Portrait

on indi’s blog, ashanthi says exasperatedly : ‘What’s this Electra NGO mummy shit?’. here’s my attempt at answering her question.

i’m usually patient with idiots. i try to be, especially when they slander me left, right and center on my blog. really, i do try. you say shit about me, i can live with it. what you can’t do, is say shit about other people. for instance, you can’t say shit about my mother.

besides the glaringly obvious fact that it would be painfully irrelevent to drag my mother’s name through the mud on my blog, on which i’m simply expressing views and opinions that i’ve emphatically mentioned are personal and my own, it is just not done, in decency, or something like that. you know?

revealer aka g man said, on my previous post :

Dear (edit) Electra…

We all know that wht Kinda fuckin bitch your mother is..

Yeah.. She fuckin NGO and all she does and do is tryin to make money out of War… She pretends to be a saint-like..

Huh… Whiney Bitches like your Mom needs to be stripped infront of the Whole nation..

Your Momma Never said a Good thing about the Sri Lankan army whos protecting your (edit) Brown ass while you Blog in the AC back in sri lanka.. whose protecting your Bitchy mom up in SL now.. Right now,,,

So dont Blog about your Moms SAD SMS whuch made mommys girl cry.. Cry about the Money your mom bribed from the Innocent people of this country to Educate you ..
How she Smuggled Millions of Rupees through NGO movements… We all know what your Breed are..
So stop Wanking on the Net.
Dadless Rich Bitch!
(end)

i’m not going to sit here and explain real slow to this immature retard that what he/she has done is irredeemably wrong, im am also not going to point out all the reasons that make him/her embarrassingly wrong, but i am going to straighten out a few things, so that the rest of the world knows, or is reminded of, who’s blog this is…

firstly, the bits i’ve edited out are, in order, my name and the name of my school. i don’t think it takes away from the general gist of this comment, therefore i am simply trying to protect whatever is left of my dignity and trying to keep the irrelevents from being involved.

-We all know that wht Kinda fuckin bitch your mother is..-
yeah? we ALL do? funny thing, that. i don’t know what kind of ‘fuckin bitch’ my mother is.

-Whiney Bitches like your Mom needs to be stripped infront of the Whole nation..-
i’d like to see you try. coward.

-Your Momma Never said a Good thing about the Sri Lankan army whos protecting your Brown ass while you Blog in the AC back in sri lanka..-
she never said a good thing about the army, she never said a good thing about the LTTE, she never said a good thing about hitler and the nazis and she never said a good thing about george bush. read my post ‘my pride’, and you might understand why this is. nowhere in my house is there an air conditioner.

-So stop Wanking on the Net.-
after you.

-Dadless Rich Bitch!-
dadless? nope. he’s still around, alive and kicking. rich? again, nope. you and i both wish, but no. certainly, i’m not poor, i live a reasonably great life. i’m not rich. rich people have big houses in colombo 7 and atleast one vehicle, i/my family has neither. but i know rich people. perhaps your sorry self in KL, malaysia is one of them, hmmm?

you told shimmi :

-They wouldnt have to do any of that I f those faggets are Not fighting you prisceless who!!!-
if you’re trying to drive home a point via the internet, it might be useful to brush up on your spelling. try ‘faggot’, and ‘whore’.

basically, i’m asking you to come tell us who you are, since you are clearly so righteous and all knowing. also, stop using indi’s email address when leaving comments, and also refrain from leaving comments under names of my friends, like swinly’s.

if i wanted to hear from an asshole, i’d have asked padashow to fart a little. so, fuck off and die.

sometimes the local media is so biased it’s almost a joke. but there is nothing funny about giving the people a condensed, heavily one-sided version of what’s really going on, and this is most often what it does.

i’m still trying to abstain from getting involved in discussions regarding the road down which the country is headed as of recent times, but i must commend the thread of conversation on indi’s blog, and the posts by daytripper and childof25. the sri lankan blogosphere is finally showing me what most of it is truly made up of : passionate arguments, carefully thought out opinions and the innate desire for peace.

