Just another day in Paradise

I am in Minneriya worrying about the level of a disease that has spread to my paddy fields, which I see has affected most farmers in my area, and just have to hope the effects on the final harvest will not be too severe. I have information from farmers in other places whose paddy has been destroyed due to lack of water, so I must be thankful. While the Government statistics showed that the area under cultivation this Maha season is an all time record for Sri Lanka, if my observations and information is anything to go by the harvest will be a lot less with the powers totally oblivious to the facts on the ground.

While here, I was just informed that there was a break in to my Kade in Godagama where all my produce is sold and all the money has been taken. Usually I don’t have much money about Rs5,000, but as it was month end and I was away unable to re-supply the shop there was Rs15,000 approx that was taken. Ironically it was probably the largest balance at the shop all year! Of course we have our suspicions as to who did it and the family that was asked to leave due to an earlier issue was still in residence last evening and had left by morning, leaving little doubt as to who the culprits were.

The shop girl had to be sent to make an entry at the Athurugiriya Police explaining the whole incident, and despite there being boys attached to the Chicken enterprise less than 10ft away from the shop, it had been done while they were asleep, indicating how easy it is to be so brazen. The dogs would not bark as they recognize the person, so what more can I say.

Of course the lessons to be learnt are many to prevent or reduce the outcome of such an event. However the desperation for cash by people who are alcoholics is little different to those of drug addicts and until we as a nation are able to do something about how perfectly able and productive people could be so ruined by this menace, their lives and others around them are affected.

I have plenty of vacancies for jobs in my enterprise, but please only non- smokers and teetotalers need apply. It is a wonderful job if you have the right attitude, and not fixated on one place, but like a nomadic life seeing the country and being fully engaged in a very fulfilling but tough life. I cannot chase people away from here however hard I try as they have such a cushy life, and those who leave voluntarily return begging for their jobs back. Only when some of these people are fired and they find it so difficult to live elsewhere as no one will tolerate their antics do they realize how foolish they were to bite the hand that fed them.

I have to take a philosophical attitude to the loss, which though to the reader does not sound a lot, it is still more money than I spend in a whole year on myself, just to put the loss in context. So if one looks at one’s annual spending then one can gauge the extent. I run a far-flung enterprise on a shoestring. My personal needs are negligible, so everything that affects the shoestring just affects the business directly, but are all factors one needs to take into account in living this way of life in this sort of enterprise where one is heavily dependent on other people most of whom have limited education and ambition.