The Water Is Warm

by Jennifer Stawska

  Raja slept like a log and did not wake up again until it was dark.

  There is no miracle cure when a person plummets like that and sometimes they have to hit rock bottom before they can begin to recover; that is certainly what happened with Raja. The Prozac calmed him down for a bit and moderated his obsessive work drive but it just put things on hold for a while. He also had a terrible cold which took weeks to go – he had not been eating properly and so he couldn’t have had much of an immune system anyway. He needed constant companionship and I spent many, many hours with him, just listening to the tales of his dreadful experiences and repeatedly reminding him of what a great man he is. I also bought him a pay as you go mobile phone so that, when I was in Galle, I could text him and ring him. When I was in Unawatuna I spent all my time with him and with Sunil. Without my letters to Josh, the then fantasy world, I would never have coped.

  But none of that was enough to avoid the next near disaster with Raja– rather like the tsunami, the second wave was the biggest one. It came about three weeks later.

  ‘Simon, Uncle Raja is behaving very strangely.’ Sunil had rung me at the camp, using Raja’s mobile.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘He’s just sitting in a chair and won’t talk properly.’

  ‘Give him the phone, Sunil.’

  Sunil gave him the phone but Raja’s speech was slurred and he did not make any sense at all when I tried to get him to explain what was wrong.

  Sunil came back on to the phone.

  ‘Sunil this is very important. You know Uncle Raja’s tablets?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Can you count how many there are left in the bottle please?’

  Sunil came back a few minutes later. ‘It’s empty.’

  ‘Sunil, try to keep him awake, if you can. I am coming back now.’

  We all had bicycles to get around the camp and I went straight back to Unawatuna on one. When I arrived Raja was asleep. Overdosing on Prozac alone is rarely fatal but, when mixed with large quantities of alcohol or things like paracetamol it is much more dangerous. I could smell that Raja had drunk loads and there was a half-empty bottle of arak on the floor next to where he was sitting.

  ‘I couldn’t keep him awake,’ Sunil said.

  ‘It’s not your fault. We need to get him to a doctor though. We’d better take him to the camp. See if you can find a taxi or a tuk-tuk. I will carry him to the road.’

  Sunil ran off and I picked Raja up – he weighed next to nothing – and carried him to a tuk-tuk that Sunil had found which then took us all, squashed into the back, to the camp. I rang Ben on the way over and, by the time that we arrived, he had found a doctor. The doctor knew precisely what to do.

  ‘This happens a lot,’ he said. ‘Often they use pesticides.’ Because of the high suicide rate here (it used to be one of the world’s highest), pesticides have been regulated since 1995, but they are still readily accessible and cheap. The doctor gave him charcoal, said he needed to be hydrated and put a drip in him. He also said that he needed to be kept under observation. So we fixed him up with a bed in one of the tents at the camp and took turns to watch him. Fortunately, it seems that he had not taken enough tablets or drink to do permanent damage and also had not taken anything else.

  Sunil was very deeply affected by all this. I remember him asking me ‘if Uncle dies, what happens to me?’

  ‘I’ll look after you.’ That’s what I said and that’s what I did. For the next few days Sunil and I just sat with Raja at the camp, until his strength came back, with Sunil fetching water and food, carrying messages and fussing over his uncle. For the rest of the time I read stories to Sunil; Ben also took him off to do things around the camp.

  While Raja was sleeping I also wrote to Josh about what had been going on and I know now how my accounts of what was happening here affected him.

  ‘I just felt powerless,’ he said to me after he arrived here, ‘and envious. You were doing things that mattered here and I was just wasting my time in Sweden.’

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR

  When we arrived at Unawatuna together in April 2005, after Josh came back from Sweden, I can well understand how difficult it was for Raja to accept him. It was only a month after the overdose and the days that Raja and I had spent together had brought us very close.

  ‘You saved my life,’ he kept telling me.

  ‘No I didn’t. Anyway, you’re worth it.’ Once I even got a glimmer of a smile from him when, jokingly, I added the word ‘just’ at the end of that sentence.

