Episodes

  • My Missing Sapphire Tiara

    My Missing Sapphire Tiara
    Feb 21 2024
    My Missing Sapphire Tiara, Friday, 10th DecemberIt was Mr Wijeratne from the Water Board who brought the missing tiara to mind when he called on us this morning, his beaming presence foretelling progress in our fixed line water connection.He is a generous, positive fellow, little given to jewellery – except for this fingers. These more than make up for any deficit. They carry a rich selection of rings, the most impressive the size of a small calculator, its flat square surface a golden field on which are displayed, in neat rows, nine precious and semi-precious stones.As he waved his arms about, explaining what pipe would go where and how our deep well water provision would now be enriched by his fixed line water, the sun glinted on his fingers, and the trickle of gloom that I had started to feel at my total lack of commitment to personal jewellery, become a flood.Some people are born with voices that will carry them deep into the world of opera, or a figure on which rags or rich silk outfits can be placed with equal grace. Others are born with no instinct for jewels. I have just sufficient levels of self-awareness to know that toe or finger rings, and necklaces do little for my truculent beauty. But I also know, albeit from school, that tiaras can improve me. Whether it was a tiara or a small gold crown much garnished with glass rubies, I cannot now remember. But it did the trick. My blonde hair appeared more golden, my complexion a more prosperous pink, my head longer - as if the brain beneath my temples had given an atypical opportunity to just smile, and be blessed, and take time off from thinking. Sadly the tiara disappeared once the play we were performing came to an end. I sensed later that earrings would have also done well on me; sapphire or gold nuggets, giving my overlooked lobes something special to hug. This emotional deficit does not stop me appreciating jewellery on others, through here in the jungle, Mr Wijeratne excepted, it is a rare sight. But when it does appear, it makes the sort of glorious waves that Moses must have done as he trekked down from the mountain waving his tablets. Not long ago five ladies from St Petersburg came to stay. They dressed in a rich selection of gemstones for dinner, including two hair ornaments that may or may not have been tiaras; or State Crowns. Often pearls, rings, and earrings catch the gentle candlelight over dinner, but rarely do they offer the sort of overwhelming light force that you might encounter at a coronation, in Hi! Magazine, the Tatler Diary, or on meeting Luke Skywalker’s Cloud City lightsaberWhich is a shame, especially here, for Sri Lanka is practically the home of gemstones. If biblical rumours of King Solomon’s wooing of the Queen of Sheba with gifts of priceless Sri Lankan gems, are to be believed, the country’s gem mines can be back dated to 900 BCE. "The king of Ceylon,” wrote Marco Polo in the 13th century, has “the grandest ruby that was ever seen, a span in length, the thickness of a man's arm; brilliant beyond description, and without a single flaw. Its worth cannot be estimated in money”. Thanks to the extreme old age of its rocks, Sri Lanka’s gems are so numerous as to just wash out onto flood plains, and into rivers and streams. Twenty five percent of its land is gem-bearing, especially around Ratnapura and Elahera. From here come the 75 semi or precious gems that call this island home: rubies, sapphires, spinels, amethysts, sapphires, garnets, rose quartz, aquamarines, tourmalines, agates, cymophanes, topazes, citrines, alexandrites, zircons, and moonstones. And it was from Ratnapura over the past several years that sapphires the size of supermarket baskets have been found. So great is the affinity between Sri Lanka and its sapphires that the nation might legitimately put in for a name change to be better called Sri Sapphire. They account for 85% of the precious stones mined here – but the colour variant that gets the most acclaim is the Ceylon Blue Sapphire, the blue of cornflowers, clear skies, and inestimable, sophisticated material contentment. Selling for $5,000 - 8,000 per carat, they are as much statements of investment as they are items of adornment: “A kiss on the hand may feel very, very good,” noted Anita Loos, “but a diamond and sapphire bracelet lasts forever”. And so they do. Since Ptolemy noted their glittering existence here, they are much favoured for crowns, thrones, diadems, as well as jewellery for First Nights, hotel dinners and cocktail parties. Sri Lanka’s sapphires have given museums and auction houses jewels of such arresting quality as to gain themselves names and identities in the own right Diana, Princess of Wales’s engagement ring, a mere 12-carats of Sri Lankan sapphire, rocketed into the homes of anyone with a television set when the then Prince of Wales declared his love (“whatever that is”) for her in ...
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    13 mins
  • Chinta

    Chinta
    Feb 21 2024
    Chinta, 13th of November, 2023Today is the saddest of days, for Chinta has died. The inexorable world will not stop its spin around the sun, nor Sri Lanka pause to knows this. Even in our little town of Galagedera the news will affect just a few. But here on the estate, we all stop, deeply shocked, barely knowing how to react, or what to do next.Chinta had been away from work for a day, complaining of being a little tired and dizzy, a state that was too easily put down to the occasional colds that come at this monsoon time of the year. It little warned us that this was a far more significant symptom. But whatever the cause of her death, it is her life that I – and everyone else here – stops to really give thanks for. As ever, I am at a loss to know exactly who to thank for it, but whoever it was who put her together – thank you. Her life so effortlessly and so gladly enriched mine, and all of us here at The Flame Tree Estate & Hotel. Barely could Chinta look at someone else without smiling, the hint of a giggle almost always present on her lips. It started my day, waking up, collecting the dogs for a walk, and coming across her, already at her tasks of getting the hotel ready for the day. To be that positive and with such grace every day takes a very special talent for - and love of - life. She had worked here for years, following in her mother’s, Anulawathi’s, footsteps. Anulawathi was one of the people we sort of inherited when we arrived, the rubber tapper of the estate trees, daily emptying the white latex from their coconut shells into a bucket that would be taken to the ancient 1940s rubber rollers (imported from Wolverhampton, and still running strong today) to be processed. At first Chinta worked on the estate, helping tame the jungle into more pliable plantations for pepper and spices. When we opened the hotel, she moved across as a housekeeper, keeping the rooms and public spaces clean and orderly. This task is always herculean - even when the hotel is closed, so great is the presage of nature in the jungle, the leaves, insects, pollen, and occasional over curious wild squirrels, birds monkeys. To leave things for just 24 hours is to court the censure of all right minded Little Miss Tidys. Chinta could manage the unexpected as well as the predicable, and with equal calm - whether it was feeding six tiny puppies every three hours with a teat, cooking her in-demand village dishes for staff lunches or helping keep at bay the occasional massive swarms of day flies that can suddenly arrive on the back of a jungle monsoon.I sometimes play the game of “if X was an animal, what animal would they be?” And for Chinta it would have to be the loris.There are a variety of lorises to choose from. There is the Northern Ceylon Slender Loris, discovered as recently as 1932 in the Gammaduwa region of the Knuckles Range, with its very distinctive facial stripe. Just five years later yet another sub species was discovered, this time on Horton Plains - the Ceylon Mountain Slender Loris, in 1937 and barely seen since. The sweetest sounding is the Highland Ceylon Slender Loris, whose Tamil name - kada papa – means "baby of the forest". Unlike its closest cousin the Loris Llydekkerianus Uva, its fur is redder in colour.But for Chinta, the loris I have in mind is the beautiful Sri Lankan Red Slender Loris, slim, graceful, and modest as she ever was. This loris is also the country’s most celebrated loris species, not least because it is just one of 24 endemic mammal species on the island. It is a tiny, tree-living creature with heart-stoppingly adorable panda eyes. Like all lorises, it is a creature of the night, so unless you are a lucky insomniac you are unlikely to see them. Its custom with its offspring (one that I am sure Chinta differed from) is to coat them in allergenic saliva, a toxin that repels predators - though Chinta was ever proud and protective of her two sons. Her commute was the sort of walk to work that most people can but dream about. Chinta lived in one of the tiny hamlets that abut the estate, and from her home, overlooking paddy and a small river at the northern edge of the land, she would walk along a tiny narrow jungle track, its faint route scoured only by the daily tread of her feet. She would have known every tree and bush, each creeper and family of monkeys that ran along her route. I am sure that they would have given her as much joy as I get along my daily walk, albeit one at the end of five taut and tangled miniature schnauzer leads. I have never seen a loris on the estate but, at 1,000 feet, and given over to jungle and rich plantation, this is just the sort of place that lorises favour, sleeping in leaf covered tree holes by day and climbing through tree tops by night to gather the fruits, berries, leaves on which the feast.Gratefully, we busy ourselves with the practical things, not least Angelo, the general ...
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    9 mins
  • Politics & The Art of Family

    Politics & The Art of Family
    Oct 18 2023
    Politics – and the art of family. Monday, 25th September 2023. “Spaghetti,” barked a planter friend, describing Sri Lankan politics. “Noodles. A ball of coir, all entangled. A roll of barbed wire. “ He was on roll himself here. “Pepper vine, “ he finally ventured: “all entangled but makes you sneeze too.”Politics was front of mind today. The country was having a major sneezing fit. Yesterday, London’s Channel 4 Dispatches broadcast a programme that alleged links between Muslim extremists and public figures close to two previous presidents. It also outlined an alleged plot to make a past presidential electoral victory a little more of a certain bet for one of them.The consequent debate, and many calls to action begs the question: how do you understand island politics? Was there, I wondered, a simple exemplar, a symbol that, once grasped, unlocked the complexity of power to reval its real nature. For although I can see the obvious allergic associations in the noodles or spaghetti, neither quite captured the technicolour intricacy of Sri Lanka politics.The inevitable post Perehera rains have descended with loving vengeance and the entire estate is vibrating softly with the sound of persistent warm dewy raindrops falling from like manna from heaven. It is comfort food season; spaghetti all the more inviting. But dodging the downpour as I ran into my office, a much more satisfying symbol suddenly filled my eyes - albeit so obscure as to defy every reasonable guess.Yes.An embroidered tapestry from Vietnam. That is what I saw. It hangs at the very back of my office, ten feet long and four feet wide. It is one of three I bought back in 2006 in Saigon, and dates back just 60 or 70 years before this.It is made piecemeal style – (and with an unintended ironic nod to the once great enemy) like those famous patchwork quilts beloved of America’s early colonial settlers. Famously, the women of whole villages would sit together to sew the sort of bedcovers now beloved of Sotheby’s, Christies, and the American Museum of Folk Art. But is it art?The more I looked at the tapestry, the more I wondered. Art or Craft? Politics in Sri Lanka, or merely a nice tapestry? Oxford, that doyen of definitions, describes art as “the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power.” Whilst there is no debating which side of the divide a Goya painting might fall, a dinner plate is moot, though Picasso made such items. And a Qing Dynasty Porcelain plate recently sold for $84 million. So was this tapestry art or craft?At least 8 types of pre-made fabrics have been incorporated in this Vietnamese tapestry. Mostly rectangular, some squared. Some premade, all or mostly probably not made by the maker of this particular tapestry. So where is the art in it? The shapes are coloured red, yellow, golden, orange, and shot through with abstracted designs in black, blue, green, pink, and white. Glimpses of extravagant flowers share space with intricate geometric patterns. It sounds as if it cannot do anything other than offend the eye – yet it does quite the opposite. It glows like a golden fresco in a dark cave, a coherent whole made out of utterly dissimilar elements. And although it comes from Vietnam, it hails from a part of country that defies all borders: the Central Highlands. These mountain plateaus run from Vietnam into Loas and Cambodia. Their inhabitants – some 3 million – are ethnically different to the rest of Vietnam. Composed of 30 separate tribes - collectively called Montagnards – the language they speak have little in common with Vietnamese, still less with one another. And since records began in the 1st century BCE, they have largely resisted all attempts by any central government to dominate them.The tapestry they made all those decades ago, and that I bought more recently was created to keep you warm, not to decorate a room. Yet the scraps of cloth that make it up have been assembled with apparent logical order. It is functional – and still displays both beauty and emotional power, as might any original abstract painting do. It is art concealed as craft. And there is the node with island politics: the splice point, cross point, connection socket, point of engagement. For politics here is an art concealed – in history, and family. The Oxford Dictionary is less helpful in defining politics than art. It describes politics as “the activities associated with the governance of a country or area, especially the debate between parties having power.” But in Sri Lanka politics is but family concealed by the loosest of all sarongs. Parties run a poor second.Since Independence the country’s main parties have been more than family-friendly: the Senanayake–Kotelawalas; the Bandaranaikes; the Wijewardene-Jayewardenes; and ...
