Sri Lanka is the country I happened to born in to for some reason. When I was young, they told me Sri Lanka is the best country in the world, there are no earthquakes, volcanoes or any natural disasters, there is Buddhism and most fabulous history behind us and therefore we are the pearl of the Indian Ocean and I born in Sri Lanka because I’m lucky. They told me those sort of things for 12 years, repeatedly, in the place call School that they forced me to go to and make me do awful things such as stand up under the sun every Monday morning or do math. That do not mean it is a bad place to be. I had the opportunity of involveding in things like making fun of girls, cricket or rioting. So it was fun.
Life outside school is unexpectedly deferent. I won’t say it is better – but it is deferent. For an instance, now if somebody whips you, you really can go to the police. A police constable will write down your complain in a large book after making you wait couple of hours inside the dingy police station. But waiting is not that boring; you get to watch all the drama going inside the place. If you get amused by things like watching a skinny
moonshiner getting manhandled by a police constable or a woman with a black eye telling about her husband, may be also happened to be a moonshiner, to another constable with a smirk on his face, that is a interesting place to be. You don’t have that kind of human rights to complain about been whipped, or been forced to stand up under the sun, when you are in the school. Not even right to choose your haircut or urinate without permission.
After all that, if your parents happened to have capable friends or relatives, you get to find a job relatively easily. If not, you may have to do further rioting and be a public nuisance, until government decide to make up some jobs, start paying you monthly using public money, for a job public absolutely not in need of. Even though it may sound difficult getting a job, it is not as difficult as getting to the job. Normally we hold on to a footboard of a fast moving Tata bus, and try protect exported vital body parts, such as the whole body from hitting a passing electric or telephone poles. The alternative to this daily adventure is buying your own car, which is quite possible once you work few years, but fuel price is beyond our daily affordable level. So we use our cars on more important life events such as going to arrange a marriage for the elder daughter, or washed, waxed and parked outside the house when prospective relatives visit the house on fact finding mission before decide on the marriage proposal.
Driving in Sri Lanka is not as bad as driving in other south Asian countries. Unlike in India or Bangladesh, we get to keep side mirrors and also we really use it too, usually when someone endlessly honking behind you, so he can overtake and stop front of you at the next traffic light. We use the horn in every possible reason we can think of, a single short beep is usually to thank other drivers or say hello. A normal one for just to alert your presence or request the way. A long one to accuse the driver, whom have just annoyed you, engaged in some sort of illegitimate relationship with his mother. If somebody start to honk behind you for no particular reason you can think of, most probably he want to alert something wrong with your vehicle, such as the door your mother-in-law forget to close properly or the part of her Sari hanging out of the door. Two short beeps usually means “you are cute” or “I like you” to a passing girl. I don’t know what we expected those girls to do when we men honk at them and drive away nonstop. We know they cannot run behind our cars and thank us for our generous nature, or say “I like you too”, but we do it anyway for our own amusement.
Nothing else can amuse us as much as Liquor does. Any day is a good day to get drunk, but Friday is the best day. Drinking in Sri Lanka need three elements. Liquor been the number one obviously, spicy food and good company are the rest. We are not specific about food, as long as it is spicy and have enough salt in it to cause an instant heart attack. But we are very picky about the company we are getting drunk with. We don’t do serious drinking with ladies or anybody else we don’t wish to expose our worst behavior. We don’t care where we get drunk; it can be under a tree, a restaurant, a friend’s house or grandmother’s funeral. Normally who ever the person thinks himself the most experience in this drinking business, opens the first bottle and drinking starts for the day or for the night or for the day and night. In the first half an hour of this activity, we engage in normal conversation such as about work or children. We complain about living cost and advice the friend whom thinking of buying a car. After soft subjects like that and few more drinks, we switch to deeper matters like politics. Express our deepest unhappiness about the president of the country, who ever happened to be at that decade. And we utter our suggestions what the president should do, or if it is the cricket season, how they should select players for the next game in Britain. Unlike British, we don’t consider speaking loud to our company is improper. It simply mean I'm making a point and I’m absolutely right. Laugh out loud as we can mean, we agree with the whatever the point someone just made. When we are drunk, we like to make lot of points and agree a lot, so that makes this whole drinking business a very loud affair.
There is three way to end any drinking event no matter how we started it. We can always end in Irish way, with a fight. All we have to do is disrespect one of our friends or just stand up with the glass in one hand and holding to a chair with other, declare somebody’s mother is a prostitute for no particular reason. Sri Lankans tend to forgive bad behavior when you are drunk, so people quite like to take the advantage of that excuse regularly. Second way to end up the event is, wait till one of your friend puke all over the place. This is a common ending among young people. But seniors tend to end their event quite differently. After talk about politics, they softly switch to more philosophical subjects like Buddhism. If you are a fan of philosophy, I suggest you to get drunk with senior people. They already passed the age of puke or fight for no reason, so they choose the only option left, go to sleep.
There are many more things I can write about life in Sri Lanka, but now I’m getting sleepy too, so I should leave rest of the things for some other day.
Labels: Life in Sri Lanka, Sri Lanka