however, there’s an sms i just received from my mother that deserves blogging. simply because an sms has never made me cry before, and this one did. i did not cry in sympathy, or even empathy, and certainly not the understanding of what’s going on and what’s going to happen. i cried in simple and sheer fear. i am so scared for this country.

we very rarely find out the real crux of what is happening outside of colombo, and terribly, yet naturally, till something happens close to home, many of us are numb to the actual terror that has been prevailentt elsewhere, in other people’s homes, in other people’s colombos.

my mother says :

on the road to mutur, in small tamil town called kilivetti. 3 dead bodies on the roadside, wrapped in yellow plastic. mourners gathered around, waiting for police to come. kilivetti has 420 families, all fleeing army beatings. we met three small boys, 9, 12, 13, who have been beaten.

the enormity of this bloodlust, this unadulterated violence and mindless fighting has made the country tired. everyone caught in the crossfire is so fucking exhausted of being the innocent victim, and i am so fucking exhausted of hearing bits and pieces of news like this one. i am so fucking fed up with hearing about dead bodies wrapped in yellow plastic, hearing about little children being beaten senseless, hearing about killing and dying and bombing. i am so fucking done with having a voice that no one hears, and being one in a billion of us that just wants this all to end. i am so fucking fed up with feeling helpless and scared, and never knowing what’s coming next, and never ever knowing how ‘they’ have felt their entire lives till someone bombs the central city so i can, for a day or two panic a little and talk a lot.

i left this comment on sittingnut’s post , ’sri lankan army, our pride’.

i have and am going to continue to refrain from making any commentary on the situation that we’re facing right now, politically, as i mentioned on indi’s blog. i have noticed that getting into politically charged discussions don’t work on the net, almost always everything you say gets horribly misconstrued by others who have opinions and are as stubborn about them as you are, everyone is passionate about their point of view and no one really agrees to disagree. you may have noticed that i’m one of the few regular bloggers that haven’t made a post about the suicide bombing : it is not that i don’t care, it is that saying things on topics like this are mostly futile because right now everything is vague and everyone is hurt and no one really knows what to think. in fact, neither do i. and there is more possiblity than not that, stemming from something i say, i’ll be misinterpreted. i’d rather not have that.

however, i’ll make an exception for this particular post. i do not think the sri lankan army is our pride. i’m not unpatriotic, i don’t hate sri lanka or sri lankans, i am not pro-LTTE. i am not proud of the army, just like i am sure many tamil people are not proud of the LTTE, even though the LTTE claims to be fighting for their ‘freedom’, just like i am sure many americans are not proud of the bush regiment. i am not proud of war, violence or any establishment that condones or engages in violence or waging war. this is not to say that i don’t believe that a nation under threat doesn’t need the protection of authorities like the police, the army, the navy and the air force : that would be simply un realistic. to me, war and war wagers exist because that is what we have come to, it does not exist by the choice of the majority of the human race and it doesn’t exist for us to be proud of it. it simply exists. it is something i have to live with, one of the unfortunate realities and injustices of life and i am certainly not proud of it, but i do not deny it’s necessasity in certain times. personally, i cannot be proud of the sri lankan army as a sri lankan or any other sort of army for that matter, because that would be against the morals, values and ethics i have been taught to live by.

here’s something i didn’t say in this comment : i am not ashamed of being sri lankan or what the army is attempting to fight for, i am not angry with the soldiers. i do not resent them as people, and have nothing against them personally, nor do i undermine the immense bravery they display by being soldiers. they are admirable, for sure. i simply do not agree with the concept of war and the i do not feel the need to be ‘proud’ of armies or of war. like i said, i see war as something i must simply tolerate for it is beyond me to fix, like misery and disease and hunger and poverty.

america apologizes for re-electing it’s ‘its reckless, incompetent and corrupt government’!

