Drift Reality

It’s been nearly two years since my trip to Sri Lanka and when I see myself then, I notice something in my eyes that was so strong and energetic and I realize that whatever it was has been fading ever since I returned and started to become entrenched in everything that entails a normal life.

Some people are meant for home and some people are meant for the road. People have told me to settle down, grow roots, build on something, and plug in to what is around me. People have told me that it is time to let go of my notions and dreams of what it is to wander the Earth. People have told me that I should start thinking about my future. Maybe I’ve listened to people a little too much.

I think what I should tell people is that when you are traveling, you are plugging into something. You’re plugging into the notion that the world is infinitely larger than you, but at the same time, it is for you. It doesn’t want to overwhelm you, it just wants to teach you and if you are open, you can learn something far greater than anything you would learn in law school or medical school.

When I see myself on tape it doesn’t make me think about how young and naive I was. It doesn’t make me smirk at how blissfully ignorant I was of all the evil that exists in the world and it doesn’t make me happy to be older and further from those childish notions of life. It makes me think about how the hell I’m going to get back on the road.

As we trucked on towards Nuwara Eliya, I looked up into the sky and suddenly felt overwhelmed by everything inside and around me.

I remember leaning back in my seat, gazing out the window and suddenly, the haze which had seemed to blur the world for the past few days, dissipated and was replaced with green hills of crystalline clarity.

I sat up in my seat and quickly rolled down the window and was greeted by gusts of cool breeze which breathed life through my tussled hair and into my throbbing temples.

I closed my eyes for a moment and suddenly felt as though the wind was blowing away all the intensity of the past. All the filth of the city, the dirt roads, the oppressive heat, and my own stickly dried sweat seemed to sweep away in the instant I felt the wind.

Looking up at the sky, I saw a deep blue that made me think of the ocean and the sky and heaven all at once. It was a deep blue that I hadn’t seen since the unfettered vision of childhood. I lay back in my seat and felt as though everything in the world was perfect.

But everything in the world wasn’t perfect.

All the bliss of that instant suddenly squirmed into a question and that question was, where was she?

And then it hit me, what was all this around me without anyone to share it with?

This, the most beautiful thing possible, which was quite possibly the perfect experience, was inadequate without someone to share it with.

The thought filled me with fear that I was alone, but also with excitement because this moment was proof to me that a person’s true nature above all else, is to love.

Esala has been sitting quietly on the deck for the past five hours and I’m not entirely sure why.

Throughout this trip of ours, the three of us: Esala, Mansur, and myself, have developed a friendship.

It begun strangely enough, with a conception of employer and employee, seeing as how Mansur was actually being paid to drive through the country and Esala to accompany me.

As a result, decisions regarding intent were somehow delegated to me and answers did not come easily. Gradually, I came to understand that the situation was about my experience and acted commensurately, and only then, I realized that the situation was never really about my experience, but about the experience and it was then that things began to flow.

It was the first time that any of us had visited the Kandalama, the only difference being that both Esala and Mansur had lived in this country for all their lives. After what seemed like an endless span of time spent traveling on a winding dirt path surrounded by jungle, we finally emerged onto the Kandalama grounds and all of us rejoiced. As we drove up, we were greeted by men in pristine white suits who grabbed our luggage and then disappeared into the hotel with it.

An attractive Sri Lankan girl led me to a deck and presented me with a fruit drink. Suddenly, Esala and Mansur disappeared from sight and mind and I basked in the pleasure of the luxury that surrounded me.

Then I realized that for the first time in several days, I was without Esala and Mansur and I curiously headed back into the lobby. They were standing at the front desk, arguing with the lobby attendant, who was insisting that they stay in the servants quarters.

I responded that Esala was accompanying me on the trip. The attendant nodded and murmured some words to Esala and Mansur. Shortly thereafter, Mansur headed back to the van and drove off.

Later, I found out from Esala that Mansur had gone to stay in the servants quarters. and from a hotel employee, I found out that the servant’s quarters consisted of a single bed in a shared room with two meals/day, which essentially consisted of rice and curry.

Less than three hundred feet away, Esala and I were dining in the hotel’s five-star restaurant and I was delightedly heaping gourmet cuisine onto my plate while Esala contented himself with a simple plate of rice and curry.

Today, I spent time at the hotel spa and later, drinking cocktails by the infinity pool while Esala stayed in the room with his school books.

