‘What do you expect to find inside? What if its empty?’ she says with an ingenue’s cynicism.

‘Let’s go into the shop and look around.’

‘What do you want to buy?’ she asks. ‘I don’t like these big shops. There’s no point in going in unless you have lots of money.’

‘Oh, we can look around. At least we will know what we can do without.’

At the saree counter stands a former student of mine with his wife and relations. The salesman is pulling out the sarees which are in vogue—expensive chiffon Manipuris, sheer diaphanous things with heavy gold borders. Saree after saree is flung open on the counter. Behind the salesman are stacks of more sarees. I go past my student. He is shy with his new young bride beside him and without the slightest knowledge of what will please her. All he has is the money to purchase whatever she wants. Heavy gold earrings glitter in her ears, bracelets slip up and down the length of her forearms as she lifts the sarees and holds them against her, feeling their textures.

Kandy is a small town. I often meet my students around. The majority of them are much wealthier than me, drive about in their big cars and wear expensive clothes, imported shoes.

‘Teacher, how are you? Are you still in College?’

Sometimes they look up gratefully and say, impelled by some compulsive need to appear grateful: ‘Teacher, I am grateful to you. I am what I am because of you’.

I too had spoken like this to my old teachers, but in a different context. I meant that they had helped me to learn. But my students mean something different. I have helped them to become successful. This is of much greater importance to them. I have never thought of success in this way. They grow up and go to their tea plantations, high administrative posts in the Government, jobs in hotels, their rice mills or their gem businesses and I remain behind, sometimes even having to ask them to help me sort out some of my problems.

‘Are you still there, teacher?’

‘Yes, I’m still there.’

‘Is College still the same?’

How can anything remain the same. The faces in those class photographs have altered so much.

‘I’m glad that you’re doing well.’

I am really proud of them. Proud when I read of them, hear of them doing well in high places. Why didn’t I ever get out before the walls began to press me in and the empty pitch grew dark with a solitary shadowy figure walking across it …. The old tress are being cut down, the ancient tamarind tree, the flowering trees have all disappeared. Why didn’t I leave earlier?