Tuesday, October 15, 2013

No country for locals

The long weekend is coming up and there we were running around looking for a good place to wile away our time. But what d'ya know, it does seem like most hotels in Sri Lanka are not available to locals!

A certain "villa" in the Bentota area being one and several properties in Galle area, most being within the fort and named after words in the same lexicon as "fort" being the culprits of this gross discrimination. Speechless is the sentiment and comment-unworthy being the word of the day. These hotels are not even worth the mention.  

And when did the official currency of Sri Lanka become US Dollars? Every hotel that was inquired after would give their rates in US Dollars. Even when you've convinced them that you are a local and that you would like the local rates please, thank you. Rupees seem the forbidden word. It is a word that one is ashamed of even to speak!

Anyways, what is it with white skin and Sri Lankans? Walk into a restaurant and you would see everyone from the waiters to the management bending over backwards to serenade the white skins with their pitiable smiles and pathetically entreating words. Its almost painful to watch sometimes, the local staff embarassing themselves thus. The locals are attended to last, after all the foreigners had been preened and pampered. Some even dare to give airs and intimidating looks if a local dares ask a question or makes a comment while feigning utter indifference. I don't think anyone would notice if a local choked on his food and died in such a place!

I've never quite grasped the concept of "no locals please" in hotels and restaurants. True, certain locals do have very disgusting and destructive habits but so do a good part of foreigners. Certain foreigners have been known to make roti on their irons, boil vegetables in their electric kettles, burn room carpets doing one bizarre thing or the other and even cook chicken curries to eat with bread in their rooms for Gods sake! And somebody was saying that locals were bad? Please enlighten me if anyone has any idea why this should be so.

There is no place for Sri Lankans abroad and now, there is no place for Sri Lankans in their own country. While foreigners are entitled to our land, our beaches, our shores and our forests, us tax paying citizens must content ourselves stuck at home on our hard earned holidays. The best part is, it is the locals themselves who thus discriminate their own kind. Born and raised on this land, having become who they are, having earned what they have earned from its people, whoring away to the foreign while shunning their own kind is just beyond low. Disgusting really.

Well, Hitler himself was a Jew they say.

If anyone wants to be a true patriot and speak up against such hypocritical local businessmen, this is the time and the opportunity. I'd like to see the Facebook patriots of the country speaking up against this kind of discrimination and unfairness rather than going around posting valiant, tear-wrenchingly patriotic statements on social media, smashing No Limits, banning halal and hurling rotten eggs at whoever frequents shops that belong to individuals of certain ethnicities.

Meantime, if I ever happen to raise any children in this country, I plan to bleach their skins white and dye their hair blonde, just to get the waiters to notice them at restaurants and be allowed access to a nice local resort for their holidays. After all, a mother would want her children to be recognized and to be treated with respect.        




1 comment:

Jack Point said...

My solution is to boycott the hotels.

Stay in resthouses, bungalows and guest houses avoid hotels at all costs.

When they come begging with special offers ignore them.