We just returned from Trincomalee yesterday. A short 45-minute flight south over Tamil countries and the Palk Strait takes one to Colombo’s Bandaranaike International Airport.
Trincomalee is located on the east coast of Sri Lanka. The road from Colombo to Trincomalee starts off winding through lush green squares of paddy, tall evergreen trees, and red-tiled, low houses set deep inside compounds with delicate pink or yellow-tinged Frangi Panis, tall Hibiscus shrubs, and a variety of flora. The road is fringed with peepal trees, often with the multi-colored Buddhist flag fluttering beneath them, claiming the trees for their significance.
No self-respecting writer can afford to be ignorant of plants and trees, Ruskin Bond chastises. I have never more acutely felt my ignorance of plants and trees than when I travel abroad. Sri Lanka, in particular, is a country rich in this aspect.
I love to imagine that island nations are ever so delicately connected by their history and language and culture. After all, they have been simmering and stewing their individual flavours together for millennia now. And even if, like oil and broth, we can separate some elements from each other occasionally, they are blended in deliciously, offering rich varieties of comingled textures when you dip into them.
There are other signs, too, of the tropical island vibe. Small tea shops that are nestled under rustling trees, unhurried Sri Lankans sauntering to open shanties that sell bunches of unlabelled vegetables grouped and heaped and sold without price tags, and the dark brown skins that don’t acknowledge the incessant sun in the plains.
Dappled in sunlight, surrounded by various shades of green, with always a cool breeze to be enjoyed under any of the leafy tree copse nearby, Sri Lankans have somehow preserved this tender coconut of an island with great balance.
Once you start nearing the northeast coast, the sun gets closer to Earth. Through the heat waves shimmering on the highway, you see the land beginning to stretch out farther and farther without being softened by cool greens. The sky is bronzed blue. Where there are trees, it is mostly palm trees and the banyan trees – they seem to emphasise rather than diminish the dry descent into geographic hypnosis that the land induces.
With each passing kilometer, the paddy fields pass the baton to the brambles as sentinels of the highways, till there is just the traveler, hot searing wind, a distinct feeling of the sea, and occasional small patches of warm ponds. When the sun is directly above the head, even the birds seem to forsake the ponds, but otherwise, there are black headed ibises sifting through the water. These ibises are a perennial in the lush midsections of the country, too, and yet, here they were, in unsparingly harsh conditions.
I could probably bust the delicious mystery surrounding this behaviour, but I’m not a zoologist. I might look up their behaviours out of curiosity and habit, but for now, their distinctly curved beaks, monochrome feathering, and their tenacious character to represent the avian population in the arid eastern territory has provided them with an aura that I do not want to disturb. Through the trip, I discovered that these small ponds also attract Painted Storks, Red-Wattled Lapwings, and Great Thick-knees (Great Stone-Curlew).
As I slowly pass each water body, I drink in the sight, trying to memorise the birds standing and staring, mentally noting down the time of the day and population. If I had asked to stop and get off the side of the road, my family would have been inconvenienced. Maybe not Mira. She seems to understand nature.
I’ve read somewhere that each person’s world is only as rich as their mind. I console myself that I’ll come back to Sri Lanka very soon alone. There is life that we live in consensus with disinterested people, and then there is the world that you want to feed your soul during your lifetime. Sri Lanka seems to be the latter. Accessible, affordable, and alluring.
Darshan, our auto driver, seemed to be driving his machine through the heat with an unreadable expression. I had heard him speak in Tamil with his friend earlier an hour ago. Slowly, I leaned over and asked him something in Tamil. He slowly turned around, and his hitherto inscrutable face beamed into a warm smile.
We were driving from Kuchaveli, through Nilaveli, to Trincomalee.
