The tiny samara-washed house up a steep concrete road set in a well-tended garden is spic and span.
Usually, the heavy multi-tasking which includes cooking, washing up the saucepans after a meagre meal, cleaning, looking after school-going children, the list goes on……will all be done by the mother.
But in this cosy but humble home it is a different tale – for the mother is an invalid and both the roles of mother and father have been taken on by indomitable Vijitha Rodrigo.
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| Vijitha making paper bags to make ends meet. |
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| Samanthi Anusha struck down since 2008 |
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| Before tragedy befell the family |
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| The little house surrounded by a well-tended garden |
Since the time his wife Samanthi Anusha fell ill in 2008, the onerous tasks of not only earning a living while being by her side to attend to all her needs but also doing the daily chores and attending to their two sons have been 47-year-old Vijitha’s lot.
Not given to grumbling or moaning over his plight, he has accepted it with stoic resignation and doggedly attends to all his duties, while eking out a living by making paper bags well into the night to keep starvation at bay.
“Life was a struggle before she fell ill but then I could do a job. Now I can’t because I have to be near Anusha,” says Vijitha, explaining that since childhood his wife had had a weakness in her lower limbs.
She, however, managed to do the household chores and he worked as the caretaker of a chummery where some bankers lived in Anuradhapura.
Then fate struck a cruel blow – with Anusha contracting encephalitis. She was unconscious and had to be kept at the Institute of Neurology in Colombo for a long time with Vijitha and his two young sons making paper bags at the Vihara Maha Devi Park during the day and laying down their weary heads at the Maha Bodhi Vihshrama Shalawa, Maradana, at night.
“Yes, the children did miss out on their schooling,” says Vijitha sadly, but what could he do. They didn’t have anyone to turn to and they needed to be near Anusha while she recovered.
Having no job and also nowhere to go to, once Anusha had overcome her illness, he looked towards his hometown of Geli Oya off the Kandy-Gampola Road and help came in the form of a “nice lady” who took pity on this family and gave them 20-perches of land on which to build their little home, after begging for small donations from anyone who leant an ear.
Vijitha still had to bring his wife to the Ragama Rehabilitation Hospital but transport was a problem and so he was advised to take her to the Digana Rehabilitation Hospital, which is closer home.
Frustrated by her inability to do things on her own, Anusha is quick to lose her temper and shout at the children, so Vijitha has to be around to sort out the domestic tension as well.
His day starts at the crack of dawn when he wakes up to make plain tea for the family and cook a sparse meal for the children to take to school as their lunch. Then he rouses his two boys and sees them off to school, after which he washes his wife, gives her medication, makes her comfortable and then leaves home armed with his wares of paper bags he has made burning the midnight oil the previous day.
Vijitha walks the streets of Geli Oya or Kandy in the scorching sun or heavy rain trying to hawk the 1,000 bags which he has pasted painstakingly. If he is able to sell off all the bags at 50 cents each he would get Rs. 500 but that is becoming more difficult with many getting into the same business, he says, adding that with that money he buys some dry rations for the home and heads back.
The routine of tending the garden with its seven precious coconut trees, a few banana and papaya trees, a rambuttan tree and a butter-fruit tree, washing the children’s uniforms, cooking and cleaning and then pasting bags begins all over again. Now there are a few added financial burdens for his sons are in examination years and a little tuition is essential. “The principal and teachers of my sons’ school are very supportive and even some of the tuition masters charge only half rates,” says Vijitha.
To earn a few extra rupees, he feeds firewood to a brick kiln close to his home amidst the heat and the soot in the evening and one day he sold a bunch of bananas to pay for a trip to Colombo to check out the payment of Rs. 150 per month per child that he gets from the Public Trustee’s Department.
The day the Sunday Times met him, the family had lunched on dried sprats tempered with a few pieces of onion, a dhal curry and rice but many are the times the four go to bed after sipping cups of plain tea but no food.
The only wish of Vijitha carrying out a lone battle to feed and educate his sons is some means of self-employment. “My sons are good in their studies and that is my only hope, to educate them to get out of this poverty trap,” sighs Vijitha. |
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