Colombo: A permanent home
The Sri Lankan civil war is over. Now, when someone lights a firecracker behind you, you know it’s a firecracker
It is July 2000, and even though I am flying from London to Colombo to be with my father, who is on his deathbed, I have received countless lists of things to bring back. I say no, which is acceptable, because even though my family home is in Colombo, I am not Sri Lankan. If I was, I would have obliged. That is what Sri Lankans do. They oblige. I discover this 11 years later, when I marry a Sri Lankan and return from our honeymoon with the following items for her family and friends: four bottles of Nando’s sauces, a blender, a rice cooker, a speaker, some heavy-duty sticky tape and a car bumper.
Colombo feels the same as when I left to work in London two years earlier. Everyone looks content, but no one rushes; like an athlete who could be the best in the world if she paid more attention to detail. There is a finishing line, but the war keeps pushing it further away, so people are happy to wait and see what happens. Yet the city never sleeps, except at government offices, where it never wakes. There is a buzz of expectation. What could it be for? To me, Colombo is like a bushy-eyebrowed ex-girlfriend I can reconnect with in a second.
***
My family has been in Colombo since 1982, the year before the civil war started. I am unaware that the next time I get on a plane, one year after we scatter my father’s ashes in the hills of Sri Lanka, I will travel with my family to Bangkok, and while we are in the air, Sri Lanka’s international airport will be attacked by the Tigers. The war will finish eight years later; in all the time my father lived in Sri Lanka, he only saw one year of peace. He had an Indian passport, and my mother, brother, sister and I have British ones. So, through the war, we could have left whenever we wanted to. We could have left when our neighbours were assassinated metres from us. We could have left when a bomb went off near where my brother ate breakfast after a long night out. Yet, it never even crossed our mind.
I am half Tibetan, half English and cannot say more than please, thank you and kiss my ass in Sinhala and even less in Tamil, but I have the head wobble and I smile when I am in trouble. I would be Sri Lankan if I wasn’t a careful driver. I feel like this is my home, but I am still not sure how long I will stay.
***
It is 2011, and my wife and I marry under the vines of a massive banyan tree, while our guests sit in their sarongs and saris on the sandy floor in front of us. To our right is a kade—a village shop—selling fruit, sweets, newspapers, mops and brooms, and around us are mud huts with thatched roofs.
After we sign the registry, we dance (well, my wife dances and I move my jungle eyebrows) around a scarecrow, with a face painted on to a clay pot, guarding a vegetable patch. In the corner behind us, chickens roam free and a bull is tied to a tree. Women in traditional dress cook the most delicious curries in clay pots, above open wood fires, while the men serve arrack in cloudy glasses or coconut shells. It could be a typical Sri Lankan village scene, except that this is Nuga Gama, a restaurant at the Cinnamon Grand, Colombo’s finest five-star hotel. It is a carbon-neutral location, with the slogan “back to our roots", and I cannot think of a better setting. Sri Lankans are known for their elaborate, often ostentatious weddings, but ours is as simple as my wife (just joking).
Visitors to Sri Lanka travel to beaches, tea estates, safari parks and historical ruins, but not many would get the chance to eat in such an authentic village setting without even having to leave their hotel. It’s a great photo op for the lazy.
Four years later, I return often with my three-year-old daughter, who loves to feed apples to the same bull, and sometimes I take her to see the restaurant’s weekly cultural show. It is my hat tip to a way of life I love. Can Colombo develop as everyone hopes, without losing its roots?
***
It is 2016, and I come into Colombo for the first time after the birth of my second child. I am sitting at Barefoot’s Garden Café on a Sunday listening to live jazz. I eat black pork curry and share a bottle of white wine with some friends. To my right, a lady weaves a fabric of colours so bright and cheerful that they lift our mood. The end result will be sold at Barefoot’s famous shop. We watch the plethora of visiting expatriate Sri Lankans marvelling at life here. I know each of them wonders when to make the final move back for good. The time is right, I tell these strangers with such authority that I realize that Colombo is my permanent home.
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