Sri Lanka

The Verdant Teardrop

Just an hour from Chennai by flight, I reach a foreign capital. The Bandaranayake Airport's Green Channel welcomes me as a foreign national into a country that I feel very much at home. I am talking of Sri Lanka where I spent four five days recently.
Just like the green view of Kerala, there is nothing that I miss along the three-hour drive from Colombo to the hilly Kandy region. The Maruti 800, Alto and Wagon R, Bajaj Autorickshaws, Lanka Ashok Leyland Buses all go to make me feel that Sri Lanka is part of the Indian landmass, just separated by a stretch of water called the Indian Ocean. It has retained the essence of India. The name for a river in Sri Lanka is Ganga. So the Mahaweli river is called Mahaweli Ganga.
Everywhere I turn, there is a Buddha seated in meditation, around road bends, on top of hills and in the temples. Sri Lanka is a land where Buddha is celebrated with a national holiday on the new moon called Poya Day when the Buddha's teaching was supposed to have been brought.
The value of freedom of thought, speech and action - I learnt in Sri Lanka. Owing to the political situation, one has to carry their passport or the national identity card even while going on morning walk, to a temple or to buy something from the neigbouring shop!
I immensely breathed in the air of Sri Lanka. It felt good. Freedom is after all a state of mind and I wish all becomes well soon - for there is so much beauty that the whole world should know!