Letters to the Editor
View(s):Tourists come to Sri Lanka not for ‘cities rising from the sea’
A recent issue of the Sunday Times carried a lead story headlined “New Tourist City to rise from the Mount Lavinia Sea”! This is shocking news, indeed. For centuries the Mount Lavinia beach has been enjoyed by people young and old, being the closest beach to Colombo and one of the safest in the island. This beach was made world-famous after the Governor’s mansion was turned into a hotel with the bathing pavilion situated in the bay framed by coconut trees on the slope reaching to the sea. It was a truly tropical paradise.
Palms still sway along the coast and visitors can have a meal or drink in the many restaurants. Retired tea planters, civil servants of yesteryear and those loving a tropical holiday came to Mount Lavinia year after year even before this recent tourist rush. Tourists come to Sri Lanka in search of originality, antiquity, tropical flora and fauna, most of all for the sunshine, not for “cities rising from the sea”.
Mount Lavinia Beach: A truly tropical paradise
Tourists will enjoy walking through towns with clean roads and lit up streets without potholes, stinking drains, unbroken pavements and pestering touts and thieves. In short: A rehabilitated town!
Why not do it? Plant a tropical park on the mound, clean all the byroads, plant greenery along the walls, macadamise these lanes, get dirty walls painted and ask owners of empty lands to clean and fence their properties and plant hedges. For the safety of visitors to the beach, set up a police post. This will cost only millions — but not billions.
A recent publication titled “Public Space and Quality of Life”, a case study of the Mount Lavinia Beach by a group of professionals describes the beach as a great public space, facilitating the coexistence of many different types of people and things.
Mount Lavinia is indeed “beautiful” in its own way, a robust public space which is self-organised and functions in a harmonious manner while accommodating co-existence and diversity. Doesn’t this say enough? Why take all this away from us?
I have one technical question: The portion of the beach to be filled should have a retaining wall, called a dyke by the Dutch, to keep the sand in and the water out. Visitors who come for a sea bath will have to jump from the dyke into the deep water for a swim and climb back to land via a ladder? What about children who want to frolic in the shallows and those who cannot swim? No more surfing or youngsters playing water-ball?
This plan is a spectre rising from the Mount Lavinia sea!
A kind of tsunami taking away what is good!
A very sad Mount Lavinian, Johanna D. Bandaranayake
Grief
Not consciously
grieving
Yet conscious of …….
At first it’s
Like a thick blanket
That threatens to engulf,
smother and swallow
Intimidating…
Repelling and
compelling at the
same time…..
Scaring and yet luring
too…
Then
Slowly as days go by,
Becoming
A thin gossamer shroud
Separating the untested
“new normal”
From the familiar old….
To take cover behind,
To find refuge in, to find
solace!
No longer scaring
But strangely
comforting….
A cocoon that keeps you
safe
Until you are ready
To venture out and
Embrace the “ new
normal”!!
Always there
Fluttering like a veil or
Wrapped around you
like a shroud
Ever so lightly……
Not consciously feeling
Yet conscious of……..
Maybe
Later, much much
later….
It’ll be like
The morning mist
Appearing and disap-
pearing,
Suddenly,
unexpectedly…
One moment there, the
next not!
Reminding of a life
Long past…..
Leaving nostalgia in its
wake….
Not consciously
grieving
Nor conscious of……!
Deeptika Piyasena
Advice to smokers usually goes up in smoke
I read a lot on the dangers of tobacco smoking. Yet I simply can’t give up smoking. So, I really cannot understand why the tobacco companies are reluctant to print warnings on the packets. Only a few smokers buy cigarettes by the packet. Most of the smokers buy one, two or four cigarettes at a time. Therefore the messages printed on packets will reach only a few and that too if they care to read them.
Over the years, anti-smoking and alcohol lobbies have miserably failed to effectively reduce these bad habits. Tobacco sales and profits keep rising. I believe the only way to stop these habits is to catch them young by educating them on the harmful effects of smoking at school level and up and not by legislation.
A.G. Weerasinghe, Gangodawila
Repeal the Rent Act
Many valuable commercial properties with old buildings remain undeveloped due to a draconian law – the Rent Act.
Unscrupulous tenants who occupy these valuable commercial properties take cover under the Rent Act and pay unreasonably low rents to the owners. Most owners are unable to go for litigation as it is a costly process and involves high fees to lawyers.
The Government, which gives priority to post-war development work, should repeal the Act and make these commercial premises available for development. If commercial properties are taken out of the Rent Act, there will be a construction boom, employment boom and a business boom and more office-and-shop space will be available.
We hope the President will announce the repeal of the Rent Act when he presents Budget 2014 next month.
Sarath Perera, Colombo 3
Seeing the old city with old eyes
Smriti Daniel’s article ‘Seeing the old city with new eyes’ in the Sunday Times Plus of September 29 and the lovely pictures published with it brought back many happy memories that I cherish.
In front of the pictured building was the Bristol building with shoe and jewellery shops. Our family dentist Dr. Sathasivam practised upstairs and I was often taken there by my mother. I remember he used to sing as he worked. After an extraction we would go across the road to Millers for delicious strawberries and cream.
Across the road from Cargills, there were Whiteways and Apothecaries where now stands the largest cooperative store. Whiteways had the best shoes imported from England. The best furniture was at Apothecaries.
I wonder how many can recall Cayman’s Gate? It was at the end of Pettah and it was the hub of business. So people used to say cayman dorakada for any noisy place.
Behind the Gaffoor Building is a sailors’ church — I believe it’s St. Peter’s — but I am not sure whether it is still there.
It’s a pity many landmarks will be changed. I hope the authorities will leave the two clock towers intact.
Nandini Daniel, Thalangama North
comments powered by Disqus