I travelled to Sri Lanka in 2018. It was a difficult time for me. While I did not suffer any financial hardship, it was the first time after 11 years of seemingly unstoppable career in private practice I became unemployed.
It was a debilitating experience. In this consumer capitalist society, we take our identity from how we make a living. Our self worth is measured by how productive we are. The main metric is how much money we make.
I clung to my identity as a lawyer like a flotation device. When I had to let it go, I sank. The profession which demanded much of me and given much to me was lost.
I travelled with this hanging anxiety. A blurry sense of self.
It’s true that you can’t escape your thoughts no matter where you go. At Ella’s Rock, I stepped closer to the edge. I was thinking of jumping. The idea of ending the mental sufferings in beautiful vistas seemed romantic.
But my self-preservation instinct kicked in despite bouts of nihilism.
Sri Lanka, a Buddhist country, is also a prime centre for meditation retreats. I had been thinking of starting meditation, but at that moment I knew it was urgent to start. Just like a serendipity, I found a copy of Hermann Hesse’s Siddartha in the bookshelf of Highest Peak Bungalow guest house in Nuwara Eliya.
South Asia is photogenic. However, I was not ready to brave the intensity of the second most populated country in the world. A friend recommended Sri Lanka. Smaller in size and population density.
India Lite.
The two South Asian countries, being neighbours, have had a rather tense relationship since ancient times. In the Ramayana myth, Lanka is the kingdom of giants. King Ravana kidnapped Queen Sita of Ayodiya (India). His husband, King Rama, waged war to reclaim her.
In modern times, tension between the ‘native’ Sinhaleses and the Tamil minorities–brought by the English colonists to work on tea plantations–is still present. Unlike their Commonwealth peer Singapore, which adopted English as lingua franca, the modern Ceylon insisted on Sinhalese to assert cultural primacy of the majority population.
The Sri Lankan people are not camera shy. In convention with the stereotype of South Asians, they were happy to pose. I may be guilty of voyeuristic exoticism, but I am genuinely interested in my subjects. Their willingness to trust me in recording a piece of their soul is something I do not take for granted. Some of them lend a helping hand to me as a traveller. I try to be a mirror when I am photographing: a magic mirror, reflecting with my sentiency–connecting, sharing a brief moment of shared time space.
I am sure that my subjects have their woes. Most of them are not as well off as me, economically. But in our interactions, we were both happy. Just to smile at each other. Maybe we distract each other’s miseries with our foreignness.
I read the news that Sri Lanka is bankrupt–the government is bankrupt. The economic collapse led to institutional collapse. I wonder how my subjects are now. I hope they are persevering.
Arkademy Project is a photography collective focusing on critical and reflective photography with an interdisciplinary approach. Translation: documentary, street, travel–human interest photography. My kind of genres.
I browsed their website, the mentors’ portofolio. I knew instantly that I wanted to join their tribe. These are the photographs I am drawn to; the photographs I want to make: not just aesthetically pleasing but also meditations on human experience.
To be a photographer as an intellectual and an artist.
I only had one day to curate and submit my photo series. I got the information two days before the deadline (from an Instagram post, sponsored). I was not sure if I’d get the award. I have made entries to photography competitions before. Never successful (rightfully, when I saw the winners).
I am not a professional photographer, but I am no dilettante. I am always wary of using the word ‘passion’. They have been overused by us, millennials. But I am passionate about photography.
I may not turn this into a profession. I don’t need to make money from it. Maybe I’d progress faster if I choose to make a living from photography. But this financial detachment makes me unencumbered by the ‘market demand’. Of course, I risk being too self indulgent.
I am glad that I decided to stay alive back in Sri Lanka. ‘To live the question’, as Rilke said. The photography scholarship is a tangible answer.
I have not yet been able to love myself in the way people without a complex PTSD can. I still feel the need to attach an identifier, labels, to myself. I just realised that those labels are not fixed and I can use more than one. I chose identities which are relevant to the situation present.
I would do photography despite not getting any award. But getting the photography scholarship, an external affirmation and recognition, feels nice.
The impostor syndrome within me asks: ‘Did I get the scholarship because I am good or because the other applicants are bad?’ I did ask how many applicants applied out of the selected 12 photographers: only 50.
However, when life gives you an opportunity you must seize it. It does not matter if the opportunity is a dumb luck.
When I met the other awardees and saw their submissions, I realised how competitive the selection was. I felt more inadequate. Most of them are younger than I yet their photographs show immense depths, which require maturity.
I knew that I’d learn a lot not just from the mentors, but also from fellow participants.
Kandy was the capital of the last Sinhalese kingdom. It felt like Yogyakarta: an impoverished aristocrat who has to sell her cultural assets to make ends meet.
Tuk tuk drivers swarmed us tourists freshly offloaded to the station’s platforms. I thought we’d be more incognito because we share common skin tone with Sri Lankans, but our rucksacks gave us away. Taxi service providers at tourists’ point of arrival or main sights are less honest. However, we needed their services. So we bargained with one who has been stalking us and agreed on a price (overcharged, but still in affordable Rupees) for transfer to our hostel Clock Inn.
