The Ration Book

Denzil Jayasinghe

3 min read

Inthe sweltering stillness of our Ceylonese home, the ration book lay like a talisman, its dog-eared pages whispering promises of sustenance and survival. My mother’s hands, worn smooth by the relentless tides of household chores, cradled it with a reverence that bordered on devotion as if the fragile pages held not just our names and allotments but the very fabric of our lives.

The weekly ritual of surrendering stamps and signatures was a sacrament, a transaction that bound us to the land, to the unseen hand that governed our lives with a quiet authority. Without this book, we were refugees, our identities a mere flutter in the wind, our presence a whispered rumour in bureaucracy’s vast and uncaring machinery. My mother guarded it with a ferocity that belied its humble appearance, locking it away in the secret recesses of her almirah, shielding it from the world outside.

The memory of the cooperative society’s premises still lingers, a place of austere beauty, where rice was dispensed with a calculated precision that bordered on reverence. One kilo sold at twenty cents, carefully measured and poured into our cloth bags, like offerings to a deity. We brought our sacks, humble vessels for the sustenance that would sustain us. The Manager sat enthroned, his long pants and desk-bound duties elevating him to a station of quiet authority, while the shop assistant’s striped sarong, folded neatly to his knees, and crisp white vest bespoke a humbler station. I recall the whispers of awe when the Manager, once a shop assistant himself, donned long pants and a shirt, his promotion a transformation that rippled through the village like a stone cast into still waters.

As I rode my bicycle to the cooperative society, the wind whipping my face, I felt a sense of purpose and responsibility. I was entrusted with procuring our rations, a duty that bound me to my family, the land, and the state. The boy from Makola, with a face that mirrored mine, would sometimes join me in the queue, his bicycle’s front luggage rack laden with the exact necessities. His younger brother would accompany him, and for a fleeting moment, our lives intersected, bound by the shared ritual of procurement, our existence a delicate balance of want and sustenance.

In those moments, I felt a sense of connection to the world beyond our village, a world that was vast and mysterious yet tantalisingly within reach. The ration book was a passport to scarce commodities — chillies, other critical groceries that were elusive in the general market, and precious stones that shone brightly in the darkness of want. As I collected our rations, I felt a sense of pride and accomplishment, knowing I was contributing to my family’s sustenance and the fabric of our lives.

The sweetness of sugar, a luxury in short supply, was tempered by the government’s benevolence, sold at sixty-seven cents, a controlled price set by the authorities. I knew this sugar came from a far-off land, Cuba, a friendly socialist country that sent its produce to our shores. The kilo measure of rice, equivalent to a seruwa, the traditional measure of the locals, was a tangible quantity, a standard unit that made sense in our world. The weighting machine, placed in the middle of the store, stood sentinel, its scales a testament to the precision and fairness of the transactions. A colossal scale hung from above, its pounds and kilos etched on its side, symbolising the dual systems that governed our lives. As I watched the shop assistant measure our rations, I felt a sense of trust in the system and that the rules were in place to ensure fairness and equity.

Though we had a bounty of superior-quality rice from our paddy fields, we still secured the government’s rationed rice despite its cheaper quality. Nonetheless, it found its way into our lives, sometimes used to make hoppers or fed to the chickens in our backyard, who scratched and clucked in contentment.

Years later, when I prepared to leave Sri Lanka for foreign shores, I had to surrender this ration book, a tangible connection to my past. My first passport bears a stamp certifying that my rice ration book had been surrendered to the government, a bureaucratic ritual marking my transition to a new life. At that moment, I realised that the ration book had been more than just a tool for sustenance; it was a national ID, a testament to my existence within the framework of the state. Surrendering it was a poignant moment, severing ties to the land and the system that had governed my life for so long.