CHINESE ROLLS

My grandma makes the best Chinese rolls in the world. A statement by my granddaughter in London. I agree totally with no reservations. The happiness that showed on my wife's face was as if she just won an award for the best visiting chef in the UK.  

Even if you roam the lengths and breadth of China you will never find Chinese rolls of this sort.  Chinese rolls to my knowledge never originated in China. We have successfully modified spring rolls into Chinese rolls. Most foods at the top of Sri Lankan cuisine does not resemble its name.

So are the fish buns with no fish but seen symbol made with onion as the main ingredient. At times when sugar gets expensive, the even seen symbol will not have a trace of sugar.

If you visit a local bakery and could resist a revolt in your stomach, bloody hell you are Sri Lankanized. First of all, as you enter the room where the flour is stored the squeaking sounds of rats will make you feel as if you are in Karni Mata, the temple of the rats in Rajasthan, India. If you can survive this you are immune to the plague, salmonella, rat bite fever and tularemia amongst many other diseases transmitted through rats.

The tour through a Sri Lankan bakery will now take you to the mixing section where a sweat-soaked fat baker clad in rags not even fit for a beggar is mixing the dough. Salt is never used on the dough for obvious reasons. By this time if you are not fed up with the tour you are either a hard nut or from Bangladesh where conditions are supposedly worse.

The next stop is a clatter of tin moulds at high temperatures inside a primitive oven room. Crispy loaves of bread are manhandled in the most brutal manner that might remind you of a child marriage to a 70-year-old man like me. Not to mention prophet Mohammed and Aisha. May Allah be with me the sinner of the words. The moulds and the bread are thrown around a dirty floor yet keeping their shapes intact. Probably by this time the already rat polluted dough is sterilised by the near 250 degrees heat inside the oven.

Here comes the best part, transport to retail outlets inside vans with bare floorboards minus proper stacking facilities except for tin trays overstacked with bakery products in the most haphazard manner. By the time the van reaches the retailer, buns and bread are all strewn over the dirty floorboards calling for another round of pollution by way of rearranging with dirty hands. May God be with the consumer and prevent them from bread poisoning.

If you happen to be visiting a Sri Lankan home you might be asked your preference to the kind of rice. Raw or boiled? You do not eat raw rice but be adventurous and just say raw. Trust me the raw rice is better. It is not raw but not parboiled before it reaches the racks of the markets. The production of rice here in this resplendent island where rice is another disastrous adventure.

Rice the staple food of all Sri Lankans are produced in the fields of paddy all over Sri Lanka. Take a drive from East to west or north to south, you will see paddy fields at each and every corner. Terraced in the hill country and flat elsewhere, they will make you feel you are in a rice country producing the best rice in the world. You are in for a surprise.

The production of rice is controlled and manipulated by big companies producing pesticides and chemicals extending the rack life to incredible limits. Glyphosate is the common pesticide used and it is known and accepted as the main cause of kidney failure. Who cares as long as we produce rice. Before pesticides were introduced paddy fields were live with freshwater fish of many varieties and people drank directly out of wells dedicated to drinking only. There were bathing wells and drinking wells separately. The use of pesticides has polluted the water resources in rice producing areas, nowadays not even a frog lives there.

The government led by a so called farmer turned President overnight banned the use of glyphosate and replaced the subsidized fertilizers to a direct payment scheme. Hell broke loose and groups of people took to the streets in protest. Most of them were imposters planted by the previous regime hired for a fee. The government with the good governance motto reintroduced the previous scheme and provided the masses with kidney failures.

If you survive the bread and rice just take a walk on any road within Sri Lanka where pavements for pedestrians are only for the cities.

Sri Lanka was a paradise true to its meaning but eventually had become a paradise for politicians and their henchmen only. They gather wealth at will and kill at will. Corruption is rampant. Law is swift but applies only to petty criminals. Big time crooks are either in the parliament or in the local bodies.

The former president was instrumental in the victory over the separatist war that lasted over 3 decades. People jubilantly celebrated the victory.

In most places in Sri Lanka. The fried rice which as the usual case is rice fried with a variety of vegetables, meat and seafood of your choice, but here it is rice fried with a touch of oil and garnished with a tiny bit of carrot.

They make milk rice with no milk at all but with the diamond shape just to give the consumer the traditional feeling. A bird’s eye view of this island reveals millions of coconut trees but a coconut is far beyond the reach of the common man.

This tiny island just below India produces more curd taking the water buffalo into the world Guinness book of records for the highest yield of milk which is calculated per day could exceed their body mass.

We are the only producers of treacle and jaggery from the kithul tree and is believed to be a natural sweetener for diabetics. What is found in the market exorbitantly priced, if used by diabetics they have to double their dose of metformin or insulin.

For 6 mths she laboured to make my daughter's life comfortable. Not because she could do it. But because she loved her daughters family. Not crippled and not disabled. But with pain in her joints at her age of 69. We all were happy even though the prick of the winter snow ached every joint. My neighbour asked me why don't you stay behind. I could not. Visa regulations are strict. Moreover, my roots are back home in SL. I have to go. Tears run down eyes. Not because we are leaving. But because this could be the last time my wife would be able to help my daughter for her knees are troubling her. I cannot bear the pain of her being operated. If anyone says that the knees are not mine and so the pain is. Fuck you asshole, the pain is mine and not hers. I cannot bear that pain and I would better be dead before her joints are butchered off and steel joints are fixed.