Of Elbows and Asses

Susantha doesn't know his elbow from his ass. We are an awful combination, as a trishaw driver he technically should know where the hell he's going but unfortunately having a sense of direction is not his strong suit. He is however one of the most kind hearted and loyal chappies in all of Colombo. The kind of loyal "servant" you read about in a Jane Austen or Bronte novel. As is often the case when you don't speak any Sinhala loyalty and trustworthiness always trumps a stellar sense of direction.

If there was ever a man who was meant to suck more at his job I'd like to meet him, because Susantha is not what you would call a natural taxi driver. He proves this to me on an almost daily basis and not through his driving skills. As I've mentioned numerous times in the past I have an awful habit of creating futures for people. At times it can be rather depressing but at others it's such a powerful motivating factor to keep doing what I'm doing. If circumstances were different Susantha who knows what he could have done with his life.

If pity really does "have a human face" Susantha could be its poster boy. In this regard he really has fallen right out of a Victorian novel. His in-laws were brutally murdered last year, his wife fell into depression (naturally) and added to all of this his 2 year old daughter nearly died and was ill for almost 6 months. Along with the all these personal issues he also grapples with poverty. I know he's very grateful for all the work that we give him, we've been using him exclusively for almost 3 years now. But he's just not meant to be a driver.

It's easy to look at Susantha's circumstances and dismiss it all as just mere existence and not an actual life. To a certain degree there's a lot of truth in that, he doesn't have a career and lives paycheque to paycheque. Or I guess in his case from hire to hire. That kind of outlook however paints a rather bleak and dreary picture that would eclipse the reality of his life. Far be it for me to analyse or even for that matter understand Susantha's life, but the little glimpses that he let's us see is enough to know that this is a man who is thoroughly satisfied with life.

He is a devoted father and either flat out refuses to take hires between 1:00-2:00 PM or grudgingly does so because he picks his 6 year old daughter up from school and then has lunch with her. He also has a rather biting sense of humour, but he doesn't make this evident to everyone. By nature I think Susantha's a very reserved person, doesn't usually say much unless you initiate conversation. Which is again an unusual thing for a cabbie, because regardless of what part of the world you're in, cabbies talk.

Today he was at our gate with a huge grin on his face, one of his friends is an electrician who we've hired to rewire my grandparents' entire home (for fear that my meddlesome 84 year old grandfather will die by electrocution one day while tinkering with something unnecessary). In his own words Susantha's here to do the shitty work, he's been digging holes in the ground and breaking up concrete. Hopefully he's a better electrician than he is a driver, otherwise I think we'll all die of electrocution. And that would be really unfortunate