Bloody Hell, Appé Thel

by Gamini Weerakoon

(August 21, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) In the post Independence days when the UNP ruled the country, foreign oil companies—Shell, Caltex, Mobile Oil, etc., competed with one another to sell their products. Shell, the leading company had an advertisement with a picture of a playboy with a girl in an open sports car speeding along a road with the caption: Going well going Shell.

Today, we could have the same advertisement but with the car stalled on the road with the caption: Bloody hell, Appé Thel.

Reports are many of poor suckers whose cars have been ruined recently by pumping in adulterated petrol from Lanka Oil pumping stations. Last week there was a news report of a high judicial officer whose car had been ruined by Appé Thel. The report said that repairs had cost him around Rs 175,000.

Good record of Appé Thel

In fairness to Lanka Oil it must be said that since the heady days of socialism in the mid sixties when nationalisation of oil imports and distribution took place till the present day, Appé Thel did quite well. Sirima Bandaranaike and T. B. Ilangaratne set up the Petroleum Corporation that distributed oil and other products as well, as Shell and other companies did earlier. Anti socialist cynics predicted calamities such as what happened recently, cars stalled on the road with engines ruined but that did not happen. Alternate governments came in and went out but the Petroleum Corporation carried on regardless.

It happened only in this post- hedging period of the Petroleum Corporation in the era of Rajapaksa Republicanism.

Thinkers and Drinkers confer

At a meeting of the Thinkers and Drinkers Consortium the subject came up for discussion. A fundamentalist thinker dismissed the notion that a serious national calamity had occurred and blamed it all on the post colonial mind-set of present generations. His solution: If your car is stalled on the road, get it towed into a friendly garage. The friendly owner/manager of the garage will simply remove your carburetor and replace it with a carburetor of a similar car garaged for another defect.

If that does not work he will replace your ruined engine too with the engine of the car mentioned earlier. And hey presto, your troubles will be over for a few hundred rupees!

What of the owner of the car that was cannibalized, asked a conscientious thinker and drinker? The reply was: Simply get down a friendly insurance man who will certify that the car in question has been severely damaged in a head on collision. And Ab-ra-cada-bra – as the magicians say – the problem will be solved!

Bananas

That will be highway robbery. Little wonder Lanka is called a ‘failed state’ and a ‘Banana Republic’, the conscientious thinker and drinker shouted.

The Fundamentalist nonchalantly poured a beer for himself from his neighbour’s glass. ‘It all depends on your perception, your mind-set. Today, all states are failed states – even the USA is dead broke and cannot pay its bills. So is our former colonial master. London is in flames.

This term Banana Republic is a colonial invention continued to be spread by the neo-colonialists. Of course we are a Banana Republic – a Sovereign Independent Banana Republic. Are we not trying to grow 500 acres of Bananas on someone else’s land in Ampara for export?

Hallo, Hallo, shouted a UNP thinker from the other end of the table. I thought your Great Leader wanted to make Lanka the Miracle of Asia not a Banana Republic.

Fundamentalist: You UNPers cannot even hold a meeting at party headquarters. You start tarring the road to prevent the other side from coming in. Like the Big Match song of old he said, bursting into song:

Tar raare Tara poddu da

Mahapare Tara poddu da

Tarare tara podu

Mahapare tara………

At this stage the lights went out to the shouts of Ado Chump-ika.

Grease Yakka

The lights returned soon and some one said; must be the Grease Yakka at work.

The UNPer now in a belligerent mood shouted: You blame an imaginary Grease Yakka for everything. Do you want to bring in the STF here too? Tempers were rising and the conscientious thinker and drinker to ease the situation suggested: Do you think Sri Lanka should go for nuclear power? Then we will not have blackouts like this.

UNPer: What happens when your Einsteins mix Uranium 235 with Plutonium and fissile material accidentally, as it happened with imported petroleum and water? Not cars but the whole world will not only stall but blow up into smithereens.

At this stage further discussions of the Thinkers and Drinkers Consortium were postponed with the ringing of the closing time bell.