A typical day begins at about 5 or 6 am, right after the sun rises. These hours are the best because the heat isn’t so damaging yet. Once lunch is completed around 1 or 2pm, it’s nap time. The intensity of the heat allows for nothing else. You need to rest to get through the humidity because most houses are only equipped with ceiling fans. Teatime follows nap time (my favourite part of the day) and the evening brings cool breezes along with pesky mosquitoes. Dinner is late, at 8pm or so, at which point the heat has exhausted you yet again.
It’s a laid-back simple lifestyle that at first glimpse I took to be boring, but came to enjoy. However, I still couldn’t get over the fact that in Colombo, us Tamils still had to be segregated to be safe. We still felt like second class citizens in the country we were born in.
Returning to my motherland was an awakening, one that allowed me to appreciate being Tamil-Canadian and embrace my Canadian identity proudly. It allowed me to understand why my family left and have gratitude for the opportunities living in Canada allowed me. I still hold mixed emotions when people tell me how beautiful Sri Lanka is. I just wanna scream, “but did you know there was a genocide?” Instead I hold my tongue and smile politely, careful not to ruin their memories of an idyllic tourist destination.