Now he is out there, sitting out on the deck, staring into the jungle. Perhaps he feels uncomfortable in this hotel. Perhaps it is the fact that Mansur is confined to a Spartan one-bedroom accommodation while he is confined to the accommodations in the most glamorous hotel in all Sri Lanka that bothers him. Perhaps he feels uncomfortable because he has never been in a place like this and doesn’t know how to enjoy it. Perhaps it bothers him that all of the employees in the hotel are Sri Lankan while all the guests are Europeans - perhaps it bothers him that the most beautiful accomodations in Sri Lanka is not for Sri Lankans.

 July 5, 1987: The Tamil Tigers carries out their first suicide bombing, killing 40 troops at an army camp in the north of the country.

March 2, 1991: Defence minister Ranjan Wijeratne is among 19 people killed when a car bomb is detonated in Colombo.

May 21, 1991: Former Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi is killed at a meeting in southern India. June 22, 1991: A suicide bomber drives a truck packed with explosives into the military Joint Operations Headquarters at Flower Road, killing 21 and wounding 114.

May 1, 1993: President Ranasinghe Premadasa and 23 others are killed by a suicide bomber in Colombo.

October 24, 1994: Opposition leader Gamini Dissanayake and 56 others are killed by a suicide bomber in Colombo.

January 31, 1996: A suicide bomber drives a truck packed with explosives and devastates the Central Bank, killing 91 and wounding 1,400.

January 25, 1998: Suicide bombers devastate the country’s holiest Buddhist shrine in the town of Kandy, killing 16.

September 11, 1998: Twelve people, including the mayor, are killed in Jaffna when a bomb blast rocks the municipal council building.

December 18, 1999: President Chandrika Kumaratunga is wounded and 38 are killed in two separate attacks on election rallies.

January 5, 2000: At least 12 killed and 24 wounded when a woman suicide bomber detonates explosives strapped to her body outside the office of Prime Minister Sirima Bandaranaike.

June 7, 2000: Suicide bomber assassinates Industries Minister C.V. Gooneratne, killing 25 and injuring 27.

September 15, 2000: Tamil Tiger suicide bomber detonates explosives strapped to his body while he is being searched outside the country’s main eye hospital complex in the capital Colombo. Seven people die.

October 2, 2000: Suicide bomber detonates a bomb, killing himself and 23 others, including Muslim candidate M. Baithullah eight days ahead of elections.

October 23, 2000: Suicide bombers ram four boats packed with explosives and sink a navy gunboat and a troop carrier berthed at the Trincomalee naval harbour. At least two sailors are killed while 40 others are wounded.

July 24, 2001: Tiger rebels stage a devastating suicide attack against the main air base and only international airport in Sri Lanka, destroying 13 aircraft and leaving at least 12 people dead.

October 29, 2001: Suicide bomber detonates explosives strapped to his body as he is questioned by police guarding Prime Minister Ratnasiri Wickremanayake in Colombo. A policeman and a civilian are also killed while 16 others are wounded.

February 7, 2003: Three Tiger rebels blast themselves to pieces shortly after Scandinavians monitoring a truce rule that their trawler was carrying an anti-aircraft weapon and ammunition in violation of a truce that went into effect.

In February 2002, a cease-fire was negotiated between the Sri Lankan government and Tamil Tiger rebels under the mutual goal that it should facilitate peace talks that would end the 18-year civil war that had left more than 64,000 people dead.

Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, who won Dec. 5 elections largely as a result of a platform that called for peace and economic recovery, ordered most roads reopened and military checkpoints dismantled.

Colombo underwent dramatic changes practically overnight, and as the military checkpoint disappeared, a feeling of relief fell over the country.

The University of Kalania is about seven miles outside the city of Colombo. I chose to live in Colombo on the advice of the Fullbright organization.

The University facilities are not quite up to the standard that the people in the United States are used to.

I taught Chemistry to both undergraduate as well as graduate students.

I went there to develop a Masters program in environmental chemistry, which I did.

All of the windows of the offices have to be kept open because of the humidity and the problems with mildew and mold growing.

The teaching itself was a bit challenging because of the unreliable state with electricity. A lot of the time, the lights would go out as well as the ceiling fan and the heat can get overwhelming.

On top of that, there are flocks of mosquitoes swarming around you.

The heat, humidity, and a lot of times it rains and the sounds of raindrops can be a bit too loud.

