Guti Kaemata Niyamithayi: A Battering Is On The Menu

By Udan Fernando -November 5, 2014 

Food continues to inspire my column. But it’s a different type of food that inspired this week’s column – a contemporary Sinhala play called, Guti Kaemata Niyamithay by Thilak Nandana Hettiarachchi. An insightful review written by my friend Upali Amarasinghe (loosely) translates the title of the play as ‘Destined to be Beaten’ (read Upali’s review here) . The three characters of the play are indeed odd, but refreshingly novel: a beedi kote (a cheap local cigarette), a drop of sweat and a ‘gullaa‘, a weevil. They all exist in a loaf of bread, but face the threat of being baked. As Upali says, “the characters in their inimitable style bring forth to the audience the tragedy of their lives; the tragedy of being imprisoned in a loaf of bread. They want to break free but do not know how”. I leave it to a linguist to tell us why kanawaa or kaema (eating, food) is used in Sinhala to denote getting beaten-up. Anyway in Sinhala parlance, getting beaten up is as just good as having a meal.

A lot had been said, denied and written about a String Hopper Meal in New York where a then High Commissioner was allegedly served a sumptuous portion of string hoppers withseeni-sambal by a Monitoring Minister of the External Affairs Ministry. The latest we heard, which was not surprising news, was that the then High Commissioner was excessively intoxicated to the extent that he collapsed at the party in New York in front of the Monitoring Minister, the Secretary of the External Affairs Ministry, and other guests. Such a matter which involves a top diplomat in a topmost diplomatic posting could have been a humongous scandal to be investigated and drastic action to be taken. A government MP, Hon. Rajiva Wijesinghe, writing an opinion piece to Colombo Telegraph, a few weeks back, lamented that ‘government simply had no one left who could argue a case intelligently and in good English. But now it seems, and according to the above statement from the government, the then High Commissioner who collapsed had no strings (hoppers) attached. So the matter is closed. The Monitor will continue his monitoring work while the former High Commissioner will probably revert to his family business to blend tea. What a fall from a Diplomat to a Chai-wallah!                                                      Read More