Dolphin Island

When I visited Arthur C Clarke's grave a couple of weeks back I found a Japanese book placed by the headstone (see post 05.08.13). I figured it was most likely an Arthur C Clarke book but had no idea which. Well, as I had our Japanese friends Hitomi and Katsuya over I asked them if they could make anything out from the random page it had fallen open on.

They could tell me it featured a Professor Kazan, a Doctor Keith, someone called Snowy and 'dolphin language'. That was enough for me to find out that the book in question is Dolphin Island.

The Mentalist

Für Colombo

About one in three vehicles here is a tuk tuk (AKA a three-wheeler, trishaw, auto rickshaw, or, simply, taxi). As anyone who has had the pleasure of riding in one knows, they are basically much like a bumper car but without any of the safety features. They are often wonderfully pimped up with tassels, stickers, extra mirrors, shovels, ladders, plastic Buddhas/Christs, etc.

They also come in a number of varieties beyond the basic taxi tuk tuk, most notable of these variations here is the bakery tuk tuk, which works rather like an ice cream van, peddling baked goods down the streets. And like an ice cream van they also play a jingle to announce their presence. By power of some undisclosed tuk tuk authority this tune is standardized to be a Casio rendition of the first part of Für Elise. I took a sound recording of a bakery tuk tuk passing me.

You cannot imagine the saturation of this tune; it is a definitive part of the soundscape of life in Colombo and you will probably here it about twenty times in an average day: when in the shower or walking down the street, while cooking dinner or drinking a coffee. It worms into your brain. 

It is a most odd fate for a two-hundred year old tune that Beethoven wrote for some Elise (apparently either Therese Malfatti, who he proposed to, or a soprano singer, Elizabeth Röckel). Now, here it is in Colombo – clipped, digitalized, jingoized, omnipresent 

and used like some Pavlovian bell.

At Kalutara

Classic tropical sunset – honeyed kitsch – you can't fight it.

And then, early in the morning haze, beachcombing cattle.

En route to Kalutara

At Tangerine Beach Hotel

Refreshing to the last drop

(for Russell)

Legends of the tuk tuk: #3

Tropical warehouse

Arthur C. Clarke's Grave

After my surprise at finding that Arthur C. Clarke had been in Sri Lanka, I naturally investigated further into what I am sure is common knowledge to many fans. He lived in Sri Lanka over fifty years, from 1956 until his death in 2008. I also found out that he is buried in Colombo's central cemetery, which is a few hundred metres down the road from our house.


So, I headed into the cemetery, which is not huge but sizeable, not knowing where his grave was but knowing what it looked like. Asking a man near the gate, I was told 11th Lane and headed that way. The cemetery is peaceful and leafy; I also read that it is the safest place to cycle in Colombo if you don't want to end up in the cemetery more permanently. 

I decided to ask another man who was sweeping leaves up not far off. I greeted him in Sinhala. He didn't reply but beckoned me over. I said (in English) "I'm looking for Arthur C. Clarke's grave" – "I know." he replied, "Come". He led me a few metres off to the grave (which was suddenly obvious) and conscientiously swept the dead leaves off. "His body – here." he said, pointing down at the ground. 

There was this weathered Japanese (or Chinese?) book laid at the grave. I'd like to have known which book it was (the cover was obliterated so no clues from the cover art); The Sentinel/2001 or something less obvious?

I had read that he was buried next to his "perfect friend", Leslie Ekanayake, who died in 1977, aged 30. The stone border to the plot had presumably lain empty for some time, since 1977? I wondered how many times over the years Arthur had himself stood here, remembering Leslie and waiting to join him there. 

I also wondered if the family had to think twice about using a black(ish) monolith for a gravestone ...

As I walked back towards the gate I heard something drop into a bush, by the hedgerow, a couple of metres to my left. Draped like some comedy christmas tinsel was a medium-sized green snake that had presumably dropped from the tree above. It's body quickly sank into the bush but it left its head up, sticking out the bush like a little periscope, and eyeballed me. As I drew my camera up it dropped from sight. I suddenly rethought the time I had spent under the little tree at the grave and realized that for all that I had scrutinized the graves, kept an eye open for shady characters and observed the birdlife, my guard had been totally down for snakes dropping from the trees onto me. 

