Galle Lit Fest - Last Couple of Days

Katherine Boo, John Gimlette, Christina Lamb

I had a relatively early night last Friday after my day at the fest since I had a ticket for a 9am session on Saturday. My extremely helpful host at Elephant Rock Cottage called a tuk-tuk driver to take me to the Fort, and I went to a discussion about travel writing with Katherine Boo (Pulitzer Prize, MacArthru 'Genius' Award, to name a few of her accolades), who writes extensively on poverty in the U.S. and India; Christina Lamb who wrote I am Malala, as well as a book about another extraordinary teenager, Nujeen, who fled Syria and made her way to Germany while confined to a wheelchair due to her cerebral palsy; and John Gimlette, whom I had heard speak on my first day of the fest. This was an interesting discussion about writing about other places and writing for other voices (Christina Lamb like Katherine Boo is also a journalist, in addition to ghostwriting those two books), and how the content is influenced by the writer's perspective. John Gimlette made a point of acknowledging that he does not write in the same vein as the two women, and the important distinction between travel writer and journalist was made clear. Journalists need to be objective and give facts as they experience and investigate; John writes to give information about a place, based totally on his subjective experience of that place. The women expose corruption and shine a light on some of the most tragic aspects of humanity; John writes to entertain -- but this contrast of styles made for an interesting conversation.

After that talk, I didn't have anything going on until later in the afternoon, but I met up with Nisreen and Riyaz who had been invited to a friend's house in the fort for lunch. I was a little apprehensive about tagging along for a meal, having not actually been invited, but when we got there, there were about 25 people in all stages of having lunch, and food for possibly twice that many. The house was enormous - I saw a fraction of it, but that fraction included a huge outdoor seating area, a semi-outdoor dining room and kitchen, which was obviously not the 'main' kitchen, a more formal indoor dining room, a massive indoor/outdoor living room, and a completely empty room which could have served as a ballroom. And that was just what I saw between the entrance and the outdoor dining room where we ate, I have no idea what was on the second and possibly third floors.

Colm Toibin reading from Brooklyn

After lunch, I went back to the outdoor lounge and read for a while, and then went to an interview with Colm Toibin, who wrote Brooklyn, which I did not read, although I enjoyed the movie. By all accounts, Mr. Tobin's book aren't the cheeriest lot (the movie, Brooklyn could be described as melancholy at best), but the man himself is an extremely jolly sort. He talked about his early life in Ireland, the women in his family who inspired him (the protagonists in all his books are women), and read some passages from Brooklyn.

Michael Fehr, a German poet 'performed' two pieces before
Colm Toibin spoke. Was it poetry? Was it rap? Was it performance
art? I'm still not sure. 

I had made arrangements with my tuk-tuk driver to pick me up after that talk, and through some miracle (which you'd understand if you've spent any time in Sri Lanka), he arrived exactly on time. I went back to my room for a while and rested up for the last event of the night which was a cabaret show at a beautiful boutique hotel called the Sun House. I had no idea what the show would be like, but I really didn't expect a semi-drag performance by a really wonderful singer who accompanied herself on the ukulele. It was a fun performance in a beautiful setting and a great way to cap the day.

she goes by the name Tricity Vogue

And then the last day of the fest was Sunday and one of the best sessions of the whole event. I had heard Christina Lamb talk during the panel discussion on travel writing, but she had a solo interview on Sunday morning during which she spoke extensively about two of her books: I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban, and Nujeen: One Girl's Incredible Journey from War-torn Syria in a Wheelchair. These were two amazing topics, stories of two extraordinary teenage girls, and her admiration for both of them was clear. Malala was shot in the head by the Taliban and underwent a 5-hour operation to remove a bullet which had traveled through her skull and lodged in her shoulder near her spinal cord and spent 8 days in a coma -- all because she had the audacity to advocate for girls' education in Pakistan. In 2014 she became the youngest recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. Nujeen has cerebral palsy and is confined to a wheelchair, she left Aleppo in 2015, pushed by her older sister Nasrine, both of them traveling 3,500 miles as refugees with their mother and sisters to Cologne. Malala now lives in England and Nujeen lives in Germany, both girls are preparing to enter university. Made me rethink complaints about bad traffic and poor service in restaurants.  

Galle Literary Festival, 2017 - Day Two

My first Lit Fest event today was with another writer whom I had never heard or, Jason Licker, which is a great name for a pastry chef, which is what he is. He started in New York but has spent the last 12 years of his career cooking in Asia: Shanghai, Macau, Singapore, and Hong Kong. He did a fairly basic tart demonstration for us, focusing on tropical fruits, but it sounds like his signature dishes involve interesting ingredients like macha, green and black tea, and kumquat peel. The demonstration was fun, and the two tarts we sampled were good - one, made with mixed fruits including some spectacularly delicious mango and a lovely almond cream, was especially tasty.

After the pastry demonstration, I had some time to kill so I walked around the fort area of Galle. Galle was extensively fortified in the 17th century by the Dutch, and the ramparts comprising 'the fort' are still intact. I walked on the walls for a while and then went back to the festival lounge area to wait for the others. I was hanging out, reading a book by the Canadian author, Carol Shields, when I fittingly ran into some old friends from my childhood in Sri Lanka who now live in Toronto.

