Sunday 14 August, 2005

Not the Perahera

The day before I left Sri Lanka these are some of the things I saw: elephants walking along the road, with their minders, on their way to Kandy for Perahera; an elephant on the back of a truck, also heading towards Kandy, trumpeting, with its trunk curled high over it's head; a moslem man with a long beard hanging down, and the perspex visor of his motorcycle helmet pushed up, like a second, plastic, sticky-uppy beard; dozens of school children in their white uniforms descending on a sweet shop, and thereby me; a toilet that had not been flushed for approximately one million years that sprayed water around the room and on to me when I attempted to do the right thing; and the original manuscript of Leonard Woolf's ms, A Village in the Jungle. A friend with whom I had lunch told me that the Perahera was a pain because it meant 12 days with no alcohol and no meat. He'd had to stock up on cans of food for his 4 dogs. I didn't tell him that I was also angry at Perahera because I'd been told it took place in July, and made all my bookings only to be told at the last minute that actually it was in August and began this day, my second last day in Sri Lanka. So, seeing elephants walking to work was going to be as close as I got.

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