NOTE: I add these should any stubble across this that wants better directions for finding the grave than I found:

>Enter from Elvitigala Mw. main gates and follow the main central pathway, running parallel to Bauddhaloka Mw.; you will notice the street signs for each of the lateral lanes. 
>Just after the Buddhist Funeral Parlour comes 11th Lane, follow it left, towards Bauddhaloka Mw and it is to the left, between 10th and 11th (so, on your left if you've followed these instructions), situated under a smallish tree. 

>If you see this remarkable crypt of S. A. Simon Perara (proprietor of Mable Stores), you have gone too far towards 10th and the road.

Hell's Itch

I burn easily. I've known this from childhood of course. Even my feet sunburn (and once memorably swelled up like I'd elephantiasis and I couldn't put on my shoes – my brother gave me a piggy back from the beach to the car park).

Sunburn tends to have a steep learning curve and I haven't really had much more than a glow of sunburn since adulthood. At Mt. Lavinia hotel on Saturday, I only absently did the job (the children providing ample distractions) before going into the pool with the kids (who were now suncream coated and chomping at the bit). After an hour or so I recognised that my back had burnt but wasn't red or overly worried. By evening I looked like an ill grilled sausage, with all the attention on one side. I was thankful that the water had only washed it off my body, not my face.

I've had a couple of restless nights trying to sleep on my front – as my back will not allow it and my shoulders won't allow me to be on my sides even. I thought that was that; lesson (re)learned. It seems my training was incomplete.

A slight discomfort began during the morning today, two days after getting burned. Within a couple of hours this escalated into a sensation rather like around two hundred tiny ants crawling and biting around just under your skin. I now know this is called 'Hell's Itch'.

The sun balm I had been applying for the last couple of days only increased the cracking, prickling sensation. I could feel my patience and sanity evaporating like alcohol on a plate. I could no longer stand still and soon found I had to call Anu to come home as I no longer felt able to properly look after the two kids until the itching had gone. I was quite short with my darling children when they got underfoot and disrupted my pacing (at this point, it seemed somewhat akin to breathing).

I tried to sit the kids in front of a DVD whilst I paced up and down under the ceiling fans, phone in hand, desperately trying to search online for advice with my agonizingly slow internet connection. The symptoms are obviously consistent enough and if the nickname 'Hell's Itch' hasn't given you enough of an idea they include – ants, insanity, wanting to rip their skin off, crying, screaming, etc. (though Anu is still skeptical about the woman who said it was worse than childbirth). But everyone subscribed to a different remedy: sun balm, witch doctor, vinegar, peppermint oil (neat or with coconut oil), cold baths, hot showers, A&D oil, aloe vera, burn treatment cream, pain killers, anti-histamine. By far from patient research I found many of these are aggravants that I hurried applied to as much of my back as I could reach before having to leap into a cold shower to wash them off. This even included (in my panic) applying something that read ALOE VERA but was actually a shampoo (yes, that stung).

I could see myself pacing the house, hopping, squirming and flinching through the night.

Anu was now home and could search the internet while I continued to pace the flat awaiting her arrival a the solution. 'Try a hot shower' she said. Hot water didn't sound like a good idea. However, at this stage, I was willing to try anything. I had been in acute discomfort for about five hours at this point.

And so here I am, sat down, typing. Maybe it was a cocktail of things but the scalding hot shower that seemed to have provided the tipping point.

I think I'll probably be slathered in about an inch of suncream for some time to come.

Spiny Sea Urchins at Unawatuna

I only packed a handful of books to come with me here; to last me until our packages arrived from Helsinki (which we are still awaiting – our residence permits were only, and finally, issued on Friday). As Parade’s End is far too stocky for me to carry around, my on the road book has been Arthur C. Clarke’s Imperial Earth.

It had a passage in the Acknowledgements and notes:

“Some readers may feel that the coincidences – or ‘correspondences’ – that play a key part in this story are too unlikely to be plausible. But they were, in fact, suggested by far more preposterous events in my own life; and anyone who doubts that this sort of thing can happen is referred to Arthur Koestler’s The Roots of Coincidence. I read this fascinating book only after completing Imperial Earth, though that fact itself now seems somewhat improbable to me.”

which is followed by this passage (that you will notice happens to be full of geographical coincidence for me, having just visited Unawatuna, and also now somewhat familiar with Cinnamon Gardens in Colombo):

“The curious acoustic behavior of the Spiny Sea Urchin, Diadema Setosum, was observed by me on Unawatuna Reef, off the south coast of Sri Lanka.

…

Arthur C. Clarke

Cinnamon Gardens, Colombo

January 1974—January 1975”

Mount Lavinia

Legends of the tuk tuk: #2