Kalutara is a beautiful seaside town on the West coast of Sri Lanka and is renowned for its vast stretch of fine beach. Approximately 43km south of the island’s capital city, Colombo – Kalutara is also well-known for its mangosteen fruit and basket weaving industry, where various rushes and reeds are dyed in several hues and woven into hats, baskets and other items. But most of all, Kalutara is famous for the way it preserves, nurtures and venerates its Bōdhi, the Ficus religiosa. It was rendered sacred for having been chosen by the Buddha, to shelter him in his last lap of deep meditation and concentration that led him to the highest spiritual and intellectual attainment of which man is capable, if only he endeavours. With the island being colonised from 1505 to 1948 by the Portuguese, Dutch and British respectively, the Portuguese built a fort on the site of a Buddhist temple in Kalutara in the 16th century. Later, the British built a residence for their Government Agent, up on the hillock that was part of the sacred premises. Following independence from the British in 1948, the Government Agent’s residence was returned to the people as a Buddhist temple to become part of the premises of the venerated Kalutara Bōdhi (so called because the complex is centred round the Bō tree which is sacred to Buddhists.) The re-emergence of the Kalutara Bōdhi after nearly four centuries was not merely symbolic of independence – it was historically an important religious site and place of veneration and its popularity can be determined by the multitudes of people of all religious and cultural persuasions who support and flock to the Bōdhi to this day.premises…