Entering through its central gate, we had been met with an incoherent mess of crumbling ruins, the usual unclassifiable rubble and, perplexingly, an inordinate amount of scaffolding, heaps of freshly delivered sand and neatly cut blocks of stone, some of which had already been inserted in the fort’s formerly haggard walls. All this is financed with Dutch money. Or so it’s said.
My friend, usually brimming with historical facts, seemed to take it all in with scepticism. ‘Listen Michiel, what’s going on here? Are the Dutch planning to take over Sri Lanka again? He had a point. Forts are usually left to decay in the sun, weed taking over, cows and goats found to be grazing amid collapsed ramparts and archways…. What could possibly have motivated the Dutch to pour money into restoration?
This anecdote is about a decade old. Jaffna City was a different place then, the civil war having recently come to its bloody conclusion. When I returned to the region a decade later, I found a very different city with boutique restaurants and hotels. Returning to the fort, still basking in the unrelenting sun but now newly rebuilt, I found myself wondering about those days when Suchetha and I had been left nonplussed by the fort.
To get to Jaffna, we had taken an overnight bus service from Colombo, the train not functional yet. No sooner had the bus left when the driver turned on a Rajinikanth movie. After the 1999 film Padayappa ended, four Rajini movies followed. This seemed to bother no one in the bus – most fellow travellers were already fast asleep halfway into the first movie. The leaking air-conditioning unit above us did not help either, seemingly timing the release of its ice-cold drops when one of us would doze off.
By the time we reached Jaffna in the early morning, the combination of Kollywood movies and Nordic weather inside the bus had nullified the effects of the rum we were drinking. We were fit as as fiddle, raring to explore.
The freshly-cut stones of Jaffna Fort we had marvelled at once were now well-integrated in various walls, the newness of them having worn off somewhat battered by rain, wind and sea salt. There are now Dutch forts even more remotely located to be visited. Fort Hammenhiel – its name meaning ‘Heel of the Ham’ in Dutch, referring to the shape of the island — originally built by the Portuguese and captured by the Dutch in 1658, is now a ‘must-see’. After the British took over, it functioned as a maximum security prison and later as a hospital for infectious diseases. These days it offers four beds per night, a unique experience to get away from it all. While an unseasonably wild downpour compelled us to stay on the island an hour longer than intended, we briefly considered these prison-like beds and what might motivate one to stay here in these muggy confines.
Would this add to my experience of visiting remote forts? Fortunately, the weather itself made its decision for me. After a thundering one hour of indescribably mad rain, the sky cleared up, and we were returned.
Suddenly, I understood why going barefoot made such sense. Slushing through water that almost reached my knees, I was reminded of the sheer encumbrance of clothes itself. Wading through lukewarm water I felt rather pleased with myself that I wasn’t dealing with this mess three centuries ago.
Once the boat departed, briefly we thought we caught a glimpse of India via Ram Setu – Ram’s bridge – a.k.a. Adam’s Bridge. Yet the lure of Lion Beer and hot, devilled cuttlefish waiting for us mainland was too tempting to stay with that thought for too long.
