I want to talk about our time in Galle with this little (or probably not so little) post. But I also want to talk about something that has sort of been on my mind since a certain part of Snow Crash (which I finished while we were in Galle) or perhaps since being in Negombo, or even earlier, since I listened to a podcast (Hardcore History, by Dan Carlin is the name of the cast) about the Dark Ages. Also, something that happened just recently. And probably many more things that are immediately at the forefront of my mind at the moment. First of all though, a bit about Galle.
Galle is a fort town that was first fortified by the Portuguese, subsequently taken by the Dutch, who built further fortifications and then handed over to the British, who didn't do too much with it. But while the Dutch and the Portuguese held it, Galle was the premier port in Sri Lanka (the British developed Colombo instead). Its fortifications, on a little egg shaped jut of land covering a bay, still hold a lot people, as well as old buildings and old places of worship for at least 3 different religions. It reminded me a lot of Melaka (though I still prefer Melaka to it).
We arrived at Galle around 11 by train and made our way into the fort area where our guesthouse was. Hotel Weltevreden is in old Dutch building that is heritage listed and also home to the owners (a cheerful Sri Lankan family). All of the rooms surround a small, but sunlit courtyard and all, from what we could tell, had the distinctive odour of cat pee. This was alright since we did not intend to spend much time in our room.
The walls of the fort are walkable around the entire area, there was only one part that gave us a bit of concern and that was the little Sri Lankan military outpost that we walked by on our first day, with an armed guard posted. We walked around them as much as possible though, on that first day. As we did so, we walked by an old mosque (that was not a place for visitors), saw a Stupa across the water (more on that soon) and hid from the rain in an old Anglican church (where an attendant showed us around). We drank tea across from an old Dutch hospital that was to be turned into a shopping mall and was being worked on by the army, so the owner of the cafe told us. We were also dismayed to find how expensive everything was in Galle. I guess its not cheap to own property there. Almost all of the food places we ate at were aimed at tourists. The place we ate at the most was a place called The Indian Hut, whose sign I had initially mocked as we walked past, as it said: "Indian Hut, No Pork, No Beef, No Liquor". I had thought that this didn't seem like the most winning advertisement; as it was next to the mosque though, I suppose it did make a certain amount of sense, no liquor or pork. When we looked at the menu and saw the cheapest prices we could find in Galle (and Indian food at that), I reconsidered my mockery.
And that is really all we did in Galle, eat, drink tea and walk around. In all our walking among the old and red shingled roofs of Galle, I do not really remember the order that we did it all in, so I am going to take a different approach to this entry and talk about a few things in turn starting with that most difficult of subjects (at least to talk about and not insult someone), religion. Hopefully I can get something coherent out of what I have been thinking about.
(Looks like I didn't. You can skip this part if you want to read more about our time in Galle)
Snow Crash spends a goodly amount of time dealing with ancient Sumarian legends, specifically the ones surrounding the god Enki. Enki, and other Sumarian gods, could use magical spells called Namshods. They were basically a string of words that would alter reality in a variety of ways. Enki was, as described by Hiro, the main character of Snow Crash, was the first hacker (Hiro is a hacker, of course), a neural-linguistic hacker , or at least the way that he used his Namshod was. In the book anyway, Enki's Namshod was the origin of the Tower of Babel story, the reason that there are so many different languages in the world. From the top of his ziggurat, so the story goes, Enki came to the realization that everyone was stuck in something of a rut, they were all doing the same thing, they would always do the same thing unless they were forced to think more, think out side the box so to speak. Enki's Namshod, blocked the Sumarian language from the minds of the people, essentially erasing it from the world in a single act. Then everyone was forced to think in different languages, make up new ones and generally "babble on".
One of the basic thrusts of the book is that since then, society has been trying to return to the state that came before Enki's Namshod, that is something static, organized and with everyone basically doing and thinking the same thing. The book is far more complex than that, but for my purposes hopefully that very brief description of Enki's actions will do. Perhaps you can already see where this is going given my stated topic. (On a side note, Snow Crash is one of the pillars of the Cyber Punk genre (or anti-pillar some would say, since it is claimed to mock the genre), moving it beyond everyone copying William Gibson's Neuromancer. In a recent recent interview I heard with Neal Stephenson (the author of Snow Crash), which is why I picked up Snow Crash, he mentioned that there were companies that took the book's Metaverse idea as their entire business model (it was written in 1992), and that the game "Second Life" was more than partly based off of it).
