening came to an end, I was feeling little or no pain, but I think I recall most of what Mr. De Silva told me, chiefly about the importance of Buddhism in Ceylonese history. His advice was that, before making any trips around the island, I study up its history a bit, paying particular attention to the influence of Buddhism upon Sinhalese culture. So, with this in mind, and with Mr. Jansen’s many booklets to study, and with Colombo itself to visit, I decided my stay in the capital would be a busy one – and it was.
It is impossible, of course, to relate the complex
history of Lanka in detail. When,
for example, the Portuguese Francisco de Almeida landed on the island in 1505,
there were a number of distinct kingdoms, one or more usually at odds with the
others, although the chief kingdoms were three: Kotte, Jaffna, and Kandy.
This lack of unity made conquest relatively easy for the Portuguese, who
in any case were far better armed than either the people of the island kingdoms
themselves or the Moorish traders by that time established in Colombo.
At first Portuguese demands were fairly modest: all they consisted of was
a yearly tribute of cinnamon.
But this was soon considered insufficient.
After a little more than a decade of strife - strife within and among the
ruling families, strife between the Portuguese and the Moors, the Sinhalese
themselves siding now with one, now with the other - the Portuguese viceroy at
Goa, in India, felt himself obliged to build, with the permission of the king of
Kotte, a citadel at Colombo. It was
the beginning of foreign domination over the Sinhalese kingdoms of Lanka, with
Colombo as the emerging capital.
Here, as elsewhere in the world, the Portuguese
desired to make not only money but also converts to Catholicism, and in their
attempts to root out Buddhism they went so far as to burn in a public act of
faith what they claimed was the island's most sacred relic of a
"pagan" religion, a tooth of the Buddha; but Sinhalese priests
maintain that the object burned by the Portuguese was false and that the true
relic remains at Kandy to this day.
The city of Colombo, thus, still carried many
traces of the three great powers that tried unsuccessfully to seize and hold the
country of which it is now the capital. The
suburb of Milagiriya, for example, takes its name from the Portuguese church of
Nossa Senhora dos Milagres; Hulftsdorp, the site of the courts of justice, is
named for a Dutch governor; while many of the city's squares and streets
memorialize later British governors.
Some say the name of the city is derived from
Kolamba, a Sinhala word for "port" (it also means a leafy mango tree).
As early as the beginning of the fourteenth century, a Chinese trader
speaks of Kao-lan-Pu, while later in the same century Ibn Batuta, the Moroccan
traveler, describes the city of Calenbou as "one of the largest and most
beautiful in the Island of Serendib."
The Portuguese called it Columbo, but shortly its name became what it
remains today: Colombo, a great port city of fourteen square miles with one of
the largest artificial harbors in the world.
And with, I found, no shortage of places of interest.
During the days that followed, I dutifully did
my sightseeing and my reading and I experimented with the many exciting dishes
that comprise the island's cuisine. For
utterly peaceful relaxation I would make excursions to the lovely nearby beach
of Mount Lavinia.
The heart of the city is called the Fort, for
here both the Portuguese and the Dutch maintained their citadels, and it is, as
the guidebook says, Sri Lanka's "administrative and commercial center -
perhaps the busiest square mile in the island." (I would say there is no perhaps about it.)
The names of principal streets reflect the long British occupation:
Queen, Prince, Church, and Chatham. Here
stand most government offices as well as agencies for airlines and shipping
lines, a few foreign missions, and even a Y.M.C.A.
My own hotel was just a little to the south, over looking both Galle Face
Green and the sea.
Another very busy section of Colombo is now
called the Pettah; in other times it was known to the Dutch as the Oude Stad,
the Old Town. It is a constant
bustle of activity, with old houses, churches, and temples lining its narrow
streets, among which there is a vast jumble of markets where the visitor can buy
anything from a fresh fish to a star sapphire or a lovely hand-woven sari.
Probably the city's most sacred temple is the
Raja Maha Vihare, the basic structure of which is some two thousand years old
and which, according to legend, was actually visited by the Buddha.
It has a famous perahera (or procession) in January.
Another extremely old temple is Dipaduttaramaya, and one of the world's
great centers of Buddhist learning is the temple of Vajiraramaya.
Like the Portuguese, the Dutch were obsessed by Sri
Lanka's cinnamon, and it was they who gave the name Cinnamon Gardens to the park
where Colombo's museum now stands. The
gift of a Moslem philanthropist, it is an incredibly rich repository of island
life from earliest times onward. Aside
from its departments of anthropology and natural history, it has an extensive
library of ancient manuscripts and a remarkable collection of antiquities.
Perhaps its most famous possession is the throne, along with the royal
accoutrements, of the kings of Kandy.
One of the favourite sights of Colombo is its
zoo at Dehiwela, about seven miles from the Fort.
In addition to all the usual attractions of a large zoological garden,
this one boasts an elephants circus every afternoon at 5:15, when trained
animals go through an elaborate repertoire, including dancing and playing mouth
organs. The circus is, perhaps,
less attractive to lovers of animals than to the hordes of children (and the
tourists, too) who delight in it.
Meanwhile, I was learning to know and
appreciate the island cuisine. Of
course there is all manner of Western food to be had, but this was of no
interest. I had not come all that
way to eat a style of cooking I could get in any number of restaurants in Japan.
My first taste of a real Ceylonese rice and curry made me realize how
insipid that dish we Japanese call "rice curry" is; it also very
nearly blew my head off. But I soon got used to it, and then I came to realize that a
hot, spicy food - as hot and spicy as the mouth and stomach can stand - is ideal
for the extreme heat of the tropics. The
people of Sri Lanka are so far advanced in this direction that to their already
highly seasoned curries they add a special powder containing ground red peppers
of a quite incredible bite. That, I
must confess, I found to be a rather slowly, and carefully, acquired taste.
Sri Lanka offers many other dishes, of course,
in addition to the ordinary meat, fish, or vegetable curries, for the cuisine is
rich and varied as well as hot and spicy, while the variety of tropical fruits
available is hard to believe. There
are, for example, more than a dozen different kinds of bananas as well as
pineapples, papayas, mangoes, avocados, custard apples, and a host of others,
including the exotic wood apple and the durian. A taste for the latter two needs also, I discovered, to be
rather carefully acquired.
My homework done, I was growing impatient now
to see some of the rest of the island, so I paid another call on Mr. Jansen, at
the tourist board, where we worked out a motor route that would take me to Kandy
in time to see the festival of Wesak there and afterwards on toward the eastern
coast. It was then that Mr. Jansen
invited me to join him on an aerial photographic tour of the city.
He was going, he said, the next day, and I was
delighted to accept, for I had never been in a helicopter.
I found it a unique experience, since unlike the giant aircraft of today
a helicopter can skim very low, and follows a course of the pilot's choosing.
Now I could clearly see from quite a different vantage point all the
familiar landmarks of Colombo I had come to know from the ground: the Fort and
the port, the temples and the gardens, and Galle Face Green with my own hotel.
Seeing my enthusiasm, Mr. Jansen reminded me there were any number of
trips I could make by helicopter all over the island, but I decided I preferred
a means of transportation that would enable me to come into contact with the
people of SriLanka (and its animals as well) rather than separate me from them.
I decided also that, wherever possible, as I
traveled about the island, I would stop in modest rest houses instead of plush
hotels, for not only are both food and lodging cheaper but also it is easy for a
stranger, sitting on an informal rest house veranda drinking his tea, to make
friends, far easier than in the large impersonal hotels frequented mainly by
tourists. I could hardly deny, to
be sure, that I was a tourist in Sri Lanka, but I wanted to behave as little as
possible like one.