SHORT STORIES
Real Life Stories
These are my own experiences, sometimes distinguished by absurd situations. Some stories may sound weird, some ridiculous and a few confusing but each one stands out as different.
“…what is true lies between you and the idea of you — a friction between the fact and the fiction”
[01] Kolamba Sanniya
If I remember right, the year was 1992. The new Airbus A320s had arrived and Air Lanka had organized one of those froufrou cocktail events at the Oberoi Hotel -Now Cinnamon Grand.
Unfortunately, as the wife of the MFO there was no chance of me reporting sick for the event.
I plodded along — like a cow destined for slaughter.
The event was being held at the South lawn of the Oberoi.
Just as I began to admire the venue, I realized that my right stiletto heel was quietly sinking — through the well-manicured turf. Maintaining my fake smile I managed to quietly wriggle the damn heel out, only to realize that now the bloody left heel was sinking in!
By now the Kolamba sanniya crowd — almost entirely made up of the ‘Hooi’ magazine types — were arriving. But thankfully they were too busy trying to get noticed by the media persons and were not aware of my predicament.
Leaving the ‘wanna be’ elites to hobnob and get fraternized in the ‘sanniya’ society of Colombo; I bravely lumbered — unshackling one stiletto at a time until I found some firm ground under a frangipani tree. Groan! My calf muscles were aching so much — that in the next coupla minutes I fantasized about killing the Italian butcher who designed the damn stiletto!
As my fantasy began to fade, I watched a man walking towards me… he was bald, bespectacled, middle-aged, a drink in his hand and dressed very simply. I had never seen him before.
“Do you mind if I stand here with you?” he asked.
“Sure uncle”
Together we watched as the hoi polloi scrambled to mark their social register. Some Aunties dressed to the nines were emitting hints via a forced frequency — to ensure their admission to the yuppie club of Colombo.
“Tell me. What do you do at functions like this?” the uncle asked me.
“Well… from what I know, you are supposed to move from person to person or groups of persons and talk to them” I said.
“Hmmmm… talk? What kind of talk?”
“Well uncle… It’s usually small talk. You have to interact with the people …dropping driblets of bull shit as you move around” I said.
“Oh! Then I think I will stay here… if you don’t mind” he said.
No doubt we were both water-less fish! We certainly didn’t belong to the cocktail-circuit of Lanka.
Uncle and I watched as the third-tier models serenaded past us. Suddenly he showed me a guy doing the rounds among the crowd.
“That person is our MFO. I wonder what he is talking about so much with everybody” he said.
“Ahhh..Well that is my husband. He has mastered the art of small talk” I said.
“So, Chira is your husband?”
“Yep”
“Well, It was a pleasure to meet and talk with you. I’m Dunstan Jayawardana. Chairman Air Lanka!”
[02] The Border Patrol Antithesis
CANADA
Just after a scheduled flight to Vancouver one day, we had driven down to the Boeing Factory in Seattle — for the day. There were 10 of us in a van, proceeding along Interstate 5 to return to Douglas. We reached the’ Blaine Peace Arch’ and pulled over for the border check.
A cheerful agent approached us. Quite surprised at the motley crew inside the transport, he asked us the usual stuff like where we were from and where we were heading etc. As the agent approached me, I casually placed my tattered stack of burgundy coloured passports on his open palm.
Confused to see three passports bound together, he kept flipping through the pages several times, fast and abruptly, pausing intermittently to look at me.
“Why do you have so many travel documents?”
“There are valid visas in them”. I went on to explain how the passport pages are always used up way before the passport expiry date and that a new passport has to be obtained when this happens.
Then excusing himself very politely, the man walked inside the customs building with my passports! Just when I began to imagine the worst, he returned with several other young border patrol officers.
“These are my trainees” the Officer introduced the others to me. “I’d like to show these visas to them. Can we ask you some details about your visas?.. I hope you don’t mind. It’s not everyday that we get the chance to see such a range of visas from around the globe”
Although it seemed like an eternity, I enjoyed explaining every page of my Passports to them. At the end, every one of them thanked us profusely, for our time.