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    10 mins
  • A Walk with Henning Mankell

    A Walk with Henning Mankell
    Aug 28 2023
    Monday, 28 August 2023 Damnit. I mean honestly. Just damnit. This is the second time in as many weeks. One more such episode and you can call me obsessed; or, at best, dull. Either way, I am due a real wigging.Pining for the fjords. Playing the piper. Deep sixth. Toes up. Terminated. Death is like one of those mildly irritating guests present at most parties, eager to pass on to you the plot for his unpublished novel; his holiday plans and a recent dream involving (of course) his mother and Saxon candlesticks.It is – death, that is - a right old drama queen. It flickers into the little grey cells implying a sudden – or reasonably abrupt – entrance, and precipitating a rapid and often dramatic finale. Or does it? Would that I could be so lucky as to embrace it with so certain a thespian urge. Most people get instead the mortal equivalent of a cracker from Poundland: a slow humiliating loss of control and independence; revolving circles that spin ever closer to the drab cabbage-coloured corridors of a caring institution. Kind people doing jobs I could never manage. Alarms. The doctor on call like a sparrow manacled to the bird feeder.We do not discuss it. We do not think it. We really don’t much want it. We certainly don’t get it. Believers have, of course, an inside track, knowing that, so long as they have been reasonably good and can defend their moral choices, Rumpole-like, they will be ok on The Other Side. I firmly expect, though no religious believer myself, to be there with them on The Other Side, chortling ever so slightly as we observe together the utter disorder of Nirvana. This will make them a little bit cross, or at least I hope it will: my underserving agnostic presence coming together with the administrative chaos of afterlife processing, a tiresome twinning no good person deserves.But I say to them, as I say to the monkeys in the mango tree, immortality is like waiting for the bus. It is something you have to trust in, come what may. It is not like HSBC or Lloyds. You cannot bank with it in advance by joining a religion or doing or not doing certain things. To imagine we even have one single whispered jot of a hint about what it all might mean is mesnomic; an own-goal heresy. How can we know the slightest thing about god? It’s not as if the clues – if that what we can call the universe – are especially obvious. All we can do is trust – as if waiting for the London 328 bus which terminates in World’s End, or – for the more trusting, the Number 9, which will take you all the way to Olympia.It’s Henning Mankell’s Wallander who has led me to this place. He is a gloomy soul. God, is he gloomy. His weather is gloomy. His father’s paintings are gloomy. His friends are gloomy. His rare holidays, his food , his car, his bank balance – everything gloomy as a railway station after midnight. Mankell’s chief detective, Wallander, must be one of the most miserable literary inventions of all time. If he’s not drunk, late, or bereft, he’s in a diabetic coma. Rarely is he much concerned with villains. Stoney-sad, obsessed by a masticating mortality, a day spent in his company is like being trapped in a requiem mass. Death, death, and death. It’s the wall paper, the meal on the table and the room itself. It doesn’t have to be this way. One reads detective fiction to escape thoughts of mortality. The abiding presence of death and the incipient vulnerability the precedes it never much bothered all the other main crime writers. Just, it seems, MankellAgatha Christie is - as 2 billion readers will testify - a delightful comedian of manners, a Jane Austen who has finally been given a decent glass of whiskey. Death never troubles her. Ruth Rendell’s world is one of beautiful people with souls hammered out in hell. Death for most of them is like a checking in at The Ritz. PD James, who is, of course, really the best ( and I mean the very best) is all about and only really about things that are agreeable. Agreeable. The word is worth a pause. Agreeable. Such a word is barely used today. But in P.D James’ books, where the topography is the central obsession; place precedes people, objects and even events. And they are either agreeable or not. Spooky Norfolk, Gothic Hampstead, Discreet Dorset. All very agreeable. “And how is the death, sir” Very agreeable thank you. So kind of you to ask”. “Another sir?” “Why not, it’s all so agreeable. Do you make it here?”But we never ask for seconds do we? Of perhaps we do, up there in the afterlife, in the bit that we trust in, though have not the faintest clue about. “Thank you so much for that most agreeable journey here. Might I do it again? It was such an interesting thing, most recommendable”.The vet has been and checked out all 8 goats. All are in full working order. ...
