It’s fairly late and everything is sleepy and dark on the long drive from Bandaranaike International Airport to Colombo, except for little round discs of green neon blinking ubiquitously, announcing Sporting Times/ Turf Accountants. I am intrigued enough to read it up and discover that horse racing in Sri Lanka goes back to the 1840s and, even more interesting, Colombo Racecourse in 1922 was the first city east of the Suez to introduce a Tote Board or totalisator, that large panel that displays betting odds during races. Even the U.S. got its first boards a full decade later.
Sporting Times, a popular chain of betting shops, has been in business since the ’50s. I am told they also run an eponymous racing magazine and take bets on not just horses but also greyhound races, cricket and football matches. With some 2,000 turf agents and betting centres across the country, gambling (legalised in 2010) seems to be wide awake in the otherwise somnolent Serendib.
Next morning, when we drive down to the Colombo Port City Project, one of the first things the taxi driver says is, “It will have a lot of casinos, madam.” The signage of Chinese companies is everywhere, and the sea is getting rapidly filled in by what looks fancifully to me like a Ramayana-type bridge of boulders. A 270-hectare mammoth of malls, hotels, container terminals and entertainment plazas will sit here, just below us, serving as China’s throbbing artery to Africa and West Asia, accessing oil and markets. No wonder it gives India the heebie-jeebies. The ugly cranes midwifing the birth of the ugly sea-city (from what its blueprint threatens) are in complete contrast to what’s just behind us: the elegant neo-baroque majesty of the old Parliament House, the gently yellowing façade of Galle Face Hotel, and the old-fashioned stretch of the Green, which started life as a promenade where ladies could “take the air” shaded by their parasols.
We have arrived at the start of Vesak, and Colombo is awash with lotuses, paper lanterns, and Buddhist flags. Gangaramaya Temple, past the tranquil Beira Lake, is abuzz. A beguiling mishmash of Hindu and Buddhist, secular and sacred, the temple has giant Buddhas and lotuses, Natarajas and Skandas, ensconced amidst a teeming collection of old cameras, bowls, spoons, lanterns and even an ancient rope-drawn elevator carefully reinstated. Schoolgirls in Sunday sarongs of frilly white are tripping around and laburnum blazes in the courtyard. Across the road, the pavement is overrun by over a dozen vintage printing presses, a curious street museum that makes you worry about rust and rain. But I am not complaining—just the effort to preserve heritage appears benedictory to someone from careless India.
I gawp at the traffic with equal amazement. Midnight or noon, on almost vacant streets, all traffic still halts for red lights. Entire right lanes are left vacant by cars going straight. Autos don’t threaten life. These are wondrous sights to behold.
We stop for lemonade at a stall near the railway station. The handsome, 18-something boy behind the counter asks smilingly where I am from and then replies, “India, of course,” handing out chilled bottles of pale yellow restorative. He and his friend are Tamil, their fathers from Thanjavur. They want to keep chatting, about Chennai, India, Colombo, but it’s impossible to stand too long in the fierce sun. Later, in the air-conditioned taxi, the driver talks of days not so long ago when mothers and fathers would never travel together for fear that a bomb blast might orphan their children. “Before all that happened, we were happy together...,” he says, voice trailing off, and then we change the subject.
In the resort at Bentota, we all meticulously segue into the routine the Western world has deemed a vacation, but at mealtimes, the Aged Ones demand Indian food. The chef materialises and informs us, much to our surprise, that all whole wheat flour or atta for tandoori rotis and phulkas is shipped in from India because Sri Lankans only eat rice and maida. Meanwhile, the rest of us discover wild mango curry, raw jackfruit curry, and yoghurt eaten with treacle, which the islanders rather sweetly call “tree honey”.
