A Teardrop From Serendib

AT FORT BAZAAR ON SRI LANKA’S SOUTHERN COAST, AN EARTHY INTERPRETATION OF LUXURY TAKES A WRITER BACK IN TIME.

- Siddharth Dasgupta

Does nostalgia end up having far too easy a way with me? I suppose there’s a ring of truth to this. I’ve been compelled by the textures of the past, from ever since I can remember. My bureau of travels and writings lies tinged with the fabric and the fragrances of times gone by, my navigational compass automatically attuned towards horizons and desires drenched in vintage. Perhaps it’s a sense of longing that lies at the heart of this, the need to hold on to things and places and people often already gone.

But in the courtyard of Fort Bazaar – the Teardrop Hospitality Group’s white-accented star, I’m finding an undeniable affirmation to my love affair with wistfulness. This tango with the past has landed me, yet again, smack dab in the heart of something special. I’m in the coastal gem of Galle for an encounter with relaxation and resonance. Fortune and good judgement having played their parts, Fort Bazaar is my home for the next three nights. This is the sort of address with which I’m preconditioned to forming an immediate connection.

Fort Bazaar used to be a 17th-Century townhouse. Keeping the original skeleton (together with a defining central courtyard tree) in place, Teardrop has transformed the property with rare amounts of finesse. When the Group’s Johanna Jameel tells me about photographs from the somewhat recent past, I’m taken aback to find derelict row houses of rooms, lying idle since the 1950s. It was Teardrop’s decade-log resolve that metamorphosed the image into what stands before my eyes now – a rich repository of past and authenticity, with credence given to the address’ original British and Dutch colonial heritage.