Retire to India

Have you ever been stumped? By “stumped”, of course, I mean have you ever swung at a cricket pitch, missed it and lifted your back foot outside the batter’s box just long enough for the wicket keeper to catch the ball and push your wicket stump over. It’s a silly way to be put out. Good cricket players don’t get stumped. Only we bad ones do. And arguing with the umpire is not allowed – it’s not cricket. 

There are 30 million baseball fans in America. That’s why we fans call it The National Pastime. There are 900 million cricket fans in India. If I were them, I’d consider calling it something. 

Anyone who’s played baseball can see the similarities.

Both baseball and cricket have one team at bat and one in the field. There are innings (nine for baseball – two for cricket). There’s a pitcher (bowler) a catcher (wicket keeper) and umpires. 

Runs are scored by hitting the ball and running. Umpires call runners either safe or out. The distance from pitcher to batter is about the same 60’6″ for baseball – 66′ for cricket. Like baseball, a cricket fastball can come in at 100 mph. The farthest a baseball’s been hit in a game is 582 feet. The record in cricket is only about 425 feet – but considering cricket pitches bounce on the ground first, that’s a pretty decent whack.

Just about everything else is different. For one thing, the pitcher (bowler) starts way far back, then comes tearing up to you like a rabbit and just as he hits the proper distance, he fires a shot in the dirt at your feet. You, of course, jump forward to hit the ball while it’s still in the air. But you miss and (if you’re bad player) you get stumped. All you can do then is laugh at yourself along with everyone else. And brood. And think dark thoughts.

Here’s a baseball field versus a cricket field. 

Baseball is played on a quarter of a pie. Cricket is played on the whole pie – no foul territory. You can hit the ball in any direction which seems kind of silly to baseball players. (Cricket players must think so too. There’s even a field position called “silly point”.)

Cricket gives you a couple more fielders (eleven versus nine) but you wince. That’s not enough. You want about a dozen more than that. The umpire says no.

In baseball, it’s easy to make an out and hard to score a run. In cricket, it’s just the opposite, it’s hard to get a guy out and it’s not uncommon for a batter to score 100 runs (called a century) in a single game . 

In baseball, if a batter pounds one over the fence and the fielder jumps into the sky and catches it, the batter is out (Hoozah!). Same in cricket, unless the outfielder falls out of bounds (Oh, booo!) probably onto his neck. (Booo! Ya bum!) Then the batter gets an automatic six runs and he’s still at bat – trying not to smirk (bad form).

And that’s another thing – in baseball, if you hit the ball, you have to run. In cricket, you don’t have to run unless you feel like it. (Though you’ll get more runs if you don’t just sit there the whole game.)

Also, in baseball, it’s three strikes and you’re out. Four balls and you take your base. There are no strikes in cricket. No balls either. If you get hit by the pitch, tough. (And if you get beaned with a ball that might have hit the wicket, you’re out. (Booo!) Remember, the main job of your bat is to protect your wicket. (Boo!) No, that’s good. (Oh. Yaay!)

In baseball, you’ve got the seventh inning stretch. Fans get to buy peanuts and cracker jacks. The players get nothing. In cricket, every few hours, the players are given tea and little cakes. So there you have it – cricket. I like baseball better (except for the little cakes).

The greatest cricket player of all-time was Sachin Tendulkar. You can say so anywhere in India and no one will give you any guff. Over 15,000 runs!  The greatest baseball player of all time was Babe Ruth. (Don’t give me any guff. See the William Bendex movie.)

Just like baseball, if you’re a really good cricketer, you’re treated like a god. (Though the average baseball god gets paid better.) Like American fans, Indians like to smoke what their gods like to smoke and drink what their gods like to drink. 

The current reigning cricketer is Virat “King” Kohli. Captain of India’s national team. 

You see his face up on billboards all over India trying to glower you into buying everything from toothpaste to steel pipes. 

