Perahera elephants and working elephants
I have been watching the Perahera, year after year as a child. It was the highlight of the August holidays when we went to see our grandparents in Kandy. Anglophile, Christian and Central Bankers, my family used to secure seats at the Hatton National Bank where us kids watched the perahera from the balcony with wondrous eyes while the adults made it a social event with buffet, alcohol and the company of the others. Coloniality at its best. For us it was the spectacle, the dancers, the drummers, the fire lanterns, the smell, the noise, the colour.. and the elephants, always the elephants…Later I watched the Perahera as a Peradeniya undergraduate sitting with batchmates on the street, a very different view. The embarrassing coloniality was shed, and it was all about being part of the crowd, belonging….Not till anthropological and historical curiosity got the better of me many years later did I know anything about the significance of the Perahera beyond the carrying of the relic,