On the other side of the road are all the eating houses. There is the Muslim Hotel which has stood there for years. People are walking in and out, sitting at marble-topped tables, eating and drinking. In the past it had always been biryani, or godamba or wattalappan or tandoori chicken. What is it now? I have not been inside for a long time now. There used to be trays of rich Turkey bread, boondi, jalebis too, and the little porcelain cups of rich syrupy wattalappan. I stand for a moment and watch. I remember coming here with my father. We would go upstairs to the long dining room with our friends, and commandeer a whole table to ourselves. It would be swiftly covered with spotless white tabecloth, the tumbleers of water set on it and the steaming hot dishes of chicken curry and biryani, the long-grained rice soaked with ghee, placed in the centre. My father laughed and joked with the waiter and taking his red fez, placed it on his head.

My father was a big man; strong and always laughing. Couldn’t be still, couldn’t contain that vibrant energy he had, until he was very old. When I was a child, at Perahera time—the annual pageant where homage is paid to the sacred Tooth Relic of the Buddha and the streets are filled night after night with dancers, drummers, caparisoned elephants in their trappings of silver, gold, velvet and brocade, bearers carrying torches of burning copra, whip crackers, Kandyan chieftains in their traditional regalia—he would carry me on his shoulders, high above the crowd of heads. Every year I waited with bated breath until the casket, the karanduwa in which the sacred Tooth was kept, borne on the great tusker of Dalada Maligawa, appeared. Each year I counted the number of elephants that appeared in the procession as if it was the most important thing in the world and I could exclaim, ‘This year there were a hundred and fifty elephants! Many more than the last time ….’ Their tinkling bells, their sad, wise eyes, my having to pass under their bellies during the day perahera to give me strength, my father feeding them sugarcane sticks …. Memory after memory remains …

‘Come, come, don’t dawdle; where are you looking,’ my daughter says.

We stand before a row of pavement shops which sold sarees. My friend had told me that you could buy cut-pieces cheap here. I recognize Shariff who wants me to use my influence or power or whatever he calls it, as a teacher, to help get his young son into the big school where I teach.

‘Shariff, did you succeed?’

‘No teacher, I failed. They didn’t take my son. What to do, teacher, I was away on business in Budulla.’ His hands make a gesture of hopelessness. ‘I was too late.’

‘What will you do now?’

‘Send him to another school, anywhere … Katugastota, Siyambalagastenne, Mavilmada …’ his voice peters off sadly.