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No hard feelings!
by Sarath Madduma
I am dead tired after a day’s work. There are appointments to keep
and friends to meet. I make two or three telephone calls in a vain
attempt to postpone the programme for the evening, we had decided on.
That Monday evening. I come early to my lodgings from office and wait
for my friends.
Time: 4.30 p.m., and still they are not to be seen. I am impatient
and decide to go alone hoping to meet them on the way. My estination-exhibition
grounds. It is only a five minutes walk from there.
I reach the main gate to the exhibition and linger there for some
time expecting my friends. Two long queues on either side of the gate.
Beautiful women in bright sarees give colour to the ques. Gradually the
queues become longer and longer. The movement of the ques is very slow
and the people are tired. A lady in a cashmere saree waits impatiently
while her tiny son seems to be still more impatient to enter the
exhibition grounds. He holds her hand and tries to drag her forward. The
old lady in white behind them finally squats on the ground.
 I join the end of the que. Some people join me from behind - a
gentleman in a white national dress and his spouse in a white saree with
a black border.
A handsome damsel in a colourful saree stands in front of me. She
holds the hand of a boy - probably her child. I seem to be knowing her.
Imagination? I look at the people in front of her - a few old women
probably from the villages. The que moves on little by little. Several
others join in. I spot a familiar face-Upali-my erstwhile friend, with
his girl. Shall I talk to them? No, not now, he is too busy to speak to
me.
I buy a ticket and enter the exhibition grounds. A hive of activity -
very long ques young men and women arm in arm. The stalls are mostly
manned by beautiful women. I loiter around the grounds for awhile and
enter some of the stalls, watch the exhibits as well as the people.
I walk into yet another stall - a fully packed house and join the
crowd watching a paddy hulling machine at work. I look at the machine
and turn back looking at the crowd. A man in white shirt and khaki
trousers stares at me.
I look at him trying to identify him.
“You are my classmate at college?”, he asks me.
“Are you Dharmadasa?”
“No, I am Jayaratne, I am Dharmadasa’s friend, he is now working in
the C.T.B.”
Then I recollect. Those happy-go-lucky days at school together,
flashes across my mind. As a hard working student, he became the
teacher’s - Mr.
Mahalingam’s favourite. Tilak Sandaratne earns the wrath of his
classmates.
One day, the whole class except Tilak is not prepared for the day’s
lesson. We are given “standing orders” by Mahalingam to wait outside the
classroom. How we hooted Tilak after the lesson. Of course, we are
reported by Mahalingam to the Principal who punishes us severely.
He is temporarily employed in one of the foreign stalls. He works
there from 8.30 a.m. to 4.30 p.m. and is paid at the rate of Rs. 25 per
day. Until the exhibition is over, he is putting up with one of his
friends in Colombo.
We go to the restaurant and while having dinner talk about politics,
life and other things. We do not allow former enmities to come between
us.
He goes to the then Federal Republic of Germany on a State
scholarship.
That’s a two-year course in Architecture, he says. In the first
semester he works hard and is diligent. Unfortunately during the next
vacation he meets and falls in love with a German blonde. Inge and Tilak
have many interests in common. Both of them study Architecture at the
institute, do a lot of reading and sightseeing, play bridge and tennis
and go to the movies frequently. Naturally everything ends in love.
They go steady for some time when she asks him whether he would marry
her. Until then, my friend does not think of the possible outcome of
their relationship. He is in two minds. Would it be advisable for him to
marry her?
If he marries her, he cannot possibly return to Sri Lanka, then
Ceylon. His Sri Lankan girl friend says when he leaves Sri Lanka for
Germany “I know that it would be very difficult for both of us to be
separated like this. I know that you will not forget me at any cost-that
is my only consolation”. She would grieve to death if he marries Inge
and brings her home to Sri Lanka. On the other hand, he cannot spend the
rest of his life in a foreign land. He loves his country.
He fails to give Inge a definite word. He is worried and heart broken
Tilak tries his best to console her. But she won’t listen. She jumps to
her death from the top floor of a skyscraper.
A much worried man, Tilak Sanderatne cannot face his friends. He
tries in vain to revert to his normal day-to-day life. He gives up his
studies and leaves Germany thoroughly disgusted.
He expects to see his former girl friend at the airport. To his great
disappointment he does not see her among the large gathering of friends
and relatives who goes there to welcome him. Suddenly he realises that
he ignores her during the last few months. Not that he forgets her due
to his association with Inge.
He wants to return to Sri Lanka and marry her but during those dark
tense months before his return, to Sri Lanka he is not able to
communicate with her. He has his fears about her. Later in the day he
makes enquiries from his long-time friend Tushara and his worst doubts
come true. She is worried over Tilak’s silence. She writes to him
several times, but is not even replied to.
Then she comes to know of his relationship with Inge through a mutual
friend who is also following a course of studies in Germany. She makes
up her mind and marries the first person she comes to know well.
That night I invite Tilak to my lodgings - a tiny attic in an old
building on a lonely Colombo road. I stay there alone. Other rooms in
the building are occupied by other lodgers. I travel to my office from
there and my wife stays with her parents at Madampe. I go there for the
week-ends.
My room is like that of a madman - papers and magazines all over the
place. Hanging on the wall is our wedding photograph.
When he see the photograph on the wall I see his face changing but he
does not explain. Nor do I expect any explanation. He is silent for most
of the time he is in my room. Next day he leaves without even waiting
for tea.
Two days pass, and I receive a short note from him saying “I bear no
hard feelings” and a photograph of my wife, with the words “With love to
my darling Tilak” with her autograph. |
