Beer with Namo Narayana

I have two hours left to board the Jaffna bus from Anuradhapura at 5 PM.

My day, so far, has been a disaster. With little to do but wait in the 35-degree heat, I decide to drown my sorrows in a cold beer. Anuradhapura is as familiar to me as Austin, Texas. I speak horrible Sinhala which is particularly problematic when you are an irreverent Tamil planning a quick gulp in the cultural capital of Sinhala Buddhist nationalism.

I spot a pot-bellied, middle-aged cobbler working quietly in a corner. I approach the dark skinned, round-faced, middle-aged man dressed in neat denims and a grey and black polo-shirt.

Langa restaurant nathang bar mona hari thiyanawatha?

‘Are you Tamil?’ he replies in Tamil without a hint of irony. The accent. It always gives the game away.

‘Yes.’

He points to a vacant spot adjacent to his workbench on the pavement. ‘Buy a beer from that liquor store, gulp it down from here. There are no restaurants close by.’ His face is smug.

‘Are you sure?’

He pushes aside a dirty rag to his right to reveal an empty Lion Stout bottle. ‘I just finished this bottle. I drink all the time. You don’t be afraid.’

He senses that I am decidedly unconvinced.

‘Nobody will touch you here. I am a Tamil. You think I will just stand by and watch you turn pulp? You go buy and come.’

I am unmoved.

‘Look, a beer is Rs. 400. At a restaurant you would have to spend at least Rs. 1500. Add Rs. 200 for taxi. Do the math.’ This is an irresistible argument for any Jaffna Tamil; particularly so for a purse-light, heart-heavy one.

I instantly grab a large can of Lion Stout from the liquor store — a stone’s throw away — and dutifully sit next to the man, feeling glad for the wonders of fleeting company minus future commitments.

‘Anna, are you from Anuradhapura?’

‘I am from Anuradhapura. My wife is from Vavuniya,’ as he carefully pierced a hideous looking synthetic leather sandal with a long awl.

His phone rings. I gather that it is his Vavuniya wife who is at the opposite end of the line. ‘She calls every now and then,’ he states with a smile after a brief conversation. ‘She’ll be here to pick me up from work in three hours.’

I crack open my beer can and sip in the cold and bitter liquid. ‘How long have you been working here?’

‘Fifteen years. I have worked out of this corner for fifteen long years.’ The wrinkles on his face sharpen, burdened by the passage of time.

A short, fair-skinned, cylindrical man arrives in a red scooter. I notice a crescent moon and star sticker on the rear mudguard. He drops a worn-out pair of flat-heeled plastic female footwear nightmare. The object appears wholly unusable. Then again, from a purely functionality perspective, even brand-new female shoes aren’t any better.

The client spots that I have a beer in my hand.

‘You will drink like this and just die,’ he remarks darkly.

That is the dream, Ismail.

The man who had assured that he would defend me with his life completely ignores this quip as he finishes up with the sandals.

Ismail and my acquaintance do a deep dive on cheap Indian footwear entering the local market. The former assures that the present ignominy he has brought to be repaired is merely the tip of the greater malady.

‘We bought this only six months ago. A similar Japanese pair I got for my wife lasted five years. No issues.’

‘Like Honda and Hero Honda only,’ my acquaintance shrewdly observes.

He rubs down his beer belly and sizes up the unenviable task ahead: of enacting a wearable out of disfigured dookie.

I pay scant attention to the rest of the chatter and focus exclusively on my stout. In the sweltering heat of Anuradhapura, the bitter-sweet taste of this creamy malt goodness lingers on my gustatory cells a few seconds longer. Lion Brewery Ceylon PLC deserves a Nobel Prize for ‘Inner Peace’. A more worthy candidate than Malala Yousafzai and Barack Obama put together, if you ask me.

Ismail bargains dirty for fifty rupees and, unsurprisingly, it is the cobbler who relents eventually.

As Ismail leaves, my company reaches out for a beedi — the poor man’s Marlboro — from the deep recesses of his denim pocket, flickers it up like Rajinikanth, and puffs at it thrice.

‘Fucker! Not worth the fifty bucks,’ he shouts after the disappearing Indian Suzuki.

‘Where do you live?’

‘Neeravi.’ Neeraviya.

‘Where is it?’

‘Near the Nachaduwa Tank. About 40 minutes by motorbike from the town. My wife drops me off and picks me up from here every day.’

‘I see. How many people live in the village?’

‘About 3000 families. All Tamil.’

‘Oh.’

‘There are Sinhalese too, but we are good.’

‘How long have you lived there?’

‘Since 2006.’

‘Ah. No tensions during the end of the war years? Between the Sinhalese and the Tamils, that is?’

‘No. We don’t have divisions. No religion. No race. They hammer us. We hammer them. All equality.’

If the fellow had chaired the LLRC, we might have actually made progress on the whole reconciliation thing as a country.

Two young women walk in. They need a handbag fixed; as always, a handle has come apart. He politely quotes a modest rate and schedules for the purse to be picked up in an hour.

He surveys the fake Louis Vitton, fiddles with the zipper, and violently shakes the bag upside down. Among ancient cookie crumbs and old receipts, a fossilised tampon pops out1. This cometh to pass, that the word might be fulfilled that is written in the laws, a female purse shall never be light.

I ask him how much he makes on a given day.

‘I make, on average, 3000 rupees.

Half a bottle of DCSL arrack — Rs. 900 Two bottles of Lion Strong — Rs.880 To the wife — Rs. 1220.’ ‘Ok. That’s not good,’ I say, burping unintentionally — well aware that I should be the last person to lecture anyone on booze budget : daily earning ratio.

He ponders upon his drinking habits briefly.

‘I am church. Wife is also church. But I don’t go to church anymore.’ It is always a natural progression from spirits to the spiritual.

‘Why not?’

‘Can fool you. Can fool the wife. Can fool the four children. But not God. The way I am, there is no point.’

Clouds part. Heaven opens. Rays of light reflect off the metallic chassis of the Indian Leyland bus leaving for Kandy. The broken handle fixes itself. In a parallel universe, far apart from us in space and time, His Eminence Cardinal Malcom Ranjith opens his Sunday sermon with the exact line.

‘Cheats, all these priests. There’s only one Jesus. But in Neeravi there are three Christian sects; only thirty christians,’ he notes. That is essentially the summary of Christianity’s brief history in South Asia.

I squeeze the last few drops off my beer can. The time is 4.30 PM.

‘I’ll take my leave anna. Thanks a lot,’ I blurt out — suddenly self-aware and sheepish about my past hour-and-a-half. I would later appreciate that this sense of embarrassment extends to the past year-and-a-half as well.

‘Sit down. There’s plenty of time. One can of beer is never enough. I will also start in fifteen minutes.’

I refuse the temptation and explain that I do not want to bother the passenger by my side on the journey.

‘Ok. Your loss.’

As I shift my weight from my fat ass to weak feet, it occurs to me that I have yet to ask for the man’s name.

‘What is your name, anna?’

‘Narayana. Namo Narayana. NaMo for short.’

  1. The line is inspired by this cartoon: https://wanna-joke.com/typical-woman-purse/ ↩