One one things

I have time to kill so i’m going to write some more. I decided to stay awake so that I can sleep on the plane as much as I can. So I’m going to London tonight and quite a few people have been saying “ah be careful, never know when a bomb will go off” and I think what the hell, I’m Sri Lankan, I’ve lived all my life here and we know a thing or two about bombs. But, I seem to have taken for granted the lack of severe terror attacks in Colombo over the last couple of years. The first 16 years of my life was spent wondering when the next one will go off. Each time there’s a big bang I remember running to the phone (pay phone in school, what cell phones those days!) feverishly dialling my parents work places, then after getting to know where it’s exploded calling up people in those areas. The bombs that will forever be etched in my memory are the JOC bomb, Central Bank, Town hall and Ranjan Wijeratne.

The first bomb i remember is Ranjan Wijeratne’s blast. I must have been around 7 or 8 years old. For some reason aiya and I were dropped at my uncle’s place, which was in Thimbirigasyaya, very close to the explosion. I don’t remember much about it except that the adults were all very tense and I was feeling quite scared. My uncle took us to the blast site, which probably wasn’t too clever. I distinctly have a picture in my head of half a face of a man (ear and beard) lying on the floor near the pavement. I still feel sick thinking of it. Also I remember the Rambutan pieces scattered all over. I think that was the first time the war really hit me, I think I knew that there was a war in our country but it was then that I knew that it’s in OUR country and not just some place where we’d never set foot in.
If the Wijeratne bomb failed to convince me entirely, the JOC bomb left no stones unturned. I was in Royal in year 2 which is incredibly close to the then JOC. The explosion was massive and I remember the lights going out, we ran outside with the teachers. One image i’ll never forget is of a guy in year 4 or something running towards year 2 block whilst everyone was running away, apparently his little bro was in our grade. Reminds me of that famous Tsunami pic of that woman running towards the sea to save her kids. Most of it is hazy now, I remember the Nawarangahala was the place where injured kids were treated and I remember finding aiya somewhere there (he wasn’t injured thankfully). We were all told to evacuate to the senior playground and it felt like a stampede bc everyone was going through a small gap in the wall, and being three and a half feet tall doesn’t make things easy. We finally got home in the afternoon sometime and I sort of remember not talking for most of the day.

The Central Bank bomb occured a bit later on when i had a fairly good understanding of the war and its many brutalities. I was in my French class, third floor (F2?) in cis and there was a massive noise and I could have sworn the building shook. Everyone knew it was a bomb and I just ran off to find aiya and try and call our parents, it was so loud it felt really close but then we heard various stories one of which was that the bomb was in Nawaloka where thaththi works, my heart sank and I wanted to throw up but then the rumours stopped and we got to know it was at the Central Bank. The sheer magnitude of that bomb just shocked me and as I watched the news over and over I just got so depressed.

The town hall bomb that killed C.V. Gooneratne wasn’t the biggest bomb to hit Colombo but it depressed me as much as any other. It occured around early August and at the time I had been reading about Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The town hall bomb cracked a mirror in our house, and soon after it happened I went into (by my standards) a bit of a depression. It’s best described as just feeling kalakirila about life in general, I remeber not talking a lot and also going over the Newsweek and Time about Hiroshima and Nagasaki repeatedly, including pictures, again not very clever. I probably just got sick of wondering when is it going to be me or someone in my family, when will one of us be “among the dead”.

Last year I was in Killinochchi and I met boys around my age, and they’ve known nothing other than that same fear for their whole life. When you see bullet marks on the walls of houses it probably hits home, literally. Someday, when we ACTUALLY finish this war, we’re going to have a serious issue in terms of sorting out the mental side of things. Living in fear all the time will certainly do things to you, we need to figure out a way to sort it out.