USA BORDER
“…aaaaaah wheyraaa u fawks awff to today?” …
“New York” I said, confidently opening my passport to the page which read, USA visa -5 year-multiple entry. The humongous African American woman paused at one of the Middle East visa pages and raised one eye-brow.
“Jordan. What were you doing over there?”
“We hired the Royal Jordanian Airlines flight simulator for pilot training. I stayed in Amman for two weeks”
“Why dya wanna use their simulator? Why can’t you use ya own one?”
“We don’t have one. It’s rather expensive to own one.”
The woman flipped on, seemingly unsatisfied. Then to her horror (and mine) she found the visa stamps of other Islamic countries.
“Aww man aww man awww… Jeree ..Jereeeee…you wanna take a look at this here?” She invited her colleague …another red-neck.
“What is your “connection” with these Arab countries?” the man asked me.
“Just travel and work.”
“What kind of work?”
“Teaching mostly” I responded, extremely careful not to mention anything aviation related. (The woman had already forgotten my initial Royal Jordanian story)!
“So they don’t have teachers in these Arab countries?”
I didn’t answer.
If they would have leafed through more carefully, they would have found a multitude of European, Schengen, Russian, Australian stamps. But right now they were perplexed by the Arabic calligraphy!
“What country is this?”
“ That’s a Bahrain visa”. Flip. …that’s Egypt, that’s Kuwait. Flip. ..” that’s Lebanon … Morocco. Flip. Flip. Flip. “ … Oman… Qatar … Saudi Arabia … United Arab Emirates’’
“Where da ya live?”
“I currently live in Victoria British Columbia..Im in Uni there”
“Where da ya live when yeuuuu away fraam University?”
“I live in Singapore”
“Singaaaaapo?..Then whaaay da ya have ay stack’ o passports from … lemme see… Democratic …Socialist… Republic … Sri Lanka?”
“My country of domicile is Sri Lanka but I’m a resident of Singapore”
“Hmmm… we see clusters of arrival and departure stamps from Sri Lanka, Indoneeeesia? Bruuu…nei? Malayasia? Can you explain them?”
“Yes. I work in these countries. I commute from Singapore”
The African American woman held my passports to her chest and stared at me. “What da hell kind of works that?”
She yelled at her colleague. “Jennieeee… Jennieeee… over here!…take a look at this fairy tale ‘ere” “…haaaaa haaaaa haaaaa ….so honey, you reeeely wanna carry on with your tales?… we don ‘av da time for this…
They escorted me to another area…. And this time they wanted me to stop bullshitting and speak the ‘truth’… they wanted to know every “detail”!
I remembered what the Buddha said about arguing with a fool.
I told them the ‘truth’ they wanted to hear, conning my way without flicking an eyelid. Straight face, scoring all sixes and fours, I batted so confidently that I began to believe my own lies!
The morons released me after about two hours.
[03] Sarong Pilot
HOW I DISCOVERED WICKRAMARACHCHI MILLAWALAGE DON JOHN PAULIS APPUHAMY
It was in 1995 that our student pilot Gimara met me to get her log book endorsed. While chatting she suddenly asks me,
“Akkiyo have you heard of a pilot who flew in a sarong?”
“What? In a sarong” Nope never heard.
“He flew here, in Ratmalana in the 1950s. He’s my mother’s uncle.”
What? been in this airfield for almost a decade. Nobody has ever mentioned such a person”
“Akkiyo his name was Paulis Appuhamy. I will take you to his house if you are interested”
And… that is how Paulis Appuhamy was ‘re-introduced’ to the people of Sri Lanka by Gimara and me 25 years ago!
No sooner than Gimara spoke to me, I tried to contact our Aviation Historian Roger Thiedeman. But the response was somewhat lethargic at the time. So, we decided to do an initial recce and visit the home of Paulis in Attanagalla — a sprawling 35 room habitat.
