Fathers, sons and doors

Fathers, sons and doors

 July 3, 2013, 12:00 pm

One of our young cricketers has become internationally known overnight—for the wrong reason though. He tried to open the door of a British airways plane in mid-air while looking for a toilet the other day. Sri Lanka Cricket, which usually has egg on its face by trying to sweep things under the carpet, promptly identified him as Ramith, son of Media Minister Keheliya Rambukwella.

Ramith’s father who is busy preparing a code of ethics for journalists also had a problem with a closed door of a hotel room down under some time ago. Unable to open the rear door which got locked, shutting him out on a balcony, he tried to creep into his room through a window and had a nasty fall in the process. Having learnt a bitter lesson, he must have advised his son to be wary of taking chances if a door happened to be closed and to keep tugging at its handle until it opened or help arrived. The boy desperate to get into a toilet must have remembered his father’s advice and did as had been told, even at an altitude of 35,000 feet! An epitome of obedience, eh?

Detractors of our patriotic government politicians may try to make an issue of the allegation that the player had had one too many and did not know what he was doing. However, if that is the case then the blame should go to Britain, which keeps castigating the Sri Lankan government without adopting the latter’s good policies such as Mathata Thitha, which has helped this country put the kibosh on alcohol abuse. Fully rehabilitated and sober, all former Sri Lankan drunkards now eagerly await the monthly Dhamma talk telecast live from Temple Trees; liquor outlets have gone out of business and bars are deserted.

The youthful cricketer had been allegedly bending his elbow prior to taking off owing to the moral decadence in Britain, where governments have been issuing too many liquor licences unlike ours. He has apparently been a victim of the alcohol policy of the neo-imperialist forces. When the heads of the Commonwealth gather here in November, let them be educated on our Mathata Thitha programme!

The section of the aircraft where the toilet in question was located was dimly lit and our cricketer looked disoriented with his headphones on, according to other passengers. The plot thickens! Why wasn’t that area properly lit? Who fixed the cabin door close to the toilet? Who manufactured those headphones which made the young man deaf to frantic warnings from the alarmed passengers and the cabin crew? These are some of the questions that we ought to ask ourselves as citizens of a country ruled by the descendants of King Kekille, the legendary bovine monarch.

Thus, it may be seen that the possibility of a foreign conspiracy to discredit Sri Lanka cannot be ruled out! The innocent player may have been lured into imbibing BRITISH liquor and boarding a BRITISH aircraft with the cabin door in the wrong place so as to cause him to make a spectacle of himself and bring the patriotic Sri Lankan government into disrepute. Doesn’t this argument sound convincing?

It behoves us to take precautions to ensure the safety of our beloved cricketers. We suggest that when they go overseas hereafter they be accompanied by nannies so that they won’t have to worry about toilets. After all, ours is a nanny state, isn’t it? Another solution which is a bit too expensive is to charter planes for national cricketers and keep their toilet doors wide open during the entire flight. We don’t want any of our cricketing heroes to open the wrong door and go skydiving without parachutes at 35,000 ft. do we?

Ramith has told this newspaper that he is somnambulist and he may have tried to open the aircraft door in his sleep. He has surpassed his ministerial father in style and is sure to do well in politics. We hope and pray that he won’t fall asleep on the field and start playing ‘sleep cricket’! King Kekille must be guffawing in his grave.

Cheers!