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| Sunday, 10 July 2005 |
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Features |
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News Business Features
Editorial
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Plight of rambutan sellers by Thileni Wickramaratne What a sight down Havelock Road - mounds and mounds of tempting red rambutan just waiting to be bought by condescending mahattayas who only lower their auto - car shutters to buy numbers of rambutans for a pittance.
All of us city dwellers helplessly swarm around rambutan at this time of the year, but has anyone scrutinized the poorly state of the rambutan seller, trying to eke out a living. Thirty-year-old married Ananda Wijesiri is a rambutan seller and he is accompanied by a duriyan seller Nihal Harischandra. Being early school drop-outs, Ananda and Nihal have been in the rambutan business since they were sixteen. The duo live with their families in a village tucked six miles away from Horana. During the rambutan season, these men reside by the roadside day and night in a rustic tent to earn a fair few rupees. Poverty has plagued these honest merchants. Ananda said that there is only a rupee profit from each fruit. Each day, some three thousand rambutans are transported from Ingiriya to Havelock Road via a three-wheeler. Ananda has to pay Rs. 250 per day in addition to the petrol cost to the trishaw driver. With the towering cost of fuel one can imagine how volatile the prices Ananda has to pay everyday for transportation. Ananda gets his rambutan from the hate (60) Watta, a sixty acre land of a former DIG. He buys each fruit at the cost of Rs. 3.50 each and prays to sell as much rambutans as possible. This life is not cherished by these people, but it is not cursed either, for life's misgivings. Spirited Ananda has a seventeen-months-old baby to look after and he said that he somehow manages to cope up with what he gets. The rambutan sellers will continue selling till somewhere around August 15. When the rambutan season concludes, Ananda along with all other sellers earn their living by engaging themselves in miscellaneous jobs. Ananda said that he even labours in paddy fields and earns a sum of Rs 350 a month during the dry season. "I even carried the bags of sudu mahattayas (foreigners)" Ananda said. However, the fruit business seems to be the most profitable way of earning an income for Ananda. The festive seasons treat them into an extra couple of rupees as well he says. So unlike most people who thrive for esteem jobs, for Ananda the season decides his way of income. Ananda voices the plight of the rows of rambutan sellers down the roads.
Even young teenagers who should be at school studying, are seen squatting by
the roadside selling rambutan. For Ananda, his ultimate goal in life is to
provide a better life for his child. Ananda's misery stretches far but it is
distinctively admirable the way these people lead honest content lives and
are always thankful at the end of the day. |
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