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| Sunday, 8 August 2004 |
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| News Business Features Editorial
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Life with William: He falls out of love! by Carol Aloysius Ever since William fell in love with Gnanawathi our vegetable vendor and Ariyawathi my former domestic, our sleep pattern changed drastically.
Evening was invariably Courtship time, when Man Friday would emerge from his room all spruced up in a newly laundered shirt and sarong, his hair freshly dyed and worn long. When I asked him why he had started to grow his hair, he answered, "Dan kaale tharunu minissu konde digata wavanava" (nowadays all young men wear their hair long), conveniently forgetting the fact that he is well into his sixties! Being in love seemed to improve his looks and from the time he started courting Gnanawathi and Ariyawathi, William began to shed his years - literally. He even began calling the youngest of his five friends, Dias our former cook, aiya although the latter is at least eight years younger, and sulked if his friends, Dias, Pancha, Simon, Piyasena and Gamage, called him aiya, a term of affection and respect they used before his courtship days. But the path of love rarely runs smoothly and William's tempestuous love affair soon came to a rocky end. One of the biggest problems he encountered from the beginning was the growing jealousy between the two women. This had caused a serious split in the friendship between the two women and jeopardised William's courtship. Things came to a sorry pass last week, when the two women engaged in open warfare. It happened on a quiet Sunday when William, dressed to kill in his new Aluth Avurudu cloth and shirt, glided out of our house swinging his umbrella and carrying his parcel of ripe mangoes saying they are for 'Mamma aalaaya karana kanthawo dennata'. When I advised him to divide the mangoes equally so as not to cause any problems for himself, he replied cockily, 'Eeka prashnayak naha' (That's no problem). Reaching the market William was about to hand over the parcel to Gnanawathi who he met first, at her brother's fruit stall, when Ariyawathi charged in. Pushing Gnanawathi aside she grabbed the bag of mangoes from William's hand, and warned Gnanawathi to stay away from William and not to play games with her man. Undeterred by her threats, Gnanawathi began singing one of her usual love songs to William. An enraged Ariyawathi, grabbed her by her long hair and proceeded to pummel her with her bare fists. The two of them fought like wild cats cheered on by their henchmen who next turned on William who was about to slink off and began hitting him for causing the fight between the two women. It was a badly bruised and very dejected Man Friday who returned home that Sunday, with a torn shirt and sarong, and scratch marks from the finger nails of the two women he loved, on his face. "My affair with those two wild cats is over. I will never make the mistake of falling in love again," he told me trying to salve his injured pride with a lengthy discourse on the folly of having an intimate relationship with a woman. True to his word, Man Friday no longer walks about with a far away look in his eyes or spends his time writing passionate love songs. Instead, he is busy writing a new play titled Gaanu Pissu (Woman Madness) which satirises his own love affair with Gnanawathi and Ariyawathi. "I want this to be a lesson for all those young idiots out there who are foolish enough to fall in love," he tells me as I watch him at work. As for me and his friends who are already getting ready for rehearsals in my garage, we are just glad that Man Friday has come to his senses. |
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Until that fateful Sunday, he would wake up my household every morning
with his off key rendering of the popular Sinhala love song, 'aadaraye
veydenawa, sithata danunu, yam dinayaka, huda kalawa nothali yali enne ma
soya' (when you feel a yearning for love, without remaining in solitude
come to me) sung with great gusto . On other days we would be awakened by
a shrill whistling of a melody straight from one of the Hindi films he
sees on our T.V.
