Amulet (an extract)

As a child I grew up in the care of Punchi Menike, not my mother. She Is the one who influenced my thinking and feeling. She was a round faced woman, a moon face with dark hair oiled back into a tight knot, low at the nape of her neck. I was fed, bathed, dressed primly and properly, rocked lo sleep on her out-stretched legs. She used to pick lice out of my hair and kill them pressed between the nails of her two thumbs. Punchi Menike had one other ta k apart from following behind me all the time. She was given the important task of preparing mother\u27s daily chew of betel. I would watch, fascinated, her washing of the dark green, freshly plucked leaf, breaking the arecanut into pieces with the giraya, squeezing the chunam and other ingredients onto the leaf. While performing this daily task she would tell me stories of the good and the bad - the bad always ending up in hell worlds, the greedy as hungry peretayas always in search of food to fill their bellies

The Proposal

Dear Mr Ranmuttu, This being my first letter to you please allow me to introduce myself before anything else. I am one Kalupane working in the EXPRESS TRAVEL GROUP. I happened to know you and your esteemed family through one Mr Hatharagama who is also working in our Company today. Through his courtesy and friendship since assuming office, your loving sister was proposed to me as a wife and I agreed to pay a visit as our two horoscopes agreed to a greater extent

Why I Write

I do not know, to date, what led me to write. All I realize is that, as a lonely, introverted child, there was this enormous need to create and express myself because I dreaded to communicate through speech. I needed to express my thoughts, feelings and emotions in an indirect way rather than talk face to face. Long before I began to write, however, I was living in a fantasy world of my own creation, where I created people and situations the way I wanted them to be. I spent many happy hours creating live characters out of inanimate dolls, giving each a name and personality. I made them walk and talk and live through experiences which entertained and amused my younger sister and brother. Next I turned to play-acting with real live people, namely my cousins. We used to don costumes and put out plays for an appreciative audience, our parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles