Asthe oldest among my two siblings, I grew up with a load of family duties. My father was away most of the time, working in a distant town in Sri Lanka. With that, I became the man of the house by stealth. I assisted my mother in many ways. One of them was buying groceries. Every day after school, it was my regular duty after school.
My mother gave me ten rupees and a list of things to buy. Tucking the money and the list in my pant pockets, I raced to the shops, fish and vegetable stalls and grocery stores. With a huge bag of groceries on its handle, I rode the only mode of transport in our household, my father’s bicycle. I enjoyed the bike ride and the opportunity to interact with shopkeepers and vendors, learning the art of negotiations. To top it all, I enjoyed meeting friends while riding along in our neighbourhood streets.
The routine shopping junket started with the fish vendor. The fish stall was nothing like what you’d get here in Australia. All types of fish, big and small, were on display on a huge steel tray, blood oozing from the fresh fish. The stall was owned by a big made woman with huge breasts jutting out of her tight top. With her hawk eyes, she supervised her assistant slicing fish while looking sternly at her customers. The assistant, a middle-aged man with a huge belly, never wore a vest. He knew the art of handling a huge knife, slicing fish exactly to measure. His fingers were dead white, having soaked the ice from the fish all day when there were no hand gloves. His lips were red from chewing betel. While the assistant loved talking to the customers, the owner never took her eyes off the scale. She did not trust her assistant to take the money, instead collecting it herself, putting the cash in her wallet placing it tightly between her breasts inside her top. Kingfish was rupees 2.50 a pound, sailfish coming a close second in price. The cheapest was the small fish like sardinella at sixty cents a pound.
Vendors were everywhere in town, but many cheated on their prices and weight. Honesty was not a virtue among many of them. My mother’s favourite was ‘Prisca’, a shop run by four young brothers. They sold everything from vegetables to groceries. Prisca was reputable, not the cheapest but reliable. They knew who my mother was, often mistaking me to be her youngest brother. The eldest of the four brothers minded the till. He gave me an itemised receipt written by hand.
Sri Lankans love rice, chillies and sugar in their staple diet. The country could never produce enough of these high-demand products. A single cooperative store on the production of ration cards distributed them. That was my next destination, lining up in that store. The cooperative, run by the government, was the monopoly of rationed groceries. The whole neighbourhood turned up to queue in the cooperative; mothers, grandmothers, grandfathers, children and time wasters. It was a huge commune; everyone was waiting in lines, chatting and engaging in small talk. The odd inquisitive woman would ask how old I was; as if to mate their daughters with me. Some would ask whether I passed my exam; and my result. I hated this intrusion into my private life. I gave them a deflecting answer to annoy them like the results were lost or I got a double promotion. My answer matched my mood for the day.
On my way home, I’d drop in at my friend Ananda’s home along the main street. Under his bed was a collection of raunchy magazines, much valued and hard to find in socialist Sri Lanka. Sitting on either side of his bed, we turned pages of these hard-to-find erotic magazines, imagining the lives of grownups. A shopping trip was incomplete without a jerk-off, a pastime for the two adolescents.
Not everything was without incident. On Sundays, it was my duty to buy the weekend paper from the newsagent. The owner, a middle-aged man, had other ideas about me, trying to feel my legs. I stopped going to his shopfront, determined to challenge him when I grow up. That I did a few years later. The marauding arsehole chickened out when confronted. He hid behind his shop.
Those challenging episodes notwithstanding, it was not only the shopping, but I was also the logistics guy. I took paddy from our farm to the grinding mill, where the tradies turned them into rice. I travelled to the main hospital to fetch medicines for a grandmother. Once a month, I travelled to my mother’s estate to pick king coconuts and pineapples for the family. I collected rent from our tenants, confidently issuing receipts from my father’s rental receipt book.
These were good crafts to learn early in my adolescence.
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4 min read·Dec 11, 2022
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