The Papara Band is here

 Sri Lanka is an amalgamation of South Asian island culture and Portuguese, Dutch and French AND OF COURSE, British influences. (That sounds so Condé Naste-y I hate it let me change writing styles)

Okay now there are two ways to explore Colombo: 

1. You ha ha hee hee dilly dally and traipse through the boulevards and admire the trees buy some batik and Sri Lankan masks and call it a day

or you could 

2. Actually experience Colombo for what it is by going deep inside the markets of Kollupitiya and Pettah and haggle like a local for the Nirvana Buddha and then rest by the railway tracks to gaze at the beach and most importantly though,

GO SEE A SCHOOL CRICKET MATCH ON A SUNDAY AFTERNOON

nothing screams more colombo than a cricket match between colombo international school and st. thomas' college.

Now although this is extremely niche and is going to require considerable detour, you are lucky enough to have an author who went to one of those schools and could experience the vigour and the verve emenating in these matches.

Now these are definitely no big deal but for us it was like the biggesttttttt school rivalries and we'd send our best players ahead to go play. 

Our day on game day would begin bright and early at 6am and we would all rush to school dressed in outfits complementing the school colours and we would set up food stalls and carry our school flags BUT MOST IMPORTANTLY,

WAS THE PAPARA BAND

Here comes the Portuguese influence part i was talking about; during the portuguese funerals the funeral procession would bring trumpets and guitars along while the body was being taken to the cemetery but the Sri Lankans saw that and they decided hmmm the music's actually really fun so now the papara band in sri lanka is a part of joyous celebrations ESPECIALLY IN CRICKET MATCHES.

another thing i really love about colombo is the decorations during the time of vesak and avurudu and christmas. Vesak is the most holy day for the Buddhists as it's the day on which Buddha was born and on which he attained nirvana as well. I used to live in the proximity of a very famous Buddhist temple called Gangaramaya and there was a Buddhist relic kept there: Buddha's teeth. On Vesak and Perehera days (Grand Buddhist Processions) the relic would be taken out of the temple on an elephant's back and also there would be like a street exhibition on the street outside the temple with hugeee paper lanterns. It was a competition and a tradition for people to make these lanterns. Avurudu was another widely celebrated festival, as it was the Sinhalese New Year. The food traditionally eaten on this day was kokis and kiribath and kevum (talking about this just made me realise how fricking bad i miss kevum and kiribath, which is rice cakes made with coconut milk) (also reminds me of the time me and my friend shyamalin *quite unsuccessfully* tried making kiribath but it was good i guess) On avurudu at our school we would also dress up in sri lankan traditional clothes and we would play sri lankan games (i won the potato sack race (goni) 4 years in a row) like raban pada, where there was a big drum and everybody would gather around it and play it and sing songs and we would played the sri lankan version of piñatas, kana mutti bindeema. 

Ending my colombo centric yap with a lovely video of colombo during christmas, they'd have the loveliest buffets and cake mixing at Taj.