I was involved in solving problem for one of my friends. His Internet connection was screwed. When I checked his lap top it had 227 viruses!!!! The process to get his machine working again was tedious, I finally finished at about two in the morning. I was at the hotel where the guy works, so I had all the food I wanted and star class treatment. I was VVIP!!! It’s been long time since I got this kind of attention. Where everybody caters only to you, fuck the tourist this is our “Mahathaya”, Our Sir!!!
I got up late which is very unusual for me as generally I get up when I hear the birds singing. I went to the grocery store, or Kadde as we call it in Sinhala, to get bread, ambled along the streets I love, went to the beach, enjoyed the breeze and came back home. I was supposed to arrange my room, but I postponed it!!!!
My thoughts were about my Serendipity, who is very unhappy these days and I am powerless to do anything about it!!! I wonder sometimes if my impulsive nature has harmed the one person who encouraged and stimulated me to write.
I was sitting at the dining table watching AL JAZEERA when I heard my landlord muttering to himself and walking in the garden, my curiosity was aroused and I asked him what the problem was and if I could help. His reply “No you can’t” This intrigued me, so I came to the porch of my home and there was a huge machine and a minivan on the road. The whole bloody village had surrounded it!!! The person in charge was a lady and these jokers had come to install a communication tower in our playground!!!!!
I believe that I am blessed to witness events that very few people have an opportunity to observe and this drama qualifies as one of the best I have seen!!! There was a surreal atmosphere as my landlord walked with a “Kathe”, a sword of some sort, and comes up with the phrase I am so used to now and hear so often “Umbe Ammata Hukanawa kari vesi, (I will fuck your mother you cum prostitute)
The lady whom my landlord accosted was visibly trembling and I could sense her fear when she mumbled that she was sorry, and practically gathered her Sari (in Sinhala the term used is redda ussela) and quickly got back in the minivan. There were two males in the Van and they didn’t even get out of it!!! The Driver just reversed and got lost. The playground is used by adults and kids and the people of my village stood collectively to stop the desecration of the ground!!
The pride and victory in the village was evident as they dispersed. I thought of the Middle East and what happened to Mubarak in Egypt. I sense a growing feeling of dissent and discontent in my village!!!! They have been lied to so many times and as the old saying goes you can fool the people some of the time etc; People when pushed to the limit will revolt and the consequences in the absence of genuine and trustworthy leadership is horrific!!!. I witnessed it in 1983!!!
I hope this Nation matures; we all have a social responsibility to make sure that we hold our leaders accountable and the people we elect are sincere!! They are supposed to be for the people and civil society has to initiate action to ensure this. Unfortunately those who have the influence to do so don’t!!!! For them protecting their interests and singing Hosanna to the King is what matters.
The village was calm , when a man looking very confident walks up and tells my landlord that he didn’t want to bring his sword and chop the lady into bits as he didn’t want to incite any violence!! My landlord looked at him and said, in Sinhala, “you Mother Fucking prick you don’t have a sword your fucking wife sold it when she didn’t have money to buy bread and if you come and try to claim credit for what we did, I will cut your balls off!!!”