Along the drive, the driver solicited city tour. We said we’ll think about it and he gave his number. We checked in, unpacked and rested a while in our room. When we went down to walk around the town, the driver was waiting at the lobby. He asked if we have made up our mind for the tour. We told him we want to explore the town on foot first and left the hostel.
He was still there when we returned. Asked us again. This happened for several days. He intercepted us whenever we were passing at the lobby. His persistence was a reminder of the low season.
Kandy’s economy is supported by tourism. We got scammed more in Kandy than Colombo. One time we hailed a tuk tuk, agreed on Rs 200 fare but the driver stopped halfway when the road started going uphill. He ‘negotiated’ for additional Rs 200 (that old negotiation trick always work).
Being scammed is a part of travel experience and, unless you are negligent or unlucky, most of the time they are harmless (except for your ego). But the money lost to the scammers often deprived me of small changes for tipping the helpful local service providers.
The main sight in Kandy is Sri Dalada Maligawa, the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple. Lord Buddha’s tooth—said to be taken from Gotama’s funeral pyre—is stored in its inner sanctum. Whoever hold possession of the relic has the divine right to rule to the island.
The Portuguese claimed to have destroyed the heathen artefact in the 16th century. A claim contested by the Sinhalese: it was only the replica which was destroyed by the Catholic colonisers. Like a piece of True Cross or stock market valuation, it does not matter whether the sacred object is true as long as it is believed as true.
Every dusk a grandiose ritual is held at the temple. Traditional drums and blowpipes and conch shell musical instruments accompanied the monks in the procession worshipping the tooth. A stunning spectacle for photography and videography.
Puja of the Sacred Tooth Relic
However, it masked something hollow.
The temple has collections of paintings with self-righteous and holier than thou narratives equal to Biblical stories. Stories about how an evil king was vanquished for his faithlessness. Posters on Buddhism as the only religion consistent with modern science (astrophysics) because of its views and teachings on how the universe started with Nothingness.
I could not articulate such impression until I read Hermann Hesse’s Singapore Dreams. The sophistication of Buddhism philosophy was reduced to primitive idol worship. The proselytising Buddhism feels like another Abrahamic religion. An exclusive faith with a petty jealous god.
The Buddha Tooth reminded me that no spiritual discipline are immune from mutating to organised religions (as I have been warned by Osamu Tezuka’s Buddha). I wanted to shake off the bad aftertaste, so I went to the Buddhist Publication Society. The English books collections are limited. I got a pamphlet “Information about Meditation Centers in Sri Lanka Year 2013”.
I have always been interested on Oriental Meditation. Sri Lanka is a prime destination for meditation retreats. However, the pamphlet warned that meditation centres, the ashrams, offer basic meals (twice a day vegan diet) and bare lodgings (some even with no electricity).
A friend tried a silent meditation retreat in Thailand. Meditators were instructed not to speak or even write for two weeks. He felt refreshed after that. I wonder whether it’d be good for me? I am aware of the power of silence; the banality and the detriments of talking too much (as Mario Puzo, and Francis Ford Coppola, taught me in The Godfather). However, isolation and excommunication are also effective interrogation techniques to mentally break a subject. With my extraversion, the silent meditation may have adverse effects.
I have never meditated at that time. I’d better start somewhere less hardcore than plunging myself in those meditation retreats. I bought The Attention Revolution, a step by step meditation manual. It articulates well the how to, but I realised I will need to practice the manual as meditation is not just a conceptual exercise. There is a physical exercise involved, and I will need to be guided during such session.
My references on Oriental meditation is so Eurocentric, translations of Westerners studying under the tutelage of Asian masters. I have never read Dalai Lama or Thich Nhat Hanh. Not that the East-West label matters at all in this endeavour. However, as an Asian living in Asia, I had to travel all the way to the West to discover the Eastern Wisdom. But it has been a privilege to be initiated to the Western Rationalist approach. It infused me with a dose of skepticism which help me avoid that cultish herd mentality.
Kandy is the home of Sri Lanka’s modern artist Helga de Silva, the one memorialised by Sterophonics with their song ‘Madame Helga’. Her mansion, Helga’s Folly, is an art gallery and a hotel (the band stayed there, thus the song). The theme: surrealism. Helga imagines what if Salvador Dali, Brothers Grimm, and Lewis Caroll were flatmates. The rooms are mishmash of taxidermied animals, skulls, Mad Hatter’s tea party, murals, melted wax and candles, mirrors and shards of glass, pygmies, painted walls and windows.
Helga’s Folly living room by @adindaaditha
The mansion was empty when we visited. We only met two members of the staff, the receptionist and the resident curator. We were the only guests. With the mansion’s secluded location on a hilltop posh residential area, we felt like Chihiro in Spirited Away. We had two pints of Lion Lager; do what 21st century tourists do: photographing and posing for the Gram.
I read framed newspaper clippings on Helga’s privileged lineage: she was a Dior model; her brother, Sir George Desmond de Silva, QC., a barrister of Middle Temple, was the UN Chief War Crimes Prosecutor in Sierra Leone; her father and grandfather were prominent Sri Lankan politicians.
The first Sri Lankan I met in person was Harsha Fernando. He is a professional negotiator. He negotiated on behalf of Sri Lankan government with the Tamil Tiger (whom he described as the most reasonable negotiation counterpart despite their reputation as violent killers). Harsha also represented Sri Lankan tea plantation owners in negotiations with their workers (in which he advised them not to act like ancient raj, develop a relationship strategy with the most important people in their business, people with whom they share mutual interests the most: the workers). I took his interest-based negotiation workshop in 2015 (one of the best courses I took in my life, a hands on workshop for Fisher and Uri’s Getting to Yes).
‘Fernando’ or ‘de Silva’ are not Sankrit-Sinhalese or English names. Ceylon was a Portuguese colony before the British took over. The Sri Lankans with Portuguese surnames are of mixed descent, members of the country’s elites.
We heard that Kandy Esala Perahera Festival is a magnificent ten days procession with dancers and elephants marching in extravagant colourful ornaments. However, they are held around July or August. The only way to see a tease of the said festival is at the Kandy Lake Club. It was a quick course of Kandyan performing arts sans the elephants—which saved us from the ethical dilemma considering the cruel domestication methods and what they have to endure for the parade.
We visited the Garrison Cemetery, a burial ground for British soldiers as well as the empire’s accompanying colonisers located next to the St. Paul’s Church, a neo-gothic red bricks colonial era house of worship. We met with the caretaker Mr Carmichael. He was wearing a rubber flip flops when we met him, but speaks with Queen’s English. He guided Prince Charles in his visit to Sri Lanka. An official thank you letter from the Prince of Wales is framed in the cemetery’s office.
Lonely Planet said the caretaker is a wonderful storyteller. He’d tell the life stories of the denizens of the cemetery. However, he assigned his nephew to guide us. The barefooted apprentice caretaker, albeit speaks in second-tongue English like us, did well in telling stories. I took their photograph, I promised to send it by email to them. The caretaker is not familiar with internet. While his nephew only understands Facebook.
Many underprivileged people in South and Southeast Asia skipped the early internet age of emails and blogs—that time when you needed a personal computer to go online instead of affordable handheld devices. No wonder Zuckerberg wanted to provide free internet for rural India, it was Facebook’s philanthropic and commercial opportunity to dominate the internet in a land of billion users.
On the way to the church and cemetery, we walked through Deva Veedya where the local lawyers have their offices in Victorian buildings The street of gods is the street of lawyers and these Kandyan colleagues maintain the antiquity: no computers on their desk, just typewriters. I can’t imagine drafting my court submissions or contracts without digital word processor; no room for typo errors and reformatting. No wonder among the rows of law offices, typists still offer their services.
Street of gods, street of lawyers
Our favourite restaurant in Kandy is the Empire Cafe near the Temple. They serve both Sri Lankan and western foods—of which I always chose the former being a rice boy. We became friendly with a charming enthusiastic waiter.
A few months after our trip to Sri Lanka, he texted me. He lost his job at the Empire Cafe because, he said, he organised a tour for a group of Spaniards but they didn’t pay. He was struggling without a job. He was reconstructing his family home to a guesthouse to make a living. He needed money and asked if I, as his ‘friend’, can help sponsor him.
It was awkward to receive such request, but I remind myself that it’s easy to dismiss money matters as vulgar when you’re not poor. I wanted to help, but I don’t like being cheated too—I have not reached Siddharta’s non-attachment. So I asked further details. I didn’t know if he was avoidant in providing the detailed answers or unable to do so due language barrier. I was not convinced to help him.
We arranged direct transfer from Kandy to Bandaranaike International Airport in Katunayake (despite coded as CMB, Sri Lanka’s main international airport is not in Colombo). It was 8 hours drive. The van has no air-conditioner. We shared the ride with Norwegian and Belgian surfer girls. They just finished their surfing camp.
The driver is a Sri Lankan muslim (he told me and asked if I am; it is not intrusive to ask a stranger about his faith in Sri Lanka). He wanted to find work in Singapore and asked me how to do so. I told him just check the official ICA website. Singapore is a first world, official information is reliable.
Why he asked about Singaporean immigration to an Indonesian?
He made several stops, which may or may not be scheduled. Got lost and insisted to drop us first to the airport despite the itinerary was to transport the girls to their hostel then to the airport. We checked our Google map, the hostel is on the way to the airport.
My wife told me we should stick to our original itinerary. I was the only male passenger in the van. It’d be safer for the girls.
The driver complied when we all asked to go to the hostel first. The girls got to their hostel and we still had plenty of wait time when we arrived at the airport.
Were we being paranoid? Maybe the stops and the detours were innocent?
We hired a lady driver from Galle to Ella. Sami told us that Sri Lankan men are not aggressive like in India. She feels safe driving long distance. Indeed, Sri Lankans are approachable and helpful. A young man in Colombo escorted us to the bus stop when we asked which bus to take. If you’re a photographer, they’d be happy to pose for you and not too concerned with western concept of privacy.
