Hong Kong on the Brink

Eleven weeks ago, the placards carried by protesters said "Withdraw Extradition Bill". Now, they proclaim "FREE HONG KONG". What began as a spontaneous protest against a hated piece of legislation has turned into an aggressive pro-democracy movement.

Sri Lanka has a population of 21 million. Imagine if 7 million of them came out for a protest march in Colombo. The police and the armed services would be outnumbered, and the protesters could lay siege to the city and even topple the government. When two million protesters marched through downtown Hong Kong in June, they were one third of Hong Kong's population. The protesters have brought the city to a standstill. The government hasn't fallen yet, but remains in paralysis. Hong Kong has no armed forces, but there's a garrison of Mainland Chinese forces based in Hong Kong, and more troops across the border, but any intervention by these them could be the end of Hong Kong as we know it.

I came to Hong Kong in 1995. Two years later, the British handed over the colony to China. After the Tiananmen incident in 1989, about half a million Hong Kongers, those who could afford it or those who had professional qualifications, left, to settle down mainly in Canada, Australia, and Britain. Most who remained in Hong Kong, and even some expatriates, were not optimistic about its future. As long as it was under the British, Hong Kong had been a humiliation for China, and some even expected Chinese tanks to roll down Tolo Highway, which connected Hong Kong to China, after the handover on July 1. (I could see the highway from where I lived on the Chinese University campus)

Hong Kong's breathtaking skyscrapers 

But, no tanks came. For me, the immediate impact was in cricket. The university cricket team used a Royal Air Force (RAF) grounds for our games, but, after the handover, the Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) took over the camp and we couldn’t play there anymore.

Historical Context

Till 1949, Hong Kong only had a population of half a million within its 500 square miles. That year, the communists took over China, and a massive exodus to Hong Kong occurred, raising the population to 2 million. The elderly taxi driver who drove me to the airport regularly, Mr. Wu, told me that he swam to Hong Kong with a bicycle tube around his neck. Most of these early immigrants are now dead, but the stories they told their children and grandchildren, about suppression of freedom in China, have not been forgotten.

The early refugees lived in shacks, coping with landslides and fires. With time, the British administration managed to build enough public housing to accommodate all, although some residential units were as small as 200 sq. ft. Eventually, citizens gained much personal freedom, and access to free education and healthcare. Public transport - the Mass Transit Railway (MTR), the bus service, taxis, and ferries – are perhaps the world’s best. Currently, Hong Kong boasts a sound banking system, an independent judiciary, about $400 billion in foreign reserves, and enforces rigorous anti-corruption laws. The stock-exchange rivals London and New York. Last year’s budget surplus was $40 billion. The annual per capita GDP is $49,000 (for comparison, the figures for the UK and Sri Lanka are $42,000 and $4000 respectively). To cap it all, the life expectancy is the highest in the world, for both Hong Kong men and women.

But, there’s a dark side to Hong Kong. About 15% of the population, mainly recent immigrants from the Mainland (57,000 arrived in 2016 alone), live below the official poverty line. Their housing could be horrendous; exploited by landlords, they live in so called “sub-divided” flats, some as small as 100 sq. ft. for a family of four.

Changes

For about ten years after the handover, life went on as usual. The same civil servants and policemen continued to serve, and the same journalists’ bylines appeared in the newspapers. Train announcements were in Cantonese and English. Mainland Chinese visitors were few, because they needed visas to enter Hong Kong, which were not easy to obtain.

Gradually, I began to note changes, both at the university where I taught and elsewhere in Hong Kong. More students from the Mainland were entering Hong Kong universities, even to the detriment of local students: at my university, the majority of doctoral students turned out to be Mainlanders. Many newly appointed professors also had Mainland origins, as did some university Presidents/Vic-Chancellors. However, personally, I continued to enjoy academic freedom: no one observed my lectures, and none checked my lecture notes.

China had eased visa requirements, and Hong Kong shops began to overflow with Mainland shoppers, buying up everything from designer handbags to name-brand watches, from milk food to toilet paper. The MTR became clogged with Mainland visitors, easily noticed because they spoke Mandarin and brought huge suitcases into the railway carriages. In 2018, for instance, about 46 million Mainland visitors entered Hong Kong, further crowding the 7 million locals. Naturally, this caused a great deal of resentment.

