A Brief Colonial History Of Ceylon(SriLanka)
Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
A Brief Colonial History Of Ceylon(SriLanka)
Sri Lanka: One Island Two Nations
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Thiranjala Weerasinghe sj.- One Island Two Nations
?????????????????????????????????????????????????Sunday, May 14, 2017
On India
by Sanjana Hattotuwa-May 13, 2017
Everyone has a story about India, even those who haven’t travelled to or
within the country. Often, especially in the West, the most common
references to India are anchored to accent, religion, sport, cinema or
food. It is not surprising to discover the country first through
travelogue, film, literature or devouring the ubiquitous British
invention, chicken tikka masala, now served in India as well. As Prime
Minister Modi visits Sri Lanka for Vesak, I recalled my own encounters
with his country.
My first flight to India was also my first ever flight. We landed in the
sweltering heat of Summer in New Delhi, with several other families all
flying in to admit their children to University. On the way to our
temporary lodgings that evening, the steering wheel of the van we were
in, though mercifully close to our destination, came off in the hands of
the driver. Seated in front, I recall vividly how this stark fact
escaped the driver for a few seconds that lasted an eternity, as he,
half-asleep, continued to turn a wheel that wasn’t connected to
anything.
Jolting awake at the realisation of the disconnect between his function
and what was now an autonomous vehicle, several thrusts to brake pedal
managed to eventually create enough friction to turn the van into a
ditch, which had the intended effect of halting progress. The violent
stop meant that inside the van, those seated and the luggage stacked
behind were, upon looking back, almost inextricably entwined. After
significant effort to disentangle in what was even in the early hours of
the morning an oppressive latent heat emanating from concrete, tar and
pavement – we trudged wearily to a friend’s house.
In the fortnight thereafter, in heat that shot beyond forty degrees
Celsius, I had to learn how to gain admission to the University of
Delhi, since what was a madness that had some method to locals was
indecipherable to anyone from abroad. This meant finding a College that
would admit me first, and then going to the University with a letter of
acceptance for admission. All this required endless forms, travel to and
from places widely spaced apart in hellish heat, feverish mobs instead
of queues, three-wheeler drivers who fleeced anyone who couldn’t
understand the language and officials who for whatever reason, never
gave out information accurately, in full or an intelligible way.
It was unspeakably horrible, and I hated India and everything about it.
It was only in the months and years to come, alone as an undergrad
student and travelling around the country by train, that I came to love
the country. Admittedly, that love never extended to Delhi as a city. It
was, even 20 years ago, insufferable, but for different reasons than
one can readily peg today. More than the traffic and pollution, out of
control even in the late-nineties, the timbre of the people I met in
Delhi was overwhelmingly eviscerating. They were without heart and soul.
In well under a year, through sheer necessity and constant, deep
immersion, I was fluent in everyday conversational Hindi. This allowed
me entry into the personal experiences of rickshaw-wallah’s, often as I
shared their food on street-side, street-level, stalls. They were
victims and perpetrators, from Bihar and elsewhere. Men on edge. Men who
had no love for the city there were in, and less love for where they
came from. Men who couldn’t contemplate a future – in a very literal
sense – since they were consumed by just getting through every day, a
never ending existentialist crisis that made them malleable to any
voice, no matter how incredible, that offered them a better future.
Delhi was a hard place, and it made you hard. But it was also, perhaps
unwittingly, a great teacher. Living in Delhi taught me to cook, wash
and clean toilets (of the squatting variety), barter, bargain, fight,
run away, cross busy intersections (the trick being to keep walking at a
regular pace no matter what, because if you hesitate and stop, you die)
and negotiate a bureaucracy designed to enslave those in it, and drive
to drink those encountering it.
Not all India was as grating as Delhi, and not all those in in the city
were without heart and soul. The close bond with many wonderful
Professors at Kirori Mal College continues, and some of my best friends
remain those I met in Delhi, including many who were born and schooled
in the city. But it was through travel beyond Delhi that I learnt to
love the country writ large. The train journeys were never short of
epic. From Delhi to Chennai, and then on to Pune and Bangalore for a
theatre festival. In my final year, after shipping home all of my books,
Delhi to Trichy on the Konkan Express, under the Western Ghatts and
skirting the verdant fields of Kerala.
The gastronomic variety of station food. The abundance of colour. I was
in India before any conceivable social media, smart phones and even
broadband, when Yahoo! offered 2Mb in total, and Google, leave aside
Gmail, wasn’t even around. I never used a computer in University. There
were none around. The only computers I used were in subterranean cyber
cafés in Kamla Nagar, close to the North Campus of Delhi University or
at the British Council library, for which one had to pay every half an
hour in order to use. Nirula’s was the only fast food chain around, and
the coffee houses were gloriously smoke-infested, noisy, beautifully
decaying meeting grounds for the dissection of play, politics or party.
Amidst all this, there were revealing absences and silences too. The
North-East of India was erased from public discourse – it was like the
region didn’t exist on the conversational and media map of the country.
Gender based violence, from mutilation and rape to systemic
discrimination and even murder, was already high, but not really
discussed as undergrads. We walked past corpses on the road on the way
to exams, dead because of either the cold or heat. The sheer abundance
of humanity had resulted in a strange devaluation of life. Garlanded
cows seemed to have a better deal than most at the bottom of the
socio-economic pyramid.
The so-called Kargil War was fought in my second year of College, and
the realisation that two nuclear warhead wielding States were in open
conflict was chilling. It was also then that I learnt that India’s first
successful nuclear bomb test was codenamed ‘Smiling Buddha’ – an irony
that escaped many I brought this up with.
The contradictions continue. I took my first train journey in India last
week – from Chennai to Bangalore, and then on to Mysore – in over 17
years. Much has obviously changed. Much remains the same. Sadly, a lot
has grown worse. The India seen by train in urban areas is one big
cesspool of excrement, rotting garbage and squalor. Inside the train,
the Incredible India! Campaign looks like a cruel joke, representing a
country a world apart from what’s just outside the window. A grotesque
materialism has gripped many parts of the country, and the politics are
more violent and divisive than ever.
The India I love, however, it still there. The indescribable beauty of
Mysore stretching to horizon, seen from Chamundi Hill, around sunset;
the miracle of modern transportation that is the Delhi metro; the
boutique beers of Bangalore, along with the sheer variety of food and
venues to eat in that city alone. Path-breaking wireless cash services
like PayTM, even as the violence of demonetisation impacts far more than
those who make the news.
An arts, theatre and cultural landscape, in most cities, that is greater
and richer in depth, scope, imagination and curatorial prowess than
anything Sri Lanka has hosted. Fast and reliable Google Wi-Fi in railway
stations, even as basic access to platforms for the disabled remain
absent. Progress cheek in jowl with so much left to be done, or
deliberately left undone.
The late High Commissioner of Sri Lanka in Delhi, Mangala Moonesinghe
and his wife Gnana, gracious hosts of the student community at the time,
never failed to encourage us to travel within India and critically
imbibe tradition, myth and even at the time, aspects of an embryonic
modernity. Sadly, few in the student community listened. But those who
did found a country that defies then, as it does today, easy capture.
India is Kali, irrepressible and through sheer force of time, devouring
those who suspect the country’s resilience and innovation despite the
worst austerity and politics. India then is an idea, continuing a tryst
with destiny and embracing all of us that neighbour it, willingly or
not, in its wake. And even as we must continue to stamp our unique
identity in South Asia, Sri Lanka forgets or seeks to somehow devalue
India, as country, idea, continent, market, friend of adversary, to its
own peril.
You can hate the country. But you just cannot ignore India.