this is an old site, up, running and causing over-night controversy since bush and his dawgs were re-elected since the elections in november, 2004. i’ve been meaning to link it here for a long time, but never got around to it. give it some respect, readers, it is long over due.

the united states of america is a super powerful country, and eventually and inevitably they have an enormous effect on the rest of the world. whether we like it or not, we are ultimately seeing the results of whatever choice they make politically, in our communities, our societies. the impact they have on the rest of us is immense and totally undermined by many of us.

these guys did a lot of active campaigning in the lead up to the elections, and upon failing to get the lesser of the two evils, kerry, into office, they’ve been doing some really crazy-cool stuff. protests, awareness-spreading workshops, and they even published the ’sorry, everybody’ book.

here’s a few excerpts from their FAQ file…

What’s this site about?

No. Are you ashamed to be a human?

these are the kind of people who will eventually change the world. it will take some time, but they have the attitude, the reasons, the motivation and most importantly the courage to make a radical difference. funnily enough, there’s still people who ask them questions like this :

Why are you apologizing to the terrorists?

how backward can you get, huh? luckily, these guys handled it well :

We prefer not to confuse terrorists with the rest of the world.

hah! so there.

this is when i start believing that the united states of america isn’t rubbish : when there’s one half of the country apologizing to the entire international community for the choice that the other half of the country made. come november 2004, one half of america decides to continue sleeping in a pile of shit. the other half woke up, ‘aghast and dismayed’, and decided to say ’sorry world, we tried’.

life sucks and shit happens. sometimes, shit keeps happening. but, if by some delusional mistake, you think shit happens exclusively to you, that is preposterously egotistic.

i struggle to hold on to what little i know, what little i know for certain. the rest is a haze. it’s there, steering my life. but it’s a haze. nothing can be prognosticated. everything is glorious and fickle, all at once.

things used to be fairly simple. now it’s a little like livin’ on the edge, constantly. it gets tiring. but i want to embrace it. because i know when it is over, i will regret having hated it while it lasted.

i try and try and try. and fail and fail and fail. but you don’t want to listen to me whining. who does? effort is a strange thing. it takes so much out of me, and more often than not, disappoints terribly. i don’t want to feel like a fool, but more often than not, i do.

i live a delirious cycle of wanting things, getting them, wanting other things, losing whatever i had before and then regretting losing them. it’s hard to tell if i will ever be truly content. but maybe contentment is a myth.

i’m just trying to make some sense out of the reasons, days, goals and memories that is my life. i want to believe it’s ok to screw up. i’m just trying to be. be good, capable, loving, honest, but mostly just be.

i shall see immensity. i shall see, not one segment of this world and this life, but the entirety. the whole, beautiful, terrifying, confusing, wonderful, changing, living, dying thing. that thought is the single most overwhelming thing i know, simultaneously exciting and intimidating.

‘what do you want?’
‘i want to be happy’
‘those are the words of a child’
‘i know’

i do know. happiness is a shape-shifter, never entirely clear or simple. it might even only be something we tell ourselves is out there, in the hope that our hearts will hang on simply because there’s more to life than misery and confusion. and never really knowing.

ah. that’s it. i just want to know. it’s insatiable and lusty and crazy and frustrating. especially knowing that there will never be a way of knowing , for sure. we are doomed, destined to never really know. fated to take endless leaps of faith, meant to make the entire trip with one headlight. what a life.

someone thinks they can save us.

it’s a strange blog, funny, well written and ultimately, interesting. it’s a little tongue-in-cheek and (in my opinion) hates on all the right people.

to digress hugely, us humans do need saving. us humans also have this innate desire to be the ‘rescuer’ of someone else. we are immediately attracted to somewhat damaged people, people with issues and baggage and history. speaking out of personal experience, it’s easy to see that the attraction lies in the desire to be that someone who saves another. the hero. that someone who makes the life-altering changes in another. maybe because we revel in our power to change lives, maybe in hope that some years down the line, the other person will venerate us because our efforts ’saved’ them. oh, how i have tried to save another. how i’ve tried to rescue them, from themselves and the destructive cycle their life had become. how i’ve tried.

do check out the beefpie god’s blog, though. it makes for good reading material, if nothing else.

there aren’t enough young people who believe they can, and want to, change the world, anyway. so, hats off to Him.

