Sojourn in Serendip - I

Introduction

This year I decided to spend Diwali in Srilanka en famille. The decision was obviously serendipitous as Chennai experienced extreme rain and inclement weather right on Diwali day! So here are some tidbits from my sojourn in Serendip or Srilanka, as it is now known.

A Little Late is Alright

Our Srilankan flight UL 122 arrived a bit early at The Banda

raNayakeInternanational Airport, Colombo. Our Guide-cum-Chauffeur Sumedh (aka. Bandhu), was quite surprised to find his national airlines arriving on time! The Flight numbers of Srilankan used to have the prefix AL which was expanded as “Always Late”! Now they have been changed with numbers prefixed by UL whicgh is “Usually Late”! Definitely an improvement! Incidentally our return flight too was almost on time! Thus we experienced a bit of Serendipity right at the beginning of our sojourn in Serendip!

Poo Paper and other Pachydermic matters

Woud you like to see a group of abouy fifty to sixty elephants of various sizes and ages bathing, frolicking and simply having a lot of fun in the waters of a running brook? Then, you should visit Pinnewala Elephant Orphanage. The Orphanage on the banks of the Maa Oye houses a huge contingent of about sixty-five of these gentle pachyderms which have been either abandoned or wounded or injured and left to die in the wild. The Elephants here range in age from newborns to elderly matriarchs. Pinnewala claims to have the world’s largest collection of captive elephants. (Note: This claim needs verification as Punnathur Thota in Guruvayoor Kerala is another place which has a sizable captive-elephant population. These are not abandoned wild elephants, but rather tame elephants donated by thankful devotees to the Guruvayoor Templew. Notable among the inmates at Guruvayoor was Kannan the elephant donated by the current CM of Tamilnadu.)

We had lunch at the restaurant overlooking the Maa Oye. From the restaurant on the balcony, we could see the elephants of all shapesand sizes sporting and playing in the water. The really enjoyable sight were the little baby elephants running here and there under the huge feet of the elders. Occasionally they had mock-fights and tussles which were easily subdued by a nearby elder or the Mahouts who were close by and watching carefully.

They make paper and other handicrafts out of elephant dung at Pinnewala. The paper which is hard, tough and ideal for packing material is alliteratively called Poo-Paper! As elephant dung is highly vegetarian and is mostly leaves, shoots and bark, a lot of fiber can be recovered from it when it is boiled and filtered. The resultant fibrous pulp is soaked in water and made it into pulp. The pulp is then subjected to a process very similar to the making of hand-made paper used at Auroville in Pondicherry. The only difference is the source of the pulp! We visited a Poo Paper workshop where we saw how the paper is made. (Believe me, the paper does not stink!)

On the way to Kandy, we halted at one of the numerous spice gardens that line the route. The prices are sky high and even the temptation of the miraculous cures promised by the “Spice Doctor” does not loosen our purse strings. Purchases are the prerogative of foreigners, I suppose.