Aunties on rainy days

Why do we love Sri Lankans? Better yet, why do I love my fellow weird countrymen/women? The thought popped into my head this Friday, as I sat stretching on my mat at yoga class. Now, the class is primarily populated by people who very accurately fit the description 'aunty' -- middle-aged, child-bearing, slight busy-body-ish ladies who drive to class in posh vehicles that I ogle jealously at as I disembark from my tuk-tuk carriage :) They vary in age from possibly early-30s to mid-70s I would say, and are a sweet and completely inoffensive bunch that smiles dotingly on me when I walk into the capacious hall looking and feeling like the youngest in the group. They also strike up conversations with me about 'what are you doing', as aunties are wont to do. To our fun bunch a recent addition has been a foreign lady of unknown origin, whom I gather is called Theresa, and is very nice. The aunties love her, and while stretching out into Adhomukhaweerasan, I catch pieces of conversation that go along the lines of, "now you must learn to speak Sinhala, Theresa" and "give me is denna, da, da, like you would say 'the'."

Now this T had been absent from the past few classes, but this last Friday, a gloomy morning in Colombo, I saw her flitting across the yoga hall, yelling hello to the aunties. As I sat on my mat and watched, beaming, the aunties descended on this T like a pack of benevolent vultures, genuinely thrilled to see this woman, kissing her and hugging and all the works. Now, I don't know if the aunties knew her from elsewhere, or if yoga class is their only point of meeting, but I thought to myself that this is one reason why Sri Lankans are so freaking awesome -- that warmth was unchecked and sincere and the garrulous aunties represented, for me at that moment, the clanking societal mechanism that I often find myself criticising. With the wind whistling outside, I sat there on my mat grinning to myself and thinking that despite being a messed up group of small-islanders, we're a cheery lot, and when we're not busy poking our noses into everybody else's business and trying to generally screw each other over, there's no better group of people you'd rather call family, and homefolk.

Am also feeling very charitable towards my fellow woman/man because of the T20 World Cup victory. I could have kissed all the random strangers partying on the roads of Colombo that glorious Sunday night, and I'm pretty sure they would have kissed me back.

So, for now at least, I am a happy Sri Lankan.

The weak roar

Sitting around feeling rather blue today. The only thing that makes things even remotely bearable is knowing that there are close to thousands of people in the country feeling exactly the same today.

Sri Lanka-West Indies, Final, ICC T20 World Cup 2012. Home grounds baby, as it should be, crazy atmosphere. A sea of lion flags wherever you look, The kind of easy camaraderie among strangers that you don't find easily in our country. Was so at the match last night, when we lost.

 Whooooosh. You could almost hear the slow descent of hopes and could clearly the see the flags stop waving, the people stop cheering, the crazy guy with "SL" and "T20" painted on his mohakwed head stop dancing,

People will laugh of course. Silly little islanders, going on about their cricket. Look at them, 30 year civil war behind them, no GDP worth talking about, Stock Exchange handled by goons, rampant Law of the Jungle by administered by the ruling class, no one of note  in the vast minefield of world politics. Look at them, crying over something as trivial as a cricket match for God's sake. It's pathetic, they say, it's only a game.

Thing is,when you have so little, when there's nothing really that you can be proud about, cricket has always come to our rescue. People have no food in some parts of our country. Children are raped, with impunity. Law and order have no place. Wealth is monopolised by the same gaggle of people who could afford to watch the match on their ENORMOUS damn LCD screens yesterday, or pay 20K for a bleachers ticket.

In the same vein, the rational part of one says that surely this is NOT a big deal, because real problems we have aplenty and we can't seem to get past the cricket stuck on our nose to get some perspective. But a win would have been it. It wouldn't have made things OK, or brought about justice, or equality or anything morally good. But it would have given people something positive. It would have made the famous (infamous? notorious?) Sri Lankan Smile glow across every feature-from the hard line businessman to the vegetable vendor and the destitute watching it at a public large screen.

So, yes. The country stands glum. People are back at work, "long faces" as we call them here. The little island will get over it, the blame game has already started, everyone would have played it differently, given the chance.

 But there is a reason collective sports and recreation exist, and even the concept's most vitriolic skeptics  will agree that a win would have lifted the collective spirit of a depressed nation.