I have developed a fair aversion to flying. I’ve always had motion sickness, when I was less than 5 i had the pleasure of throwing up in JFK airport. In a few hours i’ll be off on a 10+ hour flight to England, not fun. One of the things I hate is that damn aerosol they spray just prior to touch down, makes me really sick and i have to close my eyes and nose each time. I’m not looking forward to the flight but i’m looking forward to getting to England and seeing aiya’s convacation and then moving onto a couple of places in the continent. I also need to sort out where i’m living next year so it’ll be a hectic 9 or so days. Anyway, onto more pleasant issues, i need to re-visit Kathmandu.
On the second evening there was another social event, less formal and it involved just the foriegn participants for a piss up followed by dinner. I can’t remember if i mentioned this last time but by some coincidence the hotel was having a Sri Lankan food festival and the manager wanted me to inspect the dishes before the buffet was open. There was some dishes that were rather un-Sri Lankan to be in a Sri Lankan buffet, but they got the chicken curry, parips and mutton curry right so it was good enough. Amusingly the embul thiyal wasn’t black and had hodi, there was some dish involving green peas which is a bit odd considering we don’t even eat green peas here. Ah and there was a guy making kottu and another making hoppers (aappam as he called it). I enjoyed it overall, quite decent and hats off for effort. So my Pakistani friend and I decided to ditch the rest of the gang (mainly 60+ year olds discussing south asian politics and the many vices of SAARC, fascinating stuff) and go and see the town with two of her friends from the States. Unfortunately the two friends were feeling lazy and decided to join us at the hotel so we just ended up chatting for a few hours and buggering off to bed around 1.
The next morning I was presenting and it went fairly well which pleased me immensely. Everyone seemed a lot more interested in me afterwards and lots of ppl came to say hello and talk about Sri Lanka or my paper, I felt quite important! That afternoon I went shopping with my new found friend to a place called Thamil. It’s a proper tourist trap but i managed to get some masala tea for thaththi and aiya, a book for ammi and 5 CDs for myself. We then stopped into a pizza place which was brilliant! It served the best pizza i’ve had since pizza express in England and it was so cheap! food in Nepal is very cheap in general. Had to head back to the hotel for the next couple of hours bc my friend had a dinner and then we went out again to an open air pub/bar called New Orleans around 10pm. Got properly ripped off by the cabbie and almost got into an argument, he was looking fairly mean and raised his voice so we thought it best to hop off. The New Orleans was superb, really relaxed chill place with Cuban music (I was fairly pleased that i bought myself a cuban cd earlier on in the day). I had an Irish coffee and we discussed where she should travel over the next few days (she was having a slightly extended break). I wish I could have done the same bc there’s a National park close by which had Tigers! One of the 3 things I want to do before I die is to see Tigers in the wild (already seen the 2 legged kind ) the other two are to travel in Africa, particularly safari and to go for a Counting Crows concert. We chatted for an hour or so and then went to a late night book shop and browsed around and decided to take a rickshaw back to the hotel. That was a brilliant if slightly scary experience bc it did rock (in the traditional sense) to and fro a great deal. I took a couple of pictures but i doubt they came out well. Ah i forgot to say, while i was walking single file along the road in thamil (it’s really narrow and two cars can’t go in parallel) this little kid was walking just behind me and then he made a noise, something like hachis, i thought he sneezed but then he did it again and followed it by “sir”. So i slowed down and looked at him, he looked about 14 at most, and he grinned and said “Hashish, sir?” I naturally declined (nono really) and quickened my pace and caught up with my friend. She was very amused. This isn’t the first time i’ve been thought of as a potential kudda. Long time ago, must be 4 years at least, i was out with some friends after a massive sea food buffet and we decided to have a cup of tea before heading home so we stopped at some kadey near a friend’s house. The waiter took our order and whispered something in my friend’s ear, my friend then started laughing like mad and shook his head, the waiter grinned and left. Apparently the waiter had asked if my friend wants some goods and when he declined he had asked if anyone else does and added that the fellow with the dodgy hair (yes, me) would like some bc apparently I’m an “adinawa wagey” person. Maybe I do need to crop that hair a bit then.
So that was pretty much the end of my visit to Kathmandu, and the rest was uneventful except that at the breakfast buffet a mother had forgotten to put a diaper on her kid and she carried him while he took a piss against the window. I mean, wtf!! The fellow looked close to 1 and surely they can afford a diaper if they can holiday at a 5 star (apparently) hotel. Ah and the worst thing, she cleaned it up using the napkin provided at the table. Very distressing. When i was leaving the airport was a bit mad, they manually checked my suitcase twice and then removed the wires from my laptop saying that I can collect it from Colombo from the restricted luggage ppl! Apparently the flight to Colombo is a “problematic” one and there were military ppl all over, checking the plane and what not. There was no money changer upstairs so I had to strike a deal with the duty free liquor guy to change my Nepalese rupees to US$. He proceeded to rip me off but i had little choice. The going rate is 70Rs to 1$, he charged me 80. So I was in a puk mood when i left but overall i really enjoyed the trip, I made some friends, saw some nice places and had some fun experiences. It’s a place i’d certainly want to return to and spend a bit more time there. Of course it would help if we had a direct flight,speaking of which, thank God the Colombo -London is direct! I probably should have a nap before I go.