by Helen Brown
One thing I’d deliberately forgotten to pack was Lydia’s old singlet top. In a glamorous department store I found one with a Calvin Klein logo twinkling in fake diamonds in the lower left-hand corner. A risky choice. I hoped there was enough of the old Lydia left to appreciate the glitz.
In the same shopping centre I visited the loos. A sign said ‘Queue Here’. The five cubicles were silently occupied. When I finally gained access I found out why. The toilet was a glistening white throne with foot holes either side of the bowl. There was no seat. It seemed to require removal of all the clothing on my lower body. Prickly with defeat, I bolted for the hotel. If I couldn’t handle a pristine loo in Malaysia, how on earth was I going to manage the plumbing of a Sri Lankan monastery?
‘Is the music the right temperature for you?’ asked the pretty masseuse at the hotel when I lay down for a much-needed rub.
A few minutes later I was wishing I’d avoided the ‘Traditional’ massage, thinking the only reason some massages are called ‘Traditional’ is that they’re too violent to become mainstream. My masseuse tugged my toes till they clicked out of their sockets. In one split second of agony my shoe size went up another notch.
The stop-over had been recommended to help ease jet lag, but staggering on to the midnight flight to Colombo I was still disoriented. In line behind young men wearing beach hats and the inevitable tattoos, I noticed their legs were hairy but their beards were barely perceptible. They smelt of bubble gum and brandished plastic bags of duty-free vodka. The world was their kindergarten. As they exchanged indecipherable banter, I thought the cabin announcement mentioned Columbia. Such was my dazed state that I momentarily imagined I’d made a mistake and was heading for the cocaine capital of South America to star in Banged Up Abroad.
I fell asleep watching the racehorse movie Secretariat and woke to the sound of the plane’s engines changing. The streetlights of Colombo were strung like pearls along the coast below. The country that had entranced my daughter and been witness to so much pain over the years was surprisingly peaceful.
The captain apologised for the bumpy landing. He said it was due to flood damage on the runway. I’d been too busy examining the other planes at the airport to notice. They were decorated like birds in an ancient painting. An illuminated Buddha statue glowed through the velvet darkness. We seemed to have landed in an exotic fable.
Adjusting my watch to three in the morning, I waited for the cabin crew to open the doors. With the monastery four hours’ drive away along difficult roads, Lydia and I had agreed I’d wait in an airport hotel until she reached Colombo around lunchtime. Someone from the hotel was supposed to collect me from the arrivals hall. I hoped he’d be out there already holding a sign with my name on it.
Stepping into the terminal, I steeled myself for the throngs of hustlers I’d encountered in places like Bali and Mumbai, but the atmosphere was surprisingly calm. I made my way past quiet, watchful faces – family groups, women wearing jewel-coloured saris – and another Buddha statue. A group of men held up a forest of placards emblazoned with names. My heart sank. Mine wasn’t among them.
A grandfatherly chap with distinguished white whiskers came to my rescue, and guided me to a car outside. The night was hot, but not unbearably soggy. Preparing to experience the perfumes of Sri Lanka, I opened my lungs. All I got was a waft of jet fuel.
The floods hadn’t been too bad around Colombo, the old man said, but in the East and North of the country it had been like another tsunami.
‘You’ve had terrible floods in Queensland too, have you not?’ he asked gently.
I was momentarily speechless. Certainly, the Queensland floods had been devastating, but nothing on the scale Sri Lanka had been suffering. It was incredibly gracious of him to express concern for people in a more fortunate country than his own.
‘Yes, but we didn’t have a million people lose their homes the way you have,’ I replied.
I was surprised the old gentleman was so well informed about our part of the world. Australia’s media had all but ignored the Sri Lankan emergency.
He hailed a car and a young driver sprang out to take my luggage.
‘The main road has been closed for renovations,’ the older man explained. ‘You will be taking the back roads. It’ll take about ten minutes to get to the hotel. Don’t be alarmed.’
Inside my head I store a list of famous potential last words: ‘Red light? What red light?’ ‘It’s not loaded.’ ‘These snakes aren’t poisonous.’ Climbing into the unmarked car I added a new one to the list: ‘Don’t be alarmed.’
