“Harsh question: Why should Americans watching this — why should we give a s**t? Why should people care about Sri Lanka?” This was Anthony Bourdain in Parts Unknown, in October 2017. Bourdain posed the question — and then proffered a poignant and at times profound answer.
The other night, while revisiting Tony Bourdain’s 2017 sojourn to Sri Lanka for Parts Unknown, I couldn’t help thinking about Michael Ondaatje’s novel Anil’s Ghost.
Anil’s Ghost, Ondaatje’s 2000 follow-up to his widely praised The English Patient, follows the story of Anil Tissera, a native Sri Lankan who, as an idealistic medical student in her late teens, leaves Sri Lanka for Britain on a scholarship, and returns years later in the midst of Sri Lanka’s brutal civil war as a qualified forensic pathologist.
She has been seconded by the United Nations as part of an ongoing human rights investigation into war atrocities. Together with a Sri Lankan archaeologist, Sarath Diyasena, they try to unravel the mystery behind the discovery of an unidentified body found in a mass grave in a government-controlled district in the proverbial “middle of nowhere.”
Fired by the righteous indignation of youth, Anil is determined to identify the body no matter what, to bring about justice for the nameless victims of war and, if nothing else, bring peace to at least one grieving family in a bitter conflict that lasted — and this is true — 25 years, nine months, three weeks, and four days.
By now, you get the idea that Bourdain’s time in Sri Lanka was not exactly one of those fun ride, food-centric romps around kitchens of the world. Perhaps more than any other Parts Unknown episode before it, Sri Lanka shows Bourdain in his more mature, pensive CNN mode, where a country’s history — and the thoughts and concerns of the people who live there, both in their historical context and as it reflects the events of the day — rule the hour. One of the great shames about Bourdain’s untimely passing is that he’s not around today to open people’s eyes to the injustices of the world, both at home and away.
Sri Lanka, formerly the British dominion of Ceylon and reformed as an independent republic in 1972 , was home to, among others, the legendary science-fiction author and avid deep-sea diver Arthur C. Clarke — Clarke and Bourdain had that in common — and Ondaatje himself, who was born of Tamil and Burgher descent in Colombo, Sri Lanka in 1943 — not exactly a peaceful year for British dominions around the world — before his family moved to the UK when Ondaatje was in his early teens. He later settled in Canada, first in Montreal, then London, Ont., and, eventually, Toronto.
Bourdain, well-read and himself appalled by the world’s injustices, shared something else with Ondaatje — a keenly observed poetic ability.
Lest you’re afraid that Sri Lanka is an endless dirge of misery and remembrances of past conflicts, it’s worth noting, too, that Sri Lanka, in its modern guise, is a tourist mecca and tropical playground for deep-sea divers around the world. That’s what drew Arthur C. Clarke to the island in the first place.
Sri Lanka is also where the English pop-rock Duran Duran basically invented the music video, in the early 1980s, when, together with Australian filmmaker Russell Mulcahy, they crafted the videos Hungry Like the Wolf, Save a Prayer, and Lonely in Your Nightmare.
Those music videos went viral around the world, before “viral” became a thing, and showed Sri Lanka to be a land of verdant jungles, pristine beaches fronted by turquoise surf, and — most importantly to Bourdain and countless others who followed him — a deep spirituality.
It’s probably no coincidence that Bourdain’s first-ever episode of Parts Unknown was set in Myanmar, another would-be tropical paradise — and former British dominion — beset by constant civil war and political turmoil. Bourdain’s Sri Lanka is full of ghosts.
It is also where Bourdain took a 10-hour train ride — this is a man who grew impatient quickly, remember — from the capital Colombo to the northern coastal city of Jaffna, once a city of almost unparalleled beauty … and scene of some of the most bitter fighting of the 25-year civil war.
Bourdain: “Early morning, Colombo station. The platforms bustle with a mix of commuters, long-distance travellers, and the occasional tourist. Breaking free from Colombo’s gravitational pull, the land opens up. Speeding past shimmering rice paddies and mountain vistas, second- and third-class compartments host a mix of people, smells, and slices of life. Roving food vendors sell snacks to hungry travellers.
“Commuters get on at one station, off at another. Others like me are in it for the long haul: 10 hours from Colombo to Jaffna.”
That train ride is arguably the episode’s centrepiece, the piece de resistance, the source arguably of some of documentary photographer David Scott Holloway’s most iconic and memorable images taken from years, decades even, of following Bourdain around the world. Holloway could hardly have guessed at the time that his captured-in-the-moment images would not only outlive Bourdain himself but would become the de facto historical record of who Bourdain was and why so many follow him to this day.
“Sri Lanka was once the crown jewel of the spice trade. Its cloves, cardamom, pepper, nutmeg, mace, ginger, cinnamon, chilies, and curry — the envy of the world. These spices built empires,” Bourdain recalls in his episode voiceover.
And, later: ”Jaffna crab curry might be — for me, anyway—the holy grail of Sri Lankan cuisine. Spicy, fiery—in a cuisine known for being spicy and fiery. During the war years, it was hard to get crabs like this, and it still is today, the majority being exported to other parts of the country and abroad.”
Memories are precious. Sri Lanka was never going to grab the attention of Parts Unknown viewers the way the Eric Ripert episodes did, or the US-based episodes — the Bronx, New Mexico, Charleston SC, West Virginia, New Orleans, etc.,— where Bourdain honed his craft. There’s something oddly compelling about Sri Lanka, though, the way it embraces both the pains and miseries of a world in conflict with the hopes and dreams of a better life, a world in peace where good food — and good company — count for everything.
In my research for this essay, I came across a telling testimonial by India-based food writer Vidya Balachander, herself featured in the episode, written in July, 2018. “Last year, on a moody, overcast May afternoon, I waited with anticipation to meet and interview Anthony Bourdain. A few weeks earlier, Tom Vitale and Jeff Allen, the director and producer of the Emmy Award-winning CNN show, Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown, had reached out to me about an episode they were planning to film in Sri Lanka…”
I’ve attached a link to Balachander’s testimonial here, if for no other reason than it lends an insight into Bourdain — written mere weeks after Bourdain’s passing — that even dedicated Bourdainophiles might not otherwise have found.
Balachander: “In preparation for that evening, I wondered what I could possibly ask Tony that he hadnʼt been asked before. One of the most interviewed celebrities of our age, he had been quizzed about everything, from his views on American politics (“Our president is a ****ing joke,” he said, in all seriousness, after my tape had stopped rolling) to the craziest things he had eaten (a question he had grown tired of answering, I was told).”
It seems only fitting, then, to end in Bourdain’s own words.
“Things have changed. The war is over, and if the underlying problems are far from solved or even being adequately addressed, at least you can now SEE the Tamil people, SEE Jaffna. And people, finally, are feeling freer to talk.
“So, this episode is a correction—not a balance; not a free and fair or comprehensive overview. It asks simple questions: WHO are the Tamils? Where do they live? And what do they do now?”
Save a prayer. That’s as good a start as any.
Supplementary reading:
https://explorepartsunknown.com/sri-lanka/bourdains-field-note-sri-lanka/
Supplementary viewing:
