Sri Lanka - Religion

Sri Lanka is a very religious country. Having said that, it is not much of a news for Indians who are perceived to be a highly religious community. That perception is not entirely true, considering there are at least 3 states in USA that think of themselves are more religious than Indians! However, there seems to be no doubt about the religiousity of Sri Lankans. An overwhelming 99% of Sri Lankans consider religion as an important part of their daily life - which is 3rd highest in the world (behind Egypt and Bangladesh).

Majority of Sri Lankans are Buddhists and unabashedly so. A small number of Hindus (largely Tamils) stay in the north province of Jaffna and were brought to Sri Lanka to work on the tea plantations. My hotel owner in Dambulla belonged to such a family of plantation workers who made it good. A part of his family, including his parents still lived in India. Actually, he was pretty happy, once he got to know that we were Indians. He tried to coax "kunchum kunchum" Tamil out of me but all that I could manage was "Taamil illa" or "Taamil Teriyadu".

Buddha and Hindu deities coexist peacefully in Sri Lankan society. Portraits of Laxmi, Karthikeyan, Vishnu, Ganesha or even Saraswati are to be found along side a meditating Buddha. Shiva, however is conspiously absent. I found the reason for that after I visited the Sacred Tooth Relic Temple in Kandy. Shaivaites have been historically portrayed in a negative light for having persecuted Buddhist Kings of Sri Lanka and attempting to destroy Sacred Tooth relic of Buddha. Shiva temples (kovils) are to be found most abundantly in Jaffna and sparingly in Colombo.

Mohammadans can be instantly recognized with their clothes - the long black dress worn by women who huddle together, the more progressive ones made out with bright colored salwar kameez. Men as always do not have to follow the dress code so they were busy herding a group of women and children. A marked contrast from the otherwise liberated and easy going Sri Lankans. I hardly saw any mosque around my trip except may be in Colombo.

There are statues of Buddha, Ganesha, Laxmi and Jesus in a glass case around the city squares. The glass cases are kept neat & clean and unlike India, not sprinkled with food grains, colors, flowers, vermillion or blackened by the smoke from incense sticks. Also, there are no priests who keep a vigil on these sites. There is no forced occupation of land after building a religious structure.

In the next part I will write about Buddhism in Sri Lanka and its changing face.

Image Courtesy - Wiki User Obi2canibe

Previous Entries:
Sri Lanka - Introduction
Sri Lanka - Cleanliness

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.

The petulance of being Ravi Shastri

Talk about eating your hat - Ravi Shastri must have had at least a dozen! And those were not just pushed in, mind you, but being made to chew through it and then shoveled inside.

The latest being,

"I would have dropped Yuvraj Singh from my team in that last match, purely because we have seen in the last few matches Yuvraj Singh is still not quite 70% or 80%". 

And look what Yuvraj did - effected a direct hit and took two top order wickets including India's tormentor in the last match - Kamran Akmal.

Dear Ravi Shastri, clearly, sometimes you need to STFU!

Bipasha and Kissing

I read Bipasha Basu's interview on TOI where she's quoted as saying, "I’m totally ok with lovemaking scenes, but I hate kissing". It reminds me of a scene from the Brasilian movie Estômago. In the movie, Nonato, a cook while having sex with a prostitute Iria tries to kiss her. She in turn tells him that that "I don't kiss anyone. I do everything else, but kissing....because it's not ethical"

Its funny to note that at both the places, the characters later end up kissing someone else. Bipasha with Emraan Hashmi and Iria with Nonato's boss Giovanni.

Hypocrite women. Huh.