All around, giving a simple lecture is not like what people normally envision in this country.

The rooms are often times, not kept very clean. There are animals like cats and dogs running in an out. A lot of times, the custodians don’t come around and keep the rooms very clean.

Of the nine months that I was there, the school was only opened about for of the months. There were continuous demonstrations and they would burn buildings and the school would shut down quite frequently.

There are groups of people who feel that the university is part of the establishment, which is not looking after their well-being. There are over forty different political parties and there are communist parties, parties that are sympathetic towards the Tamils, and they continuously want to express their feeling over the way that the Sri Lankan government conducts itself.

The Vice Chancellor of Kalania was understandably, very nervous about keeping the school open so as soon as he heard about demonstrations, he would order the administration to close the building.

While we walked through the University, my Father began telling me about his experiences with the school. “Many people dream about Sri Lanka as the place to come and soak up the sun, snorkel, or visit ancient ruins,” he began. “In this sense it’s a very lovely place but there is another side to this country that I’ve been exposed to as a result of teaching at the University here.

These students are outside of my office everyday, in the sweltering sun and humidity, simply because they couldn’t find a seat in the library. If they are lucky, they can sometimes find a piece of rickety furniture where they can sit down and share lunch. Three students: two girls and one boy always seemed to be around my office when I get there at eight in the morning.

Today, they tried to explain in broken English that it was their last day of examinations and they just wanted to say goodbye. As of today, they are through with their college life. They don’t have jobs though, nor do they expect one fairly soon. That is their karma, to be in Sri Lanka with no bright prospects. Nevertheless, they are glad that their schooling is going to be over, I am sure.

They are lucky compared to the 90,000 high school graduates who were selected to go to university but could not find openings because of backlogs created by an ineffective political situation and bureaucratic shortcomings in the system.

Nuwara Eliya, the “city of lights,” is the highest town in Sri Lanka and that means a break from the oppressive heat and humidity that surrounds the rest of the country.

It was found by a group of British officers during the earlier part of the 19th century, who as the story goes, had gotten lost while elephant hunting. The British governor at the time, Sir Edward Barnes, was told about this little town and subsequently decided to take residence there, soon creating a health resort, which soon became internationally renown.

It is surrounded by a seemingly endless array of tea plantations populated by tea pickers who are almost exclusively Indian Tamils, who are distinct from the Ceylonese Tamils who live in the Northeast of the country. Although both groups of Tamils speak the Tamil language and practice Hinduism, Indian Tamils were mostly brought over by the British from Southern India to work as laborers on plantations whereas Ceylonese Tamils are descendent of are descendent of Tamil dynasties who have a long history of bloodshed with the Sri Lankan Sinhalese majority. The days, Tamils are treated as second-class citizens and have to deal with many oppressive laws and regulations.

One example came in 1972, when the Prime-minister at the time, Srimavo Bandaranaike, took measures to increase the numbers of Sinhalese in the universities and in public service through his process of “standardization,” which is something along the lines of US affirmative action, except in favor of the majority.

The living conditions of the Indian Tamils who work on the tea plantations are somewhat less than perfect. Every morning, they have a two to three hour commute up the hillside, where they work until sundown at which point they have to commute another two to three hours in order to retunr home. For all their efforts, they make somewhere in the neighborhood of two dollars/day.

Walking along the beach in Unawatuna, I spotted a girl in the distance walking towards me, wearing a black bikini top and a colorful reddish sarong. When only about fifty feet separated us, she stopped walking and sat down in the sand.

I slowed as I approached her and said, “Hello.”

“Hello,” she answered.

“Have you been swimming,” I asked, which wasn’t really an impromptu question as I had decided to rehearse it when I first spotted her. “How is the water?”

“The water is fine,” she answered.

“There aren’t any jellyfish in there, are there?” I was trying the Woody Allen cute/neurotic approach.

“No, no jellyfish,” she answered.

She had a bit of a conical shaped face with a cute pointy. She was kinda cute.

Yesterday, I woke up at five in the morning after a night that ended with me stumbling around the dinner table like a buffoon, blabbering on about my life in Korea to a host of Sri Lankans and Fullbrighters from around the world at a dinner party.

After everyone had left the party, I decided to take it upon myself to help the house servants clean up the mess by drinking all the leftover wine that remained in the glasses atop the dinner table.

