My poor middle income cats

   

Happier times in Sri Lanka 

As I start typing there is something like a dead body trying to fight its way out of my freezer, and my house smells very much like the scene of a homicide where the murderer has tried to hide the evidence but failed.

But as far as I'm concerned this is one of my good days. Im Sri Lankan. This is 2022. We are going through a nightmare. Imagine waking up poor, in a third world country? I was what was called middle income. After 30 years of white-collar work, I was planning to retire in 2022 and buy myself a small car. But this was not to be. I'm now stuck in a reality where I can think twice before buying food for my cats, because a kilo of the scrawny bony fish they used to eat those days is now more expensive than a kilo of turkey or lamb or whatever you think is expensive meat.

And as for a car, perish the thought. For the last month practically everything I have done has been commuting on my two feet. This shouldn't be a shock to someone who used to walk for exercise those days, but now the number of kilometers I must cover in a day is becoming more and more and the weights I have to carry are becoming heavier and heavier. Today for example when I went to the fish stall and looked desperate and asked Danny Uncles people for some stuff which I can give to dogs and cats, one of them gave me a glinty eyed look which was slightly leery and handed me 5 kilos of the filthiest tripe you can imagine, claiming optimistically that if I boil it and give my pets they will happily eat it.

I dare say they will because not just the people, but the animals too are close to starving in most of Sri Lanka.

There's a complex reason for it, which we are told is a bespectacled dictator fellow with one fixed eye, one roving eye and a thin mustache. Well, his family actually. There's corruption, mismanagement and loans according to the financial pundits. Apparently, we were living beyond our means by using anything imported, which was bought using dollars which we don't have because we have taken so many loans that we have to keep paying back in dollars for the next 100 years or something.  I don't know why my cats should starve because of any of this, and they have actually become thin.

My cats are just as innocent as American cats, they really didn't do anything to deserve being part of this.

So I take the foul offal home by bus, praying that the bag would not explode and have me become a social outcast, for some reason this is one of my anxieties. I have many anxieties, that I will get tetanus or bitten by a rabid dog (there are no vaccines) that I will die of snake bite (there are cobras in my garden, who have an excellent understanding with me- but no anti venin in this country now) or that I will need dental attention( needless to say we only have the stocks of dentists equipment and drugs and pastes that we had around April -we don't have dollars to import any more stuff) are among my regular nightmares although I have a long list of anxieties including finally that there won't be any more anxiety medications.

So here I am carrying five kilos of dead body home and wondering what to do with it. I have a vague idea that I should wash the tripe before I place it in my freezer. It smells of autopsies. But if you love your cats, you make sacrifices. Before too long I smell like a sacrifice too. Luckily, I have an outdoor tap, itself installed after a fight to find a plumber. Most Sri Lankan workers have gone abroad and only send dollars to their wives or third wheels in limited amounts.

I place a basin, overturn the tripe into it and start washing. My cats tiptoe up to me in some concern.

Idly I hope Danny uncles people did not expect sexual favors from me in return for this free tripe.

It was the most putrid, revolting stomach churning, soul shrinking manure that I have ever come close to. I fished out a piece of what looked like intestines and gave it to each of my cats, but they looked away. They wanted it boiled with salt and Marmite as their Highnesses were accustomed to. So I descended elbow deep into this muck and started cleaning it. The basin leaked and before too long my feet were ankle deep in bloody swill. I find some acceptable pieces of fish and treat the hungry cats to it, they fall upon them gleefully.

I managed to place the gloop in three plastic bags, begging silently for forgiveness at the times when I had cursed plastic bags and called them detrimental to the environment. Anyway, I think we won't be having plastic bags for much longer and not because of their environmental impact but because we don't have the dollars to buy them. The plastic bags dripped a thick orangey red colored fluid when held up so I left them in the basin.

So far so good.

Here was evidence I was smoothly and seamlessly becoming a "poor person" as was expected, without too much screaming or revolt.