  Josh understood the setup and we had discussed it together when we were in Colombo. That all took time to settle after we got here, and a lot of sensitive handling but, bit by bit, Raja came to accept Josh and, by Sunil’s birthday in September of that year, Raja and Josh were becoming close friends too. Josh handled Raja brilliantly and allowed him to find friendship with him rather than forcing the issue; he also would stand back at times to allow Raja to spend time with me.

  With Josh’s help we got Raja off the Prozac after just short of three months and after a few more months managed to keep him off the booze, although there were still some relapses. Raja learnt to talk to Josh in the way that he spoke to me, to the point that he would often start a conversation with me by saying ‘haven’t I told you this before?’ and I would say ‘no, Raja, it must have been Josh.’

  However, it was through cooking and trade that Raja really found his feet again. There was a succession of festive days in January 2006 - I have checked on the internet and they were the Hadji festival day on 11 January, the full moon Poya day on 13 January, the Tamil Thai Pongal day on January 14th, the National day on 4 February and another full moon Poya day on 12 February. That is what I mean about this country having a lot of festival days. With Christmas just before that run of holidays the obvious date to re-open the hotel was at the start of December 2005, almost a year after the tsunami. So, we set 1 December as the target date and it was one hell of a target to meet. What’s more, we were not alone in setting that date.

  Both Josh and I knew how important it was to Raja that he should be in charge and so we always deferred to him on any matter of planning and even referred to him as General Raja, which he pretended not to like. But it was that role that helped keep him off the drink. How could he run the show and direct others if he was drunk?

  However, it was when the building work was mostly finished, at the start of October 2005, that Raja began to really flourish as he saw his empire once more surrounding him. We had two months then to decorate, furnish and tidy the site and also had to install a kitchen. By then there were the shells of ten rooms for guests – three in the main building which housed the reception and restaurant and seven in simple cabanas next to it. There was also the drinking or bar area at the front with its light blue trellis surround once more restored.

  With so many businesses sprouting up, it was obvious that Raja needed to find a distinguishing feature of his hotel and we spent ages talking about that. What would make people want to come to his hotel rather than others and what sort of clientele did he want to attract?

  The first thing that we discussed was colour. Many of the other hotels that were being built used bright colours - strong blues and yellows; some were just painted white which was dazzling in the sunlight but gave the impression of a quick whitewash. So, after endless chat we settled for a soft off-white colour which had a hint of primrose yellow. With walls of that colour, both inside and out, and ceilings of white, the result was just what we wanted, clean, bright but soft and relaxing.

  Furniture came next. This was where Josh and I made an excuse that we wanted to take Sunil to Colombo on an outing. However, we actually spent a couple of days looking at furniture there and, after loads of hunting and bargaining, ordered a complete bedroom suite made out of hardwood. We knew that most other hotels would use bamboo or softer wood furniture because it was cheaper; we wanted to improve on that and did so. We also bought a sample of linen
, some lighting and some curtains. Sunil loved what we were doing, including the conspiratorial surprise element. On the day that the furniture arrived from Colombo we eventually managed to persuade Raja that he was needed at the camp in Galle to plan a Christmas meal for the children there.

  ‘Uncle,’ Sunil said to Raja when he returned, ‘come and see this.’ We had just managed to deck out the cabana by then. It was as we opened the door to that room that Raja changed. Though I say it myself, the room looked wonderful. Softly lit, gently coloured and richly but simply furnished.

  Raja did not say anything for a while and then just said ‘It is very beautiful.’

  He then sat down on the bed, looking around before standing up and asking, guardedly, ‘Is it very costly?’

  ‘No, and we are paying for it – call it advance rent,’ I replied.

  Josh and I had planned all this for weeks. Raja paused as he was plainly lost for words. Then he shook us both by the hand and I realised that, for the first time, I was witnessing Raja smiling freely.

  ‘You do realise, don’t you, that this is just the undercoat and we are going to paint the walls purple tomorrow,’ Josh said, breaking the ice of a rather heavy moment.

