Walking to Australia by David Robbins

Author:David Robbins
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Book Guild
Published: 2018-04-18T04:00:00+00:00

12

Sri Lanka

Into the mountain

MY FIRST THOUGHTS in Colombo concerned cricket and a tree called Ficus religiosa.

The cricket came to me from a conversation I held with my tuk-tuk driver (but in Sri Lanka these wasp-like vehicles were called, more sedately and accurately, ‘three-wheelers’). He was a cheerful young man with flashing eyes and waves of dark hair, seeming almost blue under the early evening lights. He asked me where I came from. When I told him, he immediately spoke with relish and enthusiasm about Hashim Amla’s batting prowess and ‘that Dale Steyn fellow, South Africa’s great fast bowler’. While we chatted, we went tearing through the city centre, my cricket-wise driver choosing several loops through backstreets to prolong the journey. Finally we arrived at a ramshackle fish restaurant, which stood with its feet on a beach, while at its back a railway carried brightly lit trains that clattered on the joints in the rails. I stood for a moment on the beach, watching by the collected lights of the city small waves breaking whitely onto the sand. Through a parting in the clouds above the sea, a lopsided moon carried its own halo. A warm wind blew, and mounds of pale grey beach sand lay in the corners of the restaurant. At a specially prepared table a dozen Japanese tourists sat down to many bottles of wine and dishes of crispy-looking whitebait. Later, they ate prawns and lobsters and filled their glasses from a new round of bottles. Their faces became taut and animated, their skin shining in candlelight, their eyes flashing. They rose to toast each other in a stiff and formal way. They did so again and again. Their laughter became raucous. Outside, through an opening in the back wall of the restaurant, I saw packed trains as they jarred noisily past.

The Ficus religiosa had come to my attention much earlier that day as I walked towards the airport parking area in the company of a man named Janaka Rasanga. He was trying to be helpful. He told me later he could hardly believe that I did not want to visit Kandy or the Sigiriya rock fortress or the ancient capital of Anuradhapura and other historic places. I had told the tour company that my interests were narrower: that I wanted to see a particular cave, and then visit a sacred place in the south-eastern corner of the island. So Janaka, young and well-informed, had been allocated the task of looking after me during my short Sri Lankan visit. He proved to be the perfect choice.

His helpfulness began even before we had got into his car to drive the forty or so kilometres to Colombo and my overnight hotel. We were walking along a pathway surrounded by gardens and trees when he pointed out the tree he called Ficus religiosa. The leaves were plentiful and heart- shaped, with a slender tassel extended from each tapering base, and the trunk showed gnarled and fluted like a Greek or Roman column.

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