Sri Lanka's tropical paradox

Anyone who has been to Sri Lanka on even a fleeting visit will find themselves compelled to return, such is the beguiling charm of the beautiful island caught in bitter confrontation of one or another kind for several decades now.

- ADITI PHADNIS

Sri Lanka doesn't do mild or anaemic. Everything is extravagant, lavish and immoderate, from the harsh poverty of the battle-wracked Tamil-majority north to the wealth of Colombo 7. Sally (or Salih, as his family was originally named) is uniquely placed to understand and analyse the complexities of this country.

Born of a Sri Lankan Muslim father and a Welsh mother, he spent his childhood in Sri Lanka but left to spend much of his life in England, returning for short spells. He is a trade economist but unlike pucca economists, doesn't sneer at political economy. In this book, he combines history, politics and portraits of the people who shaped his thinking and his life to write a dazzling travelogue about a country that refuses to be at peace with itself.

And this is the paradox of Sri Lanka that he captures so evocatively. Despite the commitment to constitutionalism and democracy, the country has seen brutal censorship, "disappearances" and extensive state-authorised violence.

Although Tamils, Sinhalese and, to a lesser degree, Muslims intermarry and speak each other's language, they will go to great lengths to strip each other of rights to free speech, education and property-ownership. It takes little to bring latent Sinhala Buddhist or Tamil chauvinism to the surface. And yet, he writes about the journalist Vasantha, politician Irfan, former bureaucrat-turned-educator Renton, mathematician and civil rights activist Rajan Hoole, and many others who may have had the resources to flee the frustrating and sometimes oppressive conditions in the country but have elected to stay.