The Hours of Living Dangerously...

The year was 1988.

Under the aegis of an international organisation, a colleague and I were destination-bound for Colombo for a meeting.

We had sent all the necessary telegrams informing the Secretariat in Sri Lanka of our arrival details. After a 6-hour stop-over in Bangkok, our flight took off. We arrived at Colombo just before midnight local time.

All passengers quickly deplaned, cleared immigration and were whisked away. However, there was no one to meet us. There was no public transportation in sight as well. We pussyfooted about for a while. The airport porch lights were dimmed. Everything became quiet. The airport was deserted save for a few airport workers. Our anxieties grew. What has happened to our transportation arrangement?

We did not want to be stranded at the Colombo International Airport. No siree!

Plucking our courage, we went over to a white hotel limousine which was waiting for someone. According to the driver, he was there to bring a Japanese guest to his hotel. It now appeared so that the gentleman was not on the flight.

We were then informed by this hotel driver that a hartal was enforced on that day by the Little Tigers of Tamil Eelam, the separationist group in the on-going civil war, to commemorate the first anniversary of the death of Rajiv Gandhi. Any public transport vehicles on the road that day particularly buses and taxis would be summarily bombed.

Many inbound passengers who knew about the hartal postponed their flight until the next day. We were unfortunate to be caught at the wrong place at the wrong time.

We then politely requested the driver to send us to our destination. He refused as our destination was way too far away. However, he agreed to drop us at the nearest hotel.

After a half hour's drive, he drove into a back lane. Then he got out and knocked at a back-door. After a flurry exchange of words with someone behind the door, he beckoned us out of the limousine into the building. We paid him a few US dollars. He counted the notes; beamed at us kindly and drove off.

There was no room left at this ramshackle hotel. Only two chairs at the bottom of a winding staircase were available for us to rest for the night. The hotel personnel suggested we sleep on the chairs until morning. He will provide us a blanket each.

I could not sleep; waiting anxiously for morning to come. As the first rays of the sun shone,our hotel man brought us two big glasses of steaming chai (Ceylonese tea). It was the best tea I had the fortune of drinking in a long, long time.

Quote of the Day:

“A free spirit must be able to surmount anxiety time after time.” Mason Cooley

Heartsong-Heartstrong