Text & Photos:(c) Copyright, Russell Johnson
"It
is India without the hassle."
Arthur C. Clarke
I could see what
he meant about his adopted country. The people are fine featured,
well educated, and it doesn't take five of them to complete a simple
task. You see poverty but it doesn't grate at your conscience in scenes
of maimed beggars. And once out of the capital city of Colombo, the
world dissolves into a lush green dream. Banana and pineapple, teak
forests, queues of brightly colored umbrellas bobbing through rice
fields. Elephants blocking traffic.
Sri Lanka
has some of the best protected wildlife preserves in the world. The
first recorded one dates back to the 3rd Century B.C.
I
stopped at an elephant orphanage and watched a herd bathing in a river.
It was led by a curmudgeonly bull who snorted elephant ephitets when
I violated his space. I raised my camera to take a picture and heard
hissing behind me. I swung around to make eye contact with an enormous
reptile. This was not the gecko on the shower stall. The monitor lizard
looked to be about five feet from his first lethal incisor to the
last bony plate on his tail and walked with the gait of a constipated
pit bull. It "monitored" me, (rolling its eyes like Groucho
Marx) dismissed me as a wimp and not worth the trouble, and swaggered
away.
I drove on and
beautiful young women beckoned me.
They
sold me cashews, oily and sensuous. I whiffed sandlewood and vanilla
and spices. I brushed by Kandy and the Temple
of the Tooth (the Lord Buddha's) where elephants dress up and
have a grand gala every August and where I lodged at the musty but
marvelous old Hotel Suisse. It had grand hallways and huge rooms with
shutters that swung open and a circular bar tended by a gap-toothed
man with greasy black hair slicked back over his ears. I went to Sri
Lanka's "cultural triangle", the ancient cities of Anuradhapura,
Mahintale and Polonnaruwa, and walked in the rain amongst acres of
some of the most inspiring Buddhist heritage sites I have ever seen.
Now I know why
my Sri Lankan friends -- who have lived the fois gras of New
York and San Francisco and Singapore -- all say they want to go back
to their villages to retire.
But Colombo,
Sri Lanka's capitol city, does not evoke such images. The Singapore
Girl who sat next to me on the plane rolled her eyes (like Groucho
the lizard) when I asked her about it. It is noisy, petrol-stinky.
Driving requires a sort of entrepreneurship endemic to South Asia.
My driver leapfrogged smoke-spewing busses, nosing back to the proper
lane barely in time to avoid trucks that came roaring from the other
direction blasting warnings from their airhorns. We slalomed around
circuses, leftovers from the Brits who claimed this as one of their
outposts (along with the Dutch and the Portuguese). We drove past
police checkpoints, reminders of a civil war that despite cease-fires
and periodic bursts of optimism still nags and kills. "Our little
problem," as Sri Lankans call it, has had little direct effect
on travelers aside from scaring them away. We dodged past statues
depicting, in the European tradition, Great Leaders gesturing their
right hands into the air like opera singers belting arias. One G.L.
had enormous ears.
Arthur C. Clarke
lives in a neighborhood called Cinnamon Gardens where, as in many
matured cities, fashionable homes have been converted to embassies,
advertising agencies and schools. Leslie's House, named for Clarke's
late longtime companion, is located next to a girl's school. It looks
as if it has been a work in progress for the thirty some years Clarke
has lived here. Modern appendages clash with colonial charms. A garden
in back has served as his salon for the world of good men and great
who have come to call. Friends such as the late Issac Asimov who wrote
him a limerick:
- Old Arthur
C. Clarke of Sri Lanka
- Now sits
in the sun sipping Sanka
- And taking
his ease
- Excepting
when he's
- Receiving
pleased notes from his banker
Clarke says he
is especially fond of the time he spent with American newscaster Walter
Cronkhite and the good old "man-on-the-moon-days" when together
they shed tears on first touchdown.
"I hope
you are not intimidated." said Clarke as I entered his office.
He was referring to the yipping chihuahua that charged toward me.
Pepsi skidded
to a halt about three feet away.
Clarke introduced
me to the tiny beast he originally named Pepe. His Sri Lankan friends
couldn't pronounce it, however...always adding an S. So the name of
the cola stuck. Clarke got up from his chair and called Pepsi. The
dog hesitated a moment and came to me instead. I have a extreme negative
predisposition to two animals on this earth: monkeys and chihuahuas.
When I was a child, my best friend owned a shrewish little mutt that
made shreds of several of my pantlegs so I expected the worst. Pepsi,
however, was more like housecat. He nuzzled my hand when I leaned
over to pet him.
Canine friends rest in Clarke's garden
We walked
into the garden and talked
Interview
Highlights
Clarke's mind
moves like a ballet dancer, jetéing from one subject to another,
but always returning to earth in the right spot.
Following talk
and tea we headed back to his office. He wanted to show me a computer
program he was using to landscape Mars the way he thought it would
be when it was colonized. I had a 3D modeling/virtual reality program
on my laptop. We were a couple of little boys comparing captured bullfrogs
(You show me yours, I'll show you mine.) Clarke talked about his friend
Mandelbrot and fractals (which I have yet to grasp either technically
or spiritually) and rendered one Marscape after another.
