On 1 October 2021, Indian media and academia once again awakened from its sea-blindness to news coming through that India’s Adani Group has sealed a deal with the state-owned Sri Lanka Ports Authority (SLPA) to develop and run the strategic Colombo Port’s Western Container Terminal. Newsroom and academic circles once again began reveling in India’s new strategic heft in the island after a year of disappointing Indo-Sri Lanka bilateral relations. Understanding why the terminal deal is of high significance to India will require a brief description of Sri Lanka’s recent regional and global patterns of behavior that has been a cause of much frustration for New Delhi lately.