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    10 mins
  • The Mathematics of Mortality

    The Mathematics of Mortality
    Aug 20 2023
    20th August, 2023. Everyone has their thinking space: the bath, the shower, the treadmill after work. Voltaire had his bed, Dylan Thomas his shed – and I a narrow track of road weaving through jungle hills and valleys. Flame trees and palms line the edges, and beyond stetch plantations of timber, pepper, rubber - and space.A thinking space. And a very agreeable one, as I give four of the five dogs their early morning walk. The only distractions are monkeys, which have the schnauzers pulling on leads like charioteer horses at the Circus Maximus. It was a counting day this morning as I checked the leafy path to see how many more showy, and indulgent trees I could still shoehorn into the vista.And as two plus two inevitably takes you to four, counting led me rapidly to the crumbling mathematics of mortality. It has been a challenging time. Two close relatives and three friends dead in quick succession. “It makes you wonder,” said Ann Patchett presciently, “all the brilliant things we might have done with our lives if only we suspected we knew how.” Or, she might have added, if we had made time.My private calculations shows a fifth of my life devoted to childhood, education, entertainment, and the odd dash of character-building psychosis thrown in (therapists might argue that this is too modest a fraction). Thereafter two fifths devoted to toil and struggle, mortgages, money, doer-uppers, friends and family, travel, endless travel, shopping (I’m ashamed to say), and yet more work, and work.The Bible gives seventy years as the cut off, but concedes eighty “by reason of strength.” So assuming I qualify, that gives me the last two fifth for – what?Of course – today - for many 80 is just a beginning. Many of my incipient octogenaric friends wear their decades like a feather boa, flicking this way and that: a game of tennis here, a city break there; magnums and yoga all the way. But for others, it’s the start of the Great Decline. When you reap the benefits (or not) of having looked after yourself a bit better in the previous 20 years or so. And, as my sorrowful tally of deaths suggest, these mathematics are arbitrary. Fit, healthy and ambitious one day. Dead the next. No warning. That’s it. Done and dusted. Stuff left undone – too bad. You are due somewhere else, and only the luckless wait in the waiting room. If it doesn’t really bear thinking about, not thinking about it is even more difficult. Launching and running a jungle hotel in the Sri Lanka highlands keeps inertia at bay; though the read credit is down to Angleo and the amazing team here. They keep the porcelain plates spinning no matter how many times wild boar eat through the water pipes, or the country itself wobbles (Easter bombings, COVID, Aragalaya). But as others declutter and kick back, chill out, and denest, take up golf, grandkids and climb the Monroes, here the opposite looms larger. Sri Lanka is reverting to normal, guests return to the hotel, and the prodigal work of taming wild plantations, planting arboretums, gardens, of building staff bedrooms, spas, cabañas and so on returns, gladdening the heart.But it is not – quite - enough, not when you consider the mathematics of mortality. So I thought to tell a story too – Scheherazade like (with its mortality motivator). Sri Lanka has an remarkable story to tell and a compelling one to research, and disseminate. Despite the Tourist Board’s best efforts, it remains something of a well-kept secret. Before COVID, 40 million tourists went to Thailand, 26 million to Malaysia and over 4 million to Burma. Ten million fetched up in India, but just a stone’s throw away, barely 20% of that number reach these shores – roughly the same figure as went to the Maldives.Travellers see bits of Sri Lanka; and natives their part of the whole. Argument rage about what it really is; though it is, of course, everything that it is. Every last fragment. And there are many. The country has rarely done things by the book. Contrary and creative, it created a tropical Versailles whilst other countries were still experimenting with wattle and daub. When the Cold War ended, its own war began. It has absorbed, synthesised, and repurposed everything that has come its way, welcome or not, into a singular Sri Lankanness. It is an attempt to document some of this; to make its history, fauna, flora, culture, topography, art, literature, mood, and manor more accessible that sits behind www.theceylonpress.com, the online publishing website that will take up much of the remaining two fifths of my fair portion of living. I would hate to hauled out before it is at least reasonably complete. If I am lucky to go out feet first, I will be clutching a keyboard and half a dozen marked up research papers from JSTOR, my thinking space much enriched.The Ceylon Press currently produces three podcast shows.1. The Jungle ...
