February 22, 2020
A friend on a rainy day
HETTIPOLA - You remember the old boy who raced us towards the coast, the one who wrote in the dust that he was 70? Well, today we met a like soul.
There was an hour today when we were condemned to ride a single road for lack of an alternative. It was also a day in which we had to shelter three times from a downpour. It had rained all night as well and, if there were indeed smaller, more agreeable roads, they'd have been a morass of soggy sand.
Our road was remarkable for few things. There was the traffic, although that wasn't too bad, and there were the little hills that had us dancing one way through the gears and then back again. What stood out, though, was a man of about 40 wearing trousers, sandals and a white shirt, carrying a bag of tools on his back. He rode one of the single-speed Raleighs that are ubiquitous here.
He breezed past us with neither a glance nor a wave, going uphill with surprising ease although taking a piratical stance on keeping to the left.
At the top, he eased up and we freewheeled past him. We waved in greeting but there was no response. And then on the next rise he came panting past again, once more without a glance, and then once more he eased at the top so that we could catch him.
This happy little caper repeated itself over and over, to the point that we gave up acknowledging him. And then he rode by, up the road and out of sight. Farewell, good friend.
But then, at the top of a climb longer than the others, we found him waiting at a turning. He looked at us with a toothy grin, turned down an unpaved road, looked back again, waved and disappeared.
We'd made a friend on the road without ever sharing a word, and I'm telling you this story now just as he's probably recounting it to his friends and family in turn. It was just another lovely encounter of the sort you get only on a bike.
We did get off that long road and we passed through countryside so lush and abundant that, left to itself, it would engulf the road in three years. The job of making sure it doesn't has been given to prisoners. You have to be careful just which prisoners you entrust with a machete, of course, so probably they're those who've been anti-social - Saturday-night extravagants and drunk drivers -and are now making amends.
At times, I assume, they must have to hack warily around heaps of elephant dung. There are times to be grateful that elephants can't fly. There was more evidence than usual of elephants because we have been skirting another of Sri Lanka's wildlife reserves, which the country puts into two classes, those open to visitors and "strict reserves" closed to all.
Elephants are treated well in Sri Lanka, nuisance though they can be, but some people still have a way to go. Yesterday we saw an elephant with its hind legs chained together, left to stand in the heat - which elephants don't like - to entice tourists to ride it.
Some people do still ride elephants, unfortunