The Landlord and the Shopkeeper

4 min read

That year, the rains came early to Dalugama, painting the red-earth roads in slick, liquid strokes. But neither the weeping sky nor the shifting ground could keep Ruhunusiri Mudalali from his morning rite. As dawn stretched its pale fingers over Ceylon, he unlatched the wooden shutters of his shop with the quiet certainty of a man who knew time not by the clock but by the rhythm of survival itself.

It was 1970, and the island trembled on the brink of becoming Sri Lanka. But politics was a distant murmur to a man whose kingdom was four whitewashed walls and a ramshackle tile roof that sang beneath the rain. From seven until seven, through the press of heat and the damp that clung like a second skin, Ruhunusiri’s shop stood — unyielding, unchanged.

Today was Poya when the government declared no groceries should cross a counter. The law was clear, but Ruhunusiri had long known rules that were like those of the monsoon — loud in their arrival but powerless to stop life from moving beneath them. The sacks of rice and lentils sat untouched, yes. But newspapers passed in silent exchanges. Cigarettes disappeared with a glance. And tea? Well, even the Buddha might forgive a man for quenching his thirst.

“Colombo makes laws from tall chairs,” he would say, waving a hand as if shooing a fly. “Here, we breathe.”

Through the open door, the world moved in rain-soaked fragments — children splashing through puddles, women in saris balancing baskets on their hips, and men bent against the weather. His gaze, sharpened by years of watching without seeming to, caught Julian’s uneven shape long before he reached the shop.

Julian, the landlord, walked like a man wading through deep water. His left leg, swollen monstrously by elephantiasis, dragged behind him like a chain. Once, Julian had moved with the easy command of a man born to wealth. Now, every step was a battle.

Ruhunusiri smoothed his sarong. “Ayubowan, Julian aiya,” he called, the greeting warm but measured.

Julian nodded, his walking stick tapping the threshold before he pulled himself inside. Unlike Ruhunusiri, whose sarong fell to his ankles in the old way, Julian had his hitched above his knees—not for style but for survival. Fabric against his ruined skin was torture.

“The rent,” Julian said, lowering himself onto the stool with a slow wince. “Fifty rupees.”

Ruhunusiri reached beneath the counter for the metal box reserved for this monthly dance. There are no receipts, no records — just the quiet exchange of coins and the unspoken pact between them.

“Business is good?” Julian asked, though his eyes, scanning the shelves, had already taken inventory.

“It moves,” Ruhunusiri replied, the merchant’s trick of speaking without saying. He nodded toward the new shelf along the back wall. “Small changes. Better for the papers.”

Julian grunted, tucking the money away. “The building is still mine.”

Silence settled between them, heavy as the wet air. Through the doorway, the light thickened as storm clouds gathered once more. They spoke of coconut prices, of roads swallowed by mud, of neighbours gone or ailing — anything but the sickness that had remade Julian’s body, his huge leg and feet, or the rumours of Colombo doctors who could fix it — for those who could pay.

Customers came and went, some buying what was allowed, others leaving with what was not. Julian watched, his face a mask.

When he stood to leave, pain flashed across his features before he buried it again. “The roof,” he said, glancing up. “Before the worst rains.”

Ruhunusiri nodded. “It will be done.”

Then, like a shadow, the boy appeared — Cornelius’s son, Kenny, thirteen and already tall, bare-chested in shorts too small for his growing frame. He said nothing, only waited by the door sent by his mother — the unseen woman who never left their house.

As Julian limped out, leaning on his son’s shoulder between the betel plants in his garden, Ruhunusiri watched them go — one man broken by his body, the other just beginning to grow into his. Neither spoke of the pain. Neither asked for help. Some burdens were carried in silence.

The day stretched on. The shop would stay open until seven, as it always did. Poya or not, storm or swelter, through revolution and rebirth, Ruhunusiri Mudalali would remain — a keeper of hours in a land where time moved not by hands on a clock but by the quiet, stubborn beat of living.