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Selfish Notes from an Island Paradise by F. G. Pluthero

Island and paradise are two words that seem to be made for each other, especially in those colourful ads that tout frolics along sun-bleached sands kissed by sapphire seas. According to Madison Avenue the world is full of empty beaches just waiting to be scampered along, and when you're all scampered out for the day there is always a bamboo hut nearby where a smiling version of Sam from Casa Blanca serves cool rum and coconut concoctions that set up a nice buzz for a torchlit dinner at your hotel, where the entertainment is provided by a smiling troupe of local folk dancers and fire-walkers. Solitude, cool drinks and the swarming natives reduced to curiosities: it may seem a selfish recipe for paradise but it is an ancient one since the word derives from an old Persian term for pleasure garden, and like modern resorts the ancient paradises were walled off sanctuaries dedicated to solitary dreams of rushing waters, greenery and luxurious consumption. One legend has it that the original paradise was a place called Eden, built for a single couple and containing everything they could possibly want for all eternity. The details of what happened there remain hazy but it seems that the ur-couple were either too stupid to resist the temptations of knowledge or too selfish to allow the fruit of one tree to go untasted, so they invented the hackneyed plot we have come to know ever since as Trouble in Paradise.

Of course any student of dharma or ecology can tell you that there has to be trouble in paradise, because it is the product of unnatural desires. The privileged few living inside know that they cannot ignore the masses peering over the walls forever, nor is there any getting round the intolerance of exclusion that leads Nature to assault resort islands with hurricanes, suborn gardens with serpents and beat down pleasure palaces grain by grain with wind and rain. But even Nature has pity now and then, and another legend has it that after the first paradise was cleared the exiles wandered the world until they ended up on a lush green island that hangs like a postnasal drip from the schnozz of India - or if you prefer provides the period to the subcontinental question mark. Support for this legend comes from the fact that there is a mountain named for Adam on the island, where he supposedly left behind a footprint as he ascended to heaven from the only place on Earth where his longing for Eden receded to a tolerable pang. Others say the footprint was left by the Buddha when he descended for his last visit to our mortal plane, returning like Jesus for one last look around. Either way the legends agree that if Nature ever created a paradise for herself it is Sri Lanka, and that the trouble began not long after people arrived.

I confess that before I went I had little interest in the story of the ongoing debacle. It was nothing personal, I had simply had my fill of reports of suicide bombings, guerilla raids, genocides and ethnic cleansings, in spite of the fact that as a Canadian I am supposed to be intensely interested in such things since we are always sending soldiers off to some godforsaken place to keep snarling combatants from each others' throats. Frankly, I sometimes wonder whether those troops might accomplish more at home, because every conflict currently simmering within humankind seems to flare up somewhere on the streets of Toronto, Vancouver or Montreal each night as rude boys shoot it out in parking lots, transplanted Tamils hack at Sinhalese immigrants, armies of protesters clash in front of the consulates of the Great Satan night and day and visiting Israeli soldiers stay in practice by beating the odd schoolkid to death. Throw in the home-grown bigots who are wont to go hunting for gooks, ragheads and fags and the result is a constant level of aggravation and disruption which we have the same obligation to confront as the people in other countries have to settle their own domestic problems. If they choose not to learn from history that is their perfect right, but it matters to me when their trouble gets exported, or when I am planning a trip. I avoided Berlin until the first holes appeared in the wall. I have been to India half a dozen times but never to Kashmir or Pakistan. I nipped into Nepal once but I sure wouldn't go there now, and ever-bleeding Lanka was always off the menu too until one spring a respite in the communal struggle led the great chicken traveller to take a chance.

My first stop was Kandy, which is as good an introduction to paradise as anyone could want. There was a festival underway and as the taxi drove around the tree-lined lake at the centre of town I marvelled at how so many people could stand so patiently for so long as the snaking lines slowly converged on the impressive walls surrounding the gold-roofed pagoda of the Dalada Maligawa, the Temple of the Buddha's Tooth. I was told that after an average six hours of waiting each pilgrim would get a few second's darshan in the crowd gathered at the sacred relic, which is hidden in a golden casket and flanked by massive elephant tusks. After that they would leave, their souls lightened with joy on the long bus ride home. I went to the Temple of the Tooth myself a few days later, when the festival was over and it was possible to wander in at dawn or dusk without waiting. I saw much the same relics that were revealed to the festival crowds but I gained much less merit since the time was not as auspicious, an error I inadvertently avoided on my subsequent pilgrimage to Adam's Peak, since by a stroke of luck I managed to arrive just as the moon was coming full.