  ‘You do realise, don’t you, that my human curry is the one thing that tastes nicer that my lobster curry,’ Raja replied. And that was the first time that I had ever heard him tell a joke.

  So, at some expense and with endless haggling and battles with suppliers we decked out the three rooms in the main hotel concourse and three of the cabanas, all funded by the power of our credit cards. We finished off the other cabanas after the hotel opened.

  ‘How can I ever repay you?’ Raja asked us. The thing with Raja was to keep the conversation light.

  ‘Well, we have discussed that,’ I replied. ‘Josh wanted to you to provide a sample of yourself for one of your human curries, so as to celebrate. But I said we should just get in some champagne.’

  ‘I could always do a lobster curry. That might taste nicer.’

  ‘Well you’ll need to call it something better than that. How about Homard de Raja, au lait de coco et aux épices de l’île. Raja’s lobster in coconut milk and island spices.’

  ‘Actually,’ Raja said, plainly enjoying the moment, ‘I prefer lobster curry.’

  ‘Cela me brise le coeur,’ I feigned in a very French moment.

  ‘It may do,’ said Josh, covering Sunil’s ears with his hands. ‘But nobody else knows what the fuck you are talking about and it is still lobster curry.’ So I lost that one.

  ‘Well Sunil must not have any champagne,’ Raja put on his avuncular act.

  ‘You’ll have to stick to gin,’ I told Sunil.

  We had already bought the champagne and we popped the corks on the evening when we finally installed the furniture, washing down Raja’s best lobster curry with champagne for the adults and Elephant House lemonade, which we called gin and tonic, for Sunil.

  Raja is a brilliant cook or, dare I say it, chef. From the early times that I spent with him, before Josh came back, I had wanted to learn some of his cooking skills but there had not been the time and there is a limit on what you can do on an open fire. But once the kitchen was installed there was a chance for me to do so.

  Josh knew that I wanted to learn from Raja and saw the opportunity that this provided for us all to work together; I remember him putting his arm on Raja’s shoulder one day and saying, ‘Raja, my friend, would you do me a favour please? You know how bad the English are at cooking. I wonder whether you would teach this Englishman that cooking is not just about opening baked bean tins.’

  ‘And, while you are about it, you might want to teach this Swedish guy here, that cooking isn’t just about pickled herrings, smörgåsbord and boiled potatoes.’

  ‘Gentlemen, gentlemen,’ Raja said. ‘If you behave, I will teach you.’ So Raja ceased to be General Raja and became ‘Monsieur le chef’. Josh and I took it in turns to be his sous-chef. I still think that Josh was a lousy cook. We also carved out a sign on a piece of wood for Raja to keep in the kitchen: ‘Badly behaved children will be made into curry.’

  The next thing that Raja needed was a name for the hotel. That was easy. Hotel Tamana. And by the stone placard for the hotel name we placed another, smaller one that read, ‘In memory of Saira, Tamana, Pakeer and Abetha. 26.12.2004.’

  CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE

  Getting the hotel business started was never going to be easy. People were very reluctant to travel around the anniversary of the tsunami because it brought back such memories, and anniversaries always bear suspicions and fears of repetition. So Josh, Raja and I devised a plan. We advertised a free buffet for Saturday 3 December and invited a number of people from the camp and from the village to attend. We did so on the basis that gatherings attract other people. We also invited a few people to stay overnight at the hotel at a heavily discounted rate.

  On the day itself, we all got dressed up for the opening and I thought that I would play some Albinoni and Vivaldi to our guests over the sound system to make a change from the usual Sri Lankan headache music that blared incessantly elsewhere. We overdid the invitations and far too many people came, all anxious for the free food and drink that were on offer although only two families stayed the night. Raja had been buzzing for a week before the opening, desperately anxious about whether people would come, whether things would be ready and whether everything would go OK. He prepared loads of food and all of us worked flat out to ensure that the hotel was in a fit state for the opening.

