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.