Do you know the Akbar Bridge in Peradeniya

When talking about the Akbar bridge, no one can skip talking about love and friendship. However, let’s talk about it later.

Akbar bridge. Photo was taken from google.
Just let me mention how special the Akbar bridge is. It begins with a forktail. Peradeniya University has more forktails. Now I’m going to talk about one of them. I believe all of you have heard about the seven wisdoms in the world. Hmm... Do you know what the seven wisdoms in Peradeniya University are? The Akbar Bridge is one of the wisest. Normally, wisdom has both a good and a lame side. We called the good "wisheshathwaya" and the lame "gon part". The importance is that the bridge touches the land by the edges. No arches can be seen. Why is this important? Considering the width of the Mahaweli river, arches are required. No arches means, less strong. The biggest vehicle traveling across the bridge is a motor cycle. But it is not a problem because the bridge is needed to connect the engineering faculty to the main campus. Otherwise, when a student studying at E-fac needs to come to the main campus, he needs to travel 4 km. But across this bridge, its only 200 m. Anyway, it is very rare for university students to ride a vehicle other than a motor bicycle.

Love? friendship? How do those words connect with this bridge? It is not a matter of who spends time from 4.00 pm to 12.00 am or more than that. He can see this with his own eyes. Normally, couples spend their time on the bridge till 8.00 pm. After this time, the "bamaru" comes with pots of honey (why shouldn’t I be frank) Students take drinks on the bridge. Not only boys, but girls can also drink on the bridge. They sing songs with guitars and bongos. Or they listen to songs using JBL. Or they are chatting over the night. I know what you are thinking now. There doesn’t always have to be liquor involved. Groups of girls and boys come at night because of the beauty of the night view that they see from the bridge. The beauty of the view increases by more than tenfold on Poya days. On those days, the youth are singing songs under the moonlight

Anyone can come to see the bridge in the daytime, but they can not come at night. There are no police officers to stop them, but some rules apply on the bridge. Outsiders can come during the day time but these outsiders do not know the rules, and they will cause problems. The students love this bridge and the culture associated with it therefore outsiders shouldn’t try to destroy it.