Hundreds of millions of Indian kids want to grow up to be like him. It may be a 900 million-to-one shot but hey, he did it.

Nobody wants to grow up to be like Babe Ruth (who?) but hundreds of dozens of American kids want to grow up to be some kind of baseball star.

They might grow up to be the new Aaron Judge. It could happen.

At the very least, they can grow up to be like me.

To continue my little narrative from last week, Prime Minister Modi released our car from his tractor beam and we zipped up the hills to Shillong, happily honking all the way – as is the custom.

The roads were perfect except through one village that refused to pay its road tax. It took us ten minutes to drive two miles. (Pothole-A-Palooza!)

We arrived around midnight and I was surprised to find that my friend’s relatives were still awake – all of them.  What’s more, they had postponed dinner. Not a midnight snack, the whole fatted calf – as is the custom.

See the tiny tot? Let’s call her Rani. We might as well. It means “Queen” in Hindi and as everyone knows, cute kids rule the world. 

A bunch of us went for a ride the next day. Rani didn’t want to sit in a car seat, she wanted to climb all over. We should have had a sign: “Bored Baby On Board”

“Okay, Rani but don’t go too far back. You will fall into the little space and bonk your head.”

(CLIMB-CLIMB) “Where will I bonk my head?” (CLIMB-CLIMB-CLIMB) “Here?” (CLIMB-CLIMB) “Is this where I will fall and bonk my head?”

“Yes, Rani, that is where you will fall and bonk your head. Don’t go there.”

(CLIMB-CLIMB) “Right here?”

(Have I telegraphed the outcome enough?) The Q&A went on in a similar vein for awhile, then: (CLIMB-FLIP-BONK!)

“SHREEEEEK!! WAAAAAH! SQUEEEEK!  YAAAAAAA!!” 

“Rani! What happened?”

“AAAA!…I fall and bonk my head!! Woo..wooo..YAAAAA!!”

“Are you okay?”

PAUSE FOR A BEAT, THEN SHE POPS UP

“I’m okay!”

For the entire trip, everybody wanted to pick up Rani and hug her. I did, too but she wasn’t interested. She did that thing kids do where they dive out of your hands heedless of the five-foot drop and inevitable head bonk. So you have to hang onto them all crazy until Mom comes and rescues you both. 

Finally, Rani had it with all our stinking affection and huffed off.

By and by, we arrived at Cherrapunjee – The Rainiest Place on Planet Earth.

You probably think that the rainiest place on Planet Earth is Seattle. I agree. I grew up there. But guess what? We’re both wrong.  Suspiciously, it wasn’t raining in Cherrapunjee the day we were visiting . (If this was Seattle, it would rain because you were visiting.) 

We drove by some amazingly lush side valleys. It took me a couple of tries to get a decent shot.

After Cherrapunjee, we toured Mawjymbuin – The Cave of Wonders. Unlike American cave tours, this one treated you less like a valued customer and more like a long line of kids exploring a cave they just found. 

There weren’t any paths or roped off areas, you had to duck in places so as not to clock your head on a stalactite and if you came upon an ice-cold underground stream, you took off your shoes, rolled up your pantlegs and waded through it. Like any true, red-blooded American, I turned around at that point and headed back to the coffee shop. 

We visited the beautiful Seven Sisters Falls.

We also saw Noh Ka Likai Falls which means “The Leap of Likai” so called because when Likai came home from work one day and saw what her husband had made for dinner, she ran from the house to the waterfall and jumped to her death. What did he make for dinner? You don’t want to know. Especially if you’re planning on eating dinner.

All too soon, it was time to bump our way back to Siliguri. Everyone came to say good-bye – which became a pretty nice memory all by itself.

Good-byes took an hour – as is the custom.

When Pakistan broke away from India, it made India look like a chicken with a very skinny neck.

My apartment is in Siliguri and Siliguri is one of the easiest places to find in all of India. It’s in the state of West Bengal – in the skinniest part of the chicken neck. See that part? 

Unfortunately, when the lines were drawn in 1947, East and West Pakistan ended up more than two thousand miles apart. That’s like moving West Virginia to the other side of the Rocky Mountains. A little hard to govern both. So East Pakistan became Bangladesh.

But for years I wondered, what’s going on in the Chicken’s Head? 

Fortunately, a friend of mine came from there and wanted to pay a visit to the old homestead and how would I like to come along? So we bought a couple train tickets.

Twelve hundred rupees (about 16 bucks) bought us a seven-hour ride through places I’d never seen. With strange and mysterious sounding names never before heard – Alipurduar, Fakiragram, Bongaigaon. Some with names no human tongue could utter with a potato in his mouth.  

The scenery was dramatic. Very hilly and valley-ly if that’s the word I want. It was a place where you got the feeling anything could happen. For instance, isn’t that a UFO that just landed when it thought no one was looking?

It must have caught me staring at it because when I blinked, it suddenly vanished! (Well, yes, the train was moving pretty fast and it may have been a very slow blink. Maybe more like a five-minute snooze. But the fact remains, next time I looked, it was gone!) 

And could there be some kind of geomagnetic field in the Chicken Head that compels  humans to stick their stupid head out the door of fast-moving trains? 

And let’s see you explain this unretouched photograph.  Note the man in the yellow shirt. Is he reading your mind? And is the man on the right sleeping with another man’s foot in his rama-lama-ding-dong? 

We arrived at Guwahati Station where my friend’s cousin picked us up.

It should have been a three-hour drive into the hills arriving at Shillong in time for dinner at about 9pm. But we were stopped by Narendra Modi. Prime Minister of India.

He was in town to give a speech and the whole city had to stand still while he did that. All traffic came to a halt. For three hours, nothing moved.

So while we’re waiting, I’ll give you the quick skinny on Mr. Modi.

He came from pretty humble origins – son of a street cart tea seller. Although he’s a super nationalist who alienates a huge percentage of the population, his party was elected twice. Business loves him and President Trump and Modi are pals. (“Howdy Modi!” the signs read in Texas when he came to visit.)

If he could flip a switch and have the 300 million Muslims, Buddhists, Christians and Jews convert to Hinduism or leave, he’d probably do it. 900 million Hindus would like that.

On thing everyone likes about Prime Minister Modi is that he’s cleaning up the country. Literally.  Like Lady Bird Johnson did in the 1960’s with her Beautify America campaign. 

When I was a kid, picking up pop and beer bottles from the roadside could make you a pretty good chunk of change – upwards of 70-80 cents a day (which in 2020 dollars is probably like, I don’t know, a hundred and sixty bucks?) Those happy days are gone thanks to Lady Bird. That, plus slapping litterbugs with kneecap-busting fines. (They don’t make First Ladies like that anymore.)  

Okay, the traffic finally started moving but I’m way over my post limit. So we’ll pick up our Chicken Head trip next week. And visit the Rainest Place on Planet Earth.

Most foreign phrase books tell you that the number one sentence to learn when traveling abroad is “Do you speak English?” That’s useful, I agree, but “Sachalay kahan hay?” – “Where is the bathroom?” gets my vote for number one. (Number two, as well.) There are moments when determining whether or not a person speaks English is a waste your valuable time. (You might add this to your short list: “Kur-pie-a jaldee.” “Quickly, please.”)  

I am speaking, of course, about commonly used phrases. I can imagine situations, where knowing how to say, “There’s an elephant in my room.” and “It most certainly is an elephant.” and “Please get this elephant off of me.” might be very handy but if I were you, I’d commit “Sachalay kahan hay?” to memory first.

Another good one to learn is “namaste” (Pronounced “NAH-mus-tay). It’s the Hindi word for hello.

It’s also the Hindi word for good-bye.

It’s also the Hindi word for welcome, thanks and probably the Hindi word for a bunch of other things.