The wife of Paulis Appuhamy narrated the story of her late husband — the first, and only, Lankan pilot to fly a plane dressed in sarong. Paulis had become interested in flying a plane from the time J.P Obeysekera ferried an aircraft to Ceylon in 1946.
From humble beginnings to heady heights, Paulis had amassed his wealth as a bus mudalali. He owned a fleet of buses. But he wanted to do something different. Something exciting like flying a plane.
Paulis Appuhamy’s wife showed us his logbooks and his Private Pilot’s Licence which he obtained on 5th October 1953. He trained on the Tiger Moth and later advanced to the Chipmunk at the Ceylon Air Academy in Ratmalana which was set up In November 1950 by the government of Ceylon, during the tenure of D. S. Senanayake. Significantly, it was the very same premises that I flew the Upali Aviation C152 from; during the late 1980s.
Contrary to the belief that many of the student pilots at the time were from wealthy, upper-class English-speaking families, there were quite a few Sinhala speaking students, from somewhat scanty backgrounds who were very good airmen despite their lack of English skills. Some of these student pilots did two jobs to earn their flying fees, according to the wife of Paulis Appuhamy.
Paulis actually did know the English language. He perfectly understood English but was rather shy and worried about speaking the language. Since Aviation English was advanced — with many unfamiliar words than the normal conversational English, Paulis decided to brush up his English skills prior to embarking on his flying lessons.
Thus, the reason that Paulis stood out from the other students was purely because of his attire — the sarong, belt, shirt, coat and sandals — the latter which he discarded before getting into the aircraft. Apparently, he found it easier to apply rudder when flying bare feet!
Students would fondly harass him with the term ‘MahadenaMutta’ simply because he tied his hair at the back in a knot. But he despised the moniker ‘Redde asse Mahattaya’ when he sometimes wore pants under his sarong.
Paulis gave up flying in 1955 to revive his declining business.
Breaking barriers of social demarcations that detached the Ceylonese people by their attire or lingo, Paulis blazed a trail that only Kudagammana Dhammarathana Thero dared to follow in the 1980s.
[04] Abandoned to Die
Was everything peaches and cream when he was born to this wealthy family? No. Not by any stretch of the imagination. Dushan was born into a struggle that lasted nearly three decades. There are no photographs of him. Nobody except the few immediate family have seen him.
The Captain possessed the ‘curse of empathy’ the day Dushan was born — totally deformed in every respect both mentally and physically. He was born sans limbs, and his chin had not finished forming so his face was a little sunk. His gag reflexes were inoperative. He was almost 30, and that in itself was a miracle.
I first heard about the Captain’s ‘other’ son via a distorted chain of Chinese whispers that the aviation fraternity is notorious for, and curiosity made me dig further into this story. The few details I uncovered were rather disturbing. The captain’s nephew who happened to be my student at the time, confided “…Ma’am, when Dushan was born with deformity, Bappa immediately decided to move him to a place away from Colombo — straight from the hospital. Thankfully they did not put him in an institution.”
When I first set eyes on Dushan, it gave me goosebumps. I immediately saw the resemblance to his father. The most telling feature, the one that clearly identified him as the Captain’s son, was his high forehead and round face. The boy had been given his fair share of comforts in an old but decent two-room ocean-front house in Wadduwa. This brought a measure of relief. There was also a full-time caregiver for Dushan. Thus, at the least, one wrong had been righted.
Back in Baddegana, a suburb of Colombo, the Captain was hosting an expensive birthday bash for his eldest son, also a pilot. Their plush suburban home was swarming with admirers of the father-son pilot duo as well as those who were overwhelmingly supportive of their ‘Sinhalese Buddhist’ affiliations. The hostess breezed past me a number of times, totally unaware that I had visited her abandoned son a few days before.
