Pretences & Reality

The Café Latte Society of Colombo were agog with the US elections.  What drama and joy when the result was announced.   The praise for the new and the insults to the old were many on social media that one would have thought we were USA’s fief.  To top it all, the excitement trying to find some lineage to attach themselves to the newly elected VP,  whilst she makes no claim to any Lankan ancestry, is astounding.  If not her, it is about one of her Assistants, pulling out all her family history. The hysteria was just unbelievable over here.   It is great to see people of any race or colour get to where they are through their intelligence and hard work.  But they are either born in America or naturalized citizens and may not want their ancestry to be traced and made a song and dance of.  It is obvious that they left their birth land for greener pastures and to get away from where their forefathers were born.

The ten-day curfew gave me enough time to catch up with Trixie.  She was in fits of laughter as her husband was in the process of renewing his international health insurance which cost an arm and a leg since he always thought that everything was wrong with the national medical service.   This year his insurance claim covered all local medical costs since he was compelled to consult local doctors for all his little ailments.  Now he is full of praise of the medical teams over here and is in a quandary wondering whether to renew his international medical insurance cover, especially since he has decided never to travel anywhere again.  Money is also tight owing to the drop in the prevailing interest rates, which just makes it worse for him. Trixie who has great faith in the national medical service never got herself an expensive international medical insurance cover.

Trixie’s neighbour Dezima Poshwaththa’s entire family has international medical insurance cover and used to rush off to Singapore even to have a toothache attended to.  Two of her family had no option but to consult a local dentist this year.  Trixie could not stop Dezima going on about how surprised she was with the local dentist’s service and more surprised at the cost.  Dezima, who used to brag about her latest collection of bags and designer outfits is now at home in her batik kaftan and enjoying her garden as there is nowhere to go. With her domestic aides having gone home, Dezima has had to labour in the kitchen, clean her house and toilets.  This has certainly taught her a lesson to be more mindful towards her grossly underpaid domestic aides in future.  Realization has dawned on Dezima that in this pandemic all her fancy designer clothes and accessories cannot bring her any happiness nor could she chop them up for a meal when she could not get stuff from a supermarket. Currently she is looking for someone to give her a backrub with some good old Siddhalepa since she is full of aches and pains after all the domestic chores she had  with no help from either her husband or the spoilt brats she has brought up.
Reality is what we all must face during this pandemic.  Probably the lesson we hopefully would take with us at the end of this pandemic is that we are all equal, vulnerable and must help one another.