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Post-season note on Nuwara Eliya 'Season'

by Malinda Seneviratne

'Nuwara Eliya', for some, is synonymous with 'The Season'. Perhaps in a material, wind-fall sense, this may be so for a large number of residents of that town which welcomes visitors 'to the (its) salubrious climes', even if most of them would, like me, be at a loss to define that word, forget pronouncing it. Two weeks is still a brief period of time to define a town and I am sure lots happen in the lives of Nuwareliyans, if you will, during the rest of the year.


Nuwara Eliya welcomes visitors to salubrious climes. Pic by Thilak perera

I am not from Nuwara Eliya, and although I have visited the place many times, I am not necessarily a seasonal person. In fact my seasonal count stands at a pretty dismal two, and I clearly have a long way to go before achieving fashionable respectability. Not that I want membership in that club, of course.

The first time I was in Nuwara Eliya during a 'season' was almost thirty years ago. We were the guests of Bill Murugesu, who held some senior position in Ceylon Breweries. I remember being fascinated by the fireplace of his official residence, which, if memory serves me right, was called 'Balnacoil'. I still don't know what the name means.

I was fascinated by other things too. The golf course and golfers whose fascination with a game I didn't understand fascinated me. I remember a former athletics captain of Royal College and a one-time boxer, Mahen Perera belting a small ball some distance into the green, and his father commenting 'He gets his first shot off well'.

The gardens were nice, I remember, but even then I couldn't bring myself to ga-ga over flowers. I remember a trip to World's End, and my father dislocating his arm trying to pull out some exotic plant somewhere on the road to Pattipola, and the arm being encased in Plaster of Paris by Uncle Cecil, only to be removed a couple of days later in Colombo by a surgeon competent in such matters. I remember observing that Uncle Cecil's masterpiece looked like a peacock. There must have been horse races even back then, but I can't remember anyone mentioning them.

I remembered all these things a couple of weeks ago when I went to Nuwara Eliya. Uncle Cecil is now in Colombo, Uncle Bill in India. The Gardens seemed to have as many people as flowers and the games that the affluent play no longer held any fascination.

Nuwara Eliya has changed. Naturally. I didn't remember there being any parking fees, for example. I remembered a sleepy town lazily rubbing slumber away from its eyes around noon. There were no hoardings, no cut-outs enumerating the many 'exciting' things one could do and see in Nuwara Eliya, with time and place clearly marked. There were no signs and stickers like the one which asked rather stupidly, 'beer bonne somiyatada bayatada?' (Do you drink beer because you enjoy it or because you are scared?).

Back then 'beer' was adult's stuff and I was just 10 years old. This time, even though beer is not my preferred beverage, I laughed, 'of course somiyata!' I told my friends.

They agreed. We all agreed the ad was a resounding failure. Seated in what was called "The Lion Den", absolutely fearlessly, I realised that although times change, there is some truth in the observation, "the more things change, the more they remain the same".

I was convinced that all that has taken place is that someone decided to get the town to wear some new clothes. In Nuwara Eliya, you still have the flower show, the horse races, the fox-hill races, golfing, partying, and of course the gardens. Even the Lion Den, was nothing but a 21st century version of the beer garden that the Ceylon Brewery used to set up in the very same place 30 years ago.

I have done my share of travelling and am no longer interested in ticking off a "must-see, must-do" list when I go somewhere. I prefer conversation and watching people, and the Lion Den gave me an abundance of these. I wanted to know what brings people to Nuwara Eliya during the season. I talked to people, some resident and some visiting. This is what I learnt.

Very few come to Nuwara Eliya to 'capture it all'. Some are racing buffs. Some are hooked on flowers. Some just want to be seen, some want to see, and both types, I fail to understand why, come all the way to Nuwara Eliya for these purposes.

Some come to play golf. Some to escape the terrible April heat of Colombo. Some come armed with a check-list. Some come plan-less and some place-less. Some come with family, some with friends and I am sure a few come alone, again I really don't know why. They may or may not pick up an art exhibition, musical show or a body-building contest, but these fall into the by-the-way category.

I found all these strange and fascinating creatures in the Lion Den, which, surprisingly was more than a beer-dishing-out joint populated by beer-guzzlers, and certainly not a place that was open only after-hours, i.e. towards the evening.

I know because all of us were content to eat thosai or string-hoppers (for breakfast, lunch and dinner) and just sit and talk (something that would not happen at that refreshingly lazy pace in Colombo, but of course could happen anywhere, not only in Nuwara Eliya). The Lion Den was for us not a beer-joint, but a hang-out place and I found this was what a lot of people thought as well. Families came to have a snack, either from the snack-bar or from the lunch packets they brought from home.

Young boys, regardless of the time, came to have a beer and so increase their height and self-confidence, maybe. Locals walked in and out, looking for customers for guest-houses and who knows what else. Some, like us, just sat exchanging anecdotes and maybe dirty-jokes, relaxing.

And at night, a local reggae band attracted so many people that after some time we found it difficult to hear ourselves speak.

The Gardens would also have seen a good cross-section of visitors, I thought. There would be holiday-makers, the young girls who would have loved the flowers but not so much as receiving them from boys who thought they were prettier than the flowers, the families on their annual-trip, those who were killing time in between events, etc.

I don't really know, because I didn't go there. And anyway, we assumed it would be closed after dark. So what is the 'season', I asked myself. Races, flowers, saloobriyaa..(never mind) climes, a get-away, a flesh-market, a destination for beer drinkers, art lovers, body-builders, golfers and those who want a different and local flavour of music? It doesn't matter, really. People come for different reasons, take away different memories. The 'season' certainly provides for a bunch of them anyway.

As for me, this was but a random visit. I do not go anywhere for 'the season'. I just found myself in the thick of it. I am not complaining.

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