I’ve lived in the same house my entire life. The biggest move I did before going away to college was moving into the room my brother vacated when he went to college.
H on the other hand was born in Sri Lanka.
I knew nothing about Sri Lanka before we met. Nothing. Where was it? What was the language? The civil war? British colonialism? Nothing.
We’ve wanted to visit for years. H left for Canada when he was a 9 year-old and has only been back once briefly. But we weren’t initially sure we’d make it on this trip. Shouldn’t we go back at some point and spent months there enjoying and exploring and learning about his homeland? Last minute we decided, let’s go now, and then go back later. Let’s do 2 weeks and race around the island.
And race we did! We took buses, trains, and tuk tuks. We hitchhiked. We did a safari, we snorkeled with turtles. We got pulled over and the police officer demanded a bribe. We ate so much spicy delicious food and so much yogurt to regulate our tummies.
We had the best time.
My Sri Lankan book recommendations are Noontide Toll by Romesh Gunesekara and Funny Boy by Shyam Selvadurai.
Noontide Toll is a series of vignettes, not something I always like but what Romesh does well is create a through line with Vasantha—a driver who narrates each mini story about the people he drives around the island. Set just a few years after the Civil War the vignettes are emotional, awkward, funny, and tragic.
Funny Boy is a coming of age book about a young Tamil boy who is understanding his sexuality. It’s touching and also emotional. It’s set in the 80s so right at the start of the Civil War. I really enjoyed Shyam’s simple and beautiful writing style. You really feel that the narrator is young, and you feel the writing—and his POV—mature as he does.
Also if you want to learn more about Sri Lanka and specifically two Tamil immigrants that ended up in Australia listen to our friends podcast!
Thank you Sri Lanka, we’ll be back.