  People started arriving at about 4 o’clock and gradually their numbers increased as we plied them with food and drink. By 6 o’clock the place was full and we had a short opening ceremony in which we cut a cake, opened up some of the unoccupied guest rooms for people to see, cutting a ribbon at the entrance to one. I even made a short speech of welcome to the guests and of congratulations to Raja. Raja was in his element and, despite the stress of the evening, beamed with pride.

  The whole thing was a tremendous success and, later on, turned into a party. How? Like this. Josh had drunk a fair amount of wine while serving the guests. I could always tell when he had been drinking because his eyes sparkled and he became effervescent and jocular to the point of being loud.

  At about 11 o’clock, when some of the families from Galle had left, he came over to me, put his arm around my shoulder and said very quietly ‘You know this music? How fucking camp.’

  Half cut as I was also I replied, ‘Well it must seem like that to a Viking. It’s called baroque.’

  ‘Well, it won’t be called that for long.’

  Josh made his way over to the iPod which we were using as the source of the music and, having called Albinoni camp, what did he put on? Boogie music - the sort that would make even Priscilla throw up or reach for the hookah – and he called Albinoni camp? He loathed that sort of 1970’s music as much as I do. He was just pissing about.

  Then some Aussies, of course, started dancing on the beach next to the drinking area and Josh joined in. Before I knew it, many of the other guests were also dancing. Sri Lankans are natural dancers and tend to use their hands very expressively while gyrating their bodies around to the music in a way that looks almost artistic. ‘So,’ I thought, in between trying to look after the guests, ‘sod it, I’ll join in, too,’ although my dancing can hardly be called artistic.

  So, there I was dancing on a beach in Sri Lanka on a hot and clear night under the stars in the beautiful setting of Unawatuna, in the company of people I love and watching Josh, the man who means more to me than life itself, as he danced too. What picture can I paint of Josh that evening? Straw hat on his head, cigarette (or rather joint) in his mouth and beer bottle in his hand, brown Bermuda shorts and T-shirt (which at one point he took off having gone for a swim in it, accompanied by the Australians) dancing bare foot on the sand.

  For a while I also tried to continue playing host with guests along with Raja, but by then there was no need so I t
oo just danced the night away, trying to teach Sunil to jive at one point, rolling him over my shoulders and spinning him around the sand. And, just to show I knew what camp is really like I hammed up my best, or maybe I mean worst, boogie routine with Sunil trying to copy my somewhat less than balletic performance and Josh clapping almost in time with the dreadful music he had chosen to play.

  ‘You dance like a fairy,’ Josh said with a leery smile at one point, his arm around my shoulder as he slopped beer over me.

  ‘Sugar plum. Sugar plum,’ I replied then, although next morning I buried my head in my pillow and groaned ‘oh, fuck’ when I remembered what I had done.

  Later, drunk, I put on some slow music and Josh and I walked down the beach in the dark for a while, before sitting down shoulder to shoulder at the water’s edge. No one could see, we were away from the lights. Then we lay down in the shallow water and got soaked.

  By 1 a.m. the guests had mostly gone and it was time to kill the music, get Sunil to bed and tidy up. Raja had to be up early next morning for the guests that had stayed, so Josh, the wonderful Aussies and I tidied up until 4 a.m. before we all crashed out; we put the four Australians in the unoccupied room, I dread to think what arrangements they made to fit themselves in it.

  That was the night, then, that launched the hotel and, after that, the trade of the hotel built up. The festival season of January 2006 saw more people coming to Unawatuna and word got around as it does. Raja’s lobster curry, as I have to call it, became well known amongst the dining community. Josh had a friend in Malmo who ran a travel agency and so we put together a package for Swedish visitors; it included whale watching, walking in the interior, trips to Yala and the like. That worked, also.

  And then there were the Australians – wonderful guys. You only need to get a few people spreading the word and, these days, putting the right thing on the Internet, for a reputation to build up and the Aussies at the party started that off for us. After the party they became buddies who hung around with us for a week before moving off on their travels.