Sri Lanka - Cleanliness

I imagined Sri Lanka as a third world country with a culture and society similar to southern states of India, specifically Tamil Nadu. This also lead me to assume that Sri Lanka would share our third world problems too. Yes, they do share our problems but not all of them. There are some problems that we seem to have copyrighted in this holy land of ours.

Let's take cleanliness - the country is amazingly clean! There are no open garbage dumps, no rotting food and organic products strewn alongside the road. At some places, there might be an odd plastic wrapper, polythene bag or paper lying around but that is not commonplace. I am sure there would be garbage dumps somewhere but I must say they have been well hidden!

I do not know the exact reason for this. Is it because people don't litter around or because the local administration puts a lot of emphasis on cleanliness or because the janitors are ultra efficient! Whatever the reason might be, it is a pleasant change from what we all are used to see in India.

Passing by

Indian (read Bollywood) movies and cricketers are quite popular in Sri Lanka. In fact, the first person I met outside the airport (a policeman) spoke of Shahrukh Khan. I wanted to give him a piece of my mind, but then, at 3 a.m. in the morning it was hardly the time for that. Besides, he quickly moved on to Malinga and Kohli. So I had to let it go.

Also, this image is NOT from Sri Lanka. It is from Jaipur, India. Source - wiki user Marcin.

Previous Entries:
Sri Lanka - Introduction

Sri Lanka - Introduction

Ayubowan.

I am writing this entry to record my observations about my visit to Sri Lanka. I have made the observations on the country, its people, language, culture, socio-economic conditions, society etc. Whenever I fail to conjure some hullabaloo about such esteemed topics, I will write about some thing flimsier. I might have erred at times or been too judgmental about certain things which might lead the reader to a misconstruction. In either case, I would be happy to correct myself.

I am not writing this as a tourist guide to Sri Lanka although I won't mind if it serves such a cause. I will try to supply travel related information as well wherever I can plug it. If the reader has any specific question, I would try to answer, although LP/Tripadvisor would be a better place to start.

This entry is of more significance to me because my preconceived ideas about the country were challenged. Challenged is not the right word, 'destroyed' is. I am reminded of this quote by Mark Twain:

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime."

My original thought was to avoid any comparison with India - to represent Sri Lanka as a discrete entity but I later realized that it would be futile. Comparisons are bound to creep in unconsciously so let me bring them out. What is a man, if not his prejudices! Alternatively, they would contribute some juice to the otherwise boring posts.

As I gather my thoughts, I think it would be better to divide this into smaller posts because primarily I don't want to write a long meandering post and secondly because I think each topic deserves a separate post. I have also decided to write these posts on my Hindi blog as well. Since I am lousy in both the languages, the reader should not observe any appreciable differences.