TIME FOR US TO WAKE-UP AND LEND A HAND – BY Capt Elmo Jayawardena
Yesterday (12TH May) I was coming home at noon from the CandleAid office and stopped the car at the Moratuwa main junction to post a letter. I saw a long line of people standing on the pavement. They looked poor, dressed poor and with sad long faces, standing in the scorching sun. They were motionless, speechless, no words between them. The silence was a clear personification of their solution-less plight. They were just leaning on anything that stood. There was a pawnshop, they were waiting to pawn things they had. Whatever they had.
I was tempted to take a photograph but realized that would be adding insult to injury. These were people with dignity.
That is almost the last straw, the Pawn Shop. No one to borrow from and no one to assist, just the ultimate hope of getting a little money to feed their families.
The lockdown and the curfew have beaten most, specially the daily wage earner, the cleaner, the labourer, the tuk tuk driver, the other hundreds that did some sort of work to find food for the day.
There are so many today pawning their pride in multiple ways to keep the home fires burning. Most of us have helped in little ways we can. That is wonderful, this is all we need to do in the name of humanity.
Let us therefore keep looking for a battered starfish and throw it out to sea.
One Starfish is better than no Starfish.
Capt Elmo Jayawardena
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