Sri Lanka It's Happening

September 26, 2007

The state literary festival fiasco was held this year in Horana of all places. Just because that's where the Prime Minister, the chief guest at the ceremony hails from that neck of the woods.

So all award winners and invitees had to haul themselves over to the Horana. Since my father won the award for the best English novel. We had 3 invitations and thee car passes. VIP car passes at that. My mother-in-law received a separate inviation (with a VIP car pass) on account of her being an prominent singer.

The only trouble is that when we got there there was no place to park. There was a huge traffic snarl up before the horana town and we were asked to take diversion to avoid the jam. Then some stupid policemen directed us to the wrong place. Once we found our way to the right location it was impossible to find anyplace to park the vehicle.

No one (even residents) were allowed to leave their vehicals at the edge of the road cause the Prime Minister is coming. According to the constitution there isn't anything for the Primer Minister of this failed state to do. So he spends his time and tax payers money by attending all sorts of functions. In doing so he drags a security contingent which is slightly smaller than George Bush's with him.

In the end we dropped off my parents at the hall went for a drive. We came back after half an half and parked on the road side about 1 kilometer from the venue. The invitation cards said avoid bringing mobiles and cameras, so we left them behind. You can enter the hall only after they frisk you. Once inside we found that our seats had already been taken. We later found that most of the seats reserved to award winners had been taken too. By whom? by the villagers?

It's rediculous. Hundreds of citizens of Horana and invaded the hall with their mobile phones and cameras. Just goes to show how efficient the security was. It was apparent that many present rarely read anybook.

It was a good thing that we went for a drive. There were three boring speeches by three bores (Minister, Prime Minister and Speaker of the Parliament). Fortunately i wasn't bored stiff cause I had a book with me.

Posted by raditha at September 26, 2007 3:13 PM