Tourists come to Sri Lanka for many reasons, the wildlife, the temples, the gardens, the tea country, the history, the colour, the warmth. Then there is the country beneath the itinerary, the one shaped by pressure, memory, pride, politics, religion and daily endurance.
This is what our Sri Lanka guide, Niruth Ashendra, Ash, opened up for me in this interview. Read previous blogs here and here
Ash spoke about Sri Lanka as a small island with a long history and a fierce instinct to protect its independence. He also spoke about what it means to live in a country that sits in a volatile region and feels the force of decisions made far away. In his telling, Sri Lanka is forever managing its own domestic pressures while also absorbing the consequences of conflicts involving much bigger powers.
It is unconscionable. War and global instability exact a price from every country. Developing countries are forced to carry that price while already under strain. People who played no part in the decisions are left to absorb the damage through higher fuel costs, dearer food, rising transport bills and tighter family budgets. They are doing their best to raise living standards and give their children a better future, then decisions made in wealthy countries sweep through and make that task harder. Ash gave that reality a human face. In developing countries like Sri Lanka, global conflict lands in kitchens, school bags and petrol stations.
When conflict involving Iran edges closer, Sri Lanka is suddenly dealing with oil, debt, trade and sovereignty all at once. Add the weight of the United States through aid, trade and global influence, and you can see how quickly a small country is forced to tread carefully.
Ash said Sri Lanka handled it wisely by treating it as a humanitarian issue rather than a political one. Rescue the survivors. Get them medical care. Return them safely. In other words, act with decency, protect independence, and refuse to become a pawn. He also mentioned another Iranian vessel in a strategic eastern harbour, which was a reminder that geography can turn a small island into a place of sudden importance. Ports, shipping lanes and location all count when bigger nations start flexing.
The same tension came up again when he spoke about an American soldier in Sri Lanka who had been accused of war crimes. Ash saw that as another test. How does a small nation respond when the person involved comes from a country as powerful as the United States? His answer was careful, grounded in legal process, though the underlying point was larger. Sri Lanka is often required to make decisions in the shadow of power it does not control.
Then he brought it straight back to ordinary life.
He used Sri Lanka’s long relationship with Iran to show how exposed a country like this can be. Sri Lanka still owes Iran about US$251 million for oil it received years ago. Normally that debt would be paid in US dollars through international banks, because that is how most of the world trades. Sanctions closed that path. The sanctions are driven mainly by the United States. Much of the world’s trade runs through US dollars and the banks tied to that system. Once the US closes that door, other countries feel it too. Payments that move through US dollar channels can be blocked, so the usual way of settling the debt is gone even when both countries are willing. Sri Lanka’s answer is tea. Ceylon tea is shipped to Iran, Iranian buyers pay for it inside their own system, and the value is counted against the oil debt. No US dollars move. No standard bank transfer is needed. The debt comes down shipment by shipment, while Sri Lanka protects scarce foreign currency and keeps a key export industry moving.
War, instability and global conflict show up first in the price of diesel and petrol. Fuel costs then push up transport, groceries and daily living. Salaries stay the same. Families absorb the blow. In Ash’s account, few people are living in comfort. Most are working out how to keep going. Each fresh international shock tightens the screws a little more.
This is where the moral imbalance becomes impossible to ignore. Rich countries talk about inflation. Developing countries live the consequences in a harsher form. Families already close to the edge do not have room to absorb rising costs. Families cut back on food, delay plans, live with more strain and carry more fear. A war somewhere else can strip nutrition from a child’s lunchbox in Sri Lanka. It can make a teacher’s journey to school more expensive. It can shrink a household’s sense of possibility. There is something deeply wrong in that.
Sri Lanka has long been proud of its literacy and its commitment to schooling. Ash is proud of that too. Yet he made the point that free education still depends on families being able to feed children, get them to school and keep life together. When electricity, water and food all rise, households cut what they can. Entertainment is already thin on the ground for many. Food is often where the damage falls first. Ash spoke about parents feeding their children and going hungry themselves. This tells you a great deal about family life in Sri Lanka, and about the sacrifices hidden inside rising prices.
He made another point that it is often overlooked. Teachers carry these same pressures. Teachers need to travel, eat and think clearly. A country can value education strongly, though the people delivering it still live inside the same rising cost of living as everyone else. Global conflict reaches into classrooms through fuel, food and stress.
Ash also spoke about the civil war. He described the war as rooted in division between the Sinhalese majority and Tamil minority, with extremists on both sides turning tension into violence. In his account, there were no winners, only heartbreak, grief and long shadows.
