THE ENVELOPE
Mr. Aruna surveyed the narrow
road skirting his home-garden from his verandah, wondering why the
nuptial cavalcade of Mr. Jayanath, a colleague of his, was taking so
much time to reach there. It was the latter’s home-coming. And he had
been invited to the function well beforehand at the school where both of
them taught Mathematics. Mr. Jayanath lived in his ancestral home about
two kilometres down the road from Mr. Aruna’s, so his nuptial procession
was bound to take that road unless he were to charter a private jet for
the momentous event.
 ‘Should he hire a private jet’, he thought facetiously,’ he would
prate about it for years to come!’ He was already clad in his Sunday
best - a long sleeved white shirt with blue stripes, and a pair of
pitch-black trousers with a well-burnished pair of expensive black shoes
which he had just bought for this important occasion. Letting up his
search, he went back into the house and looked up at the clock on the
wall which marked time as 11.10 a.m.
‘It’s still a little too early for the nuptial lunch’, he said to
himself and returned to the verandah to resume his watch. It was his
plan to follow it, partake of the supper and return home at the earliest
possible moment. Not that he was particularly tied up that day, but he
was a sort of recluse, preferring solitude to company. Perhaps, his
dislike for the company of people stemmed from the fact that he did not
have the horse-sense that most people are born with.
Further, he was strikingly ‘unhandsome’. Now, he saw the nuptial
cavalcade negotiating the bend some twenty yards from his vantage point.
Heading the rest of the procession was a land-master bedecked with
wreaths of wild-flowers, pennants cut out of colourful polythene,
balloons, stripes of ribbon and so on and so forth.
A seat that looked like a throne was placed on the trailer, where the
newly-weds were seated. Because he had already heard about this latest
addition to nuptial rituals, he was not surprised or disturbed by it.
Also, he knew at present it was regarded as important a part of a
wedding as climbing to the poruwa. On his bicycle he followed the
nuptial procession at a safe distance.
Dressed like a bank executive, he knew he cut a ridiculous figure
upon his ramshackle bicycle that creaked beneath his weight,” so he
wanted to keep himself out of sight of those inside the last van in the
procession.
On his way to Mr. Jayanath’s, he bumped into quite a few
acquaintances, and although he gave each of them a sheepish smile, he
was rather afraid lest they should enquire about the purpose of his ride
just before the mid-noon, because, even the dumbest villager rarely
chose this time of the day to go on a pleasure-ride. However, he was
spared the blushes on that account since each one of them seemed to be
perfectly satisfied with a smile from him.
He halted his bicycle and dismounted from it a few houses from Mr.
Jayanath’s, his sense of pride forbidding him from riding further. He
asked permission from an occupant in the first house he found to park it
there and the benign woman nodded in approval. As he got nearer still,
he saw Mr. Jayanath’s homegarden swarming with guests who still
continued to pour in from the open gate like a nest of disturbed
termites.
He wondered if he would be able to find some place to seat himself.
Nonetheless, once he had stepped into the convivial home-garden of Mr.
Jayanath, he saw several of his female colleagues sitting around a round
plastic table, sheltered by a gigantic umbrella. As soon as they made
out him, they beckoned him to their table.
He thought it wise to join them rather than be seated by himself at a
vacant table and end up with a party of strangers but, he became bored
by their incessant feminine prattle. After a short while, he recognized
three of his male colleagues sipping booze sitting at a table, placed in
an inconspicuous, shady corner in the garden, and walked over to them.
Although he was a teetotaller, at the moment, he formed a sudden
liking for them perhaps in spite of himself. Shortly afterwards, he,
along with Mr. Ranjith went to the hut where the buffet was being served
and helped themselves to a delicious nuptial buffet-fried rice, fried
chicken, tuna fish, jumbo prawns, potato, brinjal salad, dhal, noodles,
cutlet and some other dishes.
Having finished his lunch before his friend, he went to wash his
hands, drink, some water and help himself to some ice-cream served as
dessert. As soon as he washed his cup and placed it on the table where
some fifty empty cups were disposed, he saw a big heppuwa covered with
betel leaves upon which lay some twenty envelopes. When he examined them
closely, he found them void.
‘Surely’, he thought to himself, ‘they must have been put here for
the guests to leave their cash presents to the newly-weds!’ He guessed
so because he himself had seen his father placing his envelopes upon a
heppuwa adorned with betel leaves at several weddings where the latter
had accompanied him when he was very young.
So without thinking twice, he pulled out the envelope containing a
bill of one thousand rupees from his trouser pocket and placed it on the
heppuwa. And he had not forgotten to scribble his name on it as he had
seen his father doing.
But, once he had seated himself back at the table where his friend,
Mr. Ranjith was still polishing off his plate and the other two were
still busy with cups and bottles, doubt began to assail him almost with
the force of a tidal wave and stagger him out of his wits. ‘Was it
sensible that I left my envelope there?’ he wondered. What if someone
else picked it up? It was true that there were some envelopes; but it
was equally true that no one else had deposited their envelopes there.
So what was the guarantee that his gift was safe there? Now he was more
than sure that he had made a monumental blunder.
Shortly, he was able to rally his wits enough to ask Mr. Ranjith
almost casually, ‘Where should we leave our envelopes, dear?’ ‘I think’,
the other answered, ‘we’d better hand them to the bridegroom himself!’
‘He was so startled by his friend’s reply that he felt his facial
muscles twitch. Maybe Mr. Ranjith also detected the sudden change that
came over the other’s face and could see that something was amiss, ‘Why
did you ask that?’ ‘No, it’s nothing.
I just asked’, stammered Mr. Aruna, torn between reason and pride, ‘I
mean, you know, I kind of placed my envelope on the heppuwa, near the
portico over there...’ He pointed in the direction of the portico and
added, ‘Maybe it’s still there!’ It was that he just hoped it was still
there, not that he believed he would find it there. ‘Ok, do let’s go and
see whether it’s still there,’ Mr. Ranjith rose from his chair and
picked up his plate.
 Mr. Aruna, as a matter of fact, was less surprised than disturbed
when he found his envelope had disappeared. Soon, his imagination began
to run riot as a weird wave of highly embarrassing possibilities rose on
the turbulent sea of his heart. What will Mr. Jayanath say when he has
found out that he he’d just eaten and left? How uncivil, how mean was it
for a man to do such a thing in the eyes of the censorious society? How
glad will they, his malicious friends and neighbours be to learn about
such a juicy scandal and spread it? Will he still be able to hold his
head erect and walk tall when his students have got the wind of this
scandalous news?
While Mr. Aruna was busy considering those dreadful possibilities,
his practical friend hailed Mr. Lankajith, a fellow staffer who was busy
serving drinks to the guests.
‘Machan, Aruna had left his envelope here some fifteen minutes ago,
but it’s gone missing now; we wonder if someone took it away?’ ‘Don’t
worry, machan, I’ll try to figure out what happened to it,’ said Mr.
Lankajith reassuringly, ‘maybe Sunil ayya moved it to a safer place...’
Mr. Aruna was scarcely comforted by his reassurance and felt uneasy even
as he went to bed that night.
The following morning, beside the principal’s office he ran into Mr.
Lankajith, who said with a grin, ‘Your envelope was found, dear, intact,
I can, if you want, tell you the exact amount contained in it!’ Now, it
occurred to him that there was the possibility that the person who’d
taken away his envelope could have replaced his note of thousand rupees
perhaps with a note of five hundred rupees or even less.
And he thought it wise not to have his doubts clarified any further.
- Jayashantha Jaywardhana
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