Over the next 6 hours, he fills me in on details about everything. I show a lot of interest but don’t venture forward with any commentary lest I disturb his safe zone of opening up about the land. “During the yudham, the tigers used to hide in there,” he reminisces, pointing into the brambles. The white and yellow scorching dry sand, the disc of burning sun above, the hard green and brown of the brambles, combine with the steady thudding and ssshhh-ing of waves along the coast of the thin strip of land we were driving through just beyond the line of trees on either side of the road, first seemed like the last place where one could hide. But in a few hours, I realised it was the opposite. This strip of land was good at hiding people.
I had hardly noticed much about the humans who were inhabiting the hamlets. Usually, I always notice them immediately. But here, they were so blended into the land. They did not wear caps, treating the formidable heat and sun as an equal. No umbrellas or sunglasses either. Lean sun-burnt Tamils, walking along stretches of parched roads to god knows where, from who knows how long back, without complaint or hurry. The defiant lone Banyan tree has either a Mariamman Kovil or a Murugan Kovil under it. “They take the Kavadi and walk from Koneshwaram to a Kovil about 20 kms away,” Darshan explained proudly after I stared a little too concernedly at a mother and daughter walking barefoot at 2 in the afternoon. I nod, truly awed by the undertaking.
What the people lack in vibrancy, the peacocks compensate for in their tail feathers. These hardy birds look dainty, have unimaginable hues of keratin-coated feathers, and strut through the heat in disobediance. Palinda, a forest ranger in Wilpattu, had wistfully explained, “The Tamils revere Lord Murugan, and so they won’t let anyone harm the peacocks,” when I had asked if the roaming flocks of peacocks aren’t pests to the farmers.
The peacocks didn’t seem like they minded playing lightning rod to ground Sinhala-Tamil differences. They were busy chasing dogs, scratching pit vipers, shedding feathers for Kavadis and twirling for the occasional wandering German tourist’s camera.
The Red-Wattled Lapwings I had seen earlier seemed to have played a more active role in the Sri Lankan conflict. It is claimed that the combatants on both sides made use of the Red Wattled Lapwing’s alarm calls to identify whether it was animals approaching or enemies. Apparently, the bird has two different calls for each of the intruders.
Conflicts seem to be present at every turn in life. In our own lives, we sometimes feel trapped, a sense of deja vu that is worse than oppression, where time seems to be dripping out, carrying with it the possibilities of adventures, because we are too focused on reacting to everything that we consider needs correction. Sometimes all we need to do is pick our pleasures and battles, and let the rest wash over. The birds adjudicate unnecessarily.
In the mornings and evenings, a cool breeze wafts over the parched land from the Indian Ocean. One morning I saw the Sri Lankan Shama. The shama is aptly colored for Sri Lanka. Cinnamon-dusted orange with a clove-hued underparts and a long tail. Mornings in Kuchaveli resounds with the melodious trilling of these beautiful passerines.
One afternoon, there was a whole host of birds surfing the billowing tree branches above where I was lying down. There was a Black Hooded Oriole obstinately clinging onto a bucking bough for a good half an hour. A lime-pie of a bird with generous coat of bright yellow turmeric, the Oriole is a bird I have not seen enough to form an opinion about. Mid afternoon, an Asian Koel set up a racket from among thick vines that I was tempted to get up and walk over to give it a stare down. A couple of King Fishers busied themselves flying from tree to tree. Gregarious Yellow-billed babblers (seven sisters) chirped noisily in the undergrowth. You could always sense the Greater Coucal in the vicinity from the resonant throaty oop-oop-oop that fills the air.
Throughout the region’s history, the birds have been around. From ancient Tamil Kingdoms, Buddhist Sinhala dynasties, Allegiance to Mainland Indian and Inland Sri Lankan royalties, The Jaffna Kingdom, and the advents of the Portuguese, English and Dutch colonisers, the birds have seen it all.
Trincomalee reminded me not to compete with a checklist of things to do in life. It exists on a grander scale. Time slows down in Trinco. History colours your view of the land. And if you appreciate geography, standing atop Koneshwaram Kovil, you get a sense of standing on the precipice atop the Indian Ocean.
The Reluctant Book Worm 
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