Quote for January

"It looks pretty deep there and there's a lot more water than I thought would be there"
- Pissu Perera's sage observation on being confronted with the Indian Ocean off Patanangala.

Adrift

It was unnerving, the dark blue underneath and the bright blue up above as I bobbed in the waves alone. The last I had seen of my dive buddies were bubbles receding in the depths as I swore at myself through the regulator. I’m pretty competent most of the time, so pressing the inflator button instead of the deflator button was a ridiculously stupid thing to do and I shot up at a much faster rate than the prescribed 18m/minute. I’m fucking lucky I didn’t get the bends, or blow a lung out, though for the latter I’m still keeping a wary eye out.

For isolation though, there are fewer more unnerving moments I’ve had than then, alone in the vast Indian Ocean, with no boat in sight apart from the big liners on the horizon. Waves slapping up against me as I looked around for the boat and waved at anything that seemed promising. Looking down into the 21 meters below me, I couldn't even see the bubbles from my hidden dive buddies, though with the strong current I had no idea how far away I had drifted in those few moments. Thankfully the boatman managed to see my waving arms and I clambered on, shame faced and feeling extremely stupid. The only solution is to dive more, at least 20 more dives before the season fizzles out in March.

More blue yonder here I come.

(Not) Leaving on a Jet Plane

My first season as a ‘patriate’ with the ‘ex’ most definitely left behind. It was busy as well, the family emergency necessitating pretty much the whole of the foreign side of the family being down, cousin K and aunt C being two of my favourite people in the family. N was down as the token member of the boys, with the associated nights drinking and Yala trips ensuing.

And now they’ve all left. It’s a strange feeling I tell you. I woke up on Saturday, the day N was leaving and I felt the keening loss of another friend leaving. D, S, N…everybody leaves and that’s the truth. I wonder how the family, the friends had felt every time I left, the UK, Sri Lanka, San Francisco, Los Angeles, over and over again.

I think it’s easier to leave than be left behind. The former act has an active component, a control component that simply doesn’t exist for the latter. You sort of feel like that dog running along the car as your family leaves you behind, not knowing when you will see them again. I’ve had friends who’ve left and never come back, I’ve left family to lose them. It’s a strange feeling not to be leaving, a good, sad feeling.

End of the decade

I remember ’99 December vividly. The heat after the cold of London, the green after the grey. The new friends, CP and S who are more than family now, and R being there with his terrible hairstyle, akkis were thin and sexy, J was down and DJ’ing at the Blue where a bottle cost a measly four grand. Life was fresh and young then and I was all about the partying. Hand brake turns on Havelock Road and B looking ridiculously cute. I look like I was 12 in those pictures a life time ago as do most of the crew. Most of the crew who now, for better or worse have fallen apart. Some like C and CP having kids, the others like M just disappeared into the wind, unheard from for half a decade. The stories will live on though and we trot them out everytime when the remnants meet up, the clutch slipping at Galle Face roundabout at 2am, the unfortunate toilet incident, etc, etc.

Ten years on and I’ve come to the end of an era. New Years Eve this time was spent with N, a 12 year old bottle of Mendis and some random but interesting acquaintances in the middle of the jungle. Cicidas whirred, while we played chicken with elephants on the way to the room at Yala Village. Rapidly warming ginger beers and arracks in hand, we recounted the incredible leopard sightings of the day, the almost sightings of our childhoods. I was thinking a year has wrought incredible change, but the decade much more so. I never thought I would celebrate 31st night watching elephants wrestle in the moonlight, away from the City, the music, the girls but I did and I have never felt so complete.

As the drunken texts poured in and the clock struck midnight, there were no fireworks. Just the sound of the ocean on the dunes and the rustle of the nighttime jungle.