If you only make one genuine pilgrimage in your life - which is to say the kind that involves some physical effort and a few hours of separation from mundane realities - I can heartily recommend the moonlit walk up the flanks of Adam's Peak. The standard track (there is a more arduous route for confirmed masochists) begins in a seasonal village of huts and tents erected to store pilgrims' belongings and dispense essentials, and after passing through a massive gate topped by a grinning kirrtimukh demon the path winds through damp-breathed tea terraces linked by ancient flights of stone-cut steps. The upper reaches of the mountain are lost in darkness from that point but there is no chance of losing the way amid the flickering fluorescent lights, nor is there need to worry about the climb becoming a parched marathon because as the path climbs above tea level the wayside shrines are joined by periodic souvenir stands and refreshment stalls which are continually resupplied by heavily-laden climbers who fly past pilgrims ranging from toddlers to octogenarians (prices rise moderately the higher you go, owing to the greater effort involved in carrying things up). The pilgrims form a continual stream in both directions on full moon nights, during which true devotees gain merit by ascending and descending before dawn. Tyros and tourists time their arrival at the summit for the sunrise, and that was of course what I was aiming for when I started my climb in the wee wee hours.

The ascent took longer than expected since the path winds in easy loops for much of the way, but as the steps finally steepened near the top I began cursing the cameras - two photo, one video - I had decided to lug along. Yet even with my dawdling and frequent pauses for cups of chai, chocolate bars and bags of chips - sugar, salt and caffeine being the necessary vitamins for climbing - I reached the top well before dawn and enjoyed the opportunity to recline on the broad summit steps in a sweat-soaked shirt, savouring the morning coolness while those around me huddled cloaked and sweatered against what they seemed to regard as a bone-gripping chill. The devout and the curious were queuing to enter the gaily-flagged temple built over the stone footprint that marks the spot of Adam's ascent and/or Buddha's descent, but for most pilgrims the main show was to the east, where the first fingers of light were reaching up from the hills to signal the immanent arrival of the one thing all people have acknowledged as divine. A single backlit storm cloud scuttled southwards along the horizon throwing down tiny lightning bolts into the purple murk and then the stage was clear for the coy appearance of a golden sliver in a bowl of hills, which was instantly greeted by a blare of trumpets a spattering of drums the clicking of shutters and the silent brush of palms joined in respectful welcome. And the whirring of one video camera.

The temple musicians kept up their raucous serenade as the solar disk slowly extricated itself from the mountains and climbed to fill the nestling lakes among them with gold, and while the natives crowded into the welcome glow a few tourists made their way to the shaded western side of the pinnacle. There we watched the perfectly pyramidal shadow of the peak begin its inward race from the horizon over purple-green haze, charcoal grey rock, chocolate brown hills and damp green forest. The sharp shadow sped like a dark ripple on the breeze as the sunlight burnt the mist around it to silver and gold, and it only rested when it reached the deep shoulder of shadow that would linger along the flanks of the mountain until noon. To the west another toy storm cloud rolled by dispensing lightning and hailstones (I heard about that later), while all around the summit the faithful were dropping their shoes and making their way into the temple. I was still so enchanted by the celestial show that I never did go in to see where the illustrious personages had hallowed the rocks with their soles. Maybe next time.

I hope there will be a next time, because now and then I find myself back on that mountaintop as pleasant recollections are set off by the pictures I took and by other unlikely things, such as scenes of child soldiers strewn like abandoned dolls in blood-soaked mud, reports of vendors blowing themselves up in crowded markets, tales of guerrillas gliding out of the forest with gleaming machetes and accounts of troops encircling cities while tens of thousands flee. Distant rumblings of a war that has proven to be far longer and bloodier than the ancient conflict that brought the legendary hero Rama and his army to Lanka in search of the demon king Ravana. The great hero is acknowledged to be an avataar of Vishnu, who in his eternal form reclines on an island in the folds of a thousand-headed serpent and dreams our universe, which sprouts as a lotus from his navel while he sleeps. The earthly reflections of that eternal paradise are two vast temples set on islands in the river Kaveri, both of which I happened to visit during the swing through southern India that punctuated my visit to Sri Lanka. At the time I was not aware that the largest of those temples lies not far from the parental home of a certain Vellupillai Prabhakaran, who depending upon where you stand in these post-September 11th days is either a semi-competent freedom fighter or a highly successful international terrorist.

