This story is about a purohita with the ‘state’ prefix. He is a big mouth hailing from Uva. However, he made it to Diyawanna through the list this time round as well. 

Although he is a member of various committees of the Betel leaf party, of late, he had been conspicuous by his absence at the regular meetings of these committees.

A political colleague of this purohita who observed the latter’s continuous absence at the regular party confabs recently asked him: “Machang, why don’t you attend our regular meetings? Aren’t you in good terms with our Lokka?”

“No. Not with Lokka … Machang,” replied the purohita. “By the way, I got my place in the government not because of our Lokka. It was really Lokki who helped me. One day I whacked her left and right from the stage. If I attend any of these meetings, she is sure to take it out on me and I might lose my temper and let go off something nasty at her… So I decided to be on the safe side by avoiding meeting her face to face.”