Equal Ground, who organized that great women-only party Women on Top which was in march this year, at tabu, is taking it upon themselves to introduce colombo to full-blown gay pride. i was in london for gay pride last summer, and i don’t remember having that much fun or being around that many happy people. ever.

i was always skeptical about how pride would be received in colombo, where there is plenty of repressed anger and frustrated violence to go around, where you can’t even go to a regular party without getting into, being the cause of or witnessing a fight, leave alone a party full of gay people who have ‘let their hair down’. the few parties i have been to, that have been organized by equal ground or other related organizations have always been really fun, because the security is really tight and they are always very careful about who they allow in and who they don’t. i suppose this is why women on top was such an enormous success. there was no tension, there was no ‘who’s feeling me up?’ ‘which one of those jerks is going to follow me to the bathroom?’ type thing, which relaxed the atmosphere noticeably.

i really hope that colombo pride goes off like the organizers expect it to. equal ground is a noteworthy organization, and their efforts to create a safer place for everyone are definifely admirable. i think the biggest step forward would be the banishing of this social mind set that homosexuality, bi-sexuality and trans-sexuality are perversions, unnatural. rosanna flamer-caldera, from equal ground, told me many horrific stoies about how lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and trans sexual people, especially those from the rural areas, are treated with disgust, disowned by their families, forced into marriages and are faced with violence daily.

colombo pride is going to happen over a week beginning on the 21st of may, and the activities are going to include a film marathon, a kite festival and of course, the essence of pride celebrations : the party. the event sounds like it is most definitely going to be fun.

everyone is welcome to attend the pride celebrations, everyone, that is, who attends it in the right spirit : that of solidarity and, quite simply, pride.

women are a strange species. every day i learn something new about our good kind. here’s some observations i’ve made. women can be amazing at their best, and destructive at their worst.

1. they are fiercely loyal.
men are not the only one’s with the ‘mob mentality’. girls, in the plural, can be as vicious and protective of each other as a bunch of very drunk, very testosterone driven men on a saturday night. they’re less likely to throw a punch, but they will go to unheard of lengths to make your life miserable if you mess with a girlfriend. they travel in packs and watch out for each other in a way that no one else really does, or can.

2. they are also fiercely vicious, especially if spurned.
hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. tell me about it. i’ve encountered very angry women, and very angry men, and somehow found myself noticeably more threatened (and i admit, frightened even) when faced with the chick. women, especially if given enough reason, will connive, and plot and scheme and meticulously screw you over.

3. they can be incredibly insincere.
women can be one thing to your face, and an entirely different something behind your back. i have found that, in general, men either don’t have it in their nature, or just do not have the time and energy it takes to be insincere. a woman carries this off like an art, and most often also allows herself to get really hurt when she discovers that others do it to her too.

4. they are jugdmental, especially of other women.
everyone judges everyone else. that’s a given. but most women take this to another level. they love playing all-mighty superior, and think they have the god given liberty to say whatever they feel like saying about someone else based on incredulous observations and loose theories. and better yet, imposing these theories on other people. lots of other people. not for a moment do they stop to consider their ignorance on the matter.

5. they live by double standards.
oh good lord. women are simply the maestros of double standards. i’ve found most men to be more practical in this regard, and that men are less hurried to be this hypocrtical. maybe this is because men are also simply less judgmental. like i said before, a woman passes judgment on other people, especially other women, like it’s her job. and then she also believes that her actions are totally justified, even if they are similar to those of the people (other women) she judged rashly, and negatively.