I think of Prabhakaran more as the Tamil Tiger equivalent of George Washington, not because he is destined to be the father of a nation - although in this world who knows - but because his legend hinges on a handful of dubious facts. In his rebel days Washington seldom slept in the same bed for two nights running, and supposedly Prabhakaran never does either. General Washington was able to rally his troops to superhuman acts of courage, while Prabhakaran commands cadres ready to strap on dynamite as human bombs in unselfish sacrifice to the cause. Young George chopped down a cherry tree and told the truth, and Prabhakaran's biography features the meant-to-be-inspiring tale of how at age 14 he and his school-chums scrounged and did odd jobs in order to club together enough rupees to buy a pistol from a local goondah to start their own revolution. That pubescent campaign never went very far, but it set the young Tigers on a track that was to drag their nation through a generation of war where the thuggery on both sides has gone far beyond anything that can ever be redeemed by a noble cause. India tried to intervene, but a bloody nose and the loss of a prime minister led her to retire from the fray and it was left to the industrious Norwegians to build a back channel between the rebels and the government. That conduit created the cease-fire which allowed me to make my tactical assault on Adam's Peak, and it was still barely holding when I returned a few weeks later to clamber over some ancient ruins, stroll along coral-crusted beaches and toil up a few more hills in search of sacred places. But it was not until the day before I was slated to leave Lanka that I found myself in the most mystifying place of all, at the corner of Mudalige and York streets in old Colombo at midday with nary a soul in sight.

In order to appreciate the mystery we have to go back to the first time I saw that particular spot, which was on the evening of the day I descended from Adam's Peak. After a rather hairy bus ride through winding mountain roads I had paused in the pilgrim-engorged local town just long enough to hire a taxi, and after mistakenly taking me to the airport the driver seemed to be seeing beautiful downtown Colombo for the first time as we rounded a corner and found ourselves locked in an impossible rush hour jam. At that moment I would have given anything to escape the noise, heat and filth but the traffic proved so impenetrable that we took an hour to cover the last mile to the seaside hotel I had set my sights upon, and I must have looked a sight when I finally stumbled through the massive doorway in a white shirt stained grimy grey, blinking in the toxic haze and addled by lack of sleep. Fortunately those old American Express ads are true, and I soon found myself wafting past the posh lobby containing Prince Philip's first car en route to a room so satisfactory that I booked it again for my last night in Lanka, which by another happy accident happened to be the national New Year's Eve.

That was why I could walk fearlessly down the middle of a street that even those who believe in reincarnation would not have dared to cross a few days earlier, and why I could hear the whispers of the ocean a half-mile distant as I leaned back with my breakfast coconut on a guard-rail set up to protect pedestrians from Colombo's ever-inventive drivers. It was also why I could have the fun of watching a spotty procession of flop-hatted foreigners come buzzing up to the government souvenir shop in autorickshaws and hop out in their twos and threes to stare with uncomprehending disappointment between their open guidebooks and the closed doors. New Year's in mid-April, who ever heard of such a thing - and where did everybody go, anyway? Where they went was back to their ancestral homes, which for almost everyone in Colombo aside from a few Muslims and the descendants of the servants to the old British masters is not the city but some sleepy village located out in the tea hills, down in the paddy lands or along the seashore.

So at every New Year, Colombo empties except for a scattering of ill-informed tourists and bemused idlers, the ranks of which swelled by one when I was joined in my innocent pastime by a dark, skinny, scraggly-bearded, spatter-shirted betel addict in his mid-twenties. He introduced himself as a tourist guide, not as a preamble to a spiel but simply to make conversation, since I was obviously not in the market for his services. I asked him if he was from Colombo and he replied that he was from Kandy, a name that called up fresh recollections of the golden temple beside the shimmering lake and pleasant evenings spent in the garden of a hotel on a hill downing ice-cold Lion Lagers while watching the whitewashed Buddha that overlooks the town slowly sink into beneficent blurriness - a peaceful pastime that was shattered the night before I left by the incessant blasts of cannon crackers and percussion bombs set off by youthful revellers trying to chase evil away from the incoming year. I asked the erstwhile guide why he hadn't gone home for the holidays, which was an innocent question because I knew that the fare for the trip to Kandy in one of the ubiquitous island minibuses was about one Canadian dollar (I also knew that it cost ten times that much to take an autorickshaw from Colombo to the seaside resort of Hikkadua, which is something few people will ever learn from personal experience). In response to my question he stood back from the rail and motioned to his stain-spotted shirt, dusty pants and tattered sandals. One is supposed to buy new clothes for the New Year he informed me with a shrug, and he couldn't go back to his mother looking like that.

