Fortunate.

I spent most of this week researching soil sample testing on Google. Basically needed to find a place in Lanka where I could get the load bearing capacity of the soil in my backyard to see if I could build a pool! (yes I have weird obsessions like that) So while clicking on multiple tabs and trying to figure out which tab was playing that god awful music I was hearing, I stumbled upon this random tumbler pic that made me remember a person I once had the pleasure of knowing…This is her story. Or at least what I know of it.

Her name was Karunawathie..which roughly translates to “compassionate”. She used to come to our place to cook. She was the smallest, oldest person I had ever seen…I don’t recall when exactly she came into our lives, but I recall her being at home once or twice a week when I came home after school. She helped with the cooking…but more than that she helped me grow up. Karunawathie had always had a life of hardship. She used to recall a time when our heavily suburban neighborhood used to be a dense jungle with tiny foot paths for travelling about. She said her house was one of the very first in the area, a fact that she stated with pride. She had never really gone to school but she knew things…She would tell me how to choose vegetables and would carefully point out things I missed, she would talk about the effects of different foods on your health and give little pointers about cooking and combinations…and since she was always very sick with either asthma or the cough she knew what aggravated them…and would prescribe little home made remedies when someone at our house fell ill. but all that was nothing compared to what she knew about life…

She used to tell me how blessed I was and that I was the luckiest person she knew…she said she would go to school at her age if someone would just give her the chance, she begged me to eat healthy and would peer into my half eaten plate and give me fake looks of disapproval when I hadn’t eaten everything green!!! I always used to go over to her place for Christmas to give her a plate of goodies…which of course she wouldn’t touch coz of all the sugar and oil…and I recall seeing her make “kevum” once at her place…seated on a large rock, with her utensils laid out on the floor outside her doorstep on the eve of the Sri Lankan new year…a strange memory I have considering I don’t know what I was doing there at the time!?!? (It almost seems like a dream now)

During the evenings just before she went home she would ask me random questions…like what I wanted to be and listen intently as I explained the world of aviation to her…she quietly nodded her head and said she had seen many a plane fly over head after the Ratmalana airport came to be. she also told me that someday she would like to fly on one of “my” planes…our little inside joke it used to be…mostly because we both knew by the time that dream blossomed karunawathie would be no more.

As time passed she came around less, then she used to drop in just to say hi and for small loans to buy herself an inhaler for her asthma and finally she stopped coming by altogether and sent word of how hard it was for her to make the trip from her home to ours. A few weeks after that I heard my parents talking about how sick she was and how the hospitals had refused to admit her coz she was beyond their help or something on those lines…Sometime after that, on a weekend my mother mentioned that Karunawathie was very sick and that she wouldn’t be around for long…and how she had asked about me and I that I should pay her a small visit. There was no hesitation on my part coz I quite enjoyed our little chats…so I put on a t-shirt, grabbed my busted up old bicycle and rode over to Karunawathie home.

The slums are an intriguing place….you get the best and worst sort of people there. Drug addicts, minor drug dealers, prostitutes, alcoholics, thieves mingle with honest hard workers like street sweepers, garbage collectors, and everyone from the local market. All the faces are familiar to me and some people smile at me, wondering what I’m doing in the side of town…When I tell them I’m here to see beloved Karunawathie they beam broad grins and offer to show me the way…I tell them I know exactly where she lives and they start laughing out loud and say “of course you do” 

I park my bike against an old tree in front of Karunawathies house and I’m greeted by her daughter. Not one of my favourite characters but today is not about my dislike for her. She leads me in to their house, and the door sill barely clears my head…not that I am in any way tall, but that’s just the way houses are built around here. The daughter tells me to give her a minute to tell Karawathie that I am here. I stand where I am and wait for her to arrive coz I few steps in either direction leads me into another room. I acutely feel the heat searing down from the tin roof…a ceiling is out of the question since the roof is a mere foot away from my head!!! Not even a few seconds in the house and I’m already sweating…partially because of the bike ride, mostly coz its much hotter in here than it is out there!!! How do they live in here I ask myself?!? I look around and for the first time notice things about the place…it is a cramped up mess with a certain order to it. 3 plastic chairs around a small wooden “coffee table” a radio atop a cupboard which holds everything from clothes to cups to toothbrushes, a towel rack bent over by the weight of things upon it. slippers beneath the rack. someone’s books in a neat pile on the floor with a pen and eraser beside them. A pen and eraser I gifted to her. I smile to myself.

The daughter returns and asks me to come “in”

Karunawathie is on a small wooden bed. the only one the house I am told. her breathing scares me…a lot…its loud and heavy in short gasps. I say her name and she takes my hand. she is cool to the touch. I am surprised coz I assumed she would be fever hot in here!!! her hand feels terrible light in mine. “baba kohomadha” (how are you?) she asks me, I tell her I’m fine and ask her how SHE is – stupid question really, but what DO you ask someone in her position? “Aiyo innawa” (Oh I’m ok) she replies. her face is expressionless, probably coz its such an effort to do anything other than breathe and talk to me. Her daughter rambles on about how hard things are and how much work she has…I zone out on her and hope she goes away. I feel awkward. sitting there…not saying anything. but what CAN you say really. I just hold Karunawathies hand and listen to her breathe. Her arms are just skin and bones…her skin hangs to her in layers of wrinkles, her hair is silver-grey, still neatly tied in a bun as it always has been. She seems smaller to me…almost as if she has shrunk a bit, and her hand feel soft in mine…its like holding a baby’s hand. I thought it would be rough and coarse from all her work. After what seems like an eternity I lean in and whisper to her that I am leaving…she cups my face and I choke up. I feel like a tennis ball has been pushed down my throat and I beg my tears to not to flood over. I get up and leave. That was the last time I ever saw Karunawathie.

We all rush through life worrying about SO many things…material things. Money, bank accounts, interest rates, exchange rates, inflation, the cost of a new car, how much a new pool will set you back…and yet there are so many people who you meet every day who don’t have a bank account, who live for the day with what they earn, they don’t ever wonder about buying a car or building a pool…and yet they get by…but what really blows your mind is that they live wholesome, rich lives. They know more about the world than you do. they share without hesitation. they don’t hate or envy or crave as much as you do. They have SO much more of what truly matters…the stuff you don’t take with you when you leave this world! And you…you with all your wifi and ipads have SO much to gain from those people. the ones who have nothing at all. the fortunate ones.

“If you have food in the fridge, clothes on your back and a place to sleep, you are richer than 75% of the world. If you have money in the bank, your wallet and a bit of spare change you are among the top 8% of the worlds wealthy. If you woke up this morning with more health than illness you are more blessed than the million people who will not survive the week. If you have never experienced the danger of battle, the agony of imprisonment or torture, or the horrible pangs of starvation, you are luckier than 500 million people who are alive and suffering. If you can read this message you are more fortunate than 3 billion people in the world who cannot read at all.”

In loving memory of Karunawathie.

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~ by Kaiser Kobayashi on September 3, 2011.