It’s may not be the only Hindi word for those other things but it’s one that won’t get you the kind of angry looks some of the fancier words have gotten me. 

Literally, “namaste” means “Not I.” Remember The Little Red Hen?  

Well, this isn’t the same thing at all. You might get angry looks if you use “Not I” that way. Less literally, “namaste” means “I bow to you.”  The etymology of “namaste” goes back to two Sanskrit words which mean ………..  …………. zz  …………zzz  ………… whups! Sorry. Dozed off there. Where were we?

Oh, right. I was about to tell you how to say “Good!” in Hindi. It’s “AH-cha!”

I really like acha. It’s a friendly way to end a conversation. For instance, say someone is trying to tell you where the bathroom is and is taking too long to do so. 

You just give a thumbs up, say “Acha!” and walk off in the general direction indicated. Toss in a “namaste” and even Miss Manners would have no complaint. Another good thing about “acha” is you can turn its meaning around on a dime. 

Say some long-winded person is expounding and you’re bobbing your head with your usual uncomprehending affability. To be sociable, you toss in an “acha” and a look of disagreement, disbelief or disgust begins forming on the face of the speaker. Just stay calm, lose the smile, sadly shake your head and add the word “nayee”. Like magic, you’ve turned “good” into “not good” and quite possibly avoided another of your international incidents. 

I’m a little embarrassed to admit it but that’s about all the Hindi I’ve learned after five years in India. Lucky for me, English is India’s official second language so it’s about all I’ve needed.  I’m 68% sure I could have learned more if I had to.

Are you old enough to remember this? 

OJ Simpson wasn’t always a famous murder suspect and convicted felon.  At one time, he was one of the greatest running backs in football (if you don’t believe me, you can google it). He did a TV commercial that showed him running through an airport – ducking and weaving and jumping over stuff. 

That was a more innocent time (even OJ was more innocent). Twenty-five years later, 9/11 happened. (If you’re too young to remember 9/11, google it.) All the rules changed. Number one, no more jumping over stuff. Shoes and belts off, pockets empty, luggage x-rayed and “Please hold still for a full-body scan, sir or madam.” Then it’s hands up and spread ’em for the squealy metal detector. 

You can still run through the airport if you want but you’ll be dragging a string of armed guards with you. Takes a bit of the fun out of air travel but after 20 years, you get used to it.

Now there’s the Covid. All the same security precautions except they shoot you with a Star Trek tricorder before letting you into the airport.  Any sign of a temperature and it’s back to wherever you came from for you.

In all lines, you must comply with the mantra “safe distance”. If you don’t, the nearest concerned citizen will point and cry “Safe distance! Safe distance!” Once on board, the stewardesses look like they’re getting ready for surgery.

Oddly, you and everyone else wears the same little blue masks the doctors wore on MASH (if you’re too young to remember, google it).

I hope they soon come up with a shot, pill, patch or spray that everyone in the world can agree on. Otherwise, the airlines will be going out of business even faster than they were before. They barely broke even packing us into planes like sardines (better google that, too). Now, all the middle seats are empty (no complaint here). On some flights, there’s no one in the rows in front or behind you. So a plane that can hold 210 passengers is only allowed to carry 70.  How, you might wonder, can any airline still be in business? Simple. It’s not business anymore, it’s magic.

Given all that, flying anywhere is still cool. 

It was cool when airports were pretty much small, jet exhaust-filled places where friends could come and wait at the gate for your flight.

Now, airports are pricey little shopping malls with not a hint of jet fuel fume to be smelt anywhere. And just about everywhere, the shops are reassuringly familiar – Gucci, Starbucks, McDonald’s, etc, etc,… But different countries’ airports do their best to show what an interesting place you’ve landed yourself in.

In Delhi, they have full-size elephant statues. 

In Kolkata, they have the biggest, glassiest, glass wall anyone could want to have to wash.

In Bangalore, the airport’s new, wavy-roof earns The David Uncle Raised Eyebrows of Appreciation.