A year later, my encounter with Dushan’s parents and brother at the funeral parlour or ‘Mal Salawa’ ‘ in Panadura was an uneasy episode. Apart from the three family members I was the only outsider present at the parlour. I watched as they maintained their silence, staring at the sealed child-size casket. Did I notice a hint of relief in their drawn faces?
[05] Julius
I first heard of “Julius” at the Royal — Thomian Cricket Match last year.
Julius had been a derelict with long untidy matted hair, shabby clothes and a glass of alcohol always in hand. But he never missed the Royal-Thomian big match until the day he died. Apparently, during the big match, he was seen staggering around the Oval grounds carrying the College flag and singing the College song much to the delight of the young and old boys of STC. He was also a familiar sight at the Mustangs tent, where he fished for any cash handouts — for his booze!
But what nobody knew was that this vagabond was a genius scholar of S’ Thomas College and the son of one of the first Ceylonese doctors on the island. The true story of his persistent craving for hooch which eventually landed him on the streets, a virtual beggar, was lamentable.
Julius was a very prominent bar-fly and his conversation at pubs, which was always educated and cultured (until he became incoherently drunk) amply paid for the drinks he scrounged!
Back in the day, Julius and his contemporary at college SWRD Bandaranaike, had been a common sight at the big match; the immaculately dressed Premier and the shabby vagrant, both seated together, swapping yarns!
EPISODE 1👇
One day Julius had been binge drinking with his buddies, who were recklessly generous that day, as it was payday. There was much singing and shouting at the bar, and Julius joined with gay abandon. At closing time his friends made their way homeward while Julius insisted on staying back.
Having no other alternative, the bartenders tried to boot him out; but what they did not know until it was too late was that they were dealing with a former ‘Stubbs Shield Boxer’.
Soon the Police were summoned and Julius was locked up.
Next morning, still drunk, he was produced in court.
Just as he was unceremoniously pushed into a Court Cell, Julius casually glanced at the bench and his face became wreathed with a smile of pure pleasure.
“ Hey Wije, You old coot” he called out gaily.
The Magistrate looked up — startled.
“Good Heavens, JULIUS!”
[The Magistrate was N.A. de S Wijesekera, Julius’s classmates at STC]
EPISODE 2 👇
Once Julius had gone to the Kalutara Courts to get a loan from a young lawyer pal. As usual he was quite drunk, and when a Constable on duty refused to allow him in, Julius became abusive. A noisy altercation followed, which disturbed the court proceedings. Julius, who was dressed in a filthy torn singlet, an equally filthy sarong, a four day growth of beard and unkempt hair, was hauled up before the Judge.
The furious judge berated him in Sinhalese and asked him why he should not be sent to Jail for “Contempt of Court”.
“ Your Honour” said Julius in English “ The quality of mercy is not strained, it droppeth as gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath. It is twice blessed” ….and in a mellifluous tone without a single error, he recited ‘ Portia’s Courtroom speech’ from Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice”.
The entire court listened spellbound and the judge gazed in amazement at the disrespectable looking tatterdemalion reciting Shakespeare.
When Julius finished his peroration, the Judge asked hoarsely, “ My God! Man, Who ARE you?”
Julius’s lawyer friend then rose to his feet and gave the judge a brief outline of the man’s background; after which the Judge turned to Julius. His eyes heavy with sorrow and compassion he told Julius “ You may leave”.
As Julius turned out of the court house gate, a peon came panting up and said “නඩුකාර හාමුදුරුවෝ දෙන්න කිව්වා “ (His Honour asked me to give this to you).
It was a Fifty rupee note!
[06] Being Cocky
The year was 2000. I was in Uni in Victoria Canada and was researching Sustainable Development. But as usual I kept digging deeper; until I ended up in a totally different sphere — Maritime Health! I was too lazy to read the abstract of an article; but was rather curious when I saw the name of the author. ‘Wickramatillake’. I wrote to the person on the abstract link and almost fell off my chair when I got a response from my grandfather’s protégé Uncle Wicks!
