SHORT STORY
“We meet all sorts of people in our lives and we have to put up with them. I felt sad for this guy. Later I learnt from the conductor that he was on the wrong train. He should have been on the Uda Rata Menike for he had a ticket to Uda Pussellawa.”
by Victor Karunairajan
(August 24, Toronto, Sri Lanka Guardian) The Yal Devi was running late that morning and we reached Polgahawela an hour behind not only because of the delayed start but just after Veyangoda there was a point failure. What it meant in railway language I did not know but the train was held up.
I usually carry some reading material when traveling on this sector between Colombo Fort and Jaffna, a scheduled seven hour and twenty minutes run; only rarely it got delayed. The Yal Devi and Uttara Devi were siblings who ran towards each other from Kankesanturai and Colombo but when they met at Anuradhapura, they would run away from each other and on the following day they went through the same ritual.
One morning I bought a copy of Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice from the station platform McCullam Book Store along with the morning’s Daily News most widely read because it carried a second page full of obituary notices.
In our time hardly anyone read features or books; they were quite at home with tittle-tattles and gossips. These sharpened their imagination too with all the garnishing they get on as these gossips move on from the wild to the wildest; even beyond. We still go by gossips, perhaps even more now than before aided by emails.
It was no surprise when Prime Minister Dahanayake had a headache in Temple Trees, in ten minutes Galle which he represented in the House of Representatives reported that the poor man had surgery for brain ulcer and it was time to look for a new prime minister. This was long, long before emails and the Internet. Jaffna reacted by reporting there was going to be an army coup.
Seated next to me was a late fifties gentleman and I soon learnt he was a Malayan pensioner but had lived in Singapore for sometime. Since I was reading the newspaper, he took my copy of the Merchant of Venice without the courtesy of permission and then asked me, “Is this your book?”
I said: “Yes,” but not quite politely. He fingered through a couple of pages and returned the book to its old position. He was curious to know what I was, who I was, where I was from and why I took the Yal Devi and not the Night Express.
Naturally, I was quite dumbstruck and without showing any emotion said I was a writer, a Vellala from Jaffna actually Sithankerny and I preferred the Yal Devi and not the Night Express. I gave the answer AK47 style hoping he would allow me to read the Daily News – not the obituary column of course – and then read the Merchant of Venice.
“So you are a writer and I am so happy to meet you. Did you write this book?” he asked pointing to the copy of Merchant of Venice.
“No, that was written by William Shakespeare some 500 years or so ago,” I said quite tickled by his question.
But for some strange reason he would not believe me. He kept insisting that I must have written Merchant of Venice. He was actually getting on my nerves and I did wonder why he was so foolish in insisting I wrote Merchant of Venice. His argument was that I was a writer therefore I must have written Merchant of Venice.
One may call this a presumptive rubbish syndrome.
But then something began to make me feel a bit queasy. During the long wait just after Veyangoda, he asked me why I was on the Yal Devi if I was going to Galle.
When I told him I was going to Jaffna and not to Galle, he looked a bit disturbed.
“No, you are lying, I saw you buying a ticket to Galle at the ticket counter.”
At least he was right here. I did buy a ticket for Galle as well because my friend was taking the Ruhunu Kumari that morning and was waiting on the station verandah for a mutual friend who was bringing us some breakfast from Ananda Bavan opposite the Fort Station.
But he wouldn’t believe me and then once again went back to Merchant of Venice.
“You are a writer, you must have written this book. You are lying.”
By this time I have had enough of this guy. I could not imagine the rest of the journey with him next to me, not all the way to Jaffna. I was really nonplussed as to what I should do with him. I could turn nasty but that would leave a sour feeling for the rest of my life. He probably was mentally deranged and was sent home from the Angoda Sanatorium believed as having been healed.
He did appear somewhat normal until he started repeating that I wrote Merchant of Venice.
Then it struck me. This guy was only complimenting me. Here he saw me as a writer and I was not reading the obituary column in the Daily News and it will be a rare person who will take a William Shakespeare play for light reading.
He did ask me whether it was my book!
And my answer was yes and he understood differently as if I had written it.
“Yes, Sir I did write this book but that was many, many years ago perhaps in another birth.”
“Praise the Lord,” he shouted in great glee. “So you are a Born again Christian.”
I really had enough of this guy and with the help of an understanding coach conductor got my sleeper seat changed to the other side of the compartment.
We meet all sorts of people in our lives and we have to put up with them. I felt sad for this guy. Later I learnt from the conductor that he was on the wrong train. He should have been on the Uda Rata Menike for he had a ticket to Uda Pussellawa.
Thank God, at least he was not a raving lunatic like the one who hammered me once for writing a feature on child abuse in a daily newspaper.
END
- Sri Lanka Guardian
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