Rediscovering Fort

By Indi Samarajiva

On the day of the Central Bank bombing, at least 100 people lost their sight. If they could see today, not much has changed. Downtown Colombo remains a post-apocalyptic space full of troops and shuttered buildings. Armed men patrol in front of tiny shops selling Saddam-era dinars. Behind checkpoints men vainly sell jewellery, stopped pocket watches, frozen like this moment in time.

Blast Radius

The White Horse bar is gone. Across the street an old colonial building is occupied by troops, their laundry hanging between stone columns. The only cars on some streets are Army Defenders, with the odd exception of a Namal Rajapaksa campaign bus. Most shops on the side streets are closed.

“All we want is the roads open,” said Sundaralingam, a local shop owner. “They are telling, not doing. Next year, this year. Telling that it’s open, it’s not open. Every day we’re asking.” This year, however, there are more substantive steps being taken to revive the commercial district. It is becoming a family affair, with the Urban Development Authority being brought under Defence Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa. Basil Rajapaksa has also been given the new Ministry of Economic Development and there are plans afoot to move high security targets out of Fort and make it a commercial district.

York Street

For now, however, the place remains stuck in time. You can proceed down York Street under arched walkways reminiscent of old Mumbai. There are mounted policemen, street cobblers, people selling posters, magazines. The old Pagoda Tea Room is largely unchanged from its cameo days in Duran Duran’s Hungry Like The Wolf music video. Not out of any instinct for preservation, simply neglect.

There has been no hideous concrete and plastic destruction of the Fort, but there hasn’t been any gentrification either. The old Cargill’s building is much as it was, except for an incongruous KFC wedged in the back. It is also largely empty. The one seemingly busy shop is the government handicrafts store, Laksala. One Western tourist said that this city center was the first place he came as part of a week long stay.  “There is a lot of military, but we just came from Laos. We’re used to seeing guns,” he said. “People are nice, if you go down a wrong road they direct you.”

As you wander down the street the sun sets down the crumbling alley that holds the Criminal Investigations Division. That’s one place they’d direct you away from.

Grand Oriental

Instead, a comfortable vantage on the High Security Zone is the Harbour Room of the Grand Oriental Hotel. There are few people, but there is still a panoramic view of the harbour — container ships and Dvora attack craft. They make a decent lime soda but otherwise the hotel is a shell. Musty and unattended, you could kick a football across the room without anyone noticing.  The entire Fort is a bit like that. Unnoticed, unattended, but with so much potential.

The port and Pettah still bustle, but the state of the commercial district is a bit like what passes for the Municipal Museum. At the end of Pettah, near the lamp-post junction, there’s an old yellowing building. You can go upstairs, no one seems to notice. There, behind dirty glass and stacked chairs are life-sized wax figurines of the entire colonial-era Colombo Municipal Council. At a meeting it seems. They are still there, taking minutes for a time that never came.