Blade Runner - Colombo 2004

The protective clothing worn by the motorcyclist usually comprises protective boots in flip flops format, protective jacket in short sleeve shirt format, and helmet well in helmet format, for the rider at least. Moving through the traffic, following the biker, Colombo life takes on a vibrancy that is infectious. The biker pulls off to the left to talk to his friends standing by the side of the street, the street is completely occupied by motorbike shops, you can buy a bike or any amount of spares to keep your bike going, whilst others are fixing and tinkering to do just that. Continuing among the flow of more bikes and tuk tuks, some turn off to the left into an environment that is simply alive with humanity, the buildings are invisible, the road surface is alive with tuk tuks, motorbikes, people walking and cycling, all in slow motion, some making a very defined flow through the space, others stopping to talk to others in the dark spaces just off the street, where it looks like you can buy absolutely anything from fresh fruit to light bulbs. In the street itself, people sit on chairs outside their shops, others seem to be selling from tricycle rickshaws and hand carts. Nobody can move at any more than a slow walking pace through this heart of the city, this is Main Street this is where it seems all of the life of Colombo is concentrated into one space, its heartbeat defined by the exchange and interplay of locals, goods and conversation.

Above, a crazy framework of steel fixed to the face of the buildings supports all manner of illuminated signs, although not illuminated as it is mid-morning, but making a brightly coloured collage against the intense blue sky, it seems that each sign stretching vertically up the face of the building is competing for position, stretching either further out over the street, or reaching higher up the building face. Many of the signs are in Sinhalese, others in English, with some familiar names that have disappeared from the British high street, Lipton, Singer... In between the building signs, streetlights compete for position, although with all the illuminated signs, I am not sure they are really necessary. Windows peer out from the cluttered facades, every now and then a pediment or a moulding is visible giving a hint of another city beneath that was built long before the advent of neon.  The tops of the parapets are adorned with signs as are the fascias above the dark spaces of the shops on the street, at night this must be awash with neon and fluorescent light. An air conditioning unit fixed on steel brackets sits precariously above the shopfront fascia, humming away pushing hot air out into the already hot and humid environment, to keep somebody cool whilst working in their office buried under the collage.

The Bradbury, or is it? In fact there are colonial buildings everywhere slotted in amongst the living fabric of buying, selling and tuk tuks. A deep red block with subtle changes in ornament, from one 'Bradbury' to the next defines one as a church, another as a mosque, whilst at the end of the row the bo tree (also known as weeping fig) grows through a clay tiled roof, and the pristine white render walls surround a garden and a pristine white Dagoba defining the Buddhist temple. The old Colombo port, the source of much of Sri Lanka’s wealth, through trading gems and tea could easily be Liverpool in the height of summer, with its grand warehouse and port offices buildings, similarly many in a state of decline as the transport of goods has moved away from shipping in small vessels to massive container ships or air freight. It is easy to imagine the rain pouring through the roof at night during the monsoon season completing the illusion that J.F. Sebastian lives in a block to himself.

Clouds of steam issue from a group of low rise buildings along with the smell of soap and wet fabrics, hundreds of shirts hang on lines in the yard outside, while sheets are laid out on the ground drying in the heat of the day at Colombo’s outdoor laundry, tended by numerous diligent workers. There is not a single area of street where people don’t walk, and in some cases that is also the railway, they simply step aside when the train comes, the commuter train, like the buses in my previous post ‘Poetry in Slow Motion’ is invariably overcrowded, with people standing in the open doors hanging on to the handrails as the train picks its way through the city. Embedded in the dense urban fabric a dazzling array of carved figures reflecting the intense sunlight, on the towers of the Hindu temple, add to the already intense colour of street life in this cultural melting pot of a city. The colours are tangible not only in the visual but in the smells, aromas of fresh fruit combine with spices in the ongoing preparation of and rice and curry that makes up the daily diet of much of the population.