6. they are melodramatic.
live with it. women are drama queens. it’s like a birth right. they are sensitive, emotional, intuitive and usually big hearted, driven by romantic ideals and faith in universal things like courage, love and loyalty. they take this stuff real seriously, so don’t ever laugh at her when she’s telling you things like ‘what ever happened to chivalry?’. she’s your typical juliet, especially with regard to love, romance and relationships : starry eyed, hopeful, idealistic. if she ever tells you ‘it’s natural’, she’s not kidding.

7. they are brave.
i don’t know too much, but i think women are integrally braver than men are. women are internally stronger. they always have a healthy attitude towards going wrong and going on. they don’t have that distracting ‘male ego’ to deal with, and are hence more capable of picking up the pieces and getting on with life. sure, they can be wrecked easily, but they will also fix themselves up and face the music stronger, better and possibly sooner than most men. this is another one of those innate traits that i believe that women are just born with.

8. they are easily guilt-ridden.
women spend their lives talking about feminism and equal rights, but most often, almost naturally, cave into the chauvinistic ways of this world. she will feel guilty when her son is caught distributing pornography in his school. she will feel guilty for breaking up with someone who treats her like crap anyway. she will feel guilty when she lets her boyfriend feel her up a little. she will feel guilty when her home is a mess. she will feel guilty about getting drunk. she will feel guilty about indulging herself a little, about being a little selfish. typical and vicious cycle.

9. they love misery.
i did a post about how women are attracted to men who treat them like shit. well, it’s true. for some odd reason, i don’t know one woman who has not, at one point in her life or another, been head over heels in love and almost obsessed with some guy who was just plain bad news. this part and parcle of loving the drama : loving the misery. i don’t know if it makes us feel like better people, or whether we take comfort in knowing that we might possibly come out of the shit hole better, bigger, wiser people, but i know women take that dangerous leap of faith time and time again to find themselves in too deep. the heart ache, the crying, the bitter memories and communal bitching sessions (known to others as venting) : she will revel in this for some time, then move on with a scar she is proud of and a wound she is happy to have cured.

10. they love talking (mostly about themselves).
everyone knows this, right? women have feelings they enjoy sharing, and they enjoy being heard and understood. of course, heard and understood are miles apart in practicality. their feelings are important to them, and they expect this to be the case for others as well.

note : these are generalizations and none of it literally applies to every woman on the face if planet earth. i will also humbly admit that i am guilty of most of the above mentioned. of course, some of this applies to men too, to the human race as a whole.

sunday’s are delicious. i realize today was easter sunday, and this has no significance for me except for memories from my childhood when we were given the privilege of making a trip to the kandos shop oppostie thurstan college to buy easter bunny chocolates, but i hope it was good for those of you it does affect. mahangu has a nice post about it.
however, i made the most of my sunday, too.

i woke up reasonably early and had the longest shower. some days, that seems the only way to avoid dropping dead from the heat. i went book shopping, at the vijitha yapa bookshop in crescat, and bought something i know i’m going to break my heart reading : the boy who loved anne frank. anyone who’s read the diary of anne frank, which is a phenomenally powerful read in iteself, knows about peter van pels, anne’s closest confidante and dearest friend.

i met anush and his friends for awhile at breeze bar, in the cinnamon grand. i didn’t drink, i haven’t in about a month, but they had all these fancy, colourful cocktails. anush was having a margarita, which, if i may say so, is my trademark drink. this is an acquired, classic preference he stole from me. the breeze bar is generally a nice place, especially for a drink with friends on a lazy sunday afternoon. and especially if it’s hot, because the place is surrounded by trees and shade. the boys (and i, a li’l bit) were full of evil jokes and depricating stories.

anush, breeze bar. he’s all spike-y hair. when he stands, he’s all height. i love the boy to glorious little bits, even if he mocks me for nearly everything i say and tells me that my eyes have gotten lost in my face.

