Sri Lanka Diaries: Part Four
Day Two
Have you ever woken up to the muffled sound of tiny tots making the kind of sounds only they can? I did and I found it very pleasantly nostalgic. There’s something about the innocence of small children that is very heart-warming to witness, even if from a distance.
It was as early as 7.15 a.m., when the domestic helper knocked on my door to inform me of breakfast being ready. The Montessori school on the ground floor of the guesthouse was abuzz with activity. I showered and got dressed and finally made it to the breakfast table at 8. Mrs. Dunuwile was waiting for me with her characteristic smile and warmth. Over a bowl of fruit, pieces of toast and some tea, we talked about a variety of subjects from the civil war in Sri Lanka to the ineffectiveness of the Indian government in dealing with the frequent terrorist attacks happening all over the country. I like conversing with people older than me. They tend to have the kind of stories I like listening to.
She was pleased enough with my company to let me go through the guest book – a privilege that she doesn’t extend to just about anyone. I felt flattered for sure!
I decided to explore a bit of Kandy on foot, before heading to the elephant orphanage at Pinnewala. I didn’t want to reach there before feeding time at 1.15 p.m. anyway. After crossing the road, I decided to walk rightwards around the lake this time. I had my camera with me and was hoping to take some interesting photos of the lake and the sights around it. I didn’t have to wait too long for that. On a branch of tree that extended towards the centre of the lake, from the edge, I spotted a few turtles sun-bathing without sun block! On another branch next to it, were a few birds. The first time I saw the turtles, I wasn’t sure if they were real or gimmicky sculpture pieces meant to confuse tourists like me. On careful observation though, movement on their part confirmed that they were indeed very real.
After walking for a bit, looking at the different buildings around the lake, with fascination plastered on my face as is so characteristic of me, I considered making human contact. I asked a couple seated on a stone bench nearby, how to get to the bus stand and whether I could do it by walking in the anti-clockwise direction around the lake that I had already begun doing. The man and woman conferred for a few minutes before turning to me to spring the bad news. No, I couldn’t get to the bus stand in the direction I was headed. I hated having to backtrack and turn the other way, but I did it any way.
I ambled onto one of the main thoroughfares in the town centre, and suddenly Kandy didn’t seem like a quaint, sleepy town anymore. I had passed a mini-market that could easily have been Delhi’s ‘Palika Bazaar’ or Mumbai’s ‘Fashion Street’ though not as fashionable, to get there and now standing on this street, the jostling and general bustle reminded me of Bangalore’s ‘Brigade Road’. They even had a KFC! Was this what Russell Peters meant when he joked about Sri Lankans being the forgotten Indians? I could just as well have been walking in a South Indian city speaking broken Kannada in response to Singhalese that could just as well have been Malayalam.
White-Haired Gentleman
An expensive IDD (our ISD is their International Direct Dialling) call to my brother later, I found myself at the non-private bus stand. I guess the buses (minibuses rather) I had taken till then were private ones. I couldn’t tell, and frankly I couldn’t have cared less. A white-haired gentleman on a red bus was helpful enough to confirm that the bus was indeed going towards Pinnewala. He was so helpful, he told me exactly where to get down to catch another bus that would take me to the elephant orphanage. “Hmm…” I thought to myself, “This guy seems friendly and interesting. I should sit down next to him before anyone else does.” So I sat down next to him and he kept feeding me with interesting conversation at regular intervals throughout my journey in that bus.
During the episode where I witnessed my first ever live sighting of a person having an epileptic fit an aisle away, the white-haired gentleman was even so kind as to mention to me that such people who know that they are prone to such epileptic episodes shouldn’t be travelling by themselves. That piece of advice to no one in particular really helped the poor man frothing from the mouth and twitching himself into a frenzy, didn’t it?