Holiday time in Sri Lanka, again

Arriving in any country on a public holiday is never the best plan. In Sri Lanka, the chances of that are probably higher than most countries because there are more public holidays here than almost anywhere in the world. It is an issue, more serious than is likely imagined.

The first estimate - an informed one, mind you - I heard today of how many there can be in a year sounded downright outrageous: eight months of the year can be, for some workers, a holiday. We counted over 25 official public holidays this year. Casual, medical and other kinds of paid leave from work total up to over 40 days comfortably for an employee. Saturdays and Sundays off through the year are another 100-plus.

Often when a public holiday falls on a weekend, an extra day off might be announced during the week. If a Tuesday is off, often the Monday will be lumped on; a Thursday off might blend into a long weekend. If you're entitled to maternity leave, well, you can see how the numbers add up. An editorial back in 2002 - since when a few more holidays have been designated - worked out that public servants could in effect work 46 four-day weeks a year.

A number of the public holidays are religious ones, so cutting down is not a straightforward decision. The Poya day, for example, is a Buddhist day of worship, celebrated on each and every full moon through the year. None of this works wonders for a country's productivity or even for efforts to attract foreign investment. Much lower on the list of concerns would be the lack of a World Cup atmosphere foreign cricket journalists might feel when they land on a public holiday.

There are of course all the usual signs that a World Cup is on: billboards, TV ads, random life-size cardboard cut-outs of players at Colombo roundabouts. Visits to the SSC and P Sara grounds were small, personal affairs, with none of the overwhelming ICC machinery that dominates these interactions. It was nice; perhaps this is what covering the 1975 World Cup was like.

In any case, until Hambantota on Saturday, the party seems currently to be in Bangladesh and India, where it often feels there is a party first and cricket later to celebrate it. It's not that there isn't cricket in the air; it's more in the soil of the land at first glance, if the number of informal tennis-ball games - memo to Netto electrical tape: hello Sri Lanka - in parks and streets is anything to go by.

Walking along a packed and festive Galle Face road early evening, though, reaffirmed that holidays are not altogether a bad thing. More, I suspect, are likely over the next many weeks.