An ode to re-visiting

Technology has made things easier. We need not remember everything.  Because they have places to store things. They’ve got places to show how things looked like a few months back.  Archives will do that all. You can find articles that were published long ago. Even web sites do have archives now. May be you can re-visit your font style, re-visit the size or structure. Do changes if you want to. Easy. 

Pic Source : Internet

Colombo Archives in Independence Avenue will help you re visit old books, deeds, inscriptions and newspapers or whatever. But not everything in this world is archived. Or preserved. We see them and we know what they are. Some things are momentary. It is not an easy task to remember everything we have seen or heard. You may miss one or two things when you try to recall them after sometime. That is human error or inadequacy, like anything else. We tend to forget. And this is why re-visiting is good. I remember how Miss Sajeevanie , my grade 12 English Literature teacher always wanted us to re-visit books. Because reading again and again helps us remember well. And every time you read you find something new which was not there before. 

Years so long gone I made frequent trips to Tangalle. Quite a lot of re-visits that I cannot name them exactly. That is where most of my childhood vacations were spent. I had an aunt who lived there doing her practice in Tangalle Base Hospital. She had no children at that time. And I was a fragment of her lonesomeness. I entertained her with my childhood adventures. She fondly recalls them. However, trips to Tangalle stopped when aunty moved to Colombo for work.

Two Sundays ago I visited Tangalle again. That was 18 years after I had left the place.

Tangalle was a happy city then.  The winter sun , the crimson skies in twilight, the dawn in orange and blue ,the every –night  glittering  telecom tower   a little away from hospital quarters , ice cream vendors along the beach , the woo-hoo sounds  of sea wave in mid night , the pulsing southern stars , curvy coconut trees  that bowed down to every blowing wind, Sunil uncle’s kade – the only 24 hour store in Tangalle  for  late night unexpected groceries and other necessities  were all perfect  and thrilling.

The  beach never had a break. It was everyday full of locals and foreigners.  A family friend always took me on sea rides. Every morning and when sun was about to sink. They are earliest of my memories. Harbor men were always busy.  Bringing ice and putting them back, sorting the fish, counting and storing. Men with fish gear set the hook, mend lines, drift and haul their catches. That was a common sight there. Beautiful and engaging. But now I have changed. I feel it’s a risk business. One would not even know if sea wave will provide a safe comeback to them and their boats.

Most of the things have had not changed  for 18 years. It was surprising .The park, the huge Mara tree  dividing the road to Tangalle Police Station and buildings were still the same. Same color. Even the Southern Bakery, to which I ran for cream bunis every morning. (That was a different cream bun altogether, with a well baked delicious crust, half cut into 4 and the surfaces filled with butter icing in different colors.) They are there in same picture board and size.

But a few things looked different the two Sundays back. The Base Hospital looked bigger, well built with a different coloring. New hotels have come in. Certain beach areas along the Colombo –Hambantota road were blocked. Walls were put up so that no can enter.  Some coconut trees were gone. Lands were seized. Regime Politics have changed the town from here and there.  Letting go has to be done sometimes. Because we are born into a world of change. When things decay or if one thinks the way it used to be has to be changed, new things are necessary. I think.

The whole trip was like a handkerchief gathering melancholia. I felt I was absent and absented through all this and more. Re –visits help you keep close records of things. Tangalle still  looked beautiful amidst the new things.  It is like when some people go away and when they come, now and again they are beautiful.