I meet Sam most every night at the Pub Royale on the ground floor of the old colonial Queen’s Hotel, in Kandy (the former Sinhalese capital, in the hills of Sri Lanka, about three hours’ drive inland from the coast). Sam doesn’t drink, but he comes to the pub to watch the news and cricket on the television. Every year he comes to Kandy for a month on holiday from Colombo, Sri Lanka’s present-day capital city. Sam is a tax accountant, so he flees the city the moment tax season is over. This is his twentieth year at the Queen’s.