Four years after that Google search encounter, I was flying Prof Wicks on a recce along the East Coast of Sri Lanka on 27th December 2004, the day after the devastating Tsunami. The 10 years that followed since that flight, was an amaranthine rollercoaster ride for us, an exclusive team of 6, working with Prof Wicks.
Despite the load he carried as Principal Investigator, Prof. Wicks always found the time to laugh. In our line of work we constantly witnessed untold suffering and disasters; yet each demanding day ended with side splitting hilarious pranks and humour.
My first year as a neophyte under Prof Wicks was suffused with boisterous antics. I became cocky because he was known to my family. He also knew my husband from S Thomas College days at Mount Lavinia. Thus my early unruly behavior seriously embarrassed Prof Wicks time and again. Then one day he called me into his office.
“Get ready for a Sexual and Reproductive Health program” he said.
“Ok sir. For whom sir?”
“Bankers” he said, calmly stroking his beard.
“When are you planning to conduct it sir?”
“Who said I’m conducting it?”
“Then who will do it sir?”
“You” he responded without taking his eyes off the laptop screen.
“ME!!?? Bu..bu…bu..but what do I know about SRH?” I yawped in horror.
“What you learned in the past one year. You either know it or you don’t. Check the Multimedia and be ready for the transport at 0800 Friday. Program starts at 0900 at the Bank of Ceylon auditorium”
“Holy mother of Moses! Sir..sir… please..”
My pleading went unheeded. Friday came and I conducted the program, batting like an SRH Pro — no holds barred. Or like the Sri Lankans say “Dunna Asti Halenna”. The conservative audience was stunned to silence. At the end of the session, a lady walked up to me “My God you are so brave to do such a program… Oh My God I would have died!”
Artfully and tactfully Prof Wicks taught me a great lesson that day.
RIP Prof Hemantha Wickramatillake. Your catchphrase is still scribbled in my diary.
“Medicine is not only about Hospitals”
[07] Murder on Airport Road
On that moonless night in September 1995, I was returning to the Joseph Frazer hospital, where Chira was recuperating. I sluggishly pulled out of our dwellings on Airport Road in Ratmalana, just by the large Bo tree where I had gone to pick up some fresh clothes for Chira.
It was around 2300 hours. The road was covered with a layer of mist and there weren’t many street lights ‘on’ at the time. I switched on the beam for better visibility and drove abeam the fence of the Bata shoe factory when suddenly the shadows of some men on the road caught my attention. They were hacking what seemed like a massive log of wood.
“Who the hell would be chopping wood at this ungodly hour?” I thought as I slowed down squinting, rubbernecking and winding the shutter down for a better view.
I froze. The vehicle froze.
The heaving, breathing, huffing men were hacking to death a man in a blood -drenched grass patch on the roadside by a sleazy motel down the road. There was no sound from the victim who was a heavyset man with a huge belly and wide open bulging eyes. The man was probably dead long ago.
There was only the groaning of the killers in the lapping of the silence down Airport Road. I must have gone bonkers to stop and watch this entire sickening episode!
Suddenly one man started to walk towards me!
I sprang into action. Switching off all lights in the vehicle, I accelerated blindly and sped like a bat out of hell, heaving a sigh of relief only when I saw the AirForce sentry at the top of the road.
The rest of my driving all the way to Colombo was erratic. Going into skids, my tires were shrieking like Janice from the sitcom ‘Friends’!
Now and then would appear the shuttered junctions of Mount Lavinia, Dehiwala and Wellawatte with ample streetlight.
I was full of bad conscience for not reporting this to the nearest Police Station. But gripping the steering wheel I was caught in a monstrous negotiation with my conscience. I began to think… What if those murderers were politically connected? What if they were persons elected by the masses into the parliament of Sri Lanka?
My conscience ordered me to suspend all logic.
[08] Thomians Rich N Poor
My ramshackle RAV4 went into auto drive mode and parked itself at the newly opened ‘BreadTalk’ outlet at Ratmalana. Hanging around at Auto Miraj in the morning had deprived my intestinal parasites of their daily nutrients.
