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Grinning from the kunubakkiya
Nothing is more ap-palling to the home owner
than to walk to his gate and find his walls covered with election posters.
One silly face grins at him, and this same silly face is multiplied a hundred
times. But it gives us a pretty good idea how this whole environmentally
degrading business is carried out. First, the printers. They churn out
bales of the junk. The candidate then calls his senior "halp-karaya"
who in turn calls in a gang of insomniacs who are each given a bundle of
the junk and a pot of paste. From then on, it's "sticky moments".
The trouble is that these stick-uppers don't care where they plaster the
rubbish. Even the Municipal roadside garbage dumps are fair game. As the
picture shows, this is a Municipal kunubakkiya in Bodhi-yangana Mawatha,
Kandy. On its outside walls, five candidates reign in state.
 Now,
with the ban on posters, these rooting-tooting garbage dump moghuls have
taken to stringing up lines of coloured tissue paper strips and large rubber
balloons. God knows why. The balloons, like elephantine condoms, hang with
a dejected air - whoever heard of a dejected condom? - and people tell
me that all this urban "beautification" is done at night.
But, if our candidates wish to make an impression, they certainly have.
Why, even their stick-upper goon squads have consigned them to the kunubakkiya!
Silky show
Felix Congreve and his wife, Sharmalie,
have decided to show Kandy the true value of Sri Lankan silk. With a counter
at the Mountbatten Lounge Bar, Queen's Hotel, Felix is showing tourists
and visitors the fascinating world of silk - the silkworms, the cocoons
they spin and the spinning of the fine thread of the cocoons into silk.
Felix and Sharmalie are on a short visit here and they have their own
Sri Lanka Silk Emporium in Stockholm, where Felix is affectionately known
as the head of Sweden's Silk Mafia. He is making a name for Sri Lanka silk
there, and his counter at the Queen's is a big attraction.
An old boy of Dharmapala Vidyalaya, Pannipitiya, Felix launched his
Sri Lankan Silk Products in Sweden and has earned both name and fame there,
not only for himself but also for this country. "Pure silk is my forte,"
he says, "and pure Sri Lankan silk is as good as any other silk in
the world."
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