Times we grew up -3

                     just a random photo from the school days

Bus stopped for tea somewhere at Hunnasgiriya for about half an hour and then started again to reach mahiyanganaya in the middle of the afternoon. We had in our possession two bottles of arrack that was bought in Kandy with the each guy investing equal shares. Unlike our friend the teacher, we had no intention of making a profit but partake the two bottles in equal shares. Now everybody was eager to open the bottles and when we arrived at 

Mahiyanganaya our friend came to receive us and take us to his place of living. but after seeing the river and being mindful of the bottles in the bag , we decided to have bath after couple of drinks despite vehement protests by our host for the trip.

We went upstream a little to be sufficiently away from the temple area because our host insisted  and started drinking and swimming  until it was late in the evening. We went to our friends boarding house probably by hiring a car. When we arrived at the house we could see they were upset and even angry, because we were not only late but have come visibly drunk.

Next day morning we saw they are fairly well to do people in the area, with many agricultural implements including couple of tractors parked in the yard. But the breakfast disappointed us enormously for it was rice and one vegetable watery cooked . The lunch also was same except the vegetable was different and there was dry fish.

We thought they are taking revenge from us because we misbehaved on the day of the arrival. But our friend assured us it is not the case and this is the way they eat, rice a seasonal vegetable from their own garden and dry fish.

In the evening , we may have walked around the area and come back, we decided to drink the balance arrack because we were planning to go back next day. We Started drinking in friends room and singing started. It was mostly songs of  Jothipala , Victor and Milton Perera. One of us had few song books which were  sold at movie theaters  those days for about 50 cents. Guy who owned the song book had the privilege of leading the song because if somebody else does it he wouldn’t give his book  to anybody else to sing from it; remember wizard of  id’s  golden rule, whoever has the gold rules the world.

Those days there was a popular song starting with a word similar to " Raamya"  with a beautiful tune  but I cant find the song in the net because I feel though it became tremendously  popular in seventies it was not an English song ; like Despacito by Puato Rican , pop singer Luis Fonsi and rapper Daddy Yankee. 

found it https://youtu.be/By3cwKFXbVQ

With the level of the bottle going down the volume of the singing increased.  Words became replaced by words that shouldn’t be spoken loudly, one guy replaced some words in the Raamya like song with phrases like “we are suffering from stomach pains after eating snake gourd “ (පතෝල කාලා බඩ දනවා. ල ල ල් ල ල ල් ල ල ලා ) . after couple of hours, probably early in the morning, the land lords asked us to leave the house. We bade  farewell to our friend and was walking out when our friend also joined us carrying his suitcase.

“They asked me also to leave the boarding place “ he said meekly to us. 

to be continued