It had been a long night and I slept like a log, dreaming profusely, until the phone rang. A wake up call from an Old Boy from college asking me to join a social event. And he mentioned “Soosthiya” (Pot-Smoker) in passing. So you wake up from a dream adventure into a world of drug induced reality. How is that for starters? Whether Soosthiya actually ever tried pot is a matter of debatable nature, he may have tried it (who hasn’t), but to justify that nickname? No, I guess not. Besides who cares, he is now a prominent doctor around here.
Get dressed, sort out perennial cat issues, come to office. Just a routine operation. But pot smoking is high on my mind. Came here and asked my beautiful secretary to type out something I had written. This is not Sinhalese, I cant read it, she complains. So what does it look like to you, Ethiopian? I retort, yet in my heart I knew she was right, right in the fact that I could never write legibly, not at school, not now, not ever.
And while all that going on I went through a Sinhala SMS, which was equally Amharic to me, despite of legibility of writing. Eureka, pot-smoking, illegible writing resembling Amharic, my dream adventure, and they all fit in! I did not know till I read the SMS. Just like in Philip K. Dick’s story The Builder, where a man builds a boat, at the cost of almost compromising his job, his family life, and his social relations. But he did not know WHY he is building it. He has no idea what it was for. And it rained, a few drops, and he knew. See, a Eureka moment.
Idiots in today’s Sri Lanka associate Bob Marley with ganja. They know jack about what Rastafarianism is all about. Well, if they put an iota of effort spent on looking for ganja at a local library… Bob Marley T-shirt idiots are more deluded unstoned than stoned out Bob Marley ever was.
Why Amharic & Ethiopia? Because my secretary thinks my script is like theirs, secondly because the pot-smoking Rastafarian movement started there. Ras Tafari (Duke Tafari) was the name of HRH Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia. Except they were not the original owners of ganja (a word of Sanskrit origin), or smoking it (Sadhus of India and Sufi of Arab smoked it, in that order, before the Ethiopians found out this lovely experience).
Lets make things more surreal by looking at how boyhood of Serveus Snape was described in the last Harry Potter book. After all, we are all in a drug induced reality world now, are we not? No, better still, lets transform it to a whole new scenario.
It was a lovely morning in the shire of Bosporus, crispy morning, and three men of different walks of life were gathered near a large playground next to a special seat of education. The Man who smoked pot with the famous & not so famous, wore a grim expression on his face, yet seemed to take things in his stride, and severe looks could not hide the jovial man underneath. The Stocky Man was keeping a close scrutiny over the The Man who smoked pot with the famous & not so famous. He did not seem to bear any ill will, just as well, for The Stocky Man was as strong as an ox. He would effortlessly take two grown sheep under his arms and carry them up the hill, singing to himself all the way. One had not seen him to break any sweat over the daily toil which was quite physically demanding. The Third Man, a man of considerable build, stroked his dark hair which was blowing in the crispy wind. Beautiful morning sun was illuminating the green fields above, beyond that the large park was coming to a new life with beautiful school girls in short(ish) skirts chattering away on their way to school. A blackbird was looking pensively at the gathering. The men looked serious, yet they were not worried. It seemed the matter in hand had some forbearing upon them, but their withers seem to be too high.
So, what had he done to receive a bomb in the first place? I mean we don’t get bombs in post like that, you know, asks The Third Man. Oh, animal testing and all that. I used to go to his lab to clean up the cages you know, says The Stocky Man. The Man who smoked pot with the famous & not so famous presented a tentative smile, it seemed he had a lot to say about these incidents. He looked a bit torn, a struggle within him trying to decide who is right. So, what happened? The Third Man asks. Well they came out and x-rayed it, and the feller said it looked like a tape recorder, not a bomb. What? Quips The Man who smoked pot with the famous & not so famous, this time not being able to hide his surprise and joy that things were back to normal. Yes, he sent it for repairs, and idiots posted it without much mention. We had a Class 01 alert for nothing, says The Stocky Man.
The men seemed to be satisfied with the way things turned out, they were now more or less settling to do other things, The Man who smoked pot with the famous & not so famous lit a cigarette, he said his dues to his friends, and took a brisk walk up towards his station. And on the way, he paused near the old coiled electrical hulk laying next to a building. Laid to waste, its azure paintwork peeling, and rust has started to appear here and there. The Man who smoked pot with the famous & not so famous did not actually know what it was, but he just used to call it Magnetron – though he well knew it to be anything but. He looked up at the clear skies with birds flying merrily above, and turned towards the building where his work was due. Another day of toil which will go waste.
The skies were bright & clear, a crispy day, yet over the woods in the park, there was a sense of doom in the distant horizon. Dark clouds were forming briskly, and he knew, just like it was day, the dark night will follow. In times like those, when things call for deep contemplation and dissociation from impending peril, a bit of weed could certainly help.
I may not be able to write legibly, and my writing may look like beautiful script of Amharic, and I may or may not have tried the weed. Yet, looking from above the skies, I think I could empathise with The Man who smoked pot with the famous & not so famous.
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