Eat Lard

Rajiv joins us a few minutes late for dinner; having come straight from work. He slides into his chair quickly, crisply dressed despite the the humidity that has me sweating into my shirt. In the still night, the long fingered zephyrs turn the occassional flower this way and that, like a parent’s hand as it maneuvers a child’s face checking for dirt. At the table, conversations carry both opportunity and loss. Rajiv speaks of bad business conditions in his quiet voice precisely, without hyperbole, exaggeration or rant. In the same voice he ordered the salmon with. As he put it gently to me, “I don’t eat any meat.”

“So many are leaving,” he tells me; ”I am one of four, no, five from our class who are still in Sri Lanka. There were 48 of us.”

The salmon, exquisite in its coconut milk, served with cous-cous occupies us for a while. Rajiv picks at it unhurriedly and explains: “People leave because of the security situation”

I interrupt him. ”I think it’s more that our savings our worthless; there is no future we can prepare for, with 30% inflation.”

“No. It isn’t the lifestyle, the economic condition, people are now leaving simply out of fear.”

I listen politely.

“My wife used to work; we commuted together in our car. The kids would hear about a bomb in Colombo. They are young and would worry till we would come back home. Eventually we thought about that, how my wife and I would go to work together and come back together. If something happened while on the road, we’d both be there.” He looked at me sadly. “We agreed that at least she should stop work.”

I  stare down at my plate; all I hear is the the unconcerned croaking of frogs.