In the darkness it was impossible to have any idea where we were going. We swung past a military checkpoint, another Buddha statue (Sri Lankans put the Italians to shame in the religious shrine department) and a wide stretch of road that appeared to be barricaded off. Presumably that was the main road the old man had mentioned.
We veered into a narrow street lined with advertisements for cough lollies. Dogs and people on bikes were just visible in the shadows. I wondered what they were doing up at this hour.
The car turned sharply and plunged into a narrow, winding road with no streetlights. We approached a bridge – not much wider than a footpath and half broken. The driver slowed down, as if he was evaluating the risk – then suddenly put his foot down and charged forward. Once we’d rattled across the bridge, the driver glanced over his shoulder and smiled victoriously. Craning my neck, I peered down at a silver ribbon of water shimmering far below. We appeared to have cleared a ravine.
In pitch darkness at 3.30 in the morning in the back streets of Colombo with a complete stranger driving an unmarked car, my thoughts turned to abduction. If I was being kidnapped, and my life was about to come to an end, I decided there wasn’t much to complain about. I’d had a good life – rich and wonderful in many ways. There’d been time to love, give birth to four fantastic children and experience joy, sorrow – and cats – in all their complexities.
On the other hand, my body organs would be unsaleable and there wasn’t a thing worth stealing on me, apart from several tons of mosquito repellent. I was probably safe.
A splash of lights ahead glowed yellow and welcoming. We were back in civilisation. Minutes later, we pulled up outside the hotel gates. In case I was about to mistake it for Nirvana, a guard ran a metal detector under and over the car. After he’d waved us through, we hiccoughed over speed humps and pulled up outside the hotel foyer.
Two gentlemen greeted me warmly. Omar Sharif’s twin brother fetched my bags, while his colleague informed me I’d been upgraded to a suite. He escorted me to a series of rooms, each the size of a small tennis court. The bed would’ve accommodated Hugh Hefner and at least six Playboy Bunnies. The curtains, opera-house sumptuous, spilled theatrically over the floor. The Raj lives on.
After a few hours of fitful sleep, I trekked the distance between my bed and the windows to drag the curtains open. The Indian Ocean fixed me with a silvery gaze, shimmering with heat. I’d always imagined such a legendary sea would be blue. Palm trees glistened along a flat, seemingly endless shoreline. In the distance, a tiny fishing boat nudged across the water. Below my window, two men in white uniforms cleaned a garishly turquoise swimming pool. The hotel and the land beyond its imposing walls were two different countries.
A text buzzed in from Lydia. They weren’t far away.
Hoping to make a good impression, I dressed in my whitest clothes and waited anxiously in the hotel foyer. While a procession of taxis and limousines glided past the front doors, I prepared myself mentally for the reunion with Lydia.
I hoped she wouldn’t be too thin – though I knew better than to say anything. And if she turned up wearing nun’s robes, I was not going to overreact. This was her world, or one she’d chosen to be part of. Mother’s authority, whatever that was at this stage in our lives, had to be put on hold. I was a mere visitor.
A ripple of excitement ran through the foyer as a battered van pulled up outside the hotel’
s doors. Dented and dusty, the vehicle was hardly up to hotel standards so when security guards rushed forward I thought they would move it along as fast as possible.
To my surprise, instead of reaching for their guns, the guards started beaming like babies, clasping their hands in prayer and bending down deeply before the van.
A doorman reached for the passenger door handle as if it was part of a royal carriage. I glimpsed a flash of maroon behind the van’s dusty windows. Then, elegantly and with perfect timing, out stepped Lydia’s teacher, grinning like a rock star.
The concierge left his post and dropped to his knees in front of the monk, pressing the hem of the maroon robe to his lips. I’d heard the expression ‘kiss the hem of his garment’ but never seen it in action before.
The monk accepted the adulation with radiant dignity. Magnificent in his robes, he belonged in this setting. In Australia, he was held in awe by a few but mostly ignored or regarded as an oddity; a representative of an alternative religion. Here in Sri Lanka, the monk was part of a belief system that was the lifeblood of much of the population. It was suddenly easier to understand why, when he’d been staying at our place, he’d expected the sort of deference that I hadn’t been able to provide. Bestowing benevolence on all who bowed before him in the hotel lobby, he was treated as a demi-god.