Ash was born in 1991. The war was already under way. He grew up with it. Although the fighting was concentrated in the north, Colombo endured bombings, fear and disruption. His parents kept him close to home because buses and public places felt dangerous. He missed normal childhood freedoms because safety came first. This is the kind of detail that makes conflict real. It is not only about leaders, armies and ideology. It is about the child who never got to roam freely, the parent constantly scanning for danger, the family changing how it lives because terror has entered public space.
He described the day the war ended with a memory that felt almost cinematic. He was out with a school friend when he saw people in the street with Sri Lankan flags and firecrackers. At first he thought it must be a cricket celebration. Joy on that scale felt unfamiliar. Then he learned the war leader had been killed and people believed peace had arrived. What came through in that story was relief, disbelief and the release of a tension carried for years.
He also explained how war reshaped education itself. School continued, though travel changed. His father paid for a school van so the children would not need to use public transport, which had become associated with bombings and danger. Safety cost money. Families with means found ways around the risk. Families without those options would have faced much harder choices.
Ash believes the war held Sri Lanka back while other countries were developing. He sees the post war years as a period of visible change, infrastructure, electricity, development, growth. He also knows that emotional wounds take far longer to heal than roads and buildings take to construct. Sri Lanka has moved forward. Sri Lanka still carries pain.
This realism also shaped the way he spoke about ethnicity and religion.
He places Tamil presence in Sri Lanka within a long historical story, stretching back centuries. This is part of the country’s makeup, not some recent intrusion. He then gave one of the most heartening examples in the whole interview, the role of his school headmaster, who mixed Tamil and Sinhalese children in class so friendships would form naturally across ethnic lines. This was reconciliation done through daily life, simply structuring a school so children grew up with one another rather than apart from one another.
Ash then moved from history and politics into social values, especially around women, religion and what holds Sri Lanka together.
Questions about restrictions on women, he said, are best answered fully by women themselves. Even so, his observations were revealing. He described Sri Lankan parents as highly protective, especially of daughters, and he could see how that protectiveness can become a barrier. Girls may grow up under strict rules around where they can go and how freely they can move. Marriage can bring another set of expectations. In his account, control often shifts rather than disappears.
He also pointed to women in powerful roles, including one of his aunts, the only woman on the board of a telecommunications finance company. He admires her greatly, and he can also see the effort and exhaustion involved in succeeding inside a male dominated world.
One example he gave was startling because it shows how slowly change can move through a culture. Only recently, he said, were women legally allowed to purchase alcohol from wine stores. The law had carried old ideas about motherhood, respectability and public behaviour. Even after the law changed, the judgement remained. Women buying alcohol still attract looks and commentary. In some places, they drink privately or discreetly while men drink more openly. In Ash’s own family, sharing a drink across generations is perfectly normal. In other families, it would still raise eyebrows. That tells its own story about Sri Lanka. Law can change faster than culture, and culture changes unevenly.
Religion is another area where Sri Lanka has its own clear lines. Ash spoke about Buddhism and the expectation of respect. Images of Buddha carry meaning and deserve reverence. Selfies with Buddha, or photos where your back is turned to Buddha, are seen as disrespectful, and even visible Buddha tattoos are frowned upon. Respect for religion is woven into public life, not tucked away as a private matter.
At the same time, Ash described Sri Lanka as a mosaic, Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims and Christians living alongside one another. He talked warmly about festivals and the way communities share food, sweets and hospitality across religious lines. Sinhala and Tamil New Year, Vesak, Christmas, Eid, each becomes an occasion for neighbours to give to one another. For him, this is what makes Sri Lanka special. Diversity is tasted in kitchens and handed across fences.
Small tensions and provocations do exist. Yet he also said those moments usually fade rather than grow because Sri Lanka has already paid too high a price for division. Parents who lived through the civil war have no appetite to see younger generations walk back into conflict. That memory still acts as a brake.
Then there was the answer that perhaps said the most about Ash himself. When I asked what he was proud of in Sri Lanka, he answered without hesitation. The people.
He talked about their resilience, their smiles, their kindness and readiness to help. He was talking about a country where people carry hardship and still meet one another with warmth. He sees Sri Lankans as generous and instinctively responsive when someone is in trouble. This is the country he knows best.
His pride is clear eyed. He wants better opportunities and better living conditions for those same people. He knows kindness does not pay bills. Hospitality does not solve housing stress. Resilience is admirable, though it should not be endlessly required.
This was the gift of these interviews. Ash went beyond the postcard version of Sri Lanka. He gave me a country balancing independence and vulnerability, pride and frustration, memory and hope. A country shaped by global events far beyond its size, and by ordinary people who keep going anyway.
Tourists come for the highlights.
Writers stay alert for the human voice that makes a place legible.
In Sri Lanka, that voice was Ash’s