After lunch, I went to a session with a writer whom I've not only heard of, but whom I actually know, Sunila Galappatti, who was the Lit Fest director in 2009, when I was living in Colombo and was a festival volunteer. Sunila was so impressive all those years ago as the festival director, and she's even more so now all these years later, as author of the book The Long Watch, which is a memoir she wrote after three years of listening to Commodore Ajith Boyagoda tell her his story; the Commodore was the highest ranking officer in the Sri Lankan Navy to be captured by the Tamil Tigers during Sri Lanka's civil war; he was held as a prisoner of war for 8 years. Sunila's interview, during which she talked about the book, the Commodore, the very long interview and writing process, the delicacy needed to write another person's story, and the experience of taking on such a sensitive and nuanced project was interesting and engaging, and it made me want to read the book.

Galle Literary Festival, 2017

a photo from her childhood in India

It has been 5 years since I was last in Galle, and 8 years since I was last at the Galle Literary Festival. I arrived with Riyaz and Nisreen on Thursday and went straight to an interview with Brigid Keenan, whom I had never heard of. Brigid was born in 1939 to Irish parents in Bombay, India where her father was an officer in the British Indian Army. She lived in India until she was 8 years old and from the emotional reading she gave of excerpts from one of her books about her early life there, India still has a place deep in her heart.

Brigid became a fashion journalist by accident - she was an assistant fashion editor at the Sunday Times in London in 1960, and in 1961 when the actual editor who was pregnant, was put on bed-rest, she became the editor by default, and spent the next several years writing about the fashion of the 'swinging 60s.' In the late 60s, she met her husband who was a diplomat, gave up fashion writing and spent many years of moving from country to country - mostly in Central Asia and the Arab world; she wrote Diplomatic Baggage, and Packing Up: Further Adventures of Trailing a Spouse about the very real job of being a diplomat's wife. The interview was fun and I was disappointed that I couldn't get a ticket to the another talk she is doing at the festival, one focusing on the fashion of the 60s, because I do love a good mini-dress.

After the morning session, Riyaz, Nisreen and I headed out of the 'fort' area which is where the lit fest venues are, and down the beach road to our different accommodations for the weekend. They dropped me off at Elephant Rock Cottage, which is where I'm staying. I'm in a very nice room up on a hill, with a balcony that looks into a bit of jungle.

it's hardly a "cottage" - my room is on the top, the big
windows are part of another rental until below mine. 

And then back for an afternoon event: John Gimlette, whom I had also never heard of, talking about his book Elephant Complex, about his travels through Sri Lanka. He also talked a lot about the British Tamil community where he lives in Tooting, a neighborhood in South London, which I have been too, and in which I have had wonderfully authentic Sri Lankan food. It was a nice talk - nothing earth-shattering, but always interesting to get an outsiders perspective on this island.

When we were done at the fest for the day, I went with Riyaz and Nisreen to the place where they and some other friends are staying, and walked around the beach neighborhood for a bit, before settling in with some drinks in the garden area of their bungalow for a competitive game of iPad Trivial Pursuit; Asita and Nisreen against Riyaz and me - pretty evenly matched teams, but we never finished the game as Lalith arrived and we moved onto the beach for dinner, which could not have been more spectacular:

setting

menu

dinner

Kitchens of the Third World

I don't like things that slither and crawl. I'm deathly afraid of snakes; I don't like to garden because worms, which are just very small snakes, freak me out. Everyone knows I both fear and loathe monkeys (everyone knows that, right?) but creepy-crawly things are the worst. So imagine what happened the other morning when I went into the kitchen to make a cup of tea only to find this scene waiting for me:

Naturally, my response was to scream and run out of the kitchen. It was more of a yelp than a scream, but still, the situation was not one my delicate constitution was able to handle. And since Velu was off for the day and I didn't think 9-1-1 would work from here, I went across the street and explained the dire situation to my cousin, who explained it to her house-man, who came over to deal. We tried opening the kitchen window to shoo them out, that didn't work, and since I couldn't find a dust-pan to capture them in, we... okay, he, used a spatula and some newspaper to coral them and move them to the backyard. Look, I've seen the geckos scampering on the kitchen walls, and that's fine, I know they live in the kitchen and they and their children and cousins will find their way back, and that's also fine, but geckos 1 and 2 need to know their place, and it's not in the sink.

hero of the day

That was the adventure du jour on Saturday, on Sunday I went in search of a taste from childhood, cadde paan (sp? cadde [pron: cah-day] is a tiny store-front, like a bodega; paan [pron: pah-n] is bread). There are some really nice bakeries in town and one could even procure a nice French baguette if one wanted, but what I wanted was the bread of my childhood (one year of it, anyway). The soft, squishy white loaf that is perfect for toasting, and with a certain je ne sais quoi flavor like no other. I walked around the block to the main road and found a little joint with a bunch of loaves shoved up into a window case and pointed. I don't know my numbers very well in Sinhalese so thankfully the guy said "60 rupees" in English. I gave him the equivalent of 40-cents, and was on my way.

