Sri Lanka Diary — Indian hand in foreign land

Besides, Indian glossies are available — at twice the cover price, though — with popular ones being film magazines like the spicy Stardust. And if that is not enough, there are an assortment of Indian entertainment channels to choose from, too.Tamil is one of the official languages in Sri Lanka. An estimated 2.5 million of the 18 million population are Tamils. One can hear Tamil cricket broadcasts along with Sinhala commentary during cricket matches.

There are Indian temples too, where bhajans are conducted. One of the recent being the one held by the Shree Satya Sai Baba Centre in Colombo.

A visit to the departmental stores helps, if you are the be Indian buy Indian type, to buy Indian cosmetics though at a considerably higher price than what is available in India.

The Lankans view India as a neighbourly big brother and almost every citizen of the country expresses a desire to visit India if he has not. There are Buddhist pilgrim packages to Sravasti, Kapilvastu, Lumbini, Varanasi, Saranath, Buddha Gaya and Rajgir.

The newspapers here do not have much foreign coverage, but one of the local dailies here carried a column length edit on K R Narayanan when he was elected President of India.

Catering to the culinary likes of the Indians, are several Indian hotels like Shanti Vihar, Amravati and Indo Ceylon Cafe. It offers popular Indian fare which is a big relief for vegetarians.

There are several vegetarians in the Indian team like Anil Kumble, Venkatesh Prasad, Robin Singh and the physio Dr Ali Irani. At breakfast hours in the team hotel, the Taj Samudra, one of the busiest persons is Marimuttu, a Sri Lankan Tamil, who makes hundreds of dosas to cater to the insatiable demands of the guests. One finds the longest queue here as patrons wait patiently to tuck into the dosas with sambar and chutney.

The hotel also has an Indian restaurant, Navratna, which is very popular with Sachin Tendulkar’s men, particularly the grass eaters in the side.

This is one tour where the vegetarians in the side have not suffered for want of food catering to their taste buds and values of religion.

The Sri Lankan cricketers are teaching India and the rest of the world a thing or two about the game with their own brand of approach, but India still contribute to the Lankan cricketing cause in their own way.

The MRF Pace Foundation has been a major educational centre for their pacemen, a considerable amount of cricketing equipment comes from India as also technical help in form of coaching from the likes of Vasu Paranjpe. The Mumbai man has been associated with Bloomfield, one of the oldest cricket clubs in Colombo which has several Test players in its ranks like Sanath Jayasuriya, Roshan Mahanama, Kumara Dharmasena, Ruwan Kalpage and Pubudu Dasayanake. So, for a change, it sure feels good to see the Indian hand at work in a foreign land.