Cooking With Fire

Two cultures, one common element

The view of the West from those of us who grew up in the East is one of a world already developed and full of progress.

What we fail to see is that old technology and even extreme poverty existed in the West well into the 1970s and beyond.

A good example is when my Sri Lankan parents visited Ireland’s West and were struck by pictures of children running around outside in the 1950s in drab clothing and no shoes. To them, having grown up during the same post-colonial times, it was unimaginable that people in the West could have been so poor. They had grown up influenced by the richness of the British Empire. To see the same poverty that is found less and less frequently in Sri Lanka in the not so recent past in the West was a surprise.

Their generation had grown up absorbed in the advancements in technology discovered by the West. During my grandmother’s lifetime, she would experience the introduction of electricity, in-house plumbing to replace well water, vaccines, radio, telephones, cars, and televisions. All of this technology was absorbed in the East.

Colonization combined with an upper class or wealthy ancestry set many people of Eastern descent to be well ahead of millions in the West. The children of these estate managers and businessmen would then educate themselves in Western universities and return to build and lead their countries raising the prosperity of all.

As a young child, I was fascinated by my grandmother’s kitchen in Colombo. A curtain was hung over the door that blew in the breeze. Walking into the main kitchen, you enter a…

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