Love in Sri Lanka

My trip to the island country of Sri Lanka was shorter than I would have liked. It was rushed. But the few short days were magical. I walked along long-winding beaches, met pretty men and women the colour of burnished bronze and saw statues of Buddha locked in eternal meditation.

But my favourite memory is undoubtedly of the first three days I was anchored to Mt Lavinia. Mt Lavinia is a hotel seated on the shores of the Indian Ocean overlooking a pretty horizon – where the sea and sky are wrapped around one another like boxers in a clinch. For an escapist like me, being stranded in a strange island is the stuff of dreams. What better way to escape reality than to lose yourself in a foreign country? – Better yet, an island!

I spent days haunting the corridors of the hotel, watching the train scurry down the rail and playing tug-o-war with the sea. (I lost! The beach stole my favourite red ballerina flats.) I spent hours watching the waves slap against the rocks and was strangely reminded of a lover’s spat.
It was during one of my evening explorations of the hotel that I saw it. I paused to gaze longingly at the frame and into the painted faces of a pair of star-crossed lovers.

I didn’t know it then but this was Lady Lovina Aponsuwa herself and her par amour Sir Thomas Maitland.

It was later that I learned that Mount Lavinia hotel was once home to the Governor of Ceylone – Sir Thomas Maitland. When he first landed in Sri Lanka, a troupe of dancers were called to perform at his welcome party. Part of this troupe was a local, biracial mestizo dancer by the name of Lovina. Lovina with her hair dark as midnight and skin as brown as warm chocolate was beautiful beyond words. Lured by her charms, Sri Thomas Maitland snatched every opportunity he could to see her. Soon, the pair fell in love.

But Lovina was half-Portuguese and half-Sri Lankan. Biracials were the lowest in social hierarchy those days. Naturally, the relationship was frowned upon. So Sir Thomas Maitland built a tunnel connecting Lovina’s humble hut to a wine cellar in his palace. And every night she would take that stroll down the long dark tunnel and slip surreptitiously into Maitland’s room for a secret rendezvous.

But this story doesn’t have a happy ending. The British Crown hears of these midnight trysts and Sir Thomas Maitland is summoned back to Britain.

So what happened to Lovina? Well, no one knows for sure. There are several versions. One version says that she threw herself off a cliff and died. Apparently, her spirit still haunts the school that was built on top of her hut. Teachers and students alike, claim to hear eerie noises and see ghostly apparitions every now and then.

Whatever happened to Lovina, history asserts that Sir Thomas Maitland died a bachelor.

There are many things about Mt Lavinia that strikes me as timeless - the beach, the breeze, and the orange-red sky with the sun ensconced in a flurry of clouds. But what truly makes the place magical is its history with love. A love that was nurtured for five measly years but has somehow managed to withstand the test of time. And maybe I had too much to drink that night but as I wandered the corridors of the hotel I could feel vestiges of this grand romance in every shred of the place –but especially in myself when I stopped to stare at the painting and my heart hurt just a little.

After those three days in Mt Lavinia, we travelled to Nuwara eliya where we were ambushed at every turn by some of the largest, most colourful flowers I have ever seen. We trekked our way through Horton Plains National park to arrive at World’s End – only for the view to be clouded by mist. And later to Kandy again – to the Temple of the Tooth – where Gautama Buddha’s tooth retrieved from his funeral pyre is said to be stashed.

But of those trips I recall nothing. What I have taken with me are those three haunting days in Mt Lavinia – where I lost my best pair of ballerina flats and - my heart.

The Anatomy of Grief

So I got thinking today!
About gravity!
About grief!

Apparently, the universe is made of space-time fabric. This ‘fabric’ is knit out of the three dimensional space and the fourth dimension, time. So, space and time are like threads interwoven to create this beautiful tapestry – our universe.

Now imagine this tapestry, spread out real tight. It is stretched. Now, drop a bowling ball right in the middle. See what happens? Assuming the tapestry didn’t rip, the fabric is bent. It is curved under the weight of the bowling ball. And by laws of common sense, it isn’t difficult to arrive at the conclusion that the greater the mass, the more pronounced the curve. Now try this. Drop smaller balls onto the tapestry. See how they roll towards the bowling ball because of the curve? And that is gravity – smaller mass travelling around the surface bent by and thereby towards a larger mass. The theory is simple - matter bends space.

So why am I talking about physics?
Think of reality as a continuum – a tapestry.
And emotions as objects with mass. Happiness would be equivalent to a balloon. As an emotion, happiness often leaves us feeling like we are floating on air. It is light – with negligible mass.
Grief on the other hand is like a bowling ball. It sits heavily on your mind and weighs you down. It is weighty – with staggering mass.
Hence, it comes as no huge surprise that while happiness flits in and out of your life without really changing you, grief is different. It bends the very fabric of your reality. It distorts you to such extends that you change in ways you never imagined.
Ever heard of black holes? It is a point in space with such incredible pull that nothing escapes its gravity well – not even light. And isn’t that how you feel when you are depressed? Like a hole has ripped open inside of you. It sucks the light out of you and leaves you in the dark.

Gravity is arguably the most important force in the universe. It holds everything in place.
My argument today is that grief is no different. We don’t want it. We deny it. We reject it. But of the spectrum of emotions that we experience, grief is arguably the most powerful. Maybe, it doesn’t hold us in place like gravity. But it does pull us apart piece by piece. And then, forces us to pick up those pieces and put ourselves back together.

So grieve.

It’s ok!

The Love Letter Challenge

This entry was originally written for the CBC Valentine Love Letter (?) Contest. This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. 

I sank into my seat like a stone dropped in water. Tired, I closed my eyes and shut the world out, seeking shelter in my sleep.

But dreams began to invade my sanctuary. They came like a drizzle, a hint of a smile, a whisper of a voice. But soon there was a downpour.

Voices gave way to curved lips and pinched cheeks. The lines of your jaw lead down to your throat, where a pulse throbbed in the wake of titter. And the titter, born from your smiles, fledged into a laugh and rose through the air, like a bird let lose.

Troubled I woke and our eyes met. I became a human popsicle. Like a breeze you whip past me, and I shudder when I think of the chill in your eyes. How long has is it been since we last met?

Finally, the engine roars into life and goes rolling down the road. Inside the vehicle, we move as one. Everything I see you see, the air you let go, I take in. The bell that rings for you rings for me too.

I smiled. You are here and not just in my dreams.

As I look out the window, I spot the restaurant, the one we went to on our first date. I see the cherry blossom, under the boughs of which we shared our first kiss.

Each building, each passing structure, reminds me of you.

But they pass me by like the days passed by.

Everything vanishes into the void as the bus drivers on.

And each moment is turned into a memory as time turns on.

And I realize with a pang that like the days before, this too will end.

If only the earth stood still.

I Want To Be a Traveller

Ever since I was a child, I have always suffered from a deep-seeded urge to wander. But I don’t want to be a tourist. I want to be a traveller. You want to know the difference?
A tourist’s approach to travel is very casual.
Step One – He spots her:
The tourist zeroes in on a place. He doesn’t give the place a lot of thought. Instead he picks it like he would any woman in a bar.
Step Two – The rendezvous:
A tourist makes a catalogue of places – popular (read cliché) places that Google so kindly lists for him. He rushes through each one of these places, religiously. Sort of like a quick fuck. You are in and out before you know it.
Step Three – The Morning After:
When you are a tourist your relationship with the city or country of choice is like a one-night stand. It is a brief love affair that lasts for a night and is forgotten the next morning but bragged about for days to come. But travelling is not very different from falling in love.
Step One – Love-at-First-Sight:
A traveller sees a place - and sometimes instantly or even slowly over a period of time – she (the place you long to travel to) catches his attention. And so he Googles the place relentlessly, gazing dreamily at pictures of her. He stalks her online by reading websites and travel blogs on her. He envies those who have travelled to the place with the passion of a lover seething over a girlfriend’s ex. And after days or even months of longing from afar he decides to take the first step.
Step Two - The courting:
After months of penny-pinching he is finally there. [Here again travelling is no different from a lover. She empties your pocket.] Now that he is finally with her, he pays her his undivided attention. He studies her history, her people and her places, and relishes his time with her. He takes long walks in the city, learning her every curve. He strays far beyond the tourist spots and hunts for secret places hidden in her contours. He savours her aroma and her taste at local food stalls and cheap restaurants. He makes memories with the city. Memories he knows he will hold dear for years to come.
Step Three - The parting of ways:
And when it is time to leave he carries a little part of her with him. Back at home, he thinks of those long nights and strolls on the streets with silent longing. He knows he will travel to other places, and love them more or less. But each place remains special in its own ways. I want to be a traveller. I want to know every city I go to as intimately as a lover. See, a relationship changes you. So must the places you travel to. If it hasn’t, you haven’t truly seen the place.

*I am blogging about my dreams and passions for the Club Mahindra#DreamTrails activity at BlogAdda. You can get a Club Mahindra Membership to own your holidays!*