Few years back a classmate of mine, who settled down in Germany an year or two after our advanced levels, visited me at home with another classmate of mine. Since they were from the same neighbourhood they have kept in touch and closer to each other than me, to any of them.
I have however had met the guy who was living in Germany few times when he was here on holidays. His wife was a German lady and he had two sons typically European looking. My friend when I asked him those days what he is doing in Germany he said he drives a tramp car.
Last time he came to Sri Lanka for very unusual reason. Reason being that he wished to sell his parental house with 60 purchase of land because he is going to become a Buddhist priest and join a meditation centre samwhere near Colombo. He has spoken to several people but has not been able to find a serious buyer.
So we had a short discussion over a couple of drinks, and I offered him 150000 Rs a pearch , the total extent of the land was 60 purchases. Since he was going to become a monk first I remember I asked him whether he will have a drink with us. He said he has no problems and joined us for good booz that evening.
I said I will give him Hundred and fifty thousand rupees a perch and keep my offer open for one month, if he find somebody who offers him more than that, he can sell it to him. If not he can come to me at the end of the month to do the transaction.
He did not like that and said he agrees with my offer and wanted to do the transaction immediately. In few days we completed the transaction and the lawyer who officiated the transaction, was also a classmate of us.
I really did not want this land for myself but new it is situated in area where many new houses are being built. so I started exploring possibilities of selling the land to somebody else with some profit margin. There were many potential buyers but most of them wanted a smaller piece because they could not afford a large land like 60 perches.
So I decided to make the land into three blocks and sell. Got another classmate of mine who is a surveyor to do that. But because the house is at the centre of the land, it was difficult to divide the land into three equal size buildable blocks.
So there was house that should be removed, and preferably without any cost. I asked several people, who would be interested in such a task. Some people showed interest, but wanted me to pay for the removal. I went on looking for a person who would at least do it free of charge, taking the debris of the house for the labour and the effort of breaking down the house.
A friend of mine gave me businessman's telephone number of a businessman from madawala, the Muslim township in the area.........to be continued
