Gloria Meltzer - Only in Sri Lanka

Amusing Signage and Invitations

A Colombo street sign for a bus stop:

Motor bus stopping station.

Street sign:

Now the best petrol your vehicle is available here.

Store sign:

Unmatched solution for burglary and crimes.

Street sign:

Keep calm and curry on.

Street sign:

Effective mediation with proven safety.

Street sign:

Hot and fast take away.

Sign on back of a tuk tuk:

Sorry girls. Mummy says no dating until Im 18.

Wording on a wedding invitation:

Best man. Best lady Besties with the bride

Only in
Sri Lanka

The World of My Aussie-Sri Lankan Grandsons

GLORIA MELTZER

Only in Sri Lanka:

Gloria Meltzer

Published by Classic Author and Publishing Services Pty Ltd

First published 2015

'Yarra's Edge'
2203/80 Lorimer Street
Docklands VIC 3008
Australia

Email:

Gloria Meltzer

All rights reserved. No part of this printed or video publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electrical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publisher and copyright owner.

Designer / typesetter: WorkingType Studio (www.workingtype.com.au)

National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry

Creator: Meltzer, Gloria, 1943- author.

Title: Only in Sri Lanka / Gloria Meltzer ; Julie Athanasiou.

ISBN: 9780987192790 (eBook)

Subjects: Meltzer, Gloria, 1943---Family.

Grandparent and child.

Grandparenting--Social aspects.

Families--Australia.

Families--Sri Lanka.

Other Creators/
Contributors: Athanasiou, Julie, editor.

Dewey Number: 306.8745

Digital edition distributed by

Port Campbell Press

www.portcampbellpress.com.au

eBook Conversion by

Dedicated to my four grandchildren, Ella, Jai, Ruki and Tarsh

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my editor, Julie Athanasiou, for her careful attention to detail, to Luke Harris, for his patience with me in redesigning the book cover to my satisfaction, and last but not least to my publishers, Jo Jo Publishing, for believing in this book and taking it on. I am eternally grateful to Anusha, my delightful daughter-in-law, for providing me with the impetus for this book, to my son Danny, for helping provide material that called out to be written. They have both made this book possible, as has Anusha's beautiful family.

Contents

2007 Colombo Confusion

A tiny hole is always there, the missing parts of the jigsaw continuously a little out of sync. The grandmother wanting her cake and to eat it, too.

Torso stretched and strained after sitting cramped for hours in cattle-class, I attempted to unwind my aged limbs from an unexpected lengthy haul that had taken me from Melbourne to Colombo. Somehow I managed to squeeze my cramped and crumpled body out of a paper-thin seat and grab hold of my heavily weighted cabin luggage, hauling baggage and myself out of the plane and into Sri Lanka. Civil war and tsunami territory. Here goes , I thought, once more in my long strange life flinging myself into a country the world considered a disaster.

Precariously balancing my hefty case, I pushed the heavy trolley through the Exit gate and out the Arrivals section, into the terminal area where a sea of Sri Lankans were waiting in clusters, anxious to greet loved ones. I searched eagerly for the familiar faces I had travelled some fifteen hours to see. There was nobody to meet me.

I had only been in the country an hour. There was a tightness to the air. Or was that a bubble of anticipation? My stomach felt squeezed with excitement. A subtle sensation as I transcended one time zone and relaxed into another.>

My long-planned trip to Sri Lanka had been fraught with both natural and man-made calamities. This was 2007, the height of the civil war between their government and the LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam), better known as the Tamil Tigers. And only three years after the tsunami that had almost taken my daughter-in-law Anushas life, decimated her coastal hometown and killed many thousands of her fellow Sri Lankans. The waters had tried to claim her. Theyd almost succeeded. She had willed herself to live. When she told me her story I wept for the terror she felt, for the life she nearly lost. And I wept for the realisation that, had she perished that day, how different my sons life would have been. And there would be no beautiful grandchildren. If I were a Buddhist, I would say it was my karma that suggested she should survive. As a Buddhist, this is what she believed.

Attempting to fly to Sri Lanka, determined to reach this tiny island at all costs, had had its share of drama. Reminiscent of another time in my life. Thirty years ago, my former Polish spouse and our two young sons had planned a six-month stay in Poland. It was at the height of the days of the Solidarity movement. The world media was painting graphic pictures of a socialist country in crisis political turmoil, food shortages and drastic queues outside food outlets. Despite warnings from all and sundry, we went. We survived. I wrote a book about it called Poles Apart.

Now it was happening all over again. Sri Lanka. Civil war. Random bombings of innocent people blown up in buses. Airlines cancelling all flights in and out of Colombo. Finally, despite all warnings and advice to the contrary, undeterred by war and an upsurge in terrorist activities, I had touched down on Asian soil. Grinning to myself, I whistled into the hot sticky air and sighed in relief. This tiny island of Sri Lanka was currently home to Danny, my Australian son; Anusha, my Sinhalese daughter-in-law; and Jai, my young grandson. This would be a time of learning how my Australian/Sri Lankan family were living their lives amidst the mayhem of a tropical isle that was in the grip of a civil war. Images of this half-Sri Lankan boy had propelled me on. My grandson was about to turn one and I was going to be there to witness this moment in his life, civil war or not.

The customs officer, a tall, pole-shaped fellow with a shock of black hair and an affable manner had waved me on, giving me a toothy grin and a mere glance at my luggage. I was hauling a single, huge, battered old brown expanding suitcase that, like its owner, had seen better days, and was now stuffed to capacity with my sons Aussie shopping list for which Qantas had charged me almost a hundred dollars in overweight charges: three jars of Vegemite, herbal salt, olive oil, several two kilo packets of raw oatmeal porridge, Vitamin E capsules, garlic capsules and a dozen bottles of Omega 3 fish oil capsules. Why he needed me to cart all these containers of fish oil to Sri Lanka, Ill never know. A waste of money when he lives in a country where, every day, twice a day, he tells me, he eats from a variety of freshly caught sear fish, tuna, swordfish, parrot fish and coral trout, all snared by local fishermen off the coast of Galle or Hikkaduwa only hours earlier. I wondered if one can overdose on Omega 3!

My flight had arrived an hour earlier than scheduled. Id assumed the family would also have arrived early, in what I imagined might be their excitement at my imminent arrival!