Free Food and Compassion: Inside the Sri Lankan Tradition of Dansal

Rooted in Buddhist teachings, Sri Lanka's roadside dansal offer free food and drinks to strangers – and this year, amid rising costs and extreme heat, the tradition feels especially relevant.

When I was a little girl growing up in Sri Lanka, I always looked forward to the month of May. That was when my father and I would decorate octagon bamboo lanterns to celebrate Vesak – the sacred day marking the birth, enlightenment and death of the Buddha – and when the first dansal of the season would appear on the streets.

Dansal are Sri Lanka's roadside generosity stalls: makeshift kiosks and improvised counters where people offer food, drinks and other essentials to passersby, free of charge. Rooted in the Buddhist practice of dana – giving without expecting anything in return – they pop up during poya, the island's monthly full-Moon holidays, most typically during the festival season from May to July.

The dansal of my childhood are etched in my memory: men and women dressed in white queuing for boiled cassava; children waving large flags to stop passing vehicles; and tiny cups of sweet passionfruit drinks being passed around when public buses crawled to a stop.

But this year, the tradition feels particularly resonant.

In recent months, temperatures across parts of Sri Lanka have climbed as high as 39C, while long dry spells have strained water supplies in some urban areas. At the same time, fuel, electricity and food costs have risen sharply following energy price hikes earlier this year, making daily life harder for many Sri Lankans.

Against that backdrop, even small acts of public generosity carry new weight. As more people have been forced to walk or rely on public transport just as Colombo's sweltering March temperatures arrived, businesses across the capital tapped into the spirit of dansal by setting up free drinking-water stalls for passersby. Just before the Sinhala and Tamil New Year in April – one of the country's biggest festivals where families gather for week-long celebrations – biscuit company Munchee distributed 25,000 train tickets at Colombo's railway station to ease the financial burden of holiday travel.

"You'll see more practical dansal [now], like handing out rice and vegetables," says Joanne Louise, a British traveller who spends several months of the year in Sri Lanka with her Sri Lankan husband. "Since the heat wave, people now feel it is more important to look after each other."  During Vesak this year, local communities are also offering free notebooks for students and handing out dry rations for pregnant women.

Author: Zinara Rathnayake, BBC

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