The Perfect Con?

For over a week I've known that I'll be writing this post. I've thought about it a lot and some have heard the story directly. It's one of those tales that, in all likeliness, won't survive the translation, mostly because it's me that's doing the translating.

I'm sure Ashok Ferrey or JK Rowling would be able to tell you this story and make it sound as fascinating in words as it was in real life. Mind you, if I was JK Rowling I'd probably have far better things to write about, like wizards and how much money I've made. If I was Ashok Ferrey I'd be writing about that bloke with the squinty eyes who was looking at me strangely at the airport on Sunday, the chap with the little Odel bag full of model tri shaws and some drum sticks poking out of his bag.

Those proper writers would give you a big build up and then hit you with the twist at the end.

I won't though. The fact is that I was conned and here's how it happened.

Friday before last saw me and C heading down to Hikkaduwa for the weekend. We were doing the slumming it thing, two rucksack type bags, not a laptop in sight, the most basic of clothes and we were off. I was travelling so light that I contemplated going without my L'Oreal mens' moisturiser, but a chap has limits.

At the appointed time we arrived at Fort railway station. This was particularly handy as we'd decided to go by train, I wouldn't want you to think we'd just gone there randomly. We headed for the ticket booth thing, fending off a couple of those touty type chaps who hang around, and bought our tickets.

I like to think of myself as a bit of a wise Sri Lankan Kalu Suddha fellow. I know that these chaps, the ones who hang around places like stations, rock fortresses and hotels with "International" buffets can smell tourists with the all the keenness and skill of T being blindfolded and put in a room and told to find a member of Thriloka. So I try to bat them off like flies, as if I had one of those tennis racket insect swatting devices these blokes are selling at the roadsides everywhere.

You, who probably live in Sri Lanka, probably don't notice the fads with the roadside sellers as it's just part of your day to day existence. I see the changes everytime I come there. I recall when the inflatable things became trendy and for the life of me can't figure out why Lanka is litterred with roadside stalls selling the things. In recent weeks I've seen these chaps with their fake tennis rackets. It took me a few days to realise what they actually are as at first I thought they really were tennis rackets, which to be frank with you, confused the hell out of me.

There we were, at the Fort station. After purrchaysing the tickets we realised we had quite a long wait ahead of us. The train wasn't due for about an hour and a half and, for once, it wasn't my fault we were so early. The time we had been initially given for the train was wrong and the train we were going to catch was running late. C so wanted to be angry with me but she couldn't, how cool was that?

We hung around, took photographs, drank Elephant House cream soda and had a cool but hot time. At one point a bloke materialised next to us and made some signs. I looked at him in a clueless, gormless and helpless way. C, being the highly intelligent and developed person that I'm not, said that he was talking in sign language. She tried to answer him and told me that he was one of the chaps at the ticket booth earlier. He was smartly dressed and seemed intent on helping us by showing us where to stand on the platform and how to get the train and all.

He was deaf and dumb.

We chatted for a bit. Sign language isn't one of my skill sets and talky soundy language wasn't one of his, but we managed. We used a pen to write my name and C's name on his hand, though I must stress that he offerred said hand, I hadn't just grabbed it and started writing on it. To tell us his name he pulled out an ID card of sorts. It told us that his name was PK Priyantha and that he was registered deaf and unemployed.

He seemed nice enough and once we'd got our spot I slightly reluctantly offerred him a couple of hundred rupees, as a thank you and I'm sorry you're deaf, dumb and unemployed kind of gesture. He steadfastly refused the money and then disappeared. I felt bad and warm. Here was a chap trying to help us for no reward, just pure and genuine kindness I thought and he'd even appeared insulted at my offer of money.

He had gone off empty handed with only the satisfaction of helping us. If there had been a nun around I would have kissed her and skipped a bit. There wasn't and, for some reason I had the Who's Pinball Wizard running through my head all the time. I'm not sure if nuns like the Who.

We continued our wait and PK was nowhere to be seen. Then he materialised, like he'd been beamed there from the USS Enterprise. He started up a conversation again, asking where we were from, whether we were married, where we live and all that. And then he was gone again.

About five minutes before the train was due PK was beamed down again. He showed us exactly where to stand on the platform. As the train pulled in I was amazed at the way in which the inoffensive looking other passengers on the platform were transformed into hustling, bustling and rather violent stampeding cattle. We Brits like a good queue and rarely is a day complete for me without a queue or two, often with only me in it.