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    7 mins
  • Space, the Perhera - and Danby

    Space, the Perhera - and Danby
    Aug 20 2023
    17th August, 2023. “Thanks for the warning,” came the text from Danby this morning. The message displayed his characteristic linguistic athleticism: lean, economic, pertinent, fully fortified against any misunderstandings, whatsoever. An expatriate, living in a house of books perched above a golden beach, and surrounded by battlements of cinnamon, Danby’s honed lifestyle ought be on school syllabuses. If he is not surfing, or beach combing, he is searching out lost architectural glories in Europe; ambient tea estates, or hot Colombo cafes. I had sent him the dates of the Kandy Perehera, the country’s supreme festival. Every night, for over a week, Lord Buddha’s tooth relic is removed from his eponymous temple and paraded around Kandy’s shabby-chic streets. The relic sits atop Sri Lanka’s most senior elephant, swathed in robes of gold brocade; and followed enthusiastically by thousands of serious priests, ecstatic dancers, fire eaters, acrobats, and junior elephants. The festival occurs in July. Or sometimes August. The date is kept flirtatiously vague until the last moment, as monks (and possibly weather forecasters and astrologers) ponder the heavens to determine auspiciousness. I say weather forecasters because you can set your gardening clock by the dates of the Perehera. The blue monsoon rains only fall the day after the event ends. The forecasting is unerringly accurate. Whether Danby’s message implied a fear of traffic jams, an aversion to excessive religiosity or a dislike of crowds was something he left teasingly open to speculation. Traffic jams was an unlikely casus belli. Merely thinking car here is to invite traffic. Nor could it be distaste for excessive religiosity. Sri Lanka is nothing if not famously religious-minded. Living here happily presupposes an elastic tolerance - if not devotion- for the divine, with the option of some kind of temple, kovil, mosque or church for every 1,000 souls. No. It had to be enochlophobia that was troubling Danby. Even so, it is hard for enochlophobs to take against the Perehera crowds, per se. They are faultlessly well behaved, lining Kandy’s streets ten or twenty deep for up to 6 hours as the nightly procession rollicks past. Picnics are held, short eats and blessings flow like flood water. The whole fiery event is unexpectedly magnetic. Before the civil war ended the Perehera was wholly patronised by locals, the tourists choosing Bali over a war zone. Today well healed travellers pay serious money to bag a comfortable seat outside the straightlaced Queen’s Hotel – pole position from which to watch the spectacle. Even so, hundreds of thousands of extra people cramming themselves into a tiny city tangled around several mountains is a lot of extra humanity to deal with, however well behaved they are. As I picture them, I sense, looming behind these crowds still greater ones. It took 200,000 years for our world’s population to hit a billion but barely 200 years more to reach 8 billion. And now the pundits warn that in 30 years’ time there will be 25% more. That’s a lot more people to fit into land that, as Twain observed, isn’t being made anymore. No wonder Danby is stressed. He’s also probably seen that mesmerising Edvard Munch-like painting: previous occupants of a single room. The room overflows with the ghostly forms of people in different costumes, sleeping eating, reading, making love – living. Like Danby, my reaction is to retreat upcountry. Village country. Jungle country. Mrs Miniver-like, I gaze across the great green vastness of the jungle here, picturing some of those who saw this very view 500 – 5,000 - years ago, just a few of the 100 billion people estimated to have ever lived on planet earth. And looking, my foreignness starts to disintegrate. I picture the first nation Vedda, pushed to these inland hills by boat loads of Iron Age migrants from the Indian subcontinent. The columns of medieval refugees fleeing Chola invasions and the destruction of the glittering city of Anuradhapura, climbing up from the dry Kurunegala plains into these bastion hills. The ranks of colonial armies wilting in serge twill up the Galagedera Gap forever failing to take Kandy, until, at last, the last kingdom fell, victim not to brigades, but bribes. They are my friends, these few forgotten people. And walking the narrow mountain roads we have cut on the estate, it is hard to comprehend the seething stress, and excitement in the almost equally narrow streets of Kandy. Like Danby, I’m staying put. Enochlophobia is, I reckon, something of an age thing. The older you get, the more enochlophobic you become. Its one of aging’s more agreeable symptoms – something you can bring up over dinner or drinks, unlike, say dribbling or a life threating medical condition. It’s something to bask in, and bask in it I do. Unless...
