Love So Sweet
August 6th 2009 05:48
They say that love is blind. But everyone else should be blind folded here in Sri Lanka. You should keep your love things away from the public places as much as possible according to their idea.
But you cannot say fairly that this is the attitude of the Sri Lankans towards love. Different societies here have different ideas and it's a time of a fast change of attitudes now.
However, many have negative feelings at a couple leaned against each other or a girl and a boy holding each other's hands in public.
Anyway, at school it's totally banned. It's the 'L' word for teachers. Students shouldn't even think of having an affair though I seriously doubt if this is the case for many.
The biggest problem here in Sri Lanka is that all the major schools here are single sex - either girls' schools or boys' schools. Girls and boys don't get together and there is no other place like school for children to get together. In public assemblies of children like in private tuition classes, you can see boys and girls sit separately without having anybody to force them to do so. This is because they are kept separate at schools.
On my part, I went to a boys' school and I didn't have much connections to the outer society. This resulted in not knowing any girls except for my sister. Now I'm at the university and I've got few girls as my batch mates. I've tried to talk to them but the response wasn't very good. Maybe I don't know how to approach them or maybe they don't like me. I've usually been the 'invisible guy' at school - never attracted attention.
But sometimes it's wrong to say that you cannot get together with the opposite sex because you've been to a single sex school. I've got a friend here in the university who also had gone to a boys' school but has developed an amazing connection with girls in an amazingly short time. Amazing, isn’t it?
Now this guy has a girl friend. But if you take a look at the messages and the missed calls in his cell phone, you can never guess who his girl friend is. I think these kinds of things should come from one’s genes. Now I once took a look at one of his messages and it began: "I feel really lonely today". This sentence was written in Sinhala and was so elaborate in writing that I myself felt his loneliness! But I know him well – he’s nobody to take pity of.
But I like the childhood love at school - something I have missed. They are beautiful - even the obstacles. The hiding, the secret keeping all add beauty to to the affair.
I've been studying the attitude of the elder generation of teachers in my school and even outside. When the catch a love letter, they of course punish the student first - calling his parents and everything but after that when no body's around, they take this letter to the staff room and enjoy reading it aloud. What a queer minded community!
This is another story: it was the first few days that I enrolled to the university course. We had an intensive English course to help us on our lectures because they are all conducted in English. And our teacher was an old lady from a leading girls' school who had pensioned from there. The lesson that day was a story of a young man who didn't know how to write a love letter.
Of course, it was interesting with interesting language styles and everything. But our teacher was thrilled - not for the writing style of course. She was laughing shyly while we students took turns reading paragraphs. She was to describe the para after the student had read it. But she was so interested in it that she once even forgot to give a student the chance and read a paragraph her self!
I’ve always wondered what kind of a state of mind they’re in. Anyway after reading, we were asked to write our ideas about it. Our ideas? I didn’t know what to write but finally ended up writing some sentence or so. Then we were asked to read our ideas. All the boys had written something just for the sake of writing something but the girls had thought so seriously that we were all surprised. (One had written that the boy is too young to fall in love).She made us to exchange our papers with our friends before reading them out so that the others cannot find out who wrote what but our guesses made her plan go all wrong.
The major foe of the moralists here is the Valentine Day. It’s just a day that businessmen ‘rob’ the lovers, they say. But there are lots of other ways that they do so and we know that. But the Valentine’s Day is the only devil they see.
There is a lake in the middle of my home town and there are benches around it for the time-killers, obviously an attraction for the couples. On one fourteenth of February, it was seen that all these benches were wet with black oil. My mother was overjoyed about this. I cannot imagine what kind of mind a guy should have to do this.
Once there was a poster “If Valentine’s Day is for the lovers, who other days are for?” What about “mother’s day” and “father’s day” “Teachers’ day” and so on?
I may be a little bit misleading. All this nonsense would have given you an impression that Sri Lanka is an anti lover country. But it’s not. The best examples are the beaches and the universities, especially mine – the University of Peradeniya.
It is the most beautiful university in the country. You find hundreds of couples around here per day. The nature here herself has given these lovers protection and shelter. Seeing these gives you a nice feeling only if you’re not jealous.
