Published in Ceylon Today
For a few days in January, several years ago, the fortress town of Galle in Sri Lanka started to host a literary festival, known informally as the 'GLF'. In the last dark years of the recent Civil War, this event seemed to gleam and glow, like a lava lamp of colour: providing an illuminated reflection of what a world focused on something more than survival could look like.
This year, after several years' absence, the GLF emerged into new life: generously funded by a corporate sponsor, Fairway Holdings, for the next five years, and offering to the inhabitants of the literary multiverse for a few gilded days an array of events: giving the book-reading and literature-loving public open access to authors and books, literary critics, reviewers, academics and judges.
Galle itself reminds me of an inlaid autonomous island - like Venice - or university towns like Cambridge, or Oxford - the self-containment of its inhabitants is striking. The absolutely everyday lives of its citizens continue unabated, while the pervasive influx of visitors buzzes and hums through its streets: myriads of people observing, purchasing, comparing descriptions in guide books and apps downloaded onto their smart phones with what they see in front of them.
There are not many streets, and the charm of this small City is that it can be navigated on foot, or by three wheeler, very easily. Everything is close to everything else. Old administrative buildings, churches and splendid organisational structures built by the Dutch, the Law Courts and hospitals and public squares, are being used as venues and backdrops for literary events, and glittering little restaurants and bars have been created on almost every lane and avenue.
Young army officers do training runs through the town, chanting their rhythmic motivational songs, school children in their dazzling white uniforms are just starting school for the New Year, and savvy old men pull out those ubiquitous plastic bucket chairs onto the uneven pavements to watch the passers by.
As in Venice, you get glimpses of people's ways of living through half-curtained windows and semi-closed doors: you get the impression of courtyards and luxurious interiors gleaming just past the paving stones leading to a personal threshold, of people's private existences continuing just beyond your ability to contemplate them.
As in Oxford, at Christmas-time, the narrow cobblestoned streets after dusk are draped with banners and streamers of multi-coloured lights, bejewelling the old stone walls and buildings, and even shimmering in the trees, like faux weeping willows.
The three-wheeler drivers are in their glory: interfacing with foreigners for whom thousands of local rupees are less than 100 units of their American or Euro currency, and who are happy to pay 300 rupees to be whizzed from one end of town to the other, laden with various-sized parcels from the boutique shops and Spa Ceylon and Colombo Jewellery Stores.
Galle seems really accessible, this time: despite the intense demand, it is still possible to stay in the heart of this City, in a bed and breakfast type inn, for twenty or thirty dollars a night. Students and clusters of young people proliferate and abound, and it is possible to reside right next to one's buddies in adjoining hostels. Each of these kinds of hotels within the Fort area have limited numbers of rooms that can be offered, so privacy and cosiness are ensured. Tiled floors, shuttered windows, plastered walls, columned street frontage, breakfast or tea out in the back garden, al fresco style, 'with different kind of Shady plants, with birds giving sound and pleasant music.'
Many people are sitting out in cheap and cheerful colourful cafés, with newspapers or magazines, their skins getting burnished and leathered by the sun in the heat of the day. The sea roars just a little, in the mid-distance, breaking on the shores and up against the sheltering ramparts, distant echoes of the tsunami, and there are long moments of bell-like, resonant silence, interspersed with human connection in the midst of a flowing stream of effervescent, kaleidoscopic colour and texture.
The Festival itself offers multiple points of access to authors and their work, and this is the brilliance of its concept. Each author can give a solo presentation of their work, or specific texts, with visual technological accompaniments such as documentaries or film footage, or be in conversation with a local author or journalist, in really comfortable looking chairs on stage, with the audience listening in, or be on a panel to discuss literary issues with other authors and commentators. The Q and A sessions after these have been excellent and inclusive, and well-supported with technological equipment such as wireless portable microphones. The majority of the events on offer can be accessed relatively inexpensively, for the equivalent of 10 dollars, well worth the cost.
At the ticket office in the Sports Hall, on the morning of the second day, an irate American gentleman had just discovered that he had left it too late to get day passes to events on Friday and Saturday. They had been on sale for a month, and there were now none left. He explained that he and his wife had come all the way from the States for these two days. The All Galle Pass came to his rescue. For a mere 10,000 rupees, he could access every event in the Hall De Galle and The Maritime Museum over the five days of the Festival.
Elsewhere, just before an author started speaking on the stage, an ungenerous English man could be heard peevishly saying that the large signs saying 'Dialog' were incorrectly spelled, and what did these people think they were about? He thought it was supposed to be a literary festival, but the people couldn't even spell!
Clothing stores in Colombo had been advising the populace to invest in 'boho chic and crisp linen shirts', and many of us were delighted to find that our wardrobes already contained many items which fitted this dress code. Swirling multi-hued skirts, parasols of silk and cotton lace, bling-embossed backpacks and gorgeous be-ribboned hats all add to the 'birds of paradise' feel in the streets.
On Saturday night, the Chamber Music Society of Colombo will play a selection of classical music in the Old Dutch Reformed church. A bejewelled sensory experience. And I can walk there from my lodgings in Middle Street, through the fairylight-festooned lanes.
The timing of this literary interlude turned out to be perfect: just after the stresses and strains of the festive season, with everyone craving renewal and refreshment. 'Me time' for a lot of people in our technologically-obsessed era involves interacting with books.
And speaking of interacting:
if you wish to meet an author of interest to you on a more personal level, authors can be lunched with or dined with for 7,500 rupees. Many authors are rather solitary and introspective people, and the thought of being auctioned off like this, even if only for a couple of hours, must surely fill some of them with horror and misgiving, but it is a great opportunity for writers and readers to interface, and engage with, and be inspired by, the wielders of words.
Galle is streaming on our screens again. With bells, and music and fairy lights from fairy lands no longer forlorn. A portal has opened again, more fully than before, into a world which seems to offer peace and plenty, to all.
As my small hotel informs us, in its own small promotional brochure,
'An open area is available to relax comfortably listening to the birds' music and enjoying evening breeze'.
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