Kumar de Silva
  • Polwatte Re-visited !

    This looks like a rundown animal shelter in some farm deep in the countryside. Sorry you’re wrong. This is Polwatte and this was the Department of English of the University of Kelaniya. This was home to me for four full years, from August 1981 to July 1985. Our part of Polwatte was semi-verdant terrain that periodically stank of bullshit. There was also cow shit and cat shit and dog shit, and if we were really unlucky, random goat shit too. After the rains this buffet of shits turned mushy and runny, like mousse au chocolat, in texture and colour, and that’s a totally different story. Let me now elaborate ! This elongated building with its half brick / half mesh walls housed three lecture rooms, one staff room, a small and congested room for the Head of Department and a disgustingly miserable ‘toilet’. Polwatte was still ‘gama’ (village) at that

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