Ravi Velloor was in Sri Lanka with Foreign Minister George Yeo recently.
http://blogs.straitstimes.com/
'Happy Deepavali.'
At 06:30 a.m. as I waited in the lobby of the Cinnamon Grand Hotel in Colombo recently, that was the call from the man striding by.
At first it didn't quite register. Then I awoke from my reverie:
Happy Deepavali, to you, Minister!
Perhaps it was fitting that the first person to wish me that day was George Yeo, Singapore's foreign minister. For Mr Yeo is an uncommon personality. Among all the global personalities I have encountered in a three decades-long career, I have met no one with such an interest in other cultures. I have watched him on an early winter morning, finishing up his breakfast, changing into chinos and a leather jacket to visit the historic Mughal built Sunday Mosque in Delhi's old quarter, only his bodyguards in tow. I have watched him in the dusty outback of India's Bihar state, standing amidst the ruins of the ancient university of Nalanda, fittingly in the company of some of the world's best known intellectual luminaries. He was there to participate in a Singapore-backed dream to revive that ancient Buddhist seat of learning for a new generation of Asians. Last month in Hua Hin, Thailand, the East Asia Summit endorsed that effort.
I am not a big fan of blogsites, but one I unfailingly check every few weeks is Mr Yeo's blog, if nothing else to catch up on some speech of his I may have missed.
On this Deepavali day, we would travel in a quiet land where there was little celebration despite the area being home to large numbers of Hindus. We would move by helicopter to Mannar in the northwest of Sri Lanka, then to Jaffna in the north and on to Trincomallee in the northeast. We would be briefed by military commanders and civilian administrators. We would visit irrigation projects and the Prima factory in Trincomallee, that iconic Singapore investment in Sri Lanka whose products have been consumed by every citizen of that nation. We would visit the historic Jaffna library and the famous Nallur Kandasamy temple in that town.
"Did you see the look on his face when he broke that coconut as an offering at the temple?" a Tamil Singaporean who was part of Mr Yeo's delegation told me later. "The reverence was real."
At the end of the day, having dined with a local industrialist and before embarking for Singapore, Mr Yeo sat down for a media wrapup. There, he unerringly pronounced correctly the names of every town we had visited and every person he met. I was taken aback.
I must have been to Sri Lanka more than a dozen times, sometimes for more than two weeks at a time, but I will not lay claim to have the same facility. Yet, this was only Mr Yeo's second visit to the island and the first was many years ago, when he holidayed there with his wife.
Does all that make him less Chinese, or less interested in the culture of his own forefathers?
Not at all.
In Trincommalee I watched a retired Sri Lankan admiral, now governor of the Eastern Province, brief Mr Yeo. The admiral mentioned an area called China Bay. Immediately, Mr Yeo's ears pricked up. He asked how the area got that name, then went on to answer his own question by discussing various possibilities, including a port call by the Chinese seafarer Zheng He.
Foreign ministers come in all sizes of intellect. Around the world there must be a few who can match Mr Yeo's intellect. But what probably sets him apart is his genuine interest in alien cultures and this surely must be of use in what probably is the world's most globalised island state.
Mr Yeo gives the impression of a man overawed by the splendour of the universe even as he marks his own place in it.
That thought struck me after seeing the transcript of a door-stop interview he gave Colombo journalists after bilateral talks with his Sri Lankan counterpart, Rohitha Bogollogama.
Dwelling on the talented Sri Lankan diaspora and how it could be harnessed for the country's post-war development, he had this to say: 'All my four children were delivered by Sri Lankan doctors.'
As a lifelong journalist my only regret about Mr Yeo is that he didn't choose to join my profession. Certainly, he had the opportunity.
My former editor in chief, Mr Cheong Yip Seng, once told me he had talent-spotted a young George Yeo just as he had entered government service as a bureaucrat. They were in Indonesia together, accompanying some heavyweight on an official trip.
Sadly, Mr Yeo declined Mr Cheong's offer of employment, choosing to stay on in government.
Too bad. The Straits Times newsroom could have used his skills to teach how to convey the most complex and beautiful thoughts in the simplest language.
And on that subject here is my favourite George Yeo line.
Turning up at an inter-religious meeting a couple of years ago in Singapore, Mr Yeo had this to say about the Parsis. This is the tiny community of Zoroastrians who migrated to India from Persia a thousand years ago and have been successful in business while being great philanthropists.
"The Parsis," said Mr Yeo at that meeting, "have always sweetened the milk that is their host."
the post Zheng De visited is told very near to Galle in the sourthern part ofs ri lanka, not Trincomlaee of eelam
Posted by: mama mami | February 11, 2010 at 02:10 AM