Of course the institution that was put to best use in keeping the status quo was religion. In the actual words of Jesus, there is no mention of a church or a pope, or even of priests. In the teaching of the Buddha, so far as I know, there is no mention of monks, or priests or kings. Only a statement that you must find your own path (or so I understand). But, and I suppose this is the rub, people seem to need something to tell them what to do, what to believe. According to Snow Crash at least, it is different languages that is able to put up a barrier between cultures and prevent them from all becoming a monoculture and it also helps prevent the spread of viral (as Snow Crash puts) neural-linguistic ideas, like that of, say, a missionary religion. Ideas are like viruses goes the theory (and we should note here that, unlike evolution, it really is only a theory). This is true for all sorts of ideas, but for the time being lets think mostly of religion.
Now most of the world religions these days are what are called "universal religions". That is they claim to have all of the answers within their framework and anything outside them is simply untrue. At least at their most rigid. Saying this is also an oversimplification but it will do for my purposes. But what it mostly means it that they try to spread, like a viral infection, something that tries to live in a host without killing it. After all, religions that are too violent or too extreme, tend to die out. Quick example, not sure what it was called, but there was a Christian group, in the early days of Christianity, that decided that all sex was evil, therefore no one should have it, ever. Not surprisingly it did not last very long; they did not win many converts and they had no children to keep it going. So there is that equilibrium in more ways than one that they have to keep.
Quickly now, I also recently listened to a Hardcore History podcast on the Dark Ages, by Dan Carlin, which talked about, among other things, how people shape their religions to their cultures. Obviously religions must shape to the dominant culture in order to survive, so despite, in this case, Christianity being essentially a pacifist religion, it shaped itself to the dominant culture, once that culture converted to it. So Clovis (or Constantine for that matter), a brutal thug, who had most of his family killed (after he became a Christian) and complained later in life of being lonely, became a saint because he converted to the "right" Christianity and was the leader of a dominant group (the Franks). As Dan Carlin points out in the podcast, Clovis and his ilk also, basically turned Jesus into Thor.
So, what does this have at all to do with Galle, well, I started this so long ago that I'm unsure now, but lets see. There are 4 of the worlds major religions here, all of them with histories in the country going back a minimum of 500 years, with Christianity being the most recent on the arrivals. All 4 have holy sites around the country. The top of Sri Pada, despite having a Buddhist monastery at its summit, is sacred to all 4, as it has either Shiva's, Buddha's or Adam's footprint there (and whoever the footprint belongs too, had some gigantic feet). Galle has temples, churches, mosques and stupas, tributes to the 4 religions represented in Sri Lanka, it seems to be a place that there is also relative peace between them.
So we have 4 universalist religions in a small space, coexisting relatively well, so long as they don't bother each other. But as we walked around Galle I wondered about how well things were shared here and I began to remember still more of what I had heard. They all hold into Sri Lankan culture in different but similar ways (if you take my meaning). As I just said, they coexist moderately well so long as they don't step on each others toes. And Sri Lankans are religious people, whatever faith they adhere to. According to the Lonely Planet, there is even a bit of bet hedging going on, with people of the different religions wandering into each other sanctuaries from time to time to worship there. But it seems that not is all so peaceful as it is in Galle.
Before arriving in Sri Lanka, I had heard on the BBC that there was a group of "radical Buddhist monks" agitating the sites of other religions and even causing violent riots. When I heard of this, I thought that it was utterly ridiculous. Whoever heard of a radical monk. Well, as I read on, apparently a lot of people. I suppose I shouldn't have been too surprised, every religion has had (and still has) violent holy folk. Bishops and Popes in the Middle Ages and Renaissance strapped on armour and led armies into battle. The founding of Islam led to a militaristic explosion of conquest by religious people. The man who assassinated Mahatma Gandi was a member of a extremist Hindu movement. To name a few of many. I had always thought of Buddhism as a religion that was not supposed to take to extremes, but here in Sri Lanka that is not the case (to be fair it is not the case in a few other countries as well; I'm fairly sure that the like the small groups in these countries, it is also small groups of true agitators here too. If you are interested in a crazy radical Buddhist sect, with fortunately few followers, research the Japanese Nichiren sect). As I read on I found out that Sri Lanka has a nationalist Buddhist movement, which is partly the cause of so much tension, especially with the Tamil Hindus of the country. A monk of this persuasion even assassinated a sitting president of Sri Lanka. I should also note that this radicalism seems to have only arisen in the 19th century.