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    10 mins
  • The Kerfuffle in the Kitchen

    The Kerfuffle in the Kitchen
    Jun 18 2023
    The kerfuffle in the kitchen The kerfuffle in the kitchen has calmed down since I (at last) remembered the old adage about too many cooks spoiling the broth. And acted upon it.Sudeth and Kasun, our (pre) existing chefs, have stepped effortlessly into the gap created by the departure of a big enchilada and the pot is set again to simmer smoothly. Two Commis chefs have joined the team and the kitchen whirls once more with contented, timely creatively – rather than the sultry Gordon Ramsay B Side that is the alternative chorus of any kitchen.Both Sudeth and Kasun are pleasingly talented and able; well organized, properly mindful of standards, hardworking and curious to prod the boundaries of our Menu Mantras.Our kitchen is (I know I may be unjustly accused of bias here), the best within at least a 65 mile range, if not more. It’s certainly way better than anything in Kandy, Negombo, Matale, Gampaha, Kurunegala, Hatton, Dambulla, or most of the grand restaurants and hotels in Colombo. That’s more than conscionably good for a kitchen in the jungles of central Sri Lanka where finding pomegranate molasses can take the better part of a week.Having eaten my way through more Michelin stared restaurant menus than any generous god could countenance, I‘ve rediscovered the blindingly obvious: you can’t beat simplicity, authenticity, routine. Do a few things really well; keep to what you can buy that is really fresh and local; and take to heart that food is a tour (or at worst, an excursion) through a country, a district, a culture. That’s it. That’s our menu Mantra. Entirely. No more. And definitely no less.This means leaving other kitchens in other lands to fashion dry ice trompe l'oeil salads, pompadour cuts of preternaturally expensive meats from distant Japanese prefectures, mercurial seascapes daubed with caviar and served on mirrors dusted with blushing Anatolian salts; and all the other melodramatic dishes prepared for the jaded urban palates of this starving earth.No. No., No. No.Food may be fuel; but it sure isn’t entertainment, brief and flimsy as anything you might catch flickering across the Netflicks screens before it is gone forever. Not unless you’ve run out of other things to do in a long and reckless life; and have taken to climbing the Munros or dropping in on the College of Hearlds to research your matriarchal family line. Food is culture; learning; life. What I revere about our estate food is that all our ingredients are really really local (though the curd most certainly comes from heaven). The most perfect vegetables and fruit are sensually abundant just a stone’s throw or so away; most of the usual – but still more of the unexpected. The spices we pick from our gardens: cinnamon, cloves, pandom leaves, pepper. cardamom, vanilla, curry leaves, turmeric, goraka, curry leaves, ginger, cumin, chilli, . The herbs we grow ourselves. With meats, we are very picky. Good beef doesn’t happen on the island: it comes from thousands of miles away, tired, jet-lagged and an affront to any armchair environmentalist. Pork is challenging; locally sourced, easily disgraced. Lamb, like penguins, have yet to call this tropical island home. But the chicken is excellent. And the fish, of course, better still. Sailfish swims off all the coasts, its flesh thick, steaky and white with none of the oily after taste of some sea creatures. And tuna – well, enough said. Tasty tuna can be seen off every beach doing backstroke, breaststroke, crawl, a gleaming Sri Lankan passport clasped between its teeth. Tuna is very very good.And then of course there is rice. Back west or down the sleek corridors of the G7 nations its mostly white. Intermittently wild,. Sometimes brown. Occasionally organic. But here there is also Suwendel, Kuruluthuda Wee, Madathawalu, Sulai, Murungakayan, Pachaperumal, Sudu Heenati, Kaluheenati, Gonabaru, Kuru Hondarawala, Polon Wee, Guru Podi Wee, Kuru Ma Wee, Pulli Wee, Alagu Samba, Guru Wee, Pushpa Raga, Alagu Samba, Allei Perumal, Hapumal Wee, Mada El, Rasna Vaalu, Askarayal, Hata Da Wee, Rata Thawalu, Hathi El, Madei Karuppan, Rath El, Heen Deveradhari, Maha Maa Wee, Bala Goda Wee, Manikkam, Masuran, Bala Murunga, Heen Rath El, Rath Karael, Bala Samba, Heen Samba, Molagu Samba, Rath Mada Al, Bala Thatu Wee, Heen Suvuru Wee, Molligoda, Bata Kiri El, Hondarawalu, Motakarupan, Mudu Kiri El, Rathu Bala Wee, Beheth Heenati, Kahata El, Murunga, Rathu Sooduru, Kahata Samba, Niyan Wee, Kalu Bala Maa Wee, Kalu Bala Vee, Deveradhari, Kalu Handiran, Sudu Maa Wee, Goda Wee, Kottayar, and Wanni Dahanala. To name but a few.As Van Goff might have said to a curious passer by: we am not short of colours. To shape food with all this around us is little short of joyful.The are the obvious things you should never deviate from, like toast soldiers with boiled eggs; nutmeg with comfort macaroni cheese, proper homemade marmalade, and freshly baked bread. But the katsup with our lunchtime...
