The Galle Face Hotel in Colombo plays a significant role in two of my books, A Painter in Penang and Jasmine in Paris – but when I wrote them, I had never visited the hotel. I first went to Sri Lanka in the 1990s but stayed in a modern hotel while in Colombo. I was looking for a good location for Evie and her daughter Jasmine to stay when en route to Penang from Kenya in A Painter in Penang. Colombo was the logical place, and my research soon led me to the Galle Face.
Opened in 1864, the hotel sits on the coast facing over Galle Face Green at the front and the Indian Ocean at the side. It has always played a leading part in the history of Colombo and Sri Lanka – formerly Ceylon. During WW2 a Japanese bomber was shot down and crashed in the grounds of the hotel. Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, stayed here when serving in the British Navy during the war – and left his motor car behind when he left. It is on display inside the hotel museum.
I eventually got to visit the hotel when I stayed there last year at the end of my research trip to Sri Lanka for The Star of Ceylon. I had a room with a terrace overlooking the sea and the hotel gardens, and it was exactly as I’d imagined Evie and Jasmine’s room to be.
One of the things I was dying to do was enjoy a sundowner on the terrace of the Travellers’ Bar while watching the sun set over the Indian Ocean. Foiled! First of all, heavy clouds rolled in followed by torrential rain – and secondly it was Poya, the monthly Buddhist festival marking the full moon – when alcohol is banned throughout the country.
I did manage to explore the old place though. There is even a little museum where the late Prince Philip’s first car, a 1935 Standard 9, can be seen. In the Travellers’ Bar, I sipped a King Coconut while inspecting the photographs of all the famous guests who had visited, from Che Guevara to DH Lawrence and Sting to Richard Nixon.
In A Painter in Penang, I included an appearance from a real person, the late Kottarapattu Chattu Kuttan, who later became famous for being the world’s oldest hotel employee. He served as the doorman at the Galle Face until he was 94 years-old, just before he died after a short illness in 2014. At the time of my book, he was a young man and was working in the hotel restaurant, so here he is chatting to Evie and her daughter – when he points out someone who will assume much importance in this book and in Jasmine in Paris (where the last chapter takes place at the Galle Face).
During dinner, Kuttan, their young Indian waiter, regaled them with stories of Colombo during the war, when the city was awash with allied service personnel, intelligence officers and wartime administrators. He recounted with relish how he had witnessed a Japanese aircraft crashing in front of the hotel. As they were about to leave the table, he said, 'Very sorry you are leaving us tomorrow, ladies. I hope you will return to The Galle Face so I might have the privilege of serving you again.’'
The smiling waiter indicated a table across the room where a middle-aged couple and a younger man, were dining.
‘One of those gentlemen is also going to Penang tomorrow. You must be on the same ship.’
Having had a chance to experience the place for myself, I decided to give the Galle Face a brief role in The Star of Ceylon. My main character, Norton Baxter stays in a different hotel, the Grand Oriental, a place that’s now seen better days, but he visits the Galle Face to meet his friend Paul Carberry. This was in 1906 – long before Kuttan’s time.
As the appointed hour to meet Carberry approached, Norton walked back along the Green to the Galle Face Hotel. An overlarge colonnaded structure, it was topped by terracotta roof tiles, its frontage facing the Green, sideways on to the ocean. He passed the uniformed doorman and porters, all in full regalia, and entered the reception hall, grateful for its cooling ceiling fans. The place could have been a grand hotel in Piccadilly or St James – much wood panelling, marbled floors and a profusion of cut flowers. Norton pushed open the door into a bar that looked as though it belonged in a London gentlemen’s club. Carberry was at a table, reading a newspaper, and drinking a beer. He got to his feet and greeted his friend. ‘You made it, Baxter!’ He swigged down what was left of his beer. ‘Let’s go out to the terrace. Best place on the planet to enjoy a sundowner.’
I’m not the only author who have stayed at the Galle Face while writing a book. I follow in the far more illustrious footsteps of Anton Chekhov, Arthur C Clarke, Arthur Conan Doyle and Mark Twain.
*All images author’s own, except KC Kuttan – image credit Singhalawap, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
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