Failure in Administration

The last British Governor, Chris Patten, had been a popular figure. But, all the Chief Executives (CE) - equivalent to Governor - appointed after the handover turned out to be utter failures. They had all been nominees of China, through an election in which only 1,200 chosen few Hong Kongers voted. The first, Tung Chi Wa, a businessman, resigned before his term was up. During his tenure, when a so-called National Security Legislation was proposed, half a million marched in protest. The bill was withdrawn. The second, Donald Tsang, is now in jail for corruption. As a Catholic, he attended mass every morning, and to me, that alone was suspect enough! The third, C.Y. Leung, was, like Tsang, a puppet in the hands of property developers.

Carrie Lam, the current Chief Executive, is a long term civil servant, like her predecessor Donald Tsang.  She, too, is a “good Catholic girl”, having even attended a Catholic convent. Top level civil servants in Hong Kong are a pampered lot. Lam famously did not know where to buy toilet paper, or how to go through the turnstiles to enter the MTR! When civil servants are appointed CE, perhaps their main shortcoming is the inability to create policy, having been trained only to carry out the decisions made by their superiors.

Despair among Hong Kong’s Young

Early on, my students had little interest in politics. I taught at a public university and most students came from the working class. Stories abounded of social mobility, of children of poor refugees from China, living  in crowded housing, rising to become top level professionals. My students also aspired to rise above their parent’ living standards, and many did.

Two sisters, whose parents were a cook and a cleaner, gained full scholarships to Oxford and Cambridge to pursue doctoral degrees. Another, the daughter of a hawker, earned a First Class Honors in English. She narrowly missed a scholarship to Oxford, and could have easily found employment in a top business firm. Instead, she joined the police as a probationary police inspector, telling me she admired the police for keeping her impoverished neighborhood safe from drug dealers and gangsters. A close friend, a world class academic, also came from a similar background.

But now, such social mobility is more the exception than the rule. I see two reasons. First, the more affluent children attend international schools, and go to the UK, Australia and the US for higher education. They return to Hong Kong with better English language and all round skills, and get the plum jobs.

The second is unaffordable housing. Housing prices have skyrocketed in the past 20 years. Presently, Hong Kong is the world’s most expensive housing market, at HK$17,000 per square foot (US$2000, or Sri Lankan Rs. 385,000/: for a square foot). For comparison, the rate for New York is only US$520. For most Hong Kongers, owning their own home is an impossibility. Those who do call themselves “mortgage slaves”, some holding more than one job to pay off killer 30-year payments. The property developers’ solution has been to build tiny flats, selling 160 sq. ft. flats for HK$3 million. Meanwhile, greedy landlords are subletting their flats, forcing whole families to live in horrendous conditions.

How the Hong Kong poor live

For the housing debacle, the culprits are three fold. First, the government (yes, even under the British), which controls all land and auctions them off to the highest bidder from the property developers. Second, the powerful, rapacious developers who manipulate the market and influence government policy. Third, Mainlanders investing their ill-gotten wealth safely in Hong Kong, driving up prices. Most of the flats they own remain unoccupied.

Singapore, which is even smaller than Hong Kong in terms of area, has solved the housing problem by building family-friendly housing costing about 5 years’ income. In comparison, a typical Hong Konger could only afford 12 square feet per year, and even a car-sized flat would cost 10 years’ income. Carrie Lam, the current CE, has a proposal to solve the housing problem: instead of building public housing on available land, she plans to create an island at a cost of HK$500 billion (US$65 billion). Construction would likely be handled by Mainland companies, and private developers would build the flats. Pressure from the Mainland and property developers is obvious.

Growing Resentment

In 1997, when Hong Kong was handed over to China, the “One country, two systems” proposed by the former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping was put in place, ensuring Hong Kong a degree of autonomy for 49 years. Although defense and diplomacy came under the Mainland, Hong Kong continued to print its currency, to link the HK dollar to the US dollar, have its own flag, issue passports, and maintain immigration control. But, over the years, frustration with China has grown due to a number of reasons: covert pressure with the proposed security law of 2003 (which was withdrawn), attempts to change the school curriculum (which also failed), and coercion to invest in massive infrastructure projects, such as the 55 km sea bridge to Macau and Zhuhai, which don’t directly benefit Hong Kong. The “invasion” by millions of Mainland tourists, crowding public transport, shops, and streets, did not help matters. The influx of Mainland money into the property market, sending prices sky high, further exacerbated the situation. Hong Kong people’s resentment was palpable: street protests against the Mainlanders were held, and clashes occurred.

The Current Protests

The hated extradition bill would have subjected Hong Kong to the Chinese legal system. The government was warned by academics and legal experts to reconsider, but, perhaps under pressure from China, chose to ignore the advice.

I was in Hong Kong in June, when the two major protest marches occurred. Despite the blistering heat, one million took part in the first march, and a week later, an estimated two million marched. The protesters came from all ages and across the social and economic strata. University, secondary school and even middle school students were joined by their parents and grandparents. Working class people marched with civil servants, teachers, and airline staff. When the government did not respond by withdrawing the extradition bill, the second march ended with clashes between radical elements and the police. Waking up at last, Carrie Lam suspended the bill, but did not withdraw it. So the violent protests continued.

Violent protests

The Legislative Council building, Hong Kong’s parliament, was stormed. Police Headquarters was besieged. Roads were blocked. Finally, the Hong Kong airport, where nearly one thousand flights take off and land every day, was brought to a standstill. The Hong Kong government, and indirectly China, were humiliated.

Well-equipped protester

The attires of the protesters and the police offer a sharp contrast. The typical protester wears a black T-shirt, a helmet, goggles, and a gas mask, to protest from tear gas. A bottle of water is ubiquitous. In contrast, policemen in riot gear have the forbidding appearance of Darth Vader from Star Wars. Some baton charges have been violent.

Riot police

China Losing Face

I have traveled widely in China in the past 20 years, and have seen first-hand how much progress the country has made during this period. But, while material prosperity and living standards have improved, personal freedom appears to have declined.

Never having experienced it, Mainland officials have little understanding of democracy. They probably cannot comprehend the dissatisfaction of Hong Kongers, who are Chinese like themselves.

In Chinese societies, “face” is everything. The loss of face is intolerable, and these societies go to great lengths to “save face”.  What exacerbates the Chinese impatience with Hong Kong is the tremendous loss of face that China and its citizens are subjected to in Hong Kong. The Chinese shoppers are called “locusts”, and any type of errant behavior, such as a child peeing on the street, goes viral on social media and is condemned. But, the annual candlelight vigil held in Hong Kong on June 4 takes the cake for “loss of face” on a global level. Any mention of the Tiananmen incident of 1989 is taboo in China, but, for the past 30 years, Hong Kong has commemorated the incident with a vigil which draws massive crowds, 300,000 this year.

Candlelight vigil, 2019. Each light represents a person. 

During the current protests, the Chinese emblem was defaced, and the Chinese flag was twice ripped from a pole and thrown into the sea. In an open society, such acts would probably draw a mild rebuke (the US flag, for instance, is set fire to both within and outside the US on a regular basis), but China is incensed. The protests themselves, broadcast around the world, makes China appear weak.

In reaction, China has amassed a large, armored force on the Hong Kong border, and broadcast its tactics for riot control. It brought pressure on Cathay Pacific Airways, Hong Kong’s privately owned flag-carrier, to sack two pilots who had participated in the protests. Even Cathay’s CEO was forced to resign.

My Hong Kong

I have a deep, emotional attachment to Hong Kong. Prior to my arrival in 1995, I had studied and taught in the USA, where I couldn’t even live from paycheck to paycheck, being squeezed by high income taxes, state taxes, payments for health insurance and social security, in addition to monthly car payments and a mortgage. The sales taxes added a further 12% to every bill. Hong Kong, in contrast, had a flat 17% income tax, free health care, and did not require social security payments. No sales tax was added, because Hong Kong is tax free. When I bought a house, the government paid the substantial mortgage. My take home salary was three times what I earned in the USA. I could even afford a domestic helper, brought from Sri Lanka. And, as a permanent resident, I voted.

In other ways, too, Hong Kong has been good to me. The Hong Kong people are tolerant of foreigners, and the presence of a large expatriate population ensures a diverse lifestyle enriched by a cuisine that is truly international. Half of Hong Kong is reserved for country parks, which are easily accessed, and public transport is perhaps the world’s best, and affordable. The police and civil servants are courteous. At the well-endowed public university where I taught, academic freedom was guaranteed, and other forms of academic and research support were provided that was unthinkable at most cash strapped American universities. The generous travel grants enabled me to see the world. I made lifelong friends.

So, I want Hong Kong to be succeed, and the people to be happy. But, in recent years, I saw the smiles fade and gloom set in. Poor leadership, an unequal society, becoming “mortgage slaves”, has sapped the cheerfulness of the people. But, during my 20-year stay, Hong Kong weathered two sharp economic downturns, and the devastating SARS epidemic which killed more than 300 people. Each time, Hong Kong bounced back. I have lived in five countries, and nowhere else have I seen such a resilient society.

What can be done? Carrie Lam, the failed Chief Executive, already “the walking dead”, has to go. The hated extradition bill must be withdrawn. A crash program to build thousands of affordable public housing should be launched immediately. Finally, universal suffrage, one-person one-vote, must be implemented when the next election for the Chief Executive comes around.

As George Orwell said, knowing “that your children get a fair chance” are basic aspirations, all that Hong Kong people are asking for. The latest protests, held on Sunday 18, in pouring rain, went off peacefully, without any clashes. An estimated 1.7 million marched. Hong Kong is on the brink, but I have hope.

"Do you play cricket?"

The job interview was at a hotel room in San Diego, California, during a major academic conference. A few chairs had been lined up outside the room, and, as I sat there, a pale, scrawny woman, who had just been interviewed, walked triumphantly out of the room with a dismissive glance in my direction, as if to say “You are not getting the job, loser, because I have already been selected”. Rather dejectedly, I walked in.

The room had two chairs and a large bed. Three white males, who turned out to be Americans, were waiting expectantly, the oldest seated on the chair and the other two on the bed. They were the interview committee. I was not surprised by the arrangement. Years before, while being interviewed for a job at another academic conference, I had been in stranger interview scenarios.

The person seated on the chair turned out to be the director of the ELT Unit, a renowned professor, who I knew by reputation, but the others were strangers. One was a roly-poly, jowly, balding, Mid-Westerner, and the other a lanky, younger person, who turned out to be an instructor.  But, despite my face not matching my name, (the name is Western, but the face and skin color are not), they didn’t appear surprised or disappointed; in fact, they were friendly. The interview proceeded smoothly. The usual questions, about my qualifications, publications, teaching experience, were asked. After about 20 minutes, as I was getting ready leave, the fat guy raised his hand and said, “I have one more question."

I replied "Sure".

"Do you play cricket?”

I nearly fell off my chair. This question was beyond my wildest expectations. At an interview for an academic job, conducted in the United States, by three Americans, I was being asked about a very British sport, specifically cricket. I didn’t even expect them to know about the game. Most Americans know "cricket" as an insect. In shock, I could only retort “Of course I do. I am Sri Lankan. Do you”?

The fat guy threw up his hands in horror and said “I don’t. But my friend Pradip wanted me to ask you.”  And that, friends, is how I got an English teaching job in Hong Kong. I actually spread that rumor after arriving in Hong Kong, and some people believed it!

I met Pradip. He taught in the ELT Unit.  Knowing that a Sri Lankan was going to interviewed, he had been curious.

As for the pale, scrawny woman? To my great misfortune, she became my "colleague" for the next 15 years.

The cricket team, 1996

Pondside trees

Kumbuk - Terminalia arjuna

"Pondside", the ancestral property which is my only home in Sri Lanka after the Hantana

property was sold, is home to a many trees. The most majestic, the King of them all, is the kumbuk tree that stands to the front of the property, next to the pond. This tree is easily over one hundred years old, and I have known it for 60 years. It's more than 100 feet tall, and has a beautiful canopy which perhaps covers about 500 square feet.

Kumbuk grows near water, and is said to purify the water and cool it, too. On a hot day, the coolest place at Pondside is under the kumbuk tree. 

Villagers tell me that it's the only kumbuk tree in the village. I am not sure if this is true, but I am fairly sure it's the oldest.

The bark is medicinal and is used to treat heart disease.

The beautiful shady canopy of the kumbuk

Looking back from the kumbuk towards the pond

My neighbor not only filled up his share of the pond, but has now installed this high fence. 

The largest madan (Syzygium cumini) tree 

I have a number of these trees in my garden. They are lovely trees, with a canopy of bright green leaves. The bright blue berries are tasty, and attract birds. The berries and bark are used in the treatment of diabetes.

In addition to about 90 coconut trees, both young and old, Pondside also has two large jak trees, about 10 mango trees, as many cashew trees, a couple of bakmee (Nauclea orientalis) near the pond, and a number of other trees. The two breadfruit trees died in the severe drought that hot the area three years ago, but two replacement saplings that I planted are coming up. I have also planted more than 50 katu anoda (prickly custard apple) which should bear fruit soon.

The view from my verandah looking towards the front gate

The frangipani trees shed their flowers in the night, and my front yard is strewn with lovely, perfumed flowers.

Hantana - A Fond Farewell

In March, I drove away from Hantana for the last time, ending a long relationship, perhaps a romance. As with any relationship that ends, the memories are bittersweet, for the house at Hantana had been our beloved second home for 35 long years.

For those who have been students at Peradeniya University, or for older fans who recall the hit movie Hanthane Kathawa, or more recent fans of Amarasiri Peiris' Hantanata payana sanda, Hantana has an aura of romance, of nostalgia, of lost love. But this is not about that Hantana; over the range of hills from Peradeniya, above the city of Kandy, is the other Hantana where my house was located.

In the mid-1980s, when I was planning to travel abroad for higher studies, my son was schooling in Kandy. "If you buy us a house in Kandy" my parents said, "We will move there to look after him". I couldn't afford a Kandy house, but President Ranasinghe Premadasa came to our rescue. In his wisdom, he realized that middle-class folks also needed public housing and launched the Hantana Housing Scheme.

So, with our parents and our son, my wife and I drove there for a visit. Past the Bogambara prison, the playground, Kandy hospital, and Hanatana Hotel, we drove up a steep, winding road. Two miles from the city, on the edge of Hantana Estate, with a clear view of Hantana hill, the housing scheme began. Only some of the terraced houses had been completed, and only one or two families had come into occupation. The location was spectacular, the price was right, and we decided to buy. 

Early Days

My parents moved to Hantana in 1984. The garden, cleared of tea bushes, was barren. They planted mangoes and avocados - which bear fruit even now - and flowering plants that thrived under my mother's tender care. Most families had children, and my son quickly made friends, playing cricket on an improvised playground, visiting each other’s homes, but mainly just hanging out. A tiny CTB bus, with its entrance and exit at the rear, came up to our doorsteps. A post office and a co-op opened, and the early residents started a welfare society. The Housing Authority made sure the roads were lit and kept cleared of weeds. When I first visited, in 1986, I saw a community of residents who had arrived from all over the country, and belonging to every race and creed. Most 

Path to house

were senior government officials, and there were a few doctors and lawyers, too. At dusk, I heard the voices of children on the internal road below, returning from their cricket, talking and laughing. Safe, harmonious, almost Utopian.

The houses blended aesthetically with the hilly terrain, and to protect from landslides, their foundations went down to 14 feet. The scheme had a central sewerage system, where the water was purified and recycled. I was told that the engineer in charge, in the presence of distinguished guests, drank a glass of recycled water to prove its purity!  

But the scheme had a hidden past. Its construction had been awarded to an Italian company, and local workers and subcontractors had fleeced them at every opportunity. Lorry loads of building materials would enter from the lower gate, obtain the signature of a corrupt official that the material had been unloaded, and exit at the upper gate without unloading. Then, they would repeat the process. Toilet fittings newly installed would vanish overnight. I was told that a thief, carrying a plate glass removed from a window, was decapitated when he stumbled and fell while scrambling downhill. 

Unable to bear the losses, the Italian engineers vanished one night, taking a flight back home. Left high and dry, the Housing Authority was compelled to sell the unfinished houses for a song. 

Scenery, Serenity

For me, mornings were the best time at Hantana. My house had a direct view of Hantana hill, and, with a steaming coffee in hand, I would sit on the terrace, enjoying the cool breeze, the hill coming into view as the mist lifted. In the distance, Bible Rock towered over the blue, rolling mountain range. As Kandy woke-up in the valley below, the whistle of a train would come floating up the hill. The chirruping of birds, the leaves stirring in the breeze. I was blessed.

Hantana hill, seen from my house

Hantana hill towered over the landscape. Because no other houses or structures could be seen between my house and the hill, and it could also be seen from three bedrooms, the living room, and the kitchen, I felt that the hill was mine alone. The tea estate below, with a winding road, added to the lush scenery. The sense of ownership was enhanced at night, because only a few pinpoints of light could be seen from the house. The rest was blessed, silent darkness. On full-moon nights, the play of shadows and light, was spectacular. 

  

Wildlife

Once, when the children were playing cricket, they heard a dog howling frenziedly from a nearby bush, and saw that it was being swallowed by a huge python. Another time, while standing on the terrace in the evening, my son saw a leopard strolling along the road below. When told, my father was dismissive: "What leopards here?" Only a week later, they saw a photo in the newspaper, a policeman with gun in hand, standing over a large leopard he had shot at Hantana. The leopard’s crime: killing household dogs. A neighbor, who lived on the edge of the forest reserve that bordered the housing scheme, heard growling one evening. Stepping onto her balcony, she saw a female leopard walking by with two cubs. More recently, I was driving home late at night, when a family of wild boars nearly collided with the car. The mother boar was as big as a calf. 

Dandumadalawa forest reserve

The Dandumadalawa forest reserve, which began just 200 meters from my house, and extended all the way to Galaha, covering nearly 500 hectares, was home to monkeys, barking deer, wild boar, porcupines, civet cats, flying squirrels, snakes, the occasional leopard, and more than 80 species of birds. These animals and birds sometimes wandered into the housing scheme. 

During the daytime, monkeys walked along the electric wires, coming to the garden to steal mangoes and avocados. At night, wild boar and fat porcupines sneaked in, to eat up the fallen fruit. My garden was strewn with porcupine quills. I wondered if I was living in a wildlife park.

I recall an interesting story that involved my father. He had been a keen hunter in his younger days, and would go out and shoot a wild boar at Hantana once in a while. Two younger men helped him. One day, the mana grass below the house caught fire, which got out of control.  The crowd that gathered saw a strange sight: my father standing on the edge of a ledge, shotgun in hand, perhaps waiting for the animals to emerge. The fire brigade, with sirens screeching, came up from Kandy, but seeing they could not do much, turned back saying it was their lunch break! Who set the fire remains a mystery to this day.

Walks

The internal roads of Hantana were made for leisurely walks. From my house, I would go along the road that bordered the forest reserve, climb up hill road to a higher elevation, and then walk downhill past the boutique hotel and the temple to my house. These were internal roads, with hardly any traffic. As I began my walk, the Dandumadalawa forest reserve, with tall, fully grown trees, was to my left, and a long row of mismatching houses to my right. These houses, abandoned by the Italians, had been completed to the whims and fancies of their individual owners. If I continued on the Forest Reserve Road, without turning right to go uphill, I would arrive at the entrance to Dandumadalawa reserve, where a resident had seen a mother leopard with two cubs. Entry to the reserve was forbidden, but I would go in anyway; I meant no harm.

Inside Dandumadalawa

I would be alone with the majestic tress, the narrow forest path, and a stream. I would sit on a boulder, the shrill cicadas would fall silent, and only the tinkling stream, and the wind in the treetops, could be heard. Beams of sunlight broke through the canopy. Such tranquility, only two miles from bustling, congested, polluted, Kandy town.

The houses along the upper road were much more attractive, and the distant hills could be seen in between. Occasionally, I would stop at the boutique hotel for a cup of tea. The manager and staff had become my friends. Then, downhill to my house, past the temple with the serene Samadhi Buddha statue. Once, while walking with my wife at dusk, we stopped to admire lights coming up around the statue, and got into a long conversation with the chief monk. We discovered that he had donated a kidney to a young mother. The woman lived not far from our ancestral home near Lunuwila, and had been a complete stranger to the monk.

Downhill walk

After dusk, if we walked just a few yards from the house, the spectacular view of Kandy town's glittering lights would come into sight.

Neglect and Threats

My son joined us abroad in 1987, and my parents, seeing no point in living at Hantana, moved back to their ancestral home near Lunuwila. During nearly 25 years abroad, my wife and I did not give up on Hantana. We hired caretakers, a manager to rent out the house, and my sister ran a successful bed and breakfast for about a year. During visits to Sri Lanka, we would go up to Hantana for a day or two.

But all was not well at Hantana. In the early 1990s, the Housing Authority handed the scheme over to the pradeshiya sabha, and, before long, tall mana grass began to crowd the roads, and burned-out street street lights were not replaced. Garbage was not cleared. Stray dogs multiplied. Older residents passed away, or moved abroad, and new residents, who had no knowledge of the scheme’s past, moved in. The welfare society, under new management, made little attempt to improve matters. The co-op, instead of catering to the middle class clientele, became an eyesore. The sub-post office moved away. A community hall is left incomplete. Even a playground, planned for more than 20 years, is yet to be completed. 

Hantana residents are mainly professionals. More doctors, lawyers, and engineers have moved in. They have spent millions to renovate and upgrade the houses. Surprisingly, what they lacked was a sense of community.

When I retired nearly ten years ago, and visits to Sri Lanka became longer and more frequent, we renovated the house at much expense, planning to reside there for half the year. Then, unexpectedly, my wife passed away. My son had settled down abroad, and I was left to manage our ancestral home, other properties, as well as Hantana. The ancestral home, located in an old village, was no haven: dogs would bark all night, neighbors would have loud "sing-song" parties, and, at 5 every morning, the loudspeakers from the nearby church began blaring monotonous prayers and hymns. The metal workshop across the road would raise a cacophony of sounds, ear splitting shrieks of steel upon lathe, and metal being banged. Reckless riders would roar past on their motorcycles. Mosquitoes would swarm after the rains. All this I could bear, because I had domestic help, and relatives who took care of me.  But, at my age and with a chronic illness, the searing heat and humidity, which seemed to worsen every year, was difficult to handle. So, I dreamed of Hantana, and traveled-up frequently, longing for the coolness, the tranquility. And Hantana did not disappoint.

But, out of the blue came a threat. A developer, working with unscrupulous officials, launched a plan to build more than one hundred houses within the existing scheme, cutting-down hundreds of trees and threatening a watercourse. The eco-system, safeguarded by the original planners, would be devastated. So, I obtained the master plan of the developer, shared it with a few other concerned residents, and we wrote to newspapers. Open meetings were held with various government authorities, and the construction plans were suspended. Mysteriously, two of my car tires were deflated, one slashed, and, one morning, I found a large rock placed on the hood.  Arrogantly, the developer's backhoe was parked near the construction site, and an ardent environmentalist had threatened to lie across its path if it started work. One day, a driver arrived and attempted to drive the backhoe. Miraculously, both front tires spontaneuosly deflated(!) and tragedy averted. 

Closure

I was almost a stranger at Hantana. Most of my parents' friends had moved or passed away. I had little in common with those who were around, except for a couple of new friends with whom I could carry on a conversation beyond mere politics. I now walked twice a day, morning and evening. Two neighborhood dogs, Socky and Goma (she was dung colored) would sometimes be my companions. Once, three stray dogs joined our group. When people stared, I would loudly deny ownership: “Not mine, Not mine”.

Walking with my entourage

In our cacophonous, crowded society, silence and solitude could be priceless.  Hantana gave me enough and more of that. I bought loads of books in town, read voraciously, and wrote on my laptop, enjoying a direct view of the hill. But, especially at night, with no other house in sight, the "blessed, silent darkness" could also cause intense loneliness. In the autumn of my life, how long could this continue?

Then came a wake-up call. A pioneer resident, who had been a close friend of my parents, and who had since become my friend, suddenly passed away. His children were abroad, and his wife was in hospital due to a long illness. Night after night, he had been alone at home.

So I talked with my son, and we decided to sell. Wanting to keep the house within the family, I offered it at a discount to two relatives, but both declined. So, I invited my son to spend a few days with me at Hantana, to say goodbye to the house. He made the long journey.

The buyer had grown up at Hantana, remembered my parents, and loved the hill. The Braines are gone, but the house is in good hands.

Master bedroom

Living room, seen from staircase