The bellies are vanishing in Colombo

An Arjuna Ranatunga-type belly was a common sight in Colombo ten years ago. Many members of that generation did not care much about physical fitness, but oh have the times changed!

One of the main reasons for this change is the fact that several parks have been landscaped across Colombo. My beloved Nugegoda has a wonderful park that is just a 5-minute walk away from the post office. A lagoon flows through the park, which is blessed with an abundance of wildlife from monitor lizards to a variety of birds.

There's also a wonderful and big park coming up off the High Level Road in Pepilyana Road.  This is in addition to an enormous park near the Bellanwila Temple, which has a nice bicycle track as well.

I also saw some new parks in the city centre and the Jayawardenepura Kotte area, near the parliament.  

People make great use of these parks, as well as the beach on Mount Lavinia. This is an absolutely welcome change in Colombo.

High tea at the Mount Lavinia Hotel

14 years of travelling to Sri Lanka and I never once went inside the iconic Mount Lavinia hotel. That changed this week, when I had high tea at the oceanside terrace.

The high tea spread (especially the savouries) leaves a lot to be desired, but the hotel obviously charges for the views. The views of the blue ocean, Colombo city and the coves are absolutely stunning. This is probably the best place to have a sundowner in all of Sri Lanka.

It's obvious that the bloody civil war is a thing of the past in Sri Lanka, when one can enter any five star hotel without even passing a metal detector. This is the way hospitality was meant to be before the terrorists ruined it all in many parts of the world.

May peace prevail permanently on this emerald isle!

The advent of cheaper transport options in Colombo

Until a few years ago, the only ways to get around Colombo were really cheap buses or three wheelers that made an art form of ripping people off.

By 2013, most of the autos started using electronic meters and now the only obstacle was knowing the fastest way to get somewhere, as Colombo is circular and not linear like Bombay.

Now, thanks to Uber and an impending flood of radio taxis and other aggregators, it is easy to get around Colombo. In addition to this, plans are on for a modern mass rapid transport system.  If this becomes a reality, the Sri Lankan capital moves one step closer to becoming world class. 

Notes from Colombo: Who spoils the image of Indians abroad?

A lot of middle class Indians complain that their working class brethren spoil the image of Indians in foreign countries. From my own personal experiences, it's the rich and upper middle class folk from India who need a behavioural adjustment.

On Saturday, I went to a popular cinema hall to watch the excellent Hindi film Neerja.  During the interval, there was a bit of commotion in the hall. A Sri Lankan man stepped on the foot of a woman while walking to his seat.

This lady, who was very light-skinned and spoke with what is called a "covent school" accent, was quite rude with the man and asked him to cross through another row. When he responded to her, she mocked his English and said he "should learn proper English first and then talk." My initial impression was that this was a local Burgher woman.

The Sri Lankan men were there to watch the film and not get into a language argument with that woman.

A couple of minutes later, I heard her telling some others in Hindi to cross through another row. She clearly had a Delhi accent. She then told her friend in Hindi about how little common sense these Sinhalese had!!! I felt like going up to her and asking her to go back to whichever hellhole she came from. The fact that she was mentioning Gurgaon a few times in her conversation with her friend suggested that she was from the National Capital Region.

Then the interval was over and my attention was back on the film.

A visit to a Buddhist temple on a Full Moon night

There is something purely magical about Buddhist temples in Sri Lanka on a Poya  (Full Moon) night.  It's the sight of people dressed in white meditating near the Bodhi tree, the smell of incense, the light of oil lamps, and the cool and gentle breeze.

Some seek merit and blessings in this life, others focus on attaining higher levels of consciousness, while people like me just enjoy the enriching cultural experience. My favourite activity is to gently place lotuses in front of the statues of the Buddha.

These traditions were brought to this blessed island from India more than 2,000 years ago. I wonder if the now-vanished Buddhist temples in Kerala had the same aura and ambience as Sri Lankan temples when India was mostly Buddhist.

It's amazing how many times I have come to this island and enjoyed the Buddhist culture and traditions, yet I have never once set foot in Bodh Gaya and some of the other important Buddhist sites in India. What am I waiting for? 

Beautifully-restored Galle

Just a few years ago, the decay was visible in the Portuguese and Dutch buildings in the Galle fort. After sunset the fort and the town became as empty as Kandy at 8 pm. Yesterday, I noticed a different energy and a different vibe to the southern Sri Lankan town.

The once-decayed buildings are whitewashed with a fresh coat of paint, the streets have been newly-repaved, classical street lights don the lanes and a series of new and elegant boutiques line the fort. If there's one thing the authorities could do, it's to close some of the streets to vehicular traffic.

No camera could have done justice to the crimson red sunset we saw yesterday, a day where the sun was playing hide and seek and the cool Indian Ocean breeze made us forget that were in a tropical island close to the equator. 

The faces of Sri Lanka

People-watching is one of my favourite activities in Colombo. This is a city where I can easily blend in the crowd. Where I can be an outsider who looks like an insider and just calmly observe people with batting an eyelid.

Sri Lankans are very beautiful people and their faces reveal the fact that their ancestors mixed with all visitors (and invaders) to the island. You spot some hardcore Tamil-looking and Bengali-looking people but a vast majority seem to be mixed race and have an interesting set of features. Yesterday while walking through the market of Nugegoda, I spotted many Portuguese faces, some Malay faces, an odd Dutch face and a few Malayali faces (many Keralites migrated here and assimilated with the Sinhalese in the 19th century).

It would be very interesting to map the ancestry of people here.