Jazz & Retro weekend at Bentota beach

The John Keells Hotels group has planned a 'The Jazz n' Retro Weekend - on the beach at Bentota Beach Hotel from August 29 -- 30.

On Saturday morning, the talented young group 'Rebels' will swing at the poolside of the hotel, which will be transformed in to an F&B extravaganza, leading all the way up to lunch. A host of fun family activities have been planned for the weekend for all guests with a 20% discount made available at the water-sports centre.

The main Jazz and Retro show, starting at 7.30 p.m. on August 29, (Saturday) at the open-air podium of Club Inter Sport, Complex adjacent to the Bentota Beach Hotel, promises to be a night to remember. Guests will be made to fall in love again with the smooth sounds of Jazz and famous melodies of the retro-years with performances by 'Souled Out' and 'The Rebels' as well as special guest performances by Gavin Senn on Saxophone and Aruna Siriwardhana on drums.

'Souled Out' is an outfit of six members who are legends in the music industry locally as well as internationally, dating back to their original musical groups Purple Rain, Wild Fire and Dream Team. They are Chris Dhason at the Drums, along with Shafi, Sunith, Shean Dharmaratne, Samantha Fonseka and bassist Dulip Gnanakan.

A scrumptious BBQ dinner will be served at the CIS complex with many action-stations serving a wide selection of food items. The hotel's award-winning Show-Bartender will also be mixing a selection of cocktails to add to the flare of the evening.

'Sax & Strings' will conclude the weekend - a sumptuous Sunday brunch spiced up by the smooth grooves of Gavin Senn Quartet, led by the talented saxophonist Gavin Senn, whose mastery of the instrument is perhaps second to none in Sri Lanka.

A special weekend package including the special events is available and tickets for both the evening of Jazz & Retro and the Sunday brunch are also available for non-hotel guests.

Reflections on life at the Cinnamon Lodge - by Tracy Holsinger

The poet William Wordsworth once saw a lot of daffodils during a walk around a lake. Being the dreamy romantic, he wrote a poem about it and was top of the pops for several weeks back in 1804. Alright, it was a bit more than several weeks, and the poem is still hailed as iconic of the Romantic age which William was instrumental in launching.
Nature was like religion to the early Romantics, and they clung to it obstinately, in vain protest of the advance of the Industrial Revolution and socio-political norms of the encroaching Age of Enlightenment. In an era that applied cold logic and scientific rationale to everything from nature to social constructs, they cried out against the separation of man from nature, celebrating intuition over reason and the pastoral over urbanization.

Fed a diet of Wordsworth, Byron and Shelley as a child, I used to be quite the budding Romantic. I found in nature a sense of peace and wonder that has remained with me for most of my life. In my cynical young adulthood, I had no time for Wordsworth and his naive rapture. But now, as the world gets crazier and sadder, I find myself trying to see things like he did - slowly and simply. Yearning more and more to get away from the constant bustle of commerce and urbanization and find that 'bliss of solitude'.

We live in strange times. The atmosphere in the country is one of relief and hope at the moment, but life in the big city remains frantic. We work longer and harder, rushing from one thing to another with little or no time to enjoy the finer things in life. Indeed, some of us only find rest when we are asleep.

My husband and I made a resolution to see as much of the country as we could this year. We'd like our children to grow up knowing that nothing can quantify the uniqueness of our land. We may be on the Ten Most Beautiful Countries of the world list, the Best Beaches of the World list, we may even have the world's Eight Wonder, but none of it adequately describes the natural beauty of this island. To love your country, you have to know your country. It's never too early or too late to begin.

We began at The Cinnamon Lodge, a place that my husband has had a strong attachment to for several years. The sense of agelessness and tranquility is palpable. Over the several days, we turned off our phones, didn't use the WiFi, put our sarongs on and sank into oblivion.

I found myself luxuriating in the ability to indulge any whim and fancy. Like watching a thalagoya root for food with its claws and tongue. I've never been that close, and the creature seemed entirely unconcerned. Its tail moved like a snake on the grass as it moved off, and on larger members of its kind I imagine that tail is quite the deterrent to would be predators. I found myself just as fascinated as my bug-eyed children.

We went down to the lake each day around sunset and watched a lotus bloom over four days. The shore is roughly lined with low-spreading trees with thick branches that extend over the shallows. Lotus plants begin almost at the edge and extend a fair way into the main body of water which is vast and dotted with trees. The horizon is thickly ringed with trees and beyond that are the elephants. The white lotus was growing in front of a bole in a weathered tree stump. On the day it bloomed, the sunset turned the water at the centre of the lake bright orange.

We were surrounded by trees the whole time. Every kind of tree imaginable; old, gnarled, vast, entangled, tall, stately, smooth, brown, black, green, silver...the trunk of one royal palm was mostly pink. My husband patiently waited with for the right light and was duly rewarded. Nature photography has never been high up on his agenda but over the days he was charmed by grey langurs, giant rock squirrels, wild mushrooms and unusual flower pods.

I watched the langurs from the Lodge's tree-houses, from across the grass, sitting on a fallen tree trunk; always closer than I had ever been. I watched protective mothers, dominant males, the curious and the cautious. I saw adults chilling on the grass watching babies playing, while adolescents flung themselves from branch to branch up through the trees. We did the same thing in the playground every afternoon, dozing on strategically placed benches in the large shady glade, while the children ran from swing to climbing frame to see-saw with the children we met there.

The days pass slowly and quietly at Cinnamon Lodge. We fell into the leisurely pace with ease. There is something so incredibly luxurious about waking up and having nothing to do except just be there. Of having enough space and time to find delight in the glimpse of a mongoose slinking around the corner of a building, or the dapple of sunlight on a giant metallic-blue dragonfly. I noticed a kind of tacit understanding between the humans and the wild life here. A policy of non-interference unless absolutely necessary.

There was a lack of fear on both sides, yet with each exercising a certain amount of restraint to achieve a workable balance and integration of man and nature that William Wordsworth would surely have approved of.