I suggested that his mother would be glad to see him no matter what his clothes looked like but the remark drew no response, and after some more small talk the conversation turned to the peace talks between the Tigers and the government, which were starting to break down again. Do you think the peace will hold I asked hopefully, and the reply was a heavy sigh. I knew what he meant, because all the signs pointed to the bloody end of yet another in a long series of false dawns. Some Tamil leaders may have been slowly coming onside but the Tigers had a standing policy of dealing harshly with moderates, as did the more militant Sinhalese. As usual the political situation was a mess with fresh allegations of corruption flying between the government and opposition and tensions rising between the president and prime minister, and there was also the ongoing matter of Rajiv Gandhi's assassination, for which India was demanding Prabhakaran's extradition. It was widely known that the truce had become a convenient lull for the smuggling of masses of arms and ammunition to the northern strongholds - the Tigers' skill at raising funds making al-Qaeda look like amateurs - and it was no secret that the army was also preparing for a new offensive, which ironically also augured well for the rebels since their main source of supply is the green army recruits who are easy meat for their battle-hardened cadres.

No, the signs were not good, and even as we spoke secret plans were unfolding that would soon take the war to new heights of viciousness and into new places, like the inner sanctum of the Temple of the Tooth - an outrage that finally got the Tigers outlawed. But what the hell I said, there were signs of hope as well. I recalled the Tamil toddy tappers I had seen in the airport in Trivandrum heading cheerfully home from exile in India, each clutching a bulging burlap bag in one hand and a ghetto blaster in the other. Good for them, observed the guide, but they have all of India to go back to when things get tough again while we Sinhalese have only this island. Still, he added sincerely, he had nothing against the Tamils themselves, who were mostly ordinary people like himself just trying to survive.

When the conversation hit that lull I tried to lighten the tone by shifting the subject to my own homeland. People all over India know two things about Canada: the capital is Ottawa and the country is underpopulated, and I take it as a sign of their greater sophistication that most Lankans are aware of an additional fact, which is that there is a French part and an English part. My new friend the tourist guide was even better informed than that, no doubt owing to his contact with foreigners, because he had also heard that the problems between the French and English in Canada were similar to the Tamil-Sinhala row. It was an interesting comment, and my first instinct was to launch into a detailed explanation of how the situations differed. But the pompous clarification died on my tongue because a few months earlier my country had, like Lanka, teetered on the edge of tearing itself apart. So instead of arguing I suddenly felt the need to tell what I was doing while the people of Quebec decided the future of Canada.

Interestingly enough I was visiting another island paradise at the time, far from my Toronto home. Not a tropical paradise with beaches but a temperate, craggy place squeezed between Vancouver Island and the B.C. coast, where the evergreen and arbutus forests are as green as Lanka's in their own way. Out in God's country, where the crisp autumn air carries no hint of the distant madness and most people couldn't give a flying fig about what goes on in the imaginary regions beyond the sheltering mountains. It was the time of year for gathering fallen branches, trimming overhangs, cutting back brambles and burning the accumulated woodland debris in massive slashpiles that flared like warning beacons in the night and simmered like Viking pyres by day, and I had spent most of referendum afternoon sitting in a sunlit clearing warmed by a triangle of such bonfires while the CBC radio coverage drifted across the meadow with reports of rallies, man-in-the-street interviews and periodic tabulations of exit polls. As I recall most of the day blended into a blur except for a single voice, that of the actor Donald Sutherland, who came on for just a moment to softly lament the impending loss of a place he had chosen to grow old and maybe die in. Amid all of the ranting and raving, threats and conniving and gloom and doom those few sentimental words were the only ones that made sense all day, which ended for us around sunset with the announcement that the referendum had been defeated by a ridiculously slender margin. We sighed a selfish sigh and it occurred to me that Sutherland's sentiment was selfish too, but like ours his selfishness was the kind that preserves in the name of nostalgia instead of destroying in the name of the future. I suspect that same selfishness may have saved Canada that day, at least until the next conjunction of cynical opportunism and stumbling suzerainty reopens the national vein of self-destructiveness.