It all got me thinking about a more pragmatic look at religion around the world and especially in Sri Lanka. I remember once thinking that if everyone just believed the same thing then all would be well, but of course adherents of most religions think that, so long as the belief is the same as their own. In the framework of Snow Crash, religion brings a certain stability, which is good, but it also brings a lack of lateral thinking and creativity, which is not. If there were no priests, or monks, or mullahs or gurus and people just self identified themselves as a affiliated to one religion without the help of said experts, would the world be a better place? People would be free to believe what they wanted about their own religion then perhaps they would not feel so threatened by the belief of others. Instead of a framework, perhaps religions would be an ever expanding bubble? As nice as that might sound, I'm sure it wouldn't work. Not yet anyway. Perhaps its confidence of adherents that is frail, that need to feel certain that they are right and there is no room for doubt, or other thoughts, but there would be many other objections as well.
As to this radical element, one does wonder if it only appears when the core is threatened at least in the country of the radicals. A defence mechanism. A thought for another time. It may be that this is the reason for Sri Lanka's radical Buddhists.
I could go on and on, with various tangents and ideas, but I think I will stop here, simply because I'm certain that I would not have gotten to a point even after 100 pages writing. So, congratulations if you got this far, sorry for my rambling. I'm going on to other things now.
(You can start again here)
In a quick little addition to all of this religion talk, a few days later when we were in Unawatuna we made our way to the Stupa (called the Peace Pagoda) we could see across the water from the Fort. It was big and a clean shiny white. And immensely peaceful. Or at least it was, once the school group left. We circled it, in all its cleanliness, feeling as though our spirit was being pulled up into the giant point and sent to the stars. I was feeling pretty good, until I started reading the inscriptions on the plaques. One in particular caught my eye. It said that the upon the Buddha's birth he pointed to the ground and to heaven, said he was revered in both and that he had come to relieve all the suffering in the world. I found this to be utterly out of context with Buddhism as I understood it. I had not understood it too be a messianic religion, which is what it seemed to be suggesting here. It upset me that it was like that, or this representation was like that anyway. It made me grouchy for the rest of our time out that day (which was fortunately not very long). I snarled a bit at Nancy and we walked back to our guesthouse in Unawatuna in silence for a while, before I realized how silly I was being and apologized.
Now for some views from the Indian Hut, which turned out to be a great place to people watch.
As we sat in the Indian Hut (which was on the second floor) we saw a tourist bus arrive and disgorge its passengers, a whole flock of them. The moment the first tourist set foot on the ground she was descended upon by people selling their wares. The whole line of them walked past the touts until all that was left was a little girl who was still being bothered by one persist tout, showing her his clothes for sale. She was apparently not interested. The touts wandered away dejected, but others caught the tourists up on the wall in smaller groups, which seemed to be more effective.
From the same vantage point we saw a dog that had stolen himself a nice fresh fish. We watched as he defended his prize from the crows that were constantly circling. The dog would snarl at two in front of him only to just barely chase the one coming from the side at the fish. They circled and he ate, growling and threatening when he saw them come to close. It seemed an epic struggle, that the dog managed to finally win. Dogs are fast eaters.
There was also an old German man, with particular tastes, who ate at the Indian Hut as often as we did. I overheard him tell the waiter exactly what he wanted done with his fried rice and order a lime juice, then a pepsi that he wanted to come with the rice and not a second sooner. There seemed to be a bit of an argument over this, I think it was a language barrier issue. He was yelling for a little bit, the waiters apologizing but he got his pepsi with his rice and not a moment sooner, well after he finished his lemon juice.
Finally, a man and his wife (in a burka) walked into the restaurant and sat down at the table next to us. I did not hear them speak once, except to order (the man did that), during the entire time they were there. They sat beside each other as separate as possible staring at the tv. I wondered if they did not like to speak in public to each other and if so, would they, once they returned to the privacy of home talk about what they had seen in the restaurant and on the tv. I also remember thinking about a part in A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khalid Hosseini (of Kite Runner fame). One of the main characters (Miriam), upon her marriage to a man much older than herself (I think he was 45 and she was 16), she is given a burka by her new husband. When she is out in Kabul wearing it for the first time, she feels completely safe from the stares of people, like stares bounce off. The feeling eventually wears off but I wonder if that is how others feels about it.
So that was Galle for us. We ate, we watched, I brooded, we drank tea.
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