Farmers' Market

On Friday, one of my mom's many cousins in town took me to a farmers' market on the outskirts of town along Beira Lake. It was a really pleasant spot with tents filled with some fruit, but mostly very pretty tropical plants. After looking at the plants, we walked over to the nearby Water's Edge hotel and had a snack.

Thirty-five Hours to Colombo

business time

As far as traveling for 35 hours straight hours goes, it wasn't that bad. I left Sacramento at 7am on a Tuesday and arrived in Colombo a couple of days later on Thursday morning. I had cashed in 80k miles for a business class ticket, and that made the two longest legs (Seattle to Frankfurt; Frankfurt to Chennai) bearable - seats that reclined all the way flat, a nice big screen for movies, and decent food. Then came the 5+ hour layover in Chennai, India (note to self: avoid long layovers in Chennai, India) in what can only be described as hell's waiting room. Because we landed just after midnight and the Air India counter didn't open until 3:30am, and you need a visa to enter

Hell's waiting room

India, and about 15 of us didn't have visas, and you need 'clearance' (like a visa or a boarding pass) to get past security to get to the terminal, the group of us connecting to Colombo were herded into a holding area to wait. And wait. AND WAIT. We waited for over three hours for the airline reps to return, take our passports, return with boarding passes, escort us through security (major pat-down; sensing a threat, they confiscated my tiny manicure scissors), then trotted us through the underbelly of the airport to "identify our luggage," this involved a crazy jaunt down an elevator, through cement hallways, into a giant, hot basement where the belts for the luggage transfers take place. We pointed out our checked bags, which then were rolled away to our next flight, returned from the under-belly, were patted down AGAIN -- this time ladies went into a small, windowless, cinder-block room which looked like a good place to kill someone, and we were finally allowed into the airport terminal around 5:30am, just in time to board the short flight to Colombo at 6:15.

But that's what it takes to get here and you gotta just roll with it. Landed in the morning in time to hit commuter traffic into town, and an hour later arrived at my late grandparents'/current brother's house on De Fonseka Road - site of very early childhood memories and a very nice guest room and it was a joy to unpack and take a shower. I took a short nap and then ended staying up until 3am working, slept for a couple more hours until 7am the next morning when Nilan, who had arrived a few days earlier after spending Christmas in Bangkok, and I went to the family coconut estate to visit relatives there. Got back around 7pm last night, fell asleep for about five hours, woke up around 1am, got up at 9am, and am hoping I can stay awake until midnight tonight, since it's New Year's Eve.

the family business

 

How Do You Get to Carnegie Hall?

You take the subway to 57th Street.

After the New Yorker Festival last month, I know I said I wasn't coming back to New York for a while, but I meant after this weekend...because I'm back in New York. As I did once before, I impulse-bought two tickets to something and figured I'd make a plan later. Well, later came and flights were booked and my pal Shelagh decided to come with me and last night we saw Marc Maron live at Carnegie Hall. I've been listening to his podcasts for a couple of years and I remember his stand up from a few decades ago, and I just decided I wanted to come and see him. Then a few weeks ago, I was looking at the Carnegie Hall website for no real reason, and I saw that Tig Notaro, whom I love (and whom I met once, but that's a different story) was doing a show at Carnegie Hall the night after Marc, there were still tickets available so I bought two of those too. Marc's show last night was great, he's a pro. It was tight and funny and smart. These are by no means the highlights, but a few things he said...

"Hillary Clinton... criminal, or nice older lady who doesn't understand her phone?"
"I think we all adapted too quickly to Trader Joe's." (there was a whole riff on Trader Joe's which I loved, but that's the line that struck me)
Re: a third party contender, or Bernie supporters voting for an independent candidate in protest, "don't be idiots, there IS NO THIRD PARTY. It was the Cubs and the Indians in the World Series, there wasn't anyone there going, 'nope, I'm going with the Yankees.'"

Anyway, it was a great show.

But tonight - Tig... well. There's something about Tig. We all know it. And there she was, on the stage, being her Tiggiest, and she was great. Then at end of her set, things got a little odd; she went on this weird jag about the Indigo Girls (what?) She said that as a "present" to us, the audience, the show was going to close with a performance by the Indigo Girls. Ok. And then she announced them and left the stage, and the crowd cheered, and... nothing. She came back out and sheepishly said there was a delay, but they were here... and she did this about five times. She bantered with the audience about whether or not the Indigo Gilrs were really coming out, then announced them, left the stage, crowd cheered, and nothing. Over and over, and it just seemed like a weird 'bit' which was frankly getting a little old, until the time she did it and Amy and Emily walked on the stage, guitars in hand, and launched into Closer to Fine. Crowd went wild. They played five songs, the big hits, Tig came back and sat on the stage at their feet and listened with us. They closed with Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters...

"And I thank the Lord for people I have found. I thank the Lord for people I have found."

I don't know when I'll be back in New York. Maybe not for a few years; maybe next week.