For all the mixed feelings I’d had in the past, I was pleased to see him – and honoured he’d made the arduous journey down from the monastery to meet me. As a non-Buddhist and an old friend, I lowered my head respectfully, and hoped it was enough.
Close on the teacher’s heels followed the two nuns, who graciously accepted the (slightly shallower) bows they were offered. At last, a familiar figure unfolded herself from the van’s back seat and ran toward me. Smiling broadly, Lydia enveloped me in her arms and kissed my cheeks. I couldn’t remember receiving such a warm embrace from her since she was in primary school. All the resentments and brinkmanship of recent years seemed to dissolve. Something in her feelings toward me had shifted.
Hugging her, I noticed she was still dressed in white – a student, not a nun. And to my astonishment, she’d actually let her hair grow! Still, it was too early to make assumptions. Perhaps she was saving her initiation for my visit.
‘If there is a pearl in all the world, Lydia is our jewel,’ said her teacher, beaming at me. I wasn’t sure whether to interpret the remark as flattery. Either way, there was ownership in it.
The van and its passengers needed rest and refreshment before embarking on the long journey back to the monastery. Fortunately, they’d arrived just before noon so Lydia’s teacher and the nuns were still able to eat. Hotel staff respectfully arranged tables so the monk and his driver could sit together at one table while Lydia and the nuns sat with me at another. When Lydia chatted to the waiter in Sinhalese his eyes bulged with surprise, and his smile became incandescent.
‘Don’t be too impressed,’ she said as he walked away toward the kitchen. ‘It’s just country dialect.’
‘You mean hillbilly talk – like “them thar grits”?’ I asked.
Lydia led me to the buffet where she pointed out some local delicacies, which she assured me were delicious. It was too early in the trip to take gastronomic risks and become a healthcare liability, so I quietly avoided them in favour of pasta. Over lunch I asked Lydia if any other Westerners were staying at the monastery. She said no, it would just be us.
Soon after, with much bowing and hem-kissing from hotel staff, the monk and his entourage climbed back into the van. He slid into the front seat next to the driver, with the nuns sitting down behind him. Lydia I took the back seat. No seat belts. We’d have to rely on the Buddha perched on top of the rear-view mirror, along with the protection beads and (Christian?) cross dangling below it. Sweating already, I glanced hopefully at the air-conditioning unit sighing lukewarm air above our heads. Whatever lay ahead was going to be an exercise in trust.
The engine coughed to life with an explosive backfire. There was enough rural blood left in my veins to diagnose the scraping noise as clutch trouble. Staff waved a royal farewell as we roared and spluttered out the hotel gates. We rumbled over potholes past stands selling coconuts, bananas, brightly coloured blow-up toys, and (I was getting used to them now) the omnipresent Buddha statues.
I asked Lydia about the rows of brand new aeroplane seats that lined the roadsides. She said they were everywhere. Apparently, there was a tax exemption for vans imported with no windows or seats. Enterprising locals had got around the loophole by importing these vans like ours, drilling out holes for windows and putting in the seats. She pointed out the impromptu finishing in our vehicle.
Some villagers bowed when they saw the saintly beings in our van. Others kept going about their business – shopping, gossiping or carrying loads on their heads. We passed a handsome young man with no legs in a wheelchair, soldiers with machine guns slung like afterthoughts over their shoulders, boys playing cricket, girls with bright umbrellas strolling beside a railway line, a white heron in a river. A man with a box on his head smiled through our window and offered us evening shoes studded with jewels.
Sri Lankan roads aren’t for the faint-hearted. They’re mostly two lanes with an invisible third lane down the middle, which is disputed territory. Traffic from either direction claims the middle of the road with as much speed and aggression as his vehicle and the condition of the road allows. Drivers charge forward blasting their horns, daring anyone to challenge them. Even a bull elephant on the back of a truck doesn’t get right of way. It’s a combination of bluff and split-second negotiation – and a miracle head-on collisions don’t happen every two minutes.
