The sky was limitless - for some.No more!

This dame from Kandé Uda Pasrata made a pilgrimage to her home area to pay her respects at the Dalada Maligawa and visit relatives. She was warned not to go to 'town' as we name the commercial city because it was overcrowded with people and vehicles. Believable since Kandy city is literally pushing hard at the seams with no room to expand.

It is picturesquely surrounded by hills, those very hills not accommodating growth and expansion. She went in the evening to the Maligawa and saw with delight the crowds of tourists who spell money. Menika was not thinking of money with tanha but with joy the country was earning valuable forex. Dinner at the Suisse Hotel out in the garden was delightful with the lake below reflecting lights; this colonial hotel and its environs evoking happy memories of weddings and living close by as a young girl.

The next day she did shopping in Getambe at the handloom shop, very satisfactory. Noticeably, 90 percent of the Kandy lamissis and the elder Menikas with a sprinkling of Kumarihamys wear handloom saris, Menika noticed. This was another delight to note evidence of handloom weavers back in business and apparently well patronised.

She heard while there a tidbit that would have enhanced J C Weliamuna's report on the money making antics and sexual flavoured pranks played out at Sri Lankan Airlines.

A person told a person who told this cat, that he was in a Sri Lankan flight to a distant destination when a steward or purser or cockpit member came to economy class and announced that passengers who wished to travel in greater comfort could bid for business class seats.

Now that made Menika's jaw drop. The practice was to upgrade passengers free and gratis in the good ole days when money was a means of buying and selling legitimately but not the be-all of life in all its diverse ramifications that money metamorphosed to in the Rajapakse regime.

Where the money earned by selling business class seats en route in the skies went, we don't know. Menika has been upgraded when the national carrier was living up to its initials and was usually late, and thus not so popular.

Menika was upgraded not merely to business class but to first too, which she, in her Kandyan modesty declined and meekly said: I'd prefer business class.

Flying around ticketless

A Sunday newspaper printed a breakdown of free helicoptering and flying in small planes by members of the royal - oops sorry - Mahinda Rajapaksa family and a few hangers on like the braying Wansé. The most shocking, apart from the stunning money defrauded from the Sri Lanka Air Force, especially by the travel bugged First Son, was his mother using a helicopter to travel from Ratmalana to Maharagama with a pick up and drop off in Colombo.

The money in millions owed to the SLAF should be extracted forthwith. If a simple Banda or Balan travel ticketless in a bus he will be hauled to a police station and probably remanded, just for a couple of rupees. But millions owed is quite all right!

What next, ha?

Most people are bewildered wondering how the political cum government cookie will crumble. One politician says this and another says that and the Prime Minister's position is set to Mary Poppins itself up up up while the President's powers are to slide down, drastically clipped. Menika may be a feline fool, but she definitely wants the President to retain a good amount of power. The present one will not, she is sure, abuse presidential power one jot. Of course the fear is how about the next since Maithripala Sirisena has categorically, consistently, publicly declared he will not come forward for a second term.

There are plenty in the wings who have to wait only five and a half years to step into the Presidential shoes, but they may have a choice to make - President's footwear or Prime Ministerial - the position with the greater power.

Menika is quite prepared to let matters take their course. Cats are creatures which seem not even to watch the world go by, but are ever alert. Menika, likewise relaxes and watches the passing parade and listens to what her friends, relatives and acquaintances pronounce as the immediate future. Everyone is an all-knowing political pundit in this country.

Illuminations as a last rite

The Asgiriya Mahanayake Thera was a wise person with great dignity. Menika is sure he did not want to go to Singapore for treatment; it must have been over-zealous dayakayas who flew him across. Once you live beyond 75, you have lived your life and no bhava tanha should be present: no longing or greed for a prolongation of life.

Be that as it may, a worse occurrence occurred. The funeral was solemn enough; the last rites performed with piety and dignity; the speeches apt and short, particularly the President's eulogy; but when the funeral pyre was set alight, lo and behold! out burst fireworks. Menika did not see it herself on TV news but a friend commented on it: sprinkled fireworks emerged after the first whiffs of smoke, as if they were giving the venerable monk a loud, fiery and flambouyant farewell.

We are losing our sense of dignity and restraint with this sort of showiness. Too bad really since the small licks of flame growing larger to consume the cloth covering the built pyre is stately and conveys serenely the message - aniccavata sankara, uppada vaya dhammino: 'It is in the nature of all formations to disintegrate.'

This lesson of impermanence and thus the uselessness of showy grandeur is more so in the case of a pious, very old monk. Hence why this new gimmick of shooting sparklers attached to a funeral pyre?

We thought bawdy showiness and vulgar display are things of the past, when it was insidiously insinuated that we were no longer a free democracy but a shackled nation with an all powerful king in power.

There was another claiming kinship to the greatest of our kings - Dutugemunu. Where oh where is he now? We are so thankful he is not seen nor heard. Hope it is permanently. And so this cat ceases her mew and goes off to have a snooze - too lazy to chase a rat, but fervently hoping that the rats that nibbled the nation's cheese will get their due punishment soon. A theory propounded by a friend to explain the inordinate delays to catch the thieves of public money is that "all are in it. You cannot catch one since so many will be dragged in, even those holding power now." Too farfetched an idea for Menika to agree to. She admires so many in power today whom she believes are squeaky clean and not tainted with the slightest smudge of corruption. The Highest, the Second, and many ministers such as Dr Harsha and Thalata Atukorale to mention but two.