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…