next, i went to visit my bed ridden friend, J. she’s had minor surgery in her foot to remove some growth, and is quite miserably unable to do much. she (sarcastically) says she lives in a 5 star hotel where you need to say ‘please’ about 7 times before anything gets done for you. we talked alot, ate ice cream bars and pizza. in that order. she’s one of those people who’s always had an uncanny habit of knowing exactly what i mean, even when i’m incoherently struggling to express myself. this makes talking to her a whole lot easier. she’s a star.

this is J, doing one of the few things she can do, given her unfortunate situation. she has a mother of a camera and takes great pictures. she’s taken some very flattering photographs of me. and my legs.

next stop, tracy’s house. i hadn’t met khavan properly, so i got that taken care of. he is 3 months old today. he has some great expressions, very serious and severe. neha, who’s a year and a month older than khavan, is as i remember her (on most occasions), albeit a little bigger. all smiles and energy. she can walk, a drunken swagger as her father called it, and she attempts to run. soon, she’ll be a pro at it, and we’ll have to get scientifically modified arms that stretch for miles. word on the street is that she’s a bit of a bully, but i’m sure khavan will get his own back soon.

tracy, feeding khavan. he needs to be bounced around a whole lot once he starts crying, in order to calm him down. tracy has become very, very (scarily) good at this. you gotta love this family of tennekoons though. every single one of ‘em.

more pictures here.

posse and the bombay sapphire, coral sands, hikkaduwa.

i’m back home, for the first time since sunday morning. i’m hot, bothered and generally nostalgic for the last four days that have been nothing short of truly fun.

sunday : we manage to leave home by about 11 am. mother, grandmother, brother, uncle, uncle and i. the original family posse. we head to unawatuna, and stop at the ambalangoda rest house for lunch. this place turns out to be a complete shit hole. as shit hole-ish as it is possible to be. the food is actually alright, but the place is grotty and dirty and unkempt. not entirely inviting. anyway, we go down to unawatuna. mother and grandmother are deposited at a place called ’sea view’, and brother and i proceed to find rooms at the legendary bishu’s. this is where ‘the wedding’ happened. bishu hassan is the master of hospitality, and his place is super neat. brother’s friend parisa is with us for one night, so we make the best of it and sit awhile on the beach talking, and take a dip in the unawatuna bay sea during sunset. i display my new (and first ever) bikini. we reminisce about S and S’s wedding, two years ago, one week before the tsunami. it is wonderful to be back in good old unawatuna, a place we have been frequenting since we were tots that were flung into the sea by our desperate parents, left to fend for ourselves and each other in the reasonably calm waters while the adults sat on the beach with their beers. a lot of familiar restaurants and cafes along the beach have been resurrected over the last one and a half years. business is booming and the beach is swarming with tourists and louts. family gathers for dinner at the place in which we are staying. the food is phenomenal, and we all sleep fairly early.

monday : i am woken by my bellowing brother, who’s trying to kick my door down. we have coffee at our place, and head down to the beach. the day is spent getting in and out of the sea, taking the piss out of mother and consuming vast amounts of coke (cola) and iced water. its murderously hot, but the water is beautiful and tempting, and it makes up for the otheriwse stifling weather. we have lunch at this restaurant we have almost made our own. i end up having 3-4 showers a day. later in the evening, i take a walk down to the beach, buy myself a coffee and read my book. my brother joins me, and soon mother too. we walk till its time for dinner, talking about love, marriage and decisions. life is tough. but not when you’re on holiday.

all so picture perfect. unawatuna.