Before too long, I was puffing on a cigar on the rooftop of the house with Pat, a Buddhist philosophy Professor from Ohio and Kamal, an Indian Zoroastrian who was working for a company that installed solar panels in rural villages. At around 2 in the morning, I retired to my room and began to pack my things in preparation for the trip I was to begin early the next morning.

The next morning was a terrible haze that included my stomach feeling as though it was being squeezed by a vise. The awful sensation increased every time I stood up, causing me to slouch like a hunchback.

My Father came to pick me up at around 7:00 in the morning and I met him bleary-eyed and red-faced. He was accompanies by a middle-aged man named Monsur, who would be the driver during my trip around the ancient cities of Sri Lanka. He was a handsome man with a wide jay, narrowed eyes and a dark thick moustache. He did not say anything until spoken to, at which point he would respond in one-word phrases.

Later, I found out that Monsur used to be a police officer, but was relegated to a desk-job after he sustained a serious leg injury from a gun wound, and eventually retired from the force to do something more relaxing.

I hopped in the back seat of the mini-van and promptly passed out. I awoke when we arrived at the University of Kalania, where my Dad was teaching classes as part of the Fullbright program that he was involved with. I stumbled out of the car and murmured something to the effect that I was excited and would have a great time. I hugged my Dad, then stumbled back into the car and fell back asleep.

Asala was my Father’s TA and heading to the University of Chicago in the Fall in order to pursue his doctorate in Biochemistry. He is a soft-spoken 28-year-old Sri Lankan who had a round baby face and roundish eyes that made him look like something out of a Japanese animation film. He was about my height but much more slender. My Father had asked him to act as an escort throughout my trip around Sri Lanka.

The Chola empire came to power in the late 9th century and lasted until around the late 13th century. For about seventy-five years, Sri Lanka was ruled as a Chola province and it was during this time that the practice of Buddhism became surpassed by Hinduism. The Chola empire chose Polonnaruwa to be their capital as a result of its location near the Mahaweli Ganga, a river that formed a natural barrier to potential Sinhalese attacks from the South.

In 1070 AD, King Vijayabahu I drove the Chola out of Sri Lanka and recaptured the former Sri Lankan capital of Anuradhapura. But instead of renaming it as their capital, they instead chose Polonnaruwa, for the same reason as the Chola, because it offered a more defensible position from potential invasions.

Vijayabahu focused his energies on restoring the Buddhist presence to the capital by rennovating temples and monasteries that had been formerly neglected. After Vijabahu’s reign ended, a short period of political instability followed, ending when King Parakramabahu I rose to power. Under his guidance, Polonnaruwa reached its peak.

Perhaps the most impressive sculptures at Pollonnaruwa are the imposing images of the Buddha located at the Gal Vihare. These four pieces of sculpture were commissioned by Parakramabahu. The first is of a seated Buddha in deep meditiation, seated on a throne decorated with lions and thunderbolts. The second is inside of a cave and records in detail Parakramabahu’s initiatives to unite the Buddhist order. The next sculpture stands twenty three feet high and expresses the serenity of the Buddha. The final, and most imposing, statue is of a reclining Buddha, which measures 46 feet in length. He is in the last moment of his life on earth, on the verge of entering nirvana.

Sigirya was built by King Kasyapa sometime during the late 5th Century AD. Although there are several renditions of how Sigirya came to be, most versions agree that Kasyapa was in some way responsible for the death of his Father, King Dhatusena. Shortly after the death of his Father, Kasyapa set about building a palace on the summit of Sigirya.

When I asked Asala why anyone would want to build a palace so difficult to get to, he responded that “Kasyapa had a lot of enemies.”

I thought to myself what a curse, to be so powerful that you could have a palace build on top of a mountain but have so many enemies that you had to isolate yourself there. Well, maybe it wasn’t that bad.

There is no consensus as to the identity of the women depicted in the Sigiriya frescoes. The Sri Lankan art historian Ananda K. Coomeraswamy postulated that they may have been “asparas,” similar to angels, because the figures were cut off at their waists by clouds, conversely, the British colonial educationist E.B. Havell believed them to be royal ladies, Kasyapa’s hand-maidens and queens.

Personally, I like the theory espoused by the Sri Lankan historian Martin Wickeramasinghe, who believed that they were royal women playing water sports and that the clouds were actually sea waves. In any debate about the meaning of art, I like the idea that the truth somehow involves topless women playing sports.