A Short Tall Story

A Short Tall Story.

Coming down from the TRI club premises, it had always been the practice to stop at the so called co-op junction where 10 roads meet at one point. To be very precise 11 roads. Two roads on either side of the co-op, one opposite, circular road to club house, one to TRI offices, one to Talawakele, one to minor staff, one to hostel, one to the house where Mr. Solomons lived during the seventies and lastly one to the junior staff. The world's busiest junction. If you have lost count make a visit to St. Coombs and you will count at leat to 9 or 10 and if you are a buddhist you will add the entrance to the Buddha statue to make it eleven. Totally confused right? No wonder you have spent most of your life time at TRI and failed to notice this slightly exaggerated situation.

I am sure by this time you are cursing me and already calling this a tall story which in fact is true. After a game of billiards and table tennis we were now at this incredible junction slowly draining out the effects of a few shots of alcohol to the surrounding chilly weather.

Gunadasa, Gune as we call him is a character to be reckoned with, relating interesting stories of the yesteryear. How they enjoyed the life at TRI during the days when things were much rosier with the administration of the whites. He would come out with so many names of white administrators and how they treated the locals with fairness and showered with facilities nowhere else in Sri Lanka, making TRI the best place to work.

During the time of the white administrators the workers were given the option to hire a vehicle at a very cheap price of 50 cents per running mile. Employees often arranged trips to places like Horton Plains, nearby farms, Nuwaraeliya etc., on weekends and holidays. This facility was intended to make life easy for the employees who are holed up in a God forsaken remote place like St. Coombs.

For a driver we all preferred Selladurai, Sella as he was popularly called at that time for good reasons. He was a person ready for any adventure and would oblige without any fuss to our demands. A pleasant guy who enjoyed life and got on very well with the officers. Last but not the least he would dislocate the speedometer just with the two fingers within seconds and would re engage it equally fast. As the most innovative swindlers on earth we cheated even the 59 cents on the personal hires. During this time none of the cars in Sri Lanka had electronic meters. All were mechanical.

We were planning to arrange a trip to Horton Plains and started calculating the charges for the vehicle, who would join, meal arrangements etc., when suddenly Gune interrupted and said that in the good old days sometimes they would go to Talawakele town and come back on the reverse gear and pay nothing for the hire. We all were dumbstruck at his statement for a few seconds before starting to laugh out loud and make mockery out of him.

During this time I owned a Peugeot 404 car and my brain started to work overtime on the statement made by Gune, which he profusely refused to admit as false. Right throughout the following encounters at the club when we made fun out of this statement, he strongly supported his statement as true. I ultimately decided to do a test run and check the authenticity of his steel strong statement.

The next day I drove my car on the only straight stretch at St.Coombs opposite the co-op towards Talawakele for about 200 meters and started to reverse. Holy Shit! Yes, the speedometer was running backwards. With my little knowledge on mechanics I was dumbstruck. After all Gune has some authenticity to his statement even though coming back on the reverse gear all the way from Talawakelle is a fairy tale.

As a regular reader of English newspapers, I never missed a word in the Sunday Observer. The next edition carried an invitation for a competition for tall stories. Every week Lake House would publish the best tall story submitted and give away a prize.

I submitted this story written in a manner where I became the protagonist as well as the narrator, without giving credit to Gune and hit the jackpot. The next edition carried my story verbatim as the best tall story of the week and received a check by post.