As I told that story I realized it was a feeble tale to tell in a place where the same vein gushes bountiful blood each day, but my point was that Lankans and Canadians share some instinctive insights into a common situation: two peoples sharing one country. Yet even as I said that I realized that blood counts for more than we can imagine. For instance I doubt that any Lankan leader would use a mere political setback to mutter about unloosing class and racial war like that moustachioed dandy in Quebec - people who have seen skinned corpses hung from lampposts and burnt bodies stacked like charred logs tend to drop their voices to whispers when the subject turns to revenge. Given the challenges they face I doubt the Lankans have much time for our concerns about the export of violence either, or for the indignation that travellers sometimes express when they see the incredible garden that is being destroyed by what seems to them the pettiest of squabbles. I at least avoided making that faux pas in my conversation with the unemployed tourist guide, although I couldn't resist mentioning the tale of the boatload of Lankan migrants who had braved the uncertain seas for the chance to trudge half-naked onto Canadian shores, where they expected to hop on buses to New York. Imagine going all that way and not having a clue where you had landed up I observed with a laugh, but the guide didn't seem to find the situation funny. I suppose that like many of his countrymen he would have been willing to take a chance on that boat, which as it happened ended up on another island that various people at various times have considered to be a paradise, or at least desirable enough to slaughter and scatter the inhabitants and claim it for themselves.

I met up with some more would-be emigrants a few hours later, when just about everyone left in Colombo converged for New Year's eve on Galle Face Green, which at that time of year is actually a brown expanse of dusty earth. A vermilion sun set into a hazy grey sea while ocean liners slid by with glittering decks. Hordes of children of varying ages buzzed joyfully around playing cricket, setting off firecrackers and wheedling their parents out of money for pony rides, pinwheels on sticks and the greatest prizes of all, long-tailed paper kites that wheeled after a moon which at a precise moment after sunset became absolutely full. There was music blaring here and there from speakers hung at intervals around the lamp-lit green, where flimsy stalls and pavilions had been set up to cater to the ambling crowds. Being the only foreigner in sight - although I knew there must have been hundreds more huddling in the air-conditioned confines of several luxury hotels located nearby - it was impossible for me to stop and survey the scene without ending up in a conversation, nor for those conversations to avoid the inevitable subject of where I was from and how easy it might be for a foreigner to move there.

I did my best to explain the Canadian immigration point system, describe the weather and offer various reasons why a place that looked so huge on the map of the world had so few people cowering in a thin layer along the southern border, but it soon got tiring. There were some interesting moments, however, such as the conversation I fell into with a well-dressed stroller who introduced himself as a fully qualified electronics engineer keen to emigrate. After admitting that I have no idea what the national requirements are for engineers he changed tack and announced that he was also a dope dealer, which is not something people tend to confess openly in Lanka. Not expressing much interest in that, he went on to mention that he also had a sideline in what Colombo touts refer to as "something special." I had heard the term before, and while it seems to be popular among some tourists - not that there's anything wrong with it, mind you - I was yet again uninterested. He motioned to one of his companions, a droopy-lidded lad of about twenty, but before he came over I wished the engineer-dealer-pimp luck with his efforts and continued on my way, content that anyone with his entrepreneurial flexibility would be a shoo-in should he decide to apply for entry to Canada.

Another illustration of Lankan flexibility appeared when I made my way to one of the food-stalls set up on the green opposite my hotel, where the waiter who bounded out to seat me was none other than my old friend the tourist guide. I had been attracted to the place by the smoke and smells of sizzling flesh, a sure sign that the stall was operated by Muslims since they were the only ones allowed to touch meat over the three days of the holiday. They were making the most of their advantage by selling what proved to be the toughest kebabs that money could buy, and exactly which part of what animal they were cut from only Allah knows. Fortunately my connections with the serving staff saved the day, since I was at least able to wash those durable morsels down with a couple of deliciously cold beers smuggled in under the table, which were made all the tastier by the fact that the island had gone officially dry for the holidays, including my hotel.

It was a moment to savour for sure, and as I sat back and watched the last few kites skittering around the rising moon I began to get a glimmering of what the paradise thing is all about. Pony rides and revels by the sea. Viking pyres in a verdant meadow while the sun sets over the Georgia Straits. Sunrise from Adam's Peak with the shadow racing in from the horizon behind. Watching young eagles hunt for salmon by the shore while the car radio announces that the country has been saved by 0.2 percent of the referendum vote. Talking in an empty street about peace while knives are being sharpened, guns loaded, fuses set and dynamite strapped on. Getting on a boat to the promised land and ending up in Nova Scotia. Yes, paradise sure is a silly, flimsy dream, worth a few bucks maybe but certainly not the risk of life and limb. And if you ever happen to find yourself walking on the dangerous side of that dream, do us all a favour and please remember to be selfish, OK?