Sri Lanka sits like a teardrop nestled beneath its neighbour India.
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For Chewton grandmother and author Gloria Meltzer, the island nation tugs at her heartstrings.
True to form, it has brought tears to her eyes.
It is a country torn apart by civil war and wracked by the tragedy of the Boxing Day tsunami, more than a decade ago.
But her reasons for both joy and sorrow are more intimate, personal.
Sri Lanka is where her son, Daniel, met his wife, a Sinhalese woman named Anusha.
It is where her three beloved grandsons, Jai, Ruki, Tarsh, are growing up.
It is also more than 8000 kilometres away, across the Indian Ocean.
The tyranny of distance means her grandmotherly visits are rare, overseas feats.
Despite the overwhelming love she has for him, Ms Meltzer cannot converse with her youngest grandson, as he doesn’t speak English.
“Sometimes I look at them and think: ‘I can’t believe they’re mine’,” Ms Meltzer said.
“It’s hard to connect when you don’t see them often.
“I come from a close family. I was very close to both my grandmothers, so I am feeling that loss.
“They’re missing out as much as I am, because I know how important that was to me.”
The theme is one that struck a chord with many Australian grandmothers, whose children had travelled, fallen in love, and started a family overseas.
The relative ease and affordability of travel now is placing more grandparents in this difficult position – one that most of their generation were unlikely to face.
In an article penned for The Age in 2013, Ms Meltzer articulated the feeling of becoming a “phantom figure” to her grandchildren – “the ones our own existence originally made possible barely get to know us,” she wrote.
The piece resonated and Ms Meltzer explored the theme in greater depth in her latest book, her 10th.
But in the book, Only in Sri Lanka, Ms Meltzer also shared the her unique view of the country.
Rather than hitting the tourist spots and staying only in fancy hotels, Ms Meltzer had a more authentic experience of Sri Lankan village life through her daughter-in-law and her family.
It gave her a distinct, sometimes gruesome, insight into the major events that had cut through the heart of the country.
“My first trip was in 2007 – it was the height of the civil war,” Ms Meltzer said.
“In fact, DFAT here was warning all Australians not to go except for essential purposes. I decided my grandson’s first birthday was an essential purpose.
“But that was a scary time and there were road blocks everywhere. A lot of people were being blown up on buses in Colombo, but normal life (persists) in the middle of catastrophe.”
She said people continued on with their everyday lives, with Anusha insisting on catching the bus when she took her mother-in-law on shopping trips.
But it was the tsunami – which nearly claimed Anusha’s life – which made the biggest imprint on Ms Meltzer.
The earthquake and tsunami struck in 2004, but Ms Meltzer could see the devastating impact three years on.
There were buildings decimated on beaches that have never been rebuilt.
Ms Meltzer recalls one of the saddest stories, where she and Anusha were driving through the port city of Galle.
Anusha leaned over and pointed out a building – it was where her sister gave birth to her two children.
The tsunami, Anusha said, went right through the hospital. All those newborn babies and their mothers drowned.
“It was just something you couldn’t conceive of,” Ms Meltzer said.
“You’ve brought life into the world and you think you’re safe, and you end up drowning.”
Her son Daniel had already met Anusha before the tsunami struck. He was visiting Sri Lanka on holiday, and she was managing a hotel in Colombo.
“She was managing the business centre and he went in there to use the computer. They got talking and the rest is history,” Ms Meltzer said.
Daniel rushed to Sri Lanka after the horror event, to see if he could find Anusha, to see if she was still alive.
On the day of the disaster, Anusha was walking from the town of Galle up a hill to the hotel where she worked.
“Just by luck the hotel was on a hill, but she was down in the town walking towards the hill when people yelled out to her: ‘Water coming, water, water!’ She thought they were joking,” Ms Meltzer said.
“Finally she turned around and saw this incredible wall of water coming for her.
“A little tuk tuk came along and the driver recognised her. It was already full of people on the roof and inside, but one of them grabbed her and put her on their knee, and they raced back up the hill.”
When it was over, Ms Meltzer said, Anusha went with an American journalist, who was staying at the hotel, to serve as an interpreter and to examine the damage.
“She said she saw thousands of bodies, including a woman (whose) body was stuck in a drain. She and the journalist pulled her body out of the drain,” Ms Meltzer said.
But one of the most devastating images was from near Anusha’s family property.
Their home was built a couple of kilometres back from the coast and didn’t suffer the wrath of the wave.
Others were not so lucky.
“The water only licked the steps of their house, but a lot of their neighbours were killed,” Ms Meltzer said.
“Afterwards, her uncle … and his sons walked around, picking up body parts. Fingers and toes and arms, of people they knew, their neighbours.”
Despite the traumatic events, Ms Meltzer’s novel is still a family story, dotted with amusing anecdotes from when things simply go wrong, delightful and funny tales of muddled English and cultural misunderstandings.
In January, Ms Meltzer has been able to reunite with her grandsons in Sri Lanka, spending precious bonding time with them and spoiling them in ways only grandmothers can.
She has also had the good fortune to attend the Galle Literary Festival while she is there, sinking her teeth into some of the most vibrant works by Sri Lankan authors.
She also hopes to find a new publisher for Only in Sri Lanka.
One day before the October launch of her book at the Chewton town hall, Ms Meltzer was informed the publisher, Jojo Publishing, had gone into liquidation.
The books were to be pulped.
Fortunately, distributors allowed her to buy some copies back – she has a few hundred copies now, and took 50 to Sri Lanka in the hopes of sharing with locals how a grandmother from the quaint town of Chewton views their world.