Then there was the stage where I should start a wood fire. I should by rights be getting my fireplace running but Im one of those karens who don't know how to start a wood fire without kerosene and also there is a massive breeze these days from the Bay of Bengal some monsoonal turbulence that promises me that if I do dare start a fire it may not go as I planned.

I stuff two of the bags into the freezer but the door keeps popping out. I jam them in to a plastic box and force it shut.

At this point I gave in to my decadent middle-class laziness, gave up the romantic wood fire idea and initiated  the infrared cooker, to boil the first set of tripe. There will be a toll on the electricity bill but I will face it later. The cats have fed and fallen asleep on my beds and sofa after some brief content purry body washing.

The electricity goes out which we are accustomend to, and it wont be back for another three hours, but for now my laptop has some power. 

So I wash my cadaver-scented fingers with Lymol dish wash liquid, and sit down to type…

 

 

 

The Beauty and the Bitterness

A life we rarely see

A sweeping panorama of misty highland beauty greets the eye, bringing cool serenity to the heat and grit of Colombo.  The result of combined efforts of more than 3 dozen  youth from the plantation sector of Sri Lanka- and this time they have not been plucking tea leaves, but diverted their energies to a different art- the impactful skill of photojournalism.  Their tireless civil society partners and artistic/creative advisors have pitched in to bring you an experience hitherto unparalleled.  The Teh Kahata exhibition on photography brings you previously untold stories from the so called tea plantation sectors of Sri Lanka, bringing glimpses into a life we rarely experience beyond the uplifting sparkle of a cup of the world renowned Ceylon tea. 

Photo by WT Dhanushka

Striking visuals 

The games that old folk like to say have become a long lost art still live here. A small child sits on a coconut frond while older children pull it along. One picture down some children use a toy blackboard and bottlecaps from liquor bottles to play a game and left and right of them there are all manner of items being used - empty tins, plastic bottles and old plastic bags. It's not because these children's parents are overly nostalgic or minimalist - this is all they can give their children to play with. 

Teh Kahata Background 

The Teh Kahata photojournalism project was a brainchild of the Centre for Policy Alternative and its Badulla collaborative partner Uva Shakhti Foundation, begun in 2018. Here the objective was not merely another project with predictable development results, but the goal was to make a real difference in the lives of the young  estate sector participants by giving them a comprehensive training not only in the technical aspects of photography (and photo editing) but also in social aspects of visual reportage through photography. Forty youth were selected based on their genuine enthusiasm for the field of communication studies and photography and underwent extensive training by experts selected especially for their sensitivity and professionalism. A number of practical field trips were held in the estates, working with the approval of plantation sector administration and other stakeholders in the areas.  The results were thousands of striking visuals bringing their world before the wider audience of Sri Lankans and through virtual exhibitions, before the world itself.  This phase of the project saw its striking exhibitions held in Kandy, Jaffna and Batticaloa apart from Colombo.

"Rare pictures, made me want to cry," said one of the visitors to the exhibition, and another said "The Technology used for the photographs is great. Handling of colours including artistry has been used perfectly and I'm happy the photographers are young people.  It's very good to see photography used to  bring out their internal environmental issues…"

Photo by C Sagidaran

Tea Industry reels under double whammy

The programme by CPA, Uva Shakthi Foundation and GIZ was begun in 2018, and the latest phase of the photojournalism project beyond 2020, had to battle the challenges of a crippling global pandemic and internal repercussions of bungled agricultural reforms, along with the plantation sector in which it is set. While Sri Lanka has reeled under skyrocketing inflation with the tea industry as a whole being buffeted by banning, shortages and then escalating prices in chemical fertiliser, problems in power supply, pollution, climate change, transport price hikes, international competition; the wages of the plantation sector workers remain static, with no hope of revision in sight. 

So for the marginalised workers of the line rooms trapped between chaotic policies and entrenched injustice, there seems no end in sight to their suffering among the beauty of the estates.