The Detergent Salesman ” a short story from “Rainbows in Braille” – A collection of short stories – By Elmo Jayawardena
The place looked the same. Houses painted in Pentalite colours, light ones and lighter ones that CIC sells in all possible shades. Reminded me of their clarion call, “Not white, not quite, but Pentalite”, always displayed on roadside billboards, father, mother, son and daughter with broad smiles in front of their newly painted home. That’s Pentalite and CIC for you.
The lane was a cul-de-sac, five homes to the left and six to the right, the one less on the left was the result of a double-sized house and a doubled-sized garden, perhaps the nicest, hands down winner of the best house in the lane competition, if it came to that.
Green garbage bins lined the lane on either side, not the usual overflowing but recently emptied. The sidewalk too was swept and litter-free.
Low parapet walls protected serpent-green lawns and each house had a name or a number; some had both, embossed on polished bronze boards mounted on the wall or nailed to the gate in wood or metal, just to confirm an identity.
Owners’ names too appeared, but not in all the houses.
People who mattered lived here.
It has been a month since I came last. I sell detergent, house to house and face to face; great service. We come by van and spread out in the neighborhood, three of us, we cover all the prospective customers and take their orders. The van drops the purchases at the door.
“Just make sure they get their money’s worth,” that’s what Mr. Yapa said; he was the marketing boss of my bread and butter source.
The big house with the big garden seemed different; somehow it had lost the lane champion look. The gate was closed and a heavy iron chain secured the two sides with a very large padlock, so large that you could decipher the name Yale clearly. Standing on toes, I could see the house and the garden, the gate wasn’t that tall.
The weeds were growing wild, and the pond had collected a fair share of the fallen leaves. The fountain was silent, gushing and splashing for none, someone had switched off the pump, everything looked dead or dying.
“What you want?” The voice was old, the man older. I had not seen him sitting under the shade of the giant Mimosa tree.
“Nothing,” he certainly didn’t look like someone who would be buying detergent.
Faded khaki shirt, munching a mouth full of betel, sarong worn at three-quarters with dusty dirty feet in full view, a watcher of a kind; that was my instant evaluation.
“Where are the people of the house?”
“They go,” twin syllable through betel covered teeth.
“Where?”
“I don’t know,” and then he recalls, “far away land, Madam sister land.”
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“When will they come?”
“They not come back.”
“Why did they go?”
The man gives a sly look, and then barely stretches the lips.
‘Tamil…. Tamil.”
The detergent van is waiting, I need to go, need to sell the detergents.
Author’s note
After the 1983 ethnic riots where so many of the innocent were killed, many left the shores of Sri Lanka, the Paradise Island. Today the Sri Lankan dispora is everywhere; from the chilly summits of Northern Canada to the dry lands of Tasmania, from the deserts of Dhahran to the lush green valleys of New Zealand. You see Sri Lankans with their little Sri Lankan “clubs”, clinging on dearly to memories of a homeland, torn between a new life and what they left behind. It’s a love they cannot shed, a romance gone rotten, and they gather and lament, speak in sad nostalgic tones of the Paradise they left behind.