In Bangkok, they have a large work of art showing “The Churning of the Ocean of Milk” (google it).

In Kathmandu, you have to gain altitude fast to get over the Himalayan foothills. 

In Amsterdam, they have a wall of little Delft ceramic houses filled with gin. 

But Colombo, Sri Lanka gets the award for Swellest Looking Airport. In fact, it is so swell-looking, I’m not sure what I’m seeing. Kind of like an MC Escher trick perspective thing. 

Don’t go dashing over to see it for yourself just yet. The airport doesn’t look anything like this now but according to their PR people, “It sure will pretty soon!”

And you might want to avoid the Hong Kong airport just now as well. Protesters. They’ve been protesting their police state for over a year. (Probably think US protestors are a bunch of copycats.) 

There are two kinds of junk food in India. Their own junk food and American junk food. You can find junk food from a few other countries thrown in (British, Nepalese, Chinese) but the vast majority are either local or US purveyors.

Your Basic Junk Food Groups in India are Sweet, Salty and Spicy. You can just write down “The 3 Ss”. It’s a mnemonic device that will help you to instantly call to mind the types of Indian junk food the next time someone asks you – or the question comes up on a test – or you find yourself sitting alone on a wind-swept ocean cliff contemplating infinity and stuff.

First, Sweet. If I have a sweet tooth (and I sure do) Indians have a whole mouthful. Oddly, compared to the average American (me) the average Indian hardly ever eats sweets. (I know, I watched him carefully for four days). But when he does, it’s sugar on steroids (icky simile, let’s try again) it’s sweet with a capital S (naw, too wimpy – here’s one) it’s premium super ultra sweet. (Got that from a gas pump – who needs a thesaurus?) 

The following are a few of his favorites. 

If I’d grown up in India, I’d probably have one wiggly tooth left in my head by now. So how come the average Indian’s teeth look so good? Again, I watched him and, psst, here’s The Big Secret, (look left, look right) – he  brushes them.

You probably think there are two more categories on the Junk Food Pyramid, Salty and Spicy. Actually there’s only one – Salty and Spicy. Unlike the world-famous American Junk Food Pyramid,…

…the Indian Junk Food Pyramid is more like this:

Everything that isn’t sweet is spicy or spicy and salty. Potato chips, corn chips, popcorn, kabobs, momos,… Many menus tell how spicy an item is on a scale of one to five chilis. In India, this is to accomodate tourists. If there were no tourists, they’d start at three chilis. (I’m convinced they make regular Uncle Chips for me alone.)

Everyone knows the best-tasting junk food in America is cocoa and toast.

What’s the best-tasting junk food in India? You guessed it – pani puri! 

Two-inch puff balls of crispy, egg-shell-thin, deep-fried crepe. Crack a hole with your thumb, fill it with a spicy mashed potato stuffing made with onions, corn, chutney… whatever you like. Dunk it in a spicy mint-ginger broth, pop the whole thing in your mouth and instant addiction! They’re sold by street vendors in what look like popcorn machines. 

You can eat 20 at a time and still get change back from your dollar.

Just like Americans, Indians think of dinner as the big meal of the day.

Lunch and breakfast come in second – pretty much neck and neck I’ve noticed – but dinner wins by a good three lengths.

The simple reason: meat. 

Many Indians are vegetarians but most of them aren’t. And dinner is the meatiest mealtime. Of course you won’t find a bacon burger on the menu here. Hindus don’t eat beef and Muslims don’t eat pork. So rather than squabble, nobody eats either. I’ve been able to find both but the “beef” was water buffalo which was kind of tough and the pork, although freshly butchered and porky-tasting, was not cut identifiably (like chops, loin, bacon, etc…).

Mutton is also popular here – just not with me. Mutton in England is sheep – here, it’s goat. Either way I say blagh! But don’t let that stop you.