I wrestled with my rucksack (with L'Oreal moisturiser inside), my girlfriend and my British "sorry, no really, after you, I'm sorry" attitude. Whilst I was busy doing all this wrestling other chaps were pushing their way past me to get in the train and get a seat. In my peripheral vision I saw my old mate PK Priyantha shoot passed me, with the speed and agility of a leopard chasing a pack of Sri Lankans coated in a meat flavoured paste onto a train.

I did the gallant thing and let C fend for herself as I got on the train. All the seats were taken, except the two that were being guarded and shielded by PK. I grabbed one and C followed some minutes later with the bags and things. It was apparent that PK had jumped aboard and saved a double seat for us. Kind no?

We made ourselves as comfortable as poss and again I tried to give the saintly fellow some money. Again he refused. My God I thought, kindness reigns supreme yet there still wasn't a nun in sight.

Just as the train was leaving we said bye to PK. He wanted nothing, he was just happy to help.

Then, he pulled out a newspaper cutting and showed it to me. It was one of those sports pages from a newspaper, the type with out of focus pictures of school sports teams when they've won something, where you can't actually make out the faces but mothers all around the country carry round in their purses with pride.

He showed me a picture. There was some sort of caption that said the name of a deaf school. He pointed to one of the faces, indicating that it was him. I smiled, thinking that he was proud and wanted to show me this before he left.

He pulled out another bit of paper, an A4 sheet this time. It had a handwritten list of names on it. They were white names. They were in blue though, not white. By each name there was an amount and a country. These were the people who'd "donated" to his school. I peered at the list.

The last line said that Eric Larsen from Sweden had donated Rs 4000. The line before said that Mark Weston had given Rs 2000. Well I was too smart for this sort of thing. A deaf school maybe, a deaf and dumb bloke maybe, but I wasn't falling for all this.

I wrote down my name in my worst handwriting. I put "UK" as my address and, in the "amount" column, I rather scrappily wrote Rs 200. I'm a local I thought, and we don't get done like this do we?

I sheepishly handed over my Rs 200 with the list, feeling embarrased but brave, small but big.

Then C said, in that way.

"I think you should give him a thousand bucks".

So I did, but not without making sure I'd changed the figure on his sheet to reflect it and also making my writing a bit neater so that the next person would see my name properly. PK took the money and the list then cheekily gave it to C to see if she'd give some too. Then he was gone.

As the journey progressed we both thought about PK. Over the next few days we realised something that is now so obvious; we'd been totally and beautifully conned. Every step, every bit of the episode was a part of it and I didn't know whether to feel lucky to have witnessed it or foolish to have been done.

Let's go back.

He wasn't even deaf. The way in which he had known we were going to Hikks can only have been from hearing it when we bought the ticket. He never asked where we were going but knew anyway.

In order to show his name he showed his ID card. Nope, this was an excuse to show that he was deaf and unemployed, to gain sympathy. Otherwise he would have written his name on his or my hand, like I had done to him.

His sign language wasn't real. It was a pidgin version of sign language, using symbols to make us understand, more like charades than sign language. And he added sound effects. I'm no expert but I don't think dumb people can make plane noises.

His turning down of previous offers of cash and frequent vanishing acts made us think he was the real thing. Then, the piece de resistance was his timing as he got off the train. He made us think he was in a rush to go, so we had to think quickly and deal with the guilt. He didn't even say that we were giving a donation to his school, he just implied it.

So that's what happened.

If you're at Fort station and a deaf fellow comes and helps you beware, it may be him.

Deaf and dumb?

He wasn't deaf, he wasn't dumb.

But he sure played a mean pinball...

The Drummer's Still Around

Dinidu put out an APB and I'm touched by his concern and care. I'm still here and have been quite busy doing bits and pieces. I'll tell you all, well some of all, not that 5% that I reserve for special people. And by "special" I don't mean the ones who had one of those buses with a ramp that used to take them to school.

I've been looking after an African Land Snail and a cat. The contrast has been great and fortunately they're in different places. The cat is because the girls have gone away with their mother to the Isle of Man so they asked me to feed the remaining living cat, since the other one died. I suppose it's kind of my ex cat, since the divorce. I like to think that the fellow still recognises me when i turn up, maybe my smell or general demeanour, maybe just because he knows I'm the provider of all things that look like cat food.

The African Land Snail is courtesy of one of my business partners, Gaz. He went on holiday a couple of weeks ago and, the day before, turned up at the office with a cage like thing. To make things simpler I'll refer to it as a cage from now on, though it really is a tank, but not the type that they use in the army, unless there are people in the army who keep snails, then they might use one of these things. Of course this could cause problems for the army chap who's sent off to clean the tank, but that's for another story.

