Face Off at Galle Face

It was a splendor to watch the sun set – with the sun fading into the horizon into a ball of orange, illuminating the graying sky with a bright auburn hue, and be lost in the flow of tourists and locals relishing the blissful afternoon mood.

Galle Face was an otherwise deserted strip of beach area in Colombo City when I last saw it in 2009, with military soldiers armed to the teeth manning checkpoints along the roads. That was just after the “end of the 30-year civil war”. Today, it was totally not as I remembered.

Galle Face was now teeming with families, lovers, tourists and traders. The long stretch of lawn was full with children (and adults) flying their kites, playing ball, and vendors selling colorful toys. Parents sat leisurely watching their children as lovers cuddled and whispered, or promenaded, creating a world of their own from the otherwise exultant and noisy crowd.

Along the beach, children and adults frolicked excitedly as the waves caressed the shore with big splashes of cool water. Some were ecstatic, some were frightened, and some were just dipping their feet in the water. Most of them though were dressed from head to toe.

Merchants lined the paved area with stalls and carts, selling mostly food – from ice creams to fries to meals and souvenirs. Of course, they have their famous ‘kottu’ and ‘isso vade’ (pronounced ‘isuwade’), which I certainly tried, and which I topped with a delicious ice cream and then some spiced guavas.

A Beautiful World of Guns and Roses

Waft of burning cedar filled the air, punctured only by broken scent of trunks of pine. At last, an evening goaded by rest and peace, I embraced the full moon floating brightly above my flowing hair. I sauntered up and down the grassy hill to until feeling my feet swollen, I walked unevenly to the couture grass lawn, next only to middle-class residence that had served as my abode for three days now. “Be staying here for the next five months or so,” I said to myself. “This place should remind me of home, it is where my thoughts shall bloom,” I murmured. With a book resting between my arm and chest, I got myself into a corner, pulled out an old maybe dingy couch, then enthusiastically dropped myself like a bomb. Boom! Just like that, I have built, literally, my niche in Sri Lanka.

       

12:00 midnight. With unobstructed silence, I began poring over page upon page of this tiny crimson-covered book by Grisham. The plot was engaging, so were the words he used to describe each event. I could feel the pain and the twist, even the angular cirrhosis, of a life gone mad. Grisham is really good at picturing people. “The man is a torturer, a savage,” in whispers, I briefly described the hero who was slowly but surely turning into a villain. He represented whom I resented back, well, home.  

      

Bong! Bong! Prack! Prack! Prack! The successive volleys pulled myself back to Colombo. I know that sound! Know it very well.  It is embedded in my mind, in my life. Prackpakaprack prack prack prack! Bang Bang Bang!  It is so near, so close - I could hear the shouts of men – to my home. It is the sound of gunfire - from long firearms.  My heartbeat quickened with the sound of it. My senses intensified as they upped their ante for any sound of stray bullet. I stifled some nervous laughs at the thought of coming to a foreign country just to die. Such a paradox.  A few minutes passed. Then silence.

People have woken up. I hear shouts from the neighbors. Probably checking if everyone was okay. Well I hope everyone is okay.  I hear cars starting up. The sounds now intrude into the eerie silence after the spate of gunfire. But I take comfort in the thought that there is still life. I can still hear the world, I can feel my heartbeat, I can still breathe the air. I am supposed to be in the posh side of the city – within a stone’s throw away from the Prime Minister’s Office, the Russian Embassy, the UAE embassy and other foreign embassies. This is supposed to be a ‘peaceful’, ‘secured’ place.

Only a handful lingered to kibitz. Most have gone back to their homes, ready to resume the sleep that was rudely interrupted. But not a soul seems to want to protest what happened just moments ago. I am in Sri Lanka. Should I have expected this? Perhaps not, not here, not anywhere, not ever. My only wish – whatever happens – bring me home.

“Pero es bello amar al mundo

Con los ojos

De los que no han nacido todavía.”[1] 

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[1] Otto Rene Castillo’s “Frente al balance, mañana.” Translated as“But it is beautiful to love the world through the eyes of those who have not yet been born.”