Where does Supramani sleep when it rains?

Treatment as a foreigner is heavy baggage to carry around. On the one hand, service is expedited, people are smiling extra wide and you easily pass through military checkpoints. On the other, people assume you have loads of cash to hand out, so you get special and differential treatment with pricing. At market it is impossible to bargain fairly, so I expect to pay at least 30% more. I am lucky to have met a fantastic, kind Muslim Tamil man who has become a friend and my regular three-wheeler driver. Zulfi speaks good English and has taught me loads about Sri Lanka, especially about what is a fair price. Indeed, Sri Lanka has lagged behind Singapore and Thailand in terms of development, with poverty rate rising concurrently with the heightened conflict (and many jaded youth join armed forces on one side or the other, for consistent income), but money certainly isn’t everything.

It seems natural as a Westerner to offer cash to people who teach you a language or to cook or to show you around. Perhaps it’s just in the West where these niche services have become commodified and turned into small-scale industries. But it is more of an insult to offer people money for these kinds of lessons in life because showing genuine interest and being courteous are often more valuable. Where I live there are several people working as domestic staff and I’ve asked the cook to show me how to make rampas, dal curries, barota, string hoppers and sambol. Nason speaks very good English and has become a default translator between the other, inquisitive Tamil-speaking workers. He is from the historic mountainous city of Kandy, his wife died 15 years ago and has a daughter aged 18. The subject of his daughter is very touchy, as he hasn’t been able to bring her up and she has been working presumably during her entire teenage years. Despite all my questions, with me getting in the way of his expert cooking, he is happy to explain to me about all the food he prepares. Learning how much time it takes to make barota: kneading flour, rolling into fist-size balls, twirling dough around in a manner that is impossible for this researcher’s wimpy hands, until it is very thin, then folding like an envelope and baking it on skillet for a few minutes; makes the food taste even better!

I have been very lucky finding this apartment. The landlady, Gowri, and husband, Shiva, are Hindu Tamil Sri Lankans who studied and practiced immigration law in London for 20 years before resettling in Colombo. She comes from a wealthy, diplomatic family and has connections in government; her brother is an MP in Parliament. They generally support UNP, or president’s opponent, Ranil’s party. Her upper crust lifestyle permits her to own a mansion with 6 apartments connected off the side of house for long-term leases and short-term holidayers. Gowri is an amazing gardener, very authoritative with her staff and clients, and threw an amazing rooftop New Year’s Eve party with Hindi music, arrack (local liquor) and fireworks (more like nuclear warheads!). Shiva is a devoted Hindu, and the most generous man I’ve met in a long time. He worships regularly at their household shrine of Ganesh, the elephant god of success and prosperity, as well as in their rooftop meditation garden. On smog-free days you can see the ocean from the roof.

I am situated in Wella Watta, or Colombo 6, a predominantly Tamil neighborhood. It is extremely bustling, off sea-aligning Galle Road. Bombay sweet shops, market stalls nearly toppling on top of each other, cheap DVD shops, bakeries, restaurants, lottery kiosks with booming voices encouraging the poor to test their luck, a culinary institute, a mosque, a Muslim Ladies’ College and a Hindu one, a few temples, a Catholic church and boys’ school, rickety seaside shanty houses, breastfeeding beggars, no-legged men on skateboards, teenage soldiers on duty, children in their starched, white uniforms, sari boutiques, sacks of every kind of legume and spice, king coconuts with the tops cut off so you can slurp the milky white liquid then scoop their flesh, and roaming cows make up my immediate neighborhood.

Although I love my neighborhood, a 25-minute (4 km) ride to work, and I meet many people, I am torn about my role as a tenant and observer of the poverty around me. A young man with a slight mental disability, Supramani, gardens, sweeps, runs errands and does small repairs around my residence. His work is integral to the smooth functioning of this home business, yet he is treated almost like an animal. Not to impose my outsider’s view on the situation, but I’m not sure why Supramani has to sleep on the ground outside the house. Monsoon season is almost over, but with climate change there’s been continual downpours lately and I wonder where he sleeps when it rains so much. This thought keeps me up at night as I sleep with one spare bedroom.

There also seems to be many young women who come from Muskeliya, a tea village, to Colombo in order to work. Dakshani, a cross-eyed, talkative 16-year old maid will be heading back to Muskeliya to visit her tea-picking mother for Thai Pongol (January Full Moon day). While it is a Buddhist holiday, Hindus celebrate by painting their cows and hiking Adam’s Peak. (The best decorated cow gets a prize.) It is traditional to give small gifts to friends and people who work for you around Thai Pongol and Hadjj (the Muslim holiday). I have both holidays off, so I may try to go into tea country to see the festivals. Dakshani doesn’t know Kamalam or her daughter who also works as a maid in Colombo, and says that most people in Muskeliya will be hiking on evening of Thai Pongol.

I grapple with life among people who are treated as inferior, when their knowledge and life experiences are far superior and valuable than I can describe. How can I sleep at night knowing that another person, around my age, must sleep out in the rain? By offering him shelter or extra cash, I disrupt the entrenched system of hierarchy and risk being booted out myself. Not to mention I’m not sure how Supramani would react. For the time being, I can only offer respect, small Thai Pongol gifts, a genuine smile and curiosity about their histories. But I am still revolted that I cannot outright revolt at this structure of inequality and persistent poverty trap. In my myopic mind I can only think of improving literacy or English skills, but those thoughts do nothing when you have immensely wealthy people desperately trying to preserve their nauseating wealth derived from the heart-wrenching poverty of others.