where I come from

an archeologists journey on self discovery

Kandyan dancer

An archeologist goes excavating the islands that were thrown up by the tsunami.

She is of Kandyan and Indian lineage. Her paternal grandmother who is dying in Kandy asks her to come and visit. She goes to visit her estranged grandmother. During the conversation she tells her grandmother about the excavation. Her grandmother listens and appreciates.

The grandmother shares, her memory, her heritage, from a rootless nobody who is fascinated by the past the archeologist slows discovers herself. Her culture, the conflict. A kind of barrier that her Indian grandparents from Ayodhya had when they refered to her father.

Time comes when the archeologist has to return her grandmother then gives her an emerald box. "this is in sinhalese,a translation of our family heirloom, which my ancestor hid from the followers of Mahindra, the Buddhist King who came from India. The document of our lineage and family history lies here each one of the successive head of the family has documented the change in our times and hidden it . When death taps we hand to the inheritor."

Back at the Island the archeologist finds another box that matches with the one that her grandmother gave her. Six months of focused learning of sihanlese, the document revealed to the archeologist a truth that was of her family, a truth that was her identity, a truth that made her shyamini