It was perhaps the best way to end the year. To remind myself why I moved back, what part of my soul was missing all these years. The jungles, the heat, the sandy tracks and the fresh pug prints. For awhile I thought I was trying to capture something I lost over 20 years ago and who knows maybe I am. But I think I’m just writing a new chapter in my life. It’s not the finality I was searching for but I’ve come to realize that doesn’t exist. It’s been an interesting journey across a couple of continents over the last decade and an especially difficult one over the last year but I am looking forward to the present as it slowly transforms into the future.

I hope everyone had a great end to the year and a content year to come.

So this is Christmas

Damn another year has passed. It seems like yesterday, that sunkissed, stormy holiday.

How change has been wrought by a year.

I finally achieved something I have worked towards for so long. And found it wasn’t the end.

I looked across a table at someone I thought I wanted for years, and realized I didn’t.

I had a moment of utter calm and happiness on a boat in the Pacific Ocean.

I spent a month in despair and will more in my fight to move on from the past.

Became the citizen of two countries (and just remembered that I haven’t finished the whole process).

Did a crash course in patience.

Realized that some friendships, however brief are meant to last. Some however long aren’t.

Broke my previous road trip record of a 1,000 miles in a weekend.

Almost followed my genes a couple of times, but came back every time.

Still didn’t figure out what I want to do in life.

Though the most important thing I realized this year is that there really is no light at the end of the tunnel. But that the tunnel itself is not dark.

Merry Christmas and a safe and happy new year to all!

Baffling

This is going to be a relatively short post. Primarily because I have a splitting headache thanks to my sinuses and am feeling proportionally lazy. I was watching a short movie on the SL conflict and reading the (remarkably) balanced comments below the movie when I noted mention of the Holocaust. That’s when I kind of wandered, in a meandering, lackadaisical way.

Are we blowing the difficulty of what we are doing out of proportion?

Let’s think about World War II for a moment in terms of total human cost. The first war where civilian casualties outnumbered military casualties. Also the war where the Holocaust took place. Germany not only launched a war on most of Europe but also single handedly tried to eliminate the Jewish race, failed, but managed to kill six million of them. Of course if you count the other ‘minorities’ that they killed including gypsies (Romani), people with disabilities, homosexuals and Jehovah’s Witnesses of all people, then apparently the toll goes up to between 11 or 17 million.

That’s the equivalent of depopulating the majority of this country, give or take a few million.

11 or 17 million people.

Yet barely a generation later, the country was back at normal. If anything more than normal but ridiculously industrious producing BMWs and large jugs of beer. Does anybody else find that odd? That a country as a whole were a bunch of Aryan domineering murders (and lets be frank, you can’t kill 6 to 11 to 17 million people without a whole bunch of willing and able helpers) but a few years after losing a war, apart from 24 people being charged for war crimes and around 11 hung at Nuremberg, the country went back to pretty much normal.

Not to belittle the level of human suffering a 30 year war and 100 thousand casualties has brought to many people, but it is kind of baffling why normalcy escapes us so when you compare the relative amount with WWII.

Right, I’m going back to my headache.

Tall Tales

It’s been a strange couple of weeks. Disinfectant and fluorescent lights. Green uniforms and visiting times. The family’s been down in droves, people I haven’t seen in years have been in town and it’s been a mixed bag. The cousins and aunts whom I love to bits, the grandaunts and uncles with whom I’m a lot more guarded.

My relationship with the family, on both sides has never been a simple one. Too many secrets in the past and other skeletons in the closet to have ever resulted in what anybody could term a ‘normal’ situation. It was however quite interesting to hear the old stories, stories I’ve either never bothered to hear or have bothered to remember.

The old house in Negombo, three hundred years old but sold by an irresponsible grand uncle and now torn down. The great grandfather who was brilliant but an inveterate gambler, he apparently got a medical scholarship to Kings College but spent far too much time gambling and got sent back in disgrace. He then promptly won another scholarship in Ceylon (it was a long time ago) and had the dubious honour of being one of the students who had taken the longest time to finish medical school. There were countless more tales of people whose genes I shared but had never really thought about. It was surreal.

I guess family emergencies do have their plus points.