Being the only customer at the time, I stared aimlessly at the Galle road as I bit into the overpriced substandard vegetable roll. Soon my attention focused on my vehicle outside.
A man was scrutinizing the stickers at the back of my jeep.
I then watched him ramble in, crumpled ‘tulip’ polythene bag in hand. I passed a mere glance at the stocky visitor who asked the staff if he could use the washroom.
Just when I was contemplating on how to shift from my earthly world to the metaphysical world, a voice from behind me asked “Machan are you a Thomian?”I looked back. It was him. I smiled politely. “No. It’s a boys school”
“Ooooh Ooooh Aiyyum soooo sorry Aiyyum sooo sorry”
His breath reeked of tobacco.
“That’s ok. Why did you ask?”
“Ah.. huh I saw the sticker at the back of your vehicle”
“Oh that one… yes my husband was at STC” — and the usual Sri Lankan chat began.
Somewhat vague about his family details, he narrated stories of his college days at STC; eyeing my tray of food all the while.
“Would you like to join me for some lunch? It’s on me” I interrupted.
“Oh that’s very kind of you… can I select anything I want?”
I watched as he gobbled the contents on his tray.
I realized that the wanderer was feeling a sense of alienation and isolation. He was born in 1961 and it was too late for him to work on a new life lesson. I knew it the moment he asked me for a ‘smaaahl loan’… smaaahl ‘financial assistance’… I will pay you back as soon as I …”
I gave him a thousand rupee note and departed saving his number as ‘Do Not Answer’
It was somewhat odd to meet a ‘poor’ beggar — in Sri Lanka!
“Thomians young and Thomians old,
Thomians Rich and Poor!
One chum bagged while the other one fagged,
Though they both robed Black and Blue”
Esto Perpetua!
[09] The Vowel Quagmire
My maternal Grandpa Willie was a self-appointed champion of the working class. Born in the Southern town of Kathaluwa Ahangama, Willie was the third in a family of six siblings. In the 1920s the descendants of Muhandiram Abeygunasekara migrated to the cooler climes of Hanguranketha — following in the footsteps of their close relatives. But as fate would have it, eight year old Willie and his siblings soon became orphans when both their parents died under tragic circumstances — just a few years after their migration to Hanguranketha.
The orphaned children were ‘reluctantly’ adopted by their relatives and Willie grew up with his uncle at Rikillagaskada while his siblings were scattered among relatives in Hanguranketha, Dehipe and Padiyapelella.
Willie had his early education at the ‘Potgul Maliga Rajamaha Viharaya’ in Hanguranketha. Being treated as a second class citizen in his foster family, Willie didn’t stand a chance to attend Trinity College Kandy — a reputed school — like his privileged cousins. However, his uncle Eddie — who went on to become a Member of Parliament for the Nuwara Eliya district post colonial administration — observed that the boy was turning out to be a handsome sort and became keen to teach the boy some English.
“Oya koluvawa havasata mey paththe evapan ingreesi tikka ugannala yavanna”
[send the boy this way in the evenings so I can teach him some English] Eddie Abeygunasekara casually told his cousin.
But the discipline that followed the English lessons was way too harsh for young Willie. Each time he mispronounced an English word he would have to stand on one leg with his books balanced on his head for an undetermined period of time depending on the mood of his uncle Eddie. Like most Sinhalese natives, Willie always messed up his vowel application ‘O’. He was punished more often than not for mispronouncing ‘Nose’ as Norse or ‘Boy’ as ‘Bowyi’.
“I-say meka maha puduma wedak neh! Thamuseta ‘norse’ kiyanna puluwannam ‘boy’ kiyanna beri mokada miniho?”
[if you can say ‘norse’ why can’t you pronounce the same ‘aw’sound’ in the word ‘boy’] Ole Eddie just couldn’t fathom Willie’s vowel quagmire!
This is a story ole Gramps Willie often enjoyed narrating to us.
