When I rode past the village co-operative store after arriving there, I saw quite a commotion and a lot of shouting and swearing; most of the words were strange to me. It was not my mother tongue. My father had always warned me to keep clear of crowds in public places especially if I sensed some trouble. But I had no way to by-pass the store so I pulled aside and waited till I found an opportune moment to get on my way.(October,05,Toronto, SriLanka Guardian)During my school days when I was still not a teenager, I remember cycling to the neighbouring village one Saturday morning. It was about three miles away on the other side of the fields where most of our village folks cultivated food crops and watched over their goats and cattle. It was a beautiful countryside to cycle with vast open lands on both sides and friendly people along the path warmly greeting me.
I was known in the village as the postmaster’s son and my father was very popular. He was a kind man and whenever someone in the village needed assistance, he would be there to help. My mum kept the house and took good care of the family. I had a younger brother and a little sister just past her crawling stage. My maternal grandparents lived a few houses away from ours.
My father's parents lived in another province, six hours by train. We often visited them and they would also do the same.
When I rode past the village co-operative store after arriving there, I saw quite a commotion and a lot of shouting and swearing; most of the words were strange to me. It was not my mother tongue. My father had always warned me to keep clear of crowds in public places especially if I sensed some trouble. But I had no way to by-pass the store so I pulled aside and waited till I found an opportune moment to get on my way.
Suddenly a rough kind of teenager came towards me and demanded who I was and what I was doing there? Before I could answer him, sensing obviously I was not from his community, he tucked at my shirt with a nasty huff and a puff and then spat at me shouting, “We don’t want you donkeys around here; get out of my village.”
He was probably about fifteen years old or even younger but had already got implanted with racist prejudices; the folks of his village and mine came from two different communities. He also swore at me and said he was the son of the grama sevaka, the nephew of the police inspector and his grandfather’s brother was a Member of Parliament. He would have certainly rattled off more connections but I was soon out of his way.
There are people who pride in announcing their connections at the slightest of provocation but then, even that may not be needed if they are the proverbial empty drums. Little did this guy realize that all those meant nothing to me. What if he was even the son of the Prime Minister of Sri Lanka?
Years later I used to reflect on this incident and wonder how some of us try to show off that we are important on what one may say, borrowed plumes and stolen feathers. How many of us develop our own values influenced by a sense of the moral and the spiritual? If we do that, we will be better human beings and a blessing to all those around us. And our country will be richer for it.
In later years this chap turned out into an opportunist politician. He always flirted with the party in power and strutted around like someone indispensable to the country and could depend on all kinds of officials to serve him on call. In a way, he blackmailed his way out to achieve whatever he desired using his connections.
But before all that, when he was still a young man, one evening he was stung by a deadly snake. The only person who could help him lived in my village. He was rushed to this village physician who was hardly lettered but he knew the snakes, their poison and the antidotes. This guy was in such a serious condition that except for the physician who saw a slim hope for his survival, all the others had given him up for dead. Back in his village even his funeral was being planned.
After a twenty-four watch he finally opened his eyes and a couple of hours afterwards was fit enough to return to his home. On the way out he greeted and thanked the physician in what little he knew of his mother tongue. That physician was my grandfather.
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