Anyway, inside this tank was the mother of all snails. A huge big fuck off type of thing that is apparently an African Land Snail, owned by my partner's son. He casually mentions that "we" are going to be looking after this thing while he's away, we being the people in the office. You know those great big smails that you get in Africa, well this is a baby one of them. "Only" about six inches in diameter around the middle bit and with all the speed of a waiter at the Galle Face Hotel.

The looking after invovles spraying the fellow's shell with water once a day and bunging some vegetable of sorts into the cage every couple of days. I asked whether the thing has to be taken for walks or anything and was mightily pleased to get a negative response to my question. At first I was reasonably excited by the prospect of snail sitting. The girls in the office were all decidedly disinterested so I stepped up and assumed the responsibility. I contemplated taking Bully, for that is his name, home to show the girls.

After a couple of days I got bored. Bully doesn't do much, he's slimy and smells and his tank is a bit fly infested. Yes, he's low maintenance and in that context makes for a good pet, but all in all I think I'm happy to remain petless. As of Friday he was still alive and hadn't escaped, not that he could have got far if he had. I've rehearsed my speech to Gaz just in case he does escape. I figure it will be something along the lines of

"I'm so sorry Gaz, I didn't see how he did it, it all happened so fast"

What else?

Well I've been getting slowly packed. I'll be moving out of this house in a few weeks' time, back to my parents' place for a bit. A move of mixed blessings. On the good side I'll be fed with great food, have my washing done and get all that parental love that Sri Lankan parents smother their kids with, no matter how old they are. On the negative side, well, see my previous line.

So I've been making boxes, thinking about what I'm going to pack where and generally feeling half totally pissed off and half excited at the prospect. My life is an ongoing journey and this house was merely a stop.

And I've been falling for Ashok Ferrey. Not in that way. In fact he seems to have a liking for tight fitting shirts. Everywhere I go there's a picture of him wearing a shirt that's a couple of sizes too small. If I was his stylist wife I'd have a quiet word. Something along the lines of "I think you should buy your shirts a bit bigger these days, even though you have those pecs."

But, I've been falling for his writing. His wit and style of observational narrative is right up my street. I was going to say alley there but all the talk about his pecs and shirts might give you the wrong idea.

I suppose the other thing I've been doing rather a lot of is investigating Facebook. It's quite rewarding and fascinating. I've got about thirty friends on FB, which is about twenty eight more than I have in real life. This is cool. I can read the walls of people I hardly know and find out what they had for breakfast and what they think is a highly humorous way of telling me about it. People who are quite boring in real life are the life and soul of their wall on Facebook.

The best thing about Facebook is that it's the perfect thing for Sri Lankans isn't it? Instead of that dreadfully old fashioned thing of meeting someone and asking who they know, who they're related to and then finding out that you're brothers or sisters, I can now look at their friends on Facebook and know exactly how we're related and who we know. In true Sri Lankan style there's about one, perhaps two degrees of separation between me and just about every other Sri Lankan on Facebook as well.

That's about it for now. Thanks to Dinidu for his concern, I'll alive and well.

Happy Monday all.

Of Talking Books, Sach and Ashok Ferrey

I read a hell of a lot. And it may not surprise you.

I'm quite the voracious reader. From drumming magazines to gadget magazines to novels to self help books, I devour them with the appetite of one of you lot at Hikka fest at about 6.12 AM.

I also don't really have any taste in literature. No one who knows me would describe me as a discerning reader, I just grab whatever takes my fancy and try it. Of course books on Sri Lanka, whether they're factual or of the novelistical variety, exist on my bookshelves in abundance. I buy them, read them, digest them and learn from them.

The pile on my bookshelf, if pile is the collective term for some books, which it probably isn't, sits there and calls me at various times.

"Oooh Rhythmic, come and read me" screams a book sometimes

"Mr Diaspora, please take me to bed with you and fondle my pages" begs another book, of the female type, occasionally.

"Oi, I wouldn't bother with me if I were you. I'm boring and not worth reading until you're really desperate" said the big one whose voice I totally ignored the other day.

They all talk to me in different ways at different times.

Some weeks ago I bought, on a whim, a book written by an English guy. A dangerous move you may say. You're right, say I. But I felt in a risk taking mood, I felt like living dangerously and was in a devil may care mood. Only that morning I had driven to Kingston at about thirty five mph in a thirty mph zone. I even drove through an amber light (nearly).

It sat on my shelf for a while and then I ignored the warnings, picked it up and read it. I never got into it, never got taken in and swallowed up by it in the way so many good books can do. But I got interested in the storyline. What a bummer. I felt nothing for the characters. It was set in the 1950s in London and was all about the situation with African immigrants at the time. Hardly one of my areas of interest but I had thought that the London bit would suffice.

