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| Sunday, 23 November 2003 |
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Features |  |
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Cricket and Clairvoyance A special feature of this year's tourist season has been the celebrity factor, with the English cricket team's visit dominating the industry's calendar. As special as the group itself, it so happens, is the man in charge of them. by KAREL ROBERTS RATNAWEERA
Ratnapala Wijesiri Senadhira is no ordinary tour guide. At the recent Refresher Course for guide lecturers conducted by the National Tour Guide Lecturers' Association (NTGLA), Sena, as everyone calls him, was Project Manager, and it was an ideal choice. Right now, Sena is busy showing British cricket tourists the country their ancestors once colonised. But why this writer maintains that Sena is special is based on certain experiences I had while on a domestic tour with him on the invitation of a well-known travel agency. Apart from maintaining strict discipline, adhering to 'deadlines - not in the journalistic sense, of course - and generally maintaining an almost militaristic routine which is defensible in the circumstances of shepherding coachloads of tourists travelling in conditions that are unfamiliar to them. The luxury coach was parked outside the Hotel Taprobane in Fort as the tourists got in, taking their own sweet time as Sri Lankans usually do at such times. As the guide got in it was clear to me that he had something about him that was different. He was calm, gentle but with a sense of humour that seemed to come through even when he wasn't saying anything; the word is aura. He himself uses the word quite often as a serious student of para psychology, Sena is able to see an aura around everyone, he says, and his studies are helping him to perfect the practice. At least ten minutes of meditation a day, Sena says, is a 'must' for anyone who is pursuing studies in para psychology which he believes is of immense help in his profession of tour-guiding because his job is not simply a matter of getting people on and off coaches, into hotels and back to the airport. Personal attention to every tourist on a coach is of great importance, Sena says, and this is exactly what he metes out to tourists. Tour-guiding is not as easy as some might think. It is very much more than describing the passing scene to a coachload who are travelling through unfamiliar terrain thereby reposing a great responsibility on the guide. It is in these interpersonal relationships that Sena finds his studies in para psychology of great help. Widely travelled in connection with his work as a professinal tour guide, Sena has lived and worked in the former USSR - now the Russian Republic - and speaks fluent Russian. He is also fluent in Japanese, both of which he says are difficult languages to gain command of. He has travelled widely in India and in many other countries which he says has stood him in good stead. This writer will never forget a domestic tour in 2001 during which Sena took us up Ritigala and Mihintale in one short afternoon! This writer had been wanting to visit Ritigala for ever-so-long because of interest in the tales of Pandukhabaya, the prince who founded Anuradhapura and became its first king. Proceeding to the famous mountain which is home to some of the rarest Himalayan herbs (connected with the Ravanna legends), Sena, talking to his Sri Lanka tourists through his mike, stressed that there is a belief that no one visiting Ritigalakanda should ever, under any circumstances, take back even a leaf from the mountain. As the beautiful, mystical Ritigala loomed ever closer, Sena stressed the point he was making; not even a blade of grass to be taken away. The time was about 2.00 p.m. and as we began the climb upto Pandukhabaya's lookout post which is not even halfway up the mountain, in the sun-dappled afternoon, a member of the tour party was seen to pluck a handful of leaves from a tree and pocket it. On the descent to get back into the coach for Anuradhapura and Mihintale - it was the day after Poson - the individual who had helped himself to the handful of leaves, his son and a tourguide, were delaying to get into the coach. The fact is that they had lost their way down the mountain. We had to wait at least half an hour before the man, his son and friend finally arrived to join the rest of the party. On being asked as to how they had lost their way down, the plucker of the leaves said that they suddenly felt as if they were in 'no man's land' (wherever that may be), and had been helped by some villagers who directed them down the mountain to join the rest of the tour party. When my fragile gold chain bracelet got caught in the bracken and fell to the ground, I wasn't sure whether to pick it up. I waited for Sena's advice. 'Pick it up,' he said. 'It's your's.' Sena believes in planning the day early morning. He usually does so in his private flower garden which is affiliated to the Royal Peradeniya Botannical Gardens. Flower-power may be a term of the hippy sixties, but Sena believes in the power of flowers. Everyday he places five flowers of different colours on a table, or whatever, not less than three feet in height. He does so even in his hotel room if he is on a tour assignment. Sena believes that this is an auspicious 'ritual' - if such a term may be used to describe it - which helps him in his day. Sena says that the secret of success in any endeavour is in being yourself at all times and having patience. |
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