My aunts say “Modara shok maalu thiyenawa” when I say that I’m going to Modera.

I say no, fish is nowhere on my list of priorities. Heaven forbid. This is to listen to a talk. Part of a festival. Oh, a literary festival. One of those funny Colombo things they say, but in kindly tones.

I am going but I don’t know where to go. The festival is at Whist Bungalow in Modera. On the website I click on the link marked ‘Whist Bungalow’. The link leads to Google Maps.  But there is no Whist Bungalow marked on Google maps. Where the bungalow should be is the name –‘Pradeepa Hall’. Such an unexciting, boring sounding name. Where is Whist Bungalow?  I give up on Google and figure I’ll get there somehow. And I do.

Bungalow from the Bengali the speaker says. ‘Bungalow’ means a single storey house. A Bengali word. He says the Dutch built it, this ‘bungalow’ that we’re seated in; this large, graceful white washed house next to the sea. But other accounts say it was built by the British. Its name came from an early owner; an English gentleman who met here with his friends to play whist on Sunday evenings. Later the house was added on to by the English lawyer and judge, Richard Morgan, and many years later Solomon Dias Bandaranaike would live here. A bungalow built maybe by the Dutch, maybe not, added onto by the Englishman Morgan, and the home later of Solomon Dias Bandaranaike who, years after his family lived here, would introduce this country to Sinhala only and all its ensuing problems. From Dutch to English to Sinhala to confusion. Bungalow from the Bengali.

So Whist Bungalow does exist. But don’t forget your confusion with Google Maps. All Google maps know is Pradeepa Hall.

My father who grew up in Colombo remembers street names from his childhood. I who didn’t grow up in Colombo, remember names by reading sign boards. As a result our journeys around Colombo are marked by confusion and contradiction. We have arguments when we can’t decide where we are in place or in history.  Are we on Dickman’s road or Lester James Pieris Mawatha? Duplication road or R. A. de Silva Mawatha?  Green Path or Nelum Pokuna Mawatha? Havelock road or Sambuddhathva Jayanthi Mawatha? I say my father is getting old. He says Sri Lankans are mad.

So that’s the solution to the little mystery. Forget Whist Bungalow. It was taken over by the authorities and renamed. Now the ‘official’ name is Pradeepa Hall. Google Maps will never know what once was.  The English gentlemen who met to play whist and avoid their church no longer exist. All is well.

But as you exit the house (no longer a bungalow), and turn onto the road outside and pass the Tamil video shops and the churches, there before you is a narrow lane marked ‘Whist Passage’. How was this missed? Quick, bring the translator, the sign board painter, the giver of new names.

But there are things you cannot rename. You go for a job interview and the first thing you face is an English test. You leave ‘Sinhala only’ behind when you cross the threshold of the air conditioned office. History comes back at you in strange ways, it twists back and slaps you on the face, however hard you try, whatever glib politicians say, however you write and rewrite you cannot wish away those uncomfortable ghosts. The twelve English gentlemen will not be left behind so easily. Bungalow from the Bengali.