From Sri Lanka to Slough
Simon Hoggart spends a blissful time in Sri Lanka, experiencing the
real beauty of the island.
FASCINATING PANORAMA: We are just back from holiday in Sri Lanka,
where we had a wonderful time.
Tourism is sharply down this year, so it’s a very good time to go;
nothing is as impossible to sell as a room that’s been empty all night,
so you can get amazing bargains at some of the most beautiful hotels in
Asia.
The reason tourism is down is because of the continuing fight between
the Government and the Tigers of the north, who have acquired an air
force, or at least a plane, and this year bombed the airport.
Kumana bird sanctuary - Picture by Premalal Weerasinghe |
No doubt that was why there was an anti-aircraft gun on a tower next
to our hotel in Colombo, though admittedly it is also near the
presidential residence.
However, the place is, for visitors, entirely safe. Avoiding it is as
pointless as skipping southern Ireland because of the troubles in the
north.
Luckily some of the shortfall is made up by people of Sri Lankan
origin who return for holidays. Checking out of one hotel in an
especially beautiful setting, a young man asked if I was from England.
When I said I was, he said that he lived in England too, and had
returned to marry.
He and his bride, who had never left Sri Lanka - she was smiling
shyly next to him - were on honeymoon. I asked where they were going to
live, and he said Slough. It was difficult to find a really enthusiastic
way to wish them well in their new lives.
As everyone tells you, the problems in the country are political and
not religious.
In fact, the toleration is remarkable - to some extent because the
main religion, Buddhism, with two-thirds of the population, is just
about as unmilitant as a religion can be.
Buddhism, of course, is about the search for truth, rather than
telling everyone else that you have found the truth and they had better
jump into line.
Sunset at Kosgoda - Picture by Dr. Indu Waidyatilaka |
At the famous Dambulla temple caves they have signs from the
“venerable trustee” asking you to take your shoes off before going
inside, adding: “Whether any religionist, mannerly person behaves
gently,” which I suppose means, “whatever your religion, show some
respect”, though it sounds so much nicer put the other way.
Before we left, we airily told the tourism chap that we would rent a
car at the airport. He looked very worried. “I really wouldn’t do that.
You must have a driver,” he said. “You would have great difficulties.”
And we would.
For a start, road signage is in its infancy in Sri Lanka. Many
villages don’t appear even on large-scale maps, so you could be lost
very easily indeed. And drivers abide by quite different rules.
In the west, we work on the assumption that the car coming towards us
will keep its direction, and we must adjust accordingly.
In Sri Lanka, it’s the opposite: you drive straight at him because he
will undoubtedly swerve at the last minute. Luckily it’s hard to get up
to a speed above 25mph, so these heart-stopping moments occur in slow
motion.
But the roadsides present a fascinating, miles-long panorama, like a
strip cartoon or a tapestry. Peacocks lurk in the woods and kingfishers
perch on telegraph poles; mongooses look balefully up at you, and fruit
bats hang in their hundreds from the trees.
Schoolchildren are dressed in immaculate white uniforms, a relic of
colonial days, I suppose. We never saw a pair of trousers or a dress
that was even slightly smudged; mothers must scrub the clothes every
night. A few Morris Oxfords and Austin Cambridges bump along.
The stalls cluster together, so you will get a dozen fruit stands in
the same spot. On the road inland to Kandy, we passed a kilometre of
wooden shelving, devoted entirely to displaying inflatable toys -
sharks, elephants, bears, Scooby Doos and Disney dalmatians from 101
Dalmatians.
You wondered why they were there, 30 or 40 miles from the capital. Do
dads wake up at weekends and say, “hey gang, what say we all drive out
for several hours and buy an inflatable giraffe? Sound fun to you?” If
you want practical details, I’ll be writing at much greater length on
the Guardian website soon.
While I was there I bought a fascinating book, The Museum Of Hoaxes,
by an American, Alex Boese (Penguin). It’s an account of great hoaxes,
from medieval relics to the famous fake Tourist Guy picture of the man
in an anorak posing on top of the World Trade Centre as an airliner
flies towards it.
Newspapers, with their short deadlines and need for sensation, are
hoaxed more than anyone else, as the Cornish shark reminds us. The New
York Times, the great grey lady, is a particular victim, possibly
because they know that if it is in the New York Times it must be true.
In 1874, its editor fell for the New York Herald’s hoax about wild
animals escaping from the zoo. In 1934 it lovingly reprinted hoax
stories about a sea serpent which pursued the Mauretania.
In 1999 it fell for “Ron’s Angels” a website that allegedly offered
childless couples the chance to buy eggs from supermodels. In 1992, it
published a glossary of “grunge speak” from Seattle, all carefully
invented by a magazine called The Baffler. There are many other
instances.
The Guardian has been caught once or twice, though nothing like as
often as our own dear Times. In 1972 the Times believed that Thomas Cook
was offering round the world trips at 1872 prices.
Back in 1856, it reported that a train travelling from Macon to
Augusta, Georgia, had been halted six times so that passengers could
fight fatal duels with “Monte Christo pistols”.
The slaughter had left six people dead before the journey ended. The
paper stuck to its story for a year, until a reporter discovered that
“Monte Christo pistols” was local slang for champagne bottles, and that
empty bottles were referred to as “dead men”.
Guardian Unlimited, August 19. |