Earlier today.. I got the chance to offer a lift to a distant uncle of mine, on my way to work. He is a simple man with few embellishments, a past government servant and now a farmer by profession.
We talked.. about what we Sri Lankans usually talk about when met with a relative : which cousin is doing what, how crazy the political situation in the country is and the rising cost of living.. amongst other things. Lastly though just as he was about to get off.. we started talking about his profession : cultivating of paddy fields.
He was talking about how difficult it has become to find good help.. and the increasingly decreasing amount of cows around. Being an old school man, with over 4 decades of experience growing rice crops, he was all skeptical about these miracle seeds that promised tons and tons of output from a couple of Acres of paddy. I couldn't help but notice the look of pride with a whiff of sadness that clouded his face when he tried to remember how things were a couple of decades back when most of land from the little town of Yatawara, where he recides to Wattegama was covered in Acres and Acres of Paddy Fields. This brought back a torrent of memories of times past, the chocolaty mud of the freshly ploughed rice fields, how once our Land Cruiser got stuck in one.. how we used to go walking in the afternoons to the Yatawara temple situated right in the midst of a cluster of golden crops, all ripe and ready for harvest. Good times indeed... and times I've come to miss.
After dropping him off at the bus stand.. while driving to work, I was thinking how drastically different my life is, from that of my uncle's. Twice a year, he would spend barely 20,000 rupees (About 150 US dollars) to plant an acre of rice crops that would keep him and his family fed for whole year, he doesn't own or need a car to get him places... he take a bus and has been doing so, all his life. He doesn't own a fancy flat screen TV, or a posh stereo.. cos he simply doesn't need em.
In stark contrast here I am contemplating the purchase of a 2000 dollar DSLR, and worried how shabby my 4x4 looks compared to that of my friend's without an off road bumper up front.. I could not help but feel like an idiot. Something was wrong. Terribly wrong. I need to get my priorities straight. So does most of us, really!
Reality today, is that we go and buy the things that we don't need. We yearn to do things that we don't need to do.. We are caught up in this frenzy trying to become hip. become cool. become more social. but why??? is it because we are a bunch of unhappy bastards on a pursuit of happiness.. unknowingly, unwittingly searching for something that makes our lives make sense..?? or is it because we are all just a bunch of bored fools, wasting our lives one day at a time looking for distractions to keep us occupied. I am yet to figure out the answer to this question. Let me know if you have... :)
We talked.. about what we Sri Lankans usually talk about when met with a relative : which cousin is doing what, how crazy the political situation in the country is and the rising cost of living.. amongst other things. Lastly though just as he was about to get off.. we started talking about his profession : cultivating of paddy fields.
He was talking about how difficult it has become to find good help.. and the increasingly decreasing amount of cows around. Being an old school man, with over 4 decades of experience growing rice crops, he was all skeptical about these miracle seeds that promised tons and tons of output from a couple of Acres of paddy. I couldn't help but notice the look of pride with a whiff of sadness that clouded his face when he tried to remember how things were a couple of decades back when most of land from the little town of Yatawara, where he recides to Wattegama was covered in Acres and Acres of Paddy Fields. This brought back a torrent of memories of times past, the chocolaty mud of the freshly ploughed rice fields, how once our Land Cruiser got stuck in one.. how we used to go walking in the afternoons to the Yatawara temple situated right in the midst of a cluster of golden crops, all ripe and ready for harvest. Good times indeed... and times I've come to miss.
After dropping him off at the bus stand.. while driving to work, I was thinking how drastically different my life is, from that of my uncle's. Twice a year, he would spend barely 20,000 rupees (About 150 US dollars) to plant an acre of rice crops that would keep him and his family fed for whole year, he doesn't own or need a car to get him places... he take a bus and has been doing so, all his life. He doesn't own a fancy flat screen TV, or a posh stereo.. cos he simply doesn't need em.
In stark contrast here I am contemplating the purchase of a 2000 dollar DSLR, and worried how shabby my 4x4 looks compared to that of my friend's without an off road bumper up front.. I could not help but feel like an idiot. Something was wrong. Terribly wrong. I need to get my priorities straight. So does most of us, really!
Reality today, is that we go and buy the things that we don't need. We yearn to do things that we don't need to do.. We are caught up in this frenzy trying to become hip. become cool. become more social. but why??? is it because we are a bunch of unhappy bastards on a pursuit of happiness.. unknowingly, unwittingly searching for something that makes our lives make sense..?? or is it because we are all just a bunch of bored fools, wasting our lives one day at a time looking for distractions to keep us occupied. I am yet to figure out the answer to this question. Let me know if you have... :)