I fought my way through the book, just wanting to get to the end to see what happened to the characters and also not caring in the slightest. Somewhat disappointingly they all lived happily ever after too. If the author had said that at the beginning I could have saved so much time and effort. If I ever write a book I'll make the first page also the last page, a kind of palindrome of a book. Now that would be smart, like a rotavator.

The experience left me feeling bitter and somewhat cheated. I knew that my next choice of book needed to be made with due diligence and I had many candidates from which to choose.

I perused my bookshelf. The first candidate was Jools Holland's autobiography, given to me by K for Christmas. No, I thought almost instantly, it can wait. I've heard that it's a great read, that it's well written and full of funny anecdotes and he's one of my favourite musicians who also used to be in one of my all time favourite bands, Squeeze, but it didn't grab me.

Then I looked at a crime novel and rejected that too. Then I looked at the Sri Lankan books. First up was Tissa Devendra's On Horseshoe Street. No, I started it some months ago and struggled, it wasn't right to come back to it just then.

The next book shortlisted for the RD which one shall I read now prize was one by Paul Harris. It's called "Delighfully Imperfect - A Year In Sri Lanka At The Galle Face Hotel" and, though not the punchiest and most concise of titles, it pretty much does what it says on the tin. It's that book with the picture of the old fellow who's now retired I believe on the front of it. The chap with the moustache.

It looks like it will be highly interesting read, but it didn't appeal to me for the moment either. This one took some pondering and deliberating before I came to my decision. I picked it up, glanced at some random pages and paragraphs and stared at words and sentences before it got dismissed with a bit too much care and attention. If it were a woman, one of those ones who wanted to go out with me, I would have said

"Look, I like you. You seem like you'll be very funny and interesting. I think we can have some good times together, I'll even take you to bed if you're lucky. But now's not the time. I can't figure out why but I feel it. It might be to do with your moustache but I reckon I'll feel differently very soon."

Then again, I'm not that good with women. Or moustaches.

Next in the queue was Ashok Ferrey's Good Little Ceylonese Girl. I didn't know much about Mr Ferrey. I'd seen him in every page of Hi!! Magazine looking quite the muscular sort, at the opening of everything, but I hadn't read Colpetty People nor anything else by him. I checked out the book. I sampled sentences, I read the blurb and I felt something. There was an intrinsic Sri Lankan feel to it. From the photograph on the cover, which I later discovered was taken by one Dominic Sansoni, a chap I've never heard of, to the snippets I read.

Then, as I glanced at the inner sleeve, something caught my eye. It was the dealbreaker, or maybe dealmaker. I can't remember the exact words but it went something like

"This book takes you...
blah blah brilliant blah
blah read it now..."

Sachini Perera - LT Times (I think)

That was the tipping point. It was only our Sach, the cynical one, quoted on the inner sleeve of a book. Honestly, if she thinks it's good then I figured I'd like it. It was a sign, the book wasn't just calling me, it was screaming to me in urgent tones and begging me to read it. I had no choice. Well, I did have a choice but I chose that one.

I began to read and within about five minutes Ashok Ferrey became my new superhero. I laughed out loud at two little lines in the first story alone. I was drawn in to the world of each story, from Brixton to Negombo I was there. Rarely have I read a book that has been so vivid in its detail and so alive in its language.

Mr Ferrey wrote of Barbara Sansoni sarongs and I thought

"cool, I own several hundred of them."

He jotted about two people meeting at the Sunday Jazz at Barefoot. I read it and felt it. To think I've had the good fortune of playing murdering a song or two there is one of those nice big warming thoughts. Each story is illustrated by, well, by illustrations, that are done by the author. They're very lovely line drawings and add to the Sri Lankanness and general flavour of the book.

I don't want to sound too fawning and too nice about Mr Ferrey and his book, but it's caught my imagination in ways that books rarely do. As I read each page and each story I find myself relating to the way he uses words and wit. If I could be ten per cent as funny as him I'd be quite a happy chap. Lines like

"It was a case of infidelity waiting to happen"

just make me chuckle like a pirate. Not that pirates read Sri Lankan fiction of course, though Sri Lankan pirates might, if they could read.

I haven't finished it yet but I can tell you with authority that his writing on Brixton is as brilliant and evocative as his writing on Colombo. It's evident that this is a series of stories written by someone who has seen many of the things first hand. I think I'll finish the book and may even read it again.

Or I might start the one with the moustache.

If you know Ashok Ferrey please tell him he's got a new fan. If you haven't read this book then do so. Trust me. You'll love it.