Shades of Grey in Mudiyansegewatte

Faith and Vice: The Tale of Mudiyansegewatte

Denzil Jayasinghe

3 min read

Life unfolded in stark contrasts in the village of Mudiyansegewatte, where the sun rose and set like a metronome marking time. The south, with its proximity to the church and the bustling energy of Colombo, was a world of white shirts and long pants. Here, the men worked in the city, bank clerks, junior bureaucrats in government, teachers, and general clerks, their lives punctuated by the occasional drink in a polished Colombo bar, far removed from the raucous chaos of the village. Their wives lived in quiet dignity, their homes free from the echoes of violence. Their children attended schools in Colombo or semi-urban towns, their futures shimmering with possibilities. The south was a place of order, where the rhythms of life were measured and predictable.

But to the north, the village told a different story. Here, the air was thick with the scent of sweat and struggle, the lives of blue-collar workers — brass workers, shop assistants, harbour workers, labourers, carpenters, cleaners, and masons — woven into the fabric of hardship. Their children attended the local village school, their horizons limited by the boundaries of Mudiyansegewatte. For many of these men, the day’s end brought not rest but the ritual of drowning their exhaustion in cheap arrack, the illicit brew that bubbled in Anthony’s backyard. The liquor, rumoured to be laced with the poison of lizards and centipedes, ignited a fire in their veins, a false courage that spilled over into violence. Their wives’ cries became a nightly chorus, a haunting symphony of pain that no one dared to silence. For these men, sleep came only after their fists had spoken, their anger a twisted lullaby.

Anthony was at the heart of this duality; they fueled the North’s despair while cloaking himself in the South’s piety. By day, he was a figure of quiet routine, perched on a high stool in his modest shop, a day-old copy of Dinamina clutched in his hands. He read every word with the reverence of a man studying scripture, his counter cluttered with bottles and glasses untouched by his own hands. Anthony never drank; his devotion to his Catholic faith was as unwavering as the rising sun. Every Sunday, he was the first to arrive at church, a large rosary swinging from his hand, his striped sarong swaying with each deliberate step.

But as the sun dipped below the horizon, Anthony’s shop transformed. His enterprise's dim, flickering glow came alive with the clinking of glasses and the hum of laughter. The men of the north, drawn like moths to a flame, slunk into the shadowy alleys and gathered inside. They drank deeply, the bitter arrack burning their throats and igniting a false bravado that smouldered in their chests. By nightfall, their drunken fervour turned toward their homes, fists swinging with misplaced passion. The village echoed with the cries of their wives, a mournful chorus that Anthony, behind his counter, had learned to ignore. He counted his money, locked his shop, and retreated to his prayers, the cries just another part of the night’s soundtrack.

In the quiet of his home, Anthony knelt before a small wooden cross, his lips moving in whispered prayers. He asked for forgiveness, strength, and guidance—but never for the courage to close his shop, to break the cycle that fed his livelihood and shattered the lives of others. Faith was a shield for Anthony, but it was also a veil that allowed him to see the world in black and white while the village around him bled in shades of grey.

Come morning, the men of the north stirred with heads heavy as stones, their tongues sharp with curses aimed at their families. They groaned through the daylight hours, nursing their self-inflicted misery, blaming the vile arrack for their woes. Yet, they never glanced inward at the true source of their sickness.

And so, the cycle continued. The sun rose and set, the men drank and raged, the women wept, and Anthony prayed. His shop remained a beacon of both solace and destruction, its dim glow a testament to the duality of his existence. In Mudiyansegewatte, the line between sin and salvation was as thin as the pages of Anthony’s newspaper and just as easily torn. The village, divided by geography and circumstance, lived in the shadow of its contradictions, where faith and vice walked hand in hand, and the silence of the South drowned out the cries of the North.