THURSDAY, APRIL 18, 2024
Sathappan Narayanan
As sales and marketing professional I did travel extensively in India and Sri Lanka and blessed to have business experiences with people of various countries, culture, religion, qualifications, age group and economic status. Here I would like to share my experience of living in Sri Lanka.
My first visit to Sri Lanka was in 2003 when I joined a Malaysian company as Sales and Marketing manager for India and Sri Lanka. I was attached to their Sri Lankan production facility and used to travel 10-12 days in a month across India and Lanka and remaining days I used to work from the factory which was in southern Sri Lanka. Initially I was accommodated in an annex room of a guest-house which was called as Bungalow.
Bungalow must be of around 100 years old and was amidst a newly developed rubber estate, but forest not too far off. I did see variety of birds, insects, monkeys and crawling creatures in and around the area quite often. In fact every Sunday morning I used to observe monkeys and birds for hours which used to be a treat to eyes, ears and mind!
Monkeys follow the same pattern of climbing every small branch of the rubber tree till the top and pluck the freshly grown leaves. They used to pluck bunch of 3 freshly grown leaves together and eat only the freshest single leave and throw the balance two! This pattern never changed! While they were busy with their act they also used keep an eye on me and if suppose I return the eye contact they got disturbed and alert their fellow companions by their inimitable chattering and screeching followed by jumping from branch to branch of near by trees.
Unlike monkeys birds used to come only for a little time of resting. Birds of exotic unimaginable shades, shapes with singing like rhythmic musical sound etc. One day I was amazed and awestricken to see a set of birds with shades of Indian tricolor! Next is the fearful reptiles. Whenever a snake moves around I used to get the signal from birds and monkeys with their continuous peculiar sounds of fear and alerting other species. Once on hearing such sound I came out of my room-only to spot the fast moving middle & back portion of a mammoth sized snake resembling king cobra, whose body diameter can be easily 5+inches!
Apart from these day time visitors I used to get night only visitors too. Once during midnight when I was in deep sleep, suddenly I heard a knocking sound and woke up to check the time as 01.30 hrs.! I was wondering who is knocking at this hour and took a while to realize that knocking was not on the door but on rear side window! After several knocking on the window, now it is stomping on the metal roof. Next day morning I queried the care-taker who said it must be Raccoons! Within a day or two care taker arranged for a Raccoon catching cage and caught two raccoons!. They were of size around 3 feet and with Fox type of face and big cat size body! They were restless inside the cage with frequent standing on two legs, howling and showing their sharp teeth! I really enjoyed my stay in Sri Lanka.