Anyway all I have to say finally is that love is sweet and beautiful, no matter which part of the world you belong to.
But you cannot say fairly that this is the attitude of the Sri Lankans towards love. Different societies here have different ideas and it's a time of a fast change of attitudes now.
However, many have negative feelings at a couple leaned against each other or a girl and a boy holding each other's hands in public.
Anyway, at school it's totally banned. It's the 'L' word for teachers. Students shouldn't even think of having an affair though I seriously doubt if this is the case for many.
The biggest problem here in Sri Lanka is that all the major schools here are single sex - either girls' schools or boys' schools. Girls and boys don't get together and there is no other place like school for children to get together. In public assemblies of children like in private tuition classes, you can see boys and girls sit separately without having anybody to force them to do so. This is because they are kept separate at schools.
On my part, I went to a boys' school and I didn't have much connections to the outer society. This resulted in not knowing any girls except for my sister. Now I'm at the university and I've got few girls as my batch mates. I've tried to talk to them but the response wasn't very good. Maybe I don't know how to approach them or maybe they don't like me. I've usually been the 'invisible guy' at school - never attracted attention.
But sometimes it's wrong to say that you cannot get together with the opposite sex because you've been to a single sex school. I've got a friend here in the university who also had gone to a boys' school but has developed an amazing connection with girls in an amazingly short time. Amazing, isn’t it?
Now this guy has a girl friend. But if you take a look at the messages and the missed calls in his cell phone, you can never guess who his girl friend is. I think these kinds of things should come from one’s genes. Now I once took a look at one of his messages and it began: "I feel really lonely today". This sentence was written in Sinhala and was so elaborate in writing that I myself felt his loneliness! But I know him well – he’s nobody to take pity of.
But I like the childhood love at school - something I have missed. They are beautiful - even the obstacles. The hiding, the secret keeping all add beauty to to the affair.
I've been studying the attitude of the elder generation of teachers in my school and even outside. When the catch a love letter, they of course punish the student first - calling his parents and everything but after that when no body's around, they take this letter to the staff room and enjoy reading it aloud. What a queer minded community!
This is another story: it was the first few days that I enrolled to the university course. We had an intensive English course to help us on our lectures because they are all conducted in English. And our teacher was an old lady from a leading girls' school who had pensioned from there. The lesson that day was a story of a young man who didn't know how to write a love letter.
Of course, it was interesting with interesting language styles and everything. But our teacher was thrilled - not for the writing style of course. She was laughing shyly while we students took turns reading paragraphs. She was to describe the para after the student had read it. But she was so interested in it that she once even forgot to give a student the chance and read a paragraph her self!
I’ve always wondered what kind of a state of mind they’re in. Anyway after reading, we were asked to write our ideas about it. Our ideas? I didn’t know what to write but finally ended up writing some sentence or so. Then we were asked to read our ideas. All the boys had written something just for the sake of writing something but the girls had thought so seriously that we were all surprised. (One had written that the boy is too young to fall in love).She made us to exchange our papers with our friends before reading them out so that the others cannot find out who wrote what but our guesses made her plan go all wrong.
The major foe of the moralists here is the Valentine Day. It’s just a day that businessmen ‘rob’ the lovers, they say. But there are lots of other ways that they do so and we know that. But the Valentine’s Day is the only devil they see.
There is a lake in the middle of my home town and there are benches around it for the time-killers, obviously an attraction for the couples. On one fourteenth of February, it was seen that all these benches were wet with black oil. My mother was overjoyed about this. I cannot imagine what kind of mind a guy should have to do this.
Once there was a poster “If Valentine’s Day is for the lovers, who other days are for?” What about “mother’s day” and “father’s day” “Teachers’ day” and so on?
I may be a little bit misleading. All this nonsense would have given you an impression that Sri Lanka is an anti lover country. But it’s not. The best examples are the beaches and the universities, especially mine – the University of Peradeniya.
It is the most beautiful university in the country. You find hundreds of couples around here per day. The nature here herself has given these lovers protection and shelter. Seeing these gives you a nice feeling only if you’re not jealous.
Anyway all I have to say finally is that love is sweet and beautiful, no matter which part of the world you belong to.
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