In the back of the van without a seat belt, I was probably in more physical danger than I’d ever been. There was no point worrying. A monk and two nuns on board put the odds in our favour.
Halfway up a hill, we lurched to a halt outside a bank so I could withdraw money for the van hire. When the driver tried to start the vehicle up again it refused to budge. Helpful bank guards gave us a push start up the hill – heavy work, and beyond the call of duty. The engine heaved reluctantly to life.Triumphant and sweating, the guards waved us off.
Villages gave way to rice paddies, pineapple fields and stands of banana trees. Landscape unfurled in shades of green ranging from gloomy to fluorescent. As the road became steep, winding its way toward Kandy, the senior nun pulled her hood up over her head and slept like a caterpillar. The other nun’s smooth head gleamed in the steam-bath atmosphere of the van. The air-conditioning had died. Opening the windows would’ve been futile. Inside and out were equally hot and dusty.
We passed trees with leaves the size of dinner plates, a truck graveyard and a roadside box with Buddha radiating a pulsating neon light aura. Despite the intensity of the heat, I was taken by the colourful spontaneity of the place. Roadside advertising posters were refreshingly free of the semi-pornographic images we’ve become inured to in the West. Women were portrayed as wholesome and modestly dressed. Anorexic models didn’t get a look in.
The clutch jerked violently as the road became even steeper and more perilous. Toiling up a hill through a village selling nothing but pottery, I was reminded of the first time I visited Ubud in Bali twenty-five years earlier. People always say Bali was better twenty-five years ago. If they want to find out what it was like before tourism took over, they should visit Sri Lanka.
‘Sri Lankans don’t think of themselves as poor,’ said Lydia. ‘They just think Westerners are ridiculously rich. When you look at any distribution-of-wealth chart, that’s a fact.’
My spiritual daughter has a way of presenting things with surgical clarity sometimes. She was right. Compared to Sri Lankans we’re awash with wealth, yet we mentally impoverish ourselves focusing on what we don’t have.
The people of this flood-ridden, war-torn, tsunami-drenched island seemed to have a humanity the West had somehow lost in its consumerist thrall. I found myself wanting to share Sri Lanka wit
h the world and protect it at the same time. If tourists swarmed there, the country would gain monetarily but potentially lose a lot.
The monk instructed our driver to pull over at a sweet shop for tea. After the internal massage my organs were getting from the road, it was a relief to stop and get my legs moving. Curious faces watched the monk, nuns, Lydia and I make our way to the sweet store.
My eyes took a while to adjust to the store’s darkened interior. The decor was stark, but the ambience was friendly. I felt immediately at home. It was a Sri Lankan version of Spoonful. We chose homemade sweets from a counter near the door and sat down on a bench. Overstaffed by Western standards, the service was impeccable. There was one person to bring our sweets, another to pour the tea, and at least three assistants to watch.
A photo of a stern, handsome man with a handlebar moustache glowered down from behind the counter. An older, even more distinguished version of him stood at the door. I tried a smile. His eyes flashed handsomely back.
We gorged ourselves on strong tea and delicious sweets. Mouth-wateringly nutty, the sesame sweets deserved to be world famous. Jaggery sweets made from unrefined whole cane sugar came a close second. As for the coconut ice, I was an expert connoisseur because Dad used to make it when we were kids. The sweet shop’s version, layered in lurid pink and white sprinkled with fruit, was the best I’d ever tasted.
Back in the van, our driver made a brave assault on the last few hills to Kandy. Though he was willing, the clutch was not. It screeched, clunked and finally expired on a steep bend. Hot and tired, despite all the sugar we’d consumed, we piled on to the side of the road while the van driver and curious onlookers stared into the bowels of the engine.
An amiable cafe owner invited us to sit at tables with red and white checked cloths. We ordered cans of Coke and waited. The monk produced his mobile phone and called a mechanic. Flies circled above our heads and mosquitoes buzzed around our ankles. I reached in my handbag for the high-grade insect killer only to find its pump was missing. I’d brought it all the way from Australia and it didn’t work!