tuesday : this time, its my turn to rise and shine early and act like mary-fucking-sunshine. i kick my brother out of bed, but i don’t wait for him. i walk down to where my mother and grandmother are staying. they are downstairs having breakfast. i join them, but don’t eat. brother joins us soon, and eats. and eats. and eats. what else is new? we walk down to the beach, and soon the entire entourage is basking in the sea. mother and grandmother are out before brother and i. we remain, bobbing in the waves, recognizing the ocean floor with our feet and talking about women, men and why we never know what we want. i leave after lunch, and come to hikkaduwa, where sean, tash, pieris, guppy and nush have just arrived and are waiting for me. i engage in hearty conversation with the driver who’s taking me to hik, and every time i stall, looking for a word, i silently kick myself, shamed by how rotten my sinhala is. i meet the boys (and girl) at hotel francis, where they’re lunch-ing. afterwards, we walk ten full minutes in the sweltering heat to hotel coral sands, complaining endearingly to each other all the way. we book the suite, which is an apartment with two bedrooms, two bathrooms, one kitchenette and one living area. the view from the room isn’t great per se, but the hotel is semi-posh and has a nice pool. we are also directly across the street from a nice bathing spot in the sea, so we’re not too fussed. we settle in and go down to the beach for a dip. after that, we lie around on this deck by the pool, order coffee and talk. asvajit, who’s also holidaying in hik with his family, comes over to see me for awhile. we head to dinner, find some alright italian joint and eat. we come back to the room and try to drink. i feel nauseous upon my first (very diluted), so i resign. pieris is in full form. but soon, he falls asleep. guppy, nush and i drive to a considerably happening bar, called ‘top secret’. asvajit and his friends entertain me, till the place shuts down and we walk down the beach to this party at a place called ‘anchorage’. the music is mind-blowing and everyone is wasted. asvajit and i talk for some time, and i watch, fascinated, as guppy rolls a joint like a pro for someone who doesn’t smoke them. we go back to our room by about 4 am. the night was perfect, to say the least. for multiple reasons.

hikkaduwa beach

wednesday : you think sharing a bathroom with boys is tough? try sharing a room with 3 of them. there are clothes everywhere and they eat on the bed. they wake me up early, at about 9 am. by the time we shower and get the hell outta there, sean and tash, the happy couple, are already done having coffee on the poolside terrace. we cruise around in the car, looking for breakfast. we all have an opinion about where to stop and where not to stop, and this results in us cruising up and down the same road for a good half an hour. i finally tell everyone to shut up, and order that they will stop where i say ’stop’ and vow that i will make them eat at the shittiest place possible if they don’t comply. we finally stop when i yell stop and eat. lo and behold, the place, ‘refresh’, is nice nice nice. we come back, jump around in the sea, and eat lunch, quite in contrast to the morning, in a horrible place on the beach called ‘blue note’. we come back, jump around in the sea some more, and see guppy and pieris off at about 7 pm. they return to colombo. the happy couple, nush and i, drive down to t’top secret’ to find coffee. i sit with asvajit, his mother, brother and hiran and have one glass of red wine, while the trio go next door and drink coffee without me. after they return, the four of us go to dinner, and end up at a neat little joint that looks, and smells, divine, called ‘roger’s garage’. we stuff ourselves silly. we hang out on the beach till midnight near ‘top secret’ and drive back to our place. we go for a moon-light dip in the sea. the beach is all our’s, ominous and calm, and the moon is so full that it hurts to admire it for too long. i go to bed after having a shower at 1 am, all wrapped up in my happiness and euphoria.

thursday : we wake up, we have breakfast at our hotel, lounge in the pool, and the sea, for a good part of the morning. we shower, change, pack and settle bills. we buy the legendary cheese rotis from the legendary (and original) cheese roti shop in hik, and head back to colombo, armed with nothing but our memories and bad jokes. i’m already nostalgic for the perfection of the past 4 days. it is so refreshing to get away from the usual bump and grind, the weariness of routine and regularity. this trip was amazing and fulfilling. confessions were made, lectures were given, tales were told and talks were had. there is nothing quite like the warmth of a crazy family, the closeness of incredibly good friends and a few days away from the real world to remind you that here on earth, all heaven is borrowed.

all’s well that ends well.

more pictures here.