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    8 mins
  • Hand Gestures

    Hand Gestures
    Jun 18 2023
    Hand Gestures: An Alternative TutorialAt 6 am Mr Goonetilleke the Younger’s workers were already busy tapping the rubber; and as I shot past them, four dogs on a single lead, I waved a good morning.The wave I got back reminded me that hand gestures in Sri Lanka are rarely like this – of the usual kind. Simple, easy to interpret, quick to deliver.To mention “Hand Gesture” in England is to imply the semaphoring of indelible insults. The “V;” the single finger, the waggling little finger, the nodding sideways fist, it’s a menu to delight those for whom actions speak louder than words.But here in Sri Lanka, hand gestures are more likely to connect with the wisdom and life of Lord Buddha, than they are to deliver slights, slurs, and abuses. Everyone, of courses, knows the two palms pressed together as if in prayer, as a greeting that negates the sticky bacterial swopping of a western handshake. This is known locally as the “Anjali Mudra” - a 1 on 1 respectful gesture of greeting.But there are plenty of others beyond that, used in temple, home, and office to convey a feeling or thought. And, in dance too - for traditional Sri Lankan dance is nothing without the many complex hand gestures that have been passed down the centuries like a piece of supra-DNA choreography. Sometimes, as in an auction when you want to take care not to let your fingers brush some invisible fluff on your jacket or face and so be mistaken for a serious bid for the School of Canaletto on sale, it can be prudent to simply sit on your hands until you know what your random hand gestures might really mean.To get an inside track on island hand gestures, its as well to spend a little time with Lord Buddha. Even his most serene and pacific statues offer a dynamic lesson in the evangelising of fundamental Buddhist beliefs. For if ever hands can speak, those of Lord Buddha most certainly do. There are at least 11 core messages encoded in such hand signals, known as “mudras,” some with the most subtle of further variants; and most, but not all, in common use in Sri Lanka.The most popular Mudra is probably the “Karana Mudrā,” made by raising the index and little finger and folding all other digits, to ward off evil, negative thoughts – and demons. And not a hundred miles away from this is the “Abhaya Mudra” – or “gesture of fearlessness," a pose made with the right hand raised to shoulder height, arm crooked, palm facing outward, fingers upright; left hand hanging down at the side of the body. In this pose, Buddha represents protection, peace, and the dismissal of fear. Popular too is the “Bhumisparsha” – or “Earth Witness Mudra.” Here, all 5 fingers of the right hand touch the ground, to symbolise Buddha’s enlightenment under the bodhi tree. The left hand - held flat in his lap - symbolises the union of method and wisdom.At the other end, and not for the faint hearted, is the “Uttarabodhi Mudra.” Here, index fingers touch and point up; all other finger entwin at heart level – a bold gesture of supreme enlightenment, brought about by connecting oneself with divine universal energy. This Murda finds its nearest cousin in the “Jnana” or “Wisdom Mudra” - thumb tip and index finger touching as a circle and facing inwards, representing spiritual enlightenment.The remaining 5 Mudras are more complicated, eclectic, or doctrinal - or, quite possibly, all three.The “Varada Mudra” is a largely one-handed affair. Here, the left hand hangs at the side of the body, palm open, facing forwards with all fingers extended – a representation of charity and compassion, one finger each for: Generosity; Morality; Patience; Effort; and Meditative Concentration.The “Dhyana” or “Meditation Mudra” is made with one or both hands resting on the lap and is a gesture of mediation made when concentrating on Buddhism’s substantial body of “Good Laws” and the attainment of spiritual perfection.The “Vajra Mudra” symbolises the unity of all Buddhist beliefs, the erect left hand of the forefinger being closed into the right fist, the tips of both fingers curled together.The “Vitarka” or “Discussion Mudra” has the thumb and Index finger touching, the remaining fingers pointing straight, the gesture reflected with both hands and indicative of talking about and communicating Buddhist teaching.And last of all is the famous “Wheel of Dharma” or “Dharmachakra Mudra.” Here the thumb and index finger of both hands touch at their tips to form a circle that represents the union of method and wisdom. To really complicate (or enrich) things, the 3 free fingers of both hands are also extended, and carry their own separate meanings. The 3 extended fingers of the left hand symbolize Buddha, the Dharma (the doctrine of universal truth), and the Sangha (the Buddhist monastic order, of monks, nuns, laymen, and laywomen). Those of the right symbolize the 3 main tools for his teaching...
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    8 mins