The exception that proves the rule is Indian sausage. It’s not bad. Like western sausage, its contents are mysterious (lots of mutton in there I’m told). Upton Sinclair would roll his eyes in his grave. If he’d just stop and take a bite, I think he’d say, “Hmm. Not bad.”

But if you like chicken, fish or lamb, you’ll like dinner just about anywhere in India. 

Restaurants in America don’t have a “meat side” – everything’s got meat of course – but they usually have a vegetarian side (with a gluten-free side rising). In India it’s reversed – there’s “veg” and”non-veg”. Gluten-free isn’t on the radar yet although we found a very nice restaurant in Vijayawada that could do it. 

Indians don’t eat as much protein as Americans. My Fatty Boy American Weight is between 175-180 pounds. But after four months in India, I’m down to 160. “Good and skinny.” sez I. “Nearly overweight for a five-foot-eight-inch male.” sez my doctor’s officious weight chart. (Why dietitians insist on using such ridiculous, snotty charts like that is beyond me. No wonder two-thirds of Americans go to bed each night and cry themselves to sleep because they’re so fat.)

Even without the meat, Indian dinners can be very tasty. Too tasty for me sometimes. (Indians really know how to load on the spices.)

“Watch this David Uncle!” says an adorable nine-year old girl as she bites into a red chili pepper. I cringe. Just watching her makes my eyes water. She laughs cruelly.

One of my favorite dinners is non-veg Chow Mein (actually I’ve yet to find a noodle dish in India I don’t like).

Another is non-veg Fried Rice and Chapati with chutney.

Somebody made me this goat cheese salad. Very tasty! 

Side Note: Indians say “tasty” the way Americans say “good” or “delicious”. It’s about the only description you hear. Considering how much we humans like to talk about our food, it’s puzzling how few words we have (that don’t sound pretentious) to describe something that tastes “good”. But if a dish tastes “bad”, we’ve got all kinds of adjectives eager to get in their kicks and punches on the fallen menu item. (Awful, disgusting, terrible, nasty, loathsome, icky, nauseating, rotten, lousy, putrid,…) Speaking of which, let us not forget airplane food.

My favorite dinner in India so far came from The Biryani Nazi in Delhi.

Remember The Soup Nazi from Seinfeld? About a street vendor whose soup was so good, customers would endure his nastiest insults rather than be deprived?

I was visiting my friend, Indi, one weekend and he said we were going to stop and get the best chicken biryani in India. We walked into a crowded market and the closer we got to our destination, the more crowded it became. Finally we couldn’t move. We had to wait until the crowd slowly jostled us forward and I thought, “It’s The Biryani Nazi.”

Fortunately, he wasn’t mean. Just an unshaven old guy sitting in front of a hot cauldron dishing out biryani into styrofoam containers as fast as his assistant could take them away. A second assistant quickly shoveled money into a wooden box. Everything was done fast, fast, fast. Finally it was our turn. “Do chowkadi.” Indi said quickly (two quarts). “Veg or non-veg?” We got one of each and got out. Total: 300 rupees (about four bucks.) We caught a motorized rickshaw back to Indi’s (one mile – 80 cents) and when we arrived, the table was already set. 

The biryani was amazing. Very tasty. I now order biryani everywhere I go but no one else’s comes close to The Biryani Nazi of Delhi. His recipe is beyond delicious. It’s ambrosial. (See? Pretentious.)

Ever notice how when you’re in a strange place long enough, strange things stop looking strange and start looking normal? Then suddenly, you see something normal and for a second, you get this stupid look on your face because now, that thing looks strange?  

I’m thinking of one time in particular but if I can’t think of at least two more, I’ll drop this thread and write about something different. (Of course, clever readers know they wouldn’t be reading this if I hadn’t come up with three. But as I write this, the suspense is terrific.)

The time I’m thinking of is when I was coming up the stairs at an elevated train station in Bangkok. There was a Bob Dylan song playing, a little loudly I thought. When I got to the next level, there he was – live! (Hope this link works for you. The 20-second video was too big.)

https://www.dropbox.com/s/pxfskwo2sv6g8ha/%20bangkokbob%20copy.mp4?dl=0

I tried talking to him. Tell him I’m a fan, blah, blah… He seemed to have completely forgotten how to speak English! (Bob, what happened? Drugs? Old age? What?)

Here’s another. I was sitting on the veranda of a guest house in West Bengal admiring a little device I’d found in the tech store:  an 8GB flash drive with a little switch on it that lets you plug it into your cellphone (common enough now but at the time, unheard of in the US).

So there I was, delighted that we’re living here in the glittering future instead of back there in the medieval past carrying heavy objects strapped to our heads. Then I looked up and saw this guy walking right by me. 

Okay, that’s not really an out-of-context experience. More like an anachronism.

Here’s a better one. At Glenary’s Bakery in Darjeeling, you can sit outside and admire the exotic Himalayan panarama. 

Or you can sit cozy inside with your tea and crumpets.

You’ll note that behind the waiter is an interesting beer poster. Hmm…what’s that can in the second row?

Homer Simpson’s beer. Handy six-packs now available in the Himalayas. What next?

On a little side street in Jaffna, there were vegetable carts, fruit vendors, people hand-stitching newly-cut leather soles onto old leather shoes, then this.

In big cities like Delhi and Kolkata, you expect to see a lot of beggars. What you don’t expect is to have them ask you to wait a second while they take a call. 

Makes you stop and wonder.  You hand him ten rupees and move on still wondering.

In Colombo, we were walking along the waterfront. It was getting dusky and we started looking for a place to eat.

The #%^> cafe across the street looked interesting but we couldn’t quite figure out what kind of restaurant it was and whether or not our stomachs could handle it. Then we panned right. Problem solved.

I got to know Dilip in Delhi.  When he came home from work one day, there I was. And there I would stay for five weeks as their house guest – sweating bullets (literally and figuratively) trying to become a certified instructor of English as a Second Language. He and his wife Ayo just looked at each other and shrugged.

Dilip is the fastest video producer I’ve ever known – or have even heard of. My first TV commercial was for McDonald’s in 1975. We were given three weeks in Los Angeles to shoot and finish one Ronald McDonald spot.

Dilip has produced 88 You Tube videos in seven days. Actors, locations, sets, wardrobe, sound and lighting, camera crew, direction,…everything.

He is my hero.

So when he suggested that I join him while he conducted a little business in Sri Lanka I said, “Sure!” One extra body was nothing for Dilip. He just plugged me into his production schedule and for one week, my life was very, very easy.

Dilip took care of air tickets, ground transportation, hotel, restaurants,…we even found time to see a movie, “Doctor Doolittle”. (Poor Robert Downey Jr.)

We took a ten-hour bus ride up the coast to Jaffna. Lots of wetlands and jungle but smooth pavement all the way. Our driver kept his foot glued to the floor and we shot past every car on the road. After a couple of hours, he’d pull over to relax and have a cigarette while every car on the road caught up. Then suddenly, his eyes would narrow, he’d throw his cigarette down, leap back in the driver’s seat and floor it until, once again, we were in the lead. He did this three or four times all the way to Jaffna. Only once did he slow down. I happened to be up to get something from my bag at the time and almost fell over at the sudden speed reduction. In that one instant, I was able to see through the windshield and just ahead was large crocodile, scrabbling across the road lickity-split. I asked the driver how often that happened. “First time.” he said and sounded a little put out by it.

We arrived at the tip of the island. Once Dilip was finished with his high-powered meetings, we explored a bit.

Jaffna was ground zero in a civil war between the government and the Liberation Tigers. Over a quarter-century of hostilities (make that brutalities) finally ended in 2009 when the hard-nosed government pummelled the hard-nosed rebels into submission. It’s peaceful now but a few elegant homes have been left in shell-shocked condition to remind everyone just how nasty things can get.  

We wandered into 400-year-old Jaffna Fort.

It was occupied off and on by both sides during the war. It seemed to be occupied by us now and a couple other tourists – nobody else around. Little evidence of the war is left but how much do you need? 

For me, Sri Lanka’s main attraction is jewels. For Dilip, it’s EGB.

Elephant Ginger Beer. It’s good. Different. Tangy. Says 100% natural ginger. You might think 100% doesn’t leave much room for beer or elephant but Dilip doesn’t care what you think. 

We watched with professional interest as a photographer’s assistant kept trying to make a diaphanous scarf float magically down over the head of a young bride.

We returned to Colombo by train. You may recall the Toy Train to Darjeeling. The rails are two feet wide. US train tracks are over four-and-a-half feet wide. But my ugly American sneer faded when I saw Sri Lanka’s train tracks – they beat ours by almost a foot.

Seemed to make for a smoother ride to me. You can argue that bigger isn’t always better but usually, it is.

In my day, it was called Ceylon. (Dang whippersnappers keep changing the real names on me.)

Ceylon was the name of the island off the southeast coast of India. (Kind of like our Cuba.) Now it’s just the name of their tea and cinnamon.

By the way, that strange looking creature isn’t any old symbol of quality, it’s a Sri Lankan national symbol of quality. Paleontologists say that kind of lion actually existed there in dinosaur days. They found a couple of its teeth, rubbed their scientific imaginations together and so there’s your proof. (Don’t argue, it’s got a knife.) 

Quick History: From the dawn of time, Sri Lanka was ruled by tribal kings. It may have been the fabled land of Tarshish from which King Solomon imported “gold, silver, ivory, apes and peacocks.” Then, jump way ahead to the 1400’s and you’ll find friendly Portuguese traders doing business with friendly island tribes. The friendly island tribes got into a brawl and the friendly Portuguese squashed them all except for the Kingdom of Kandy. (Say kids, wouldn’t you like to be the King of Kandy?)

A hundred years later, the Dutch shoved the Portuguese off the island. The Dutch were still laughing at the Portuguese flopping around in the water in 1796 when the British snuck up and kicked the Dutch in after them. That’s when the British changed the hard-to-pronounce Portuguese name “Ceilão” to Ceylon and everything was fine for awhile. Then in 1948, Ceylon became independent and in 1972, changed its name to Sri Lanka or “Mister Island” to you. (“Sri” can also be translated “grand” or “majestic” but the literal translation is “mister”.)

As this cool overlap from Mapflight shows, Sri Lanka is about the same size and shape as West Virginia but with ten times as many people.

I’m sure you remember from high school what their annual flax production is so let’s skip that and go to something more interesting – to me. Ceylonese sapphires.

I have always liked jewels. Not set in anything, just the cut stone itself. Most of my life, I’ve seen pictures of deep, blue Ceylonese sapphires. You can find nice sapphire jewelry in America. But if you want real, pirate chest-quality jewels, go to Sri Lanka. So after landing in Colombo, the first place I headed for was a gem store.

Thanks to relaxed rich guys like Mark Zuckerberg, upscale merchants in large foreign cities can’t tell if you’re a browsing billionaire or a browsing bum. Walk in with the usual friendly American confidence and you’ll be treated well, at first anyway. So ask for the best stuff they have right away because in about five minutes, they’ll have your number. 

“Triple A sapphires? Certainly, sir!” 

You point at a fabulous, cornflower blue stone. “May I?”

“Oh, certainly sir!” he says unctuously and offers it to you on a white silk pad along with a cup of tea. 

“Is Sir looking for lady? Or for ownself?”

“Neither. Just looking.” 

After that exchange you are, as the hipsters say, busted. Nevertheless, you finally got to see with your own eyes and hold with your own hand one of the legendary “Jewels of Serendib”. 

You briefly toy with the idea of popping it in your mouth but think better of it. 

Instead, to commemorate the occasion, you decide to not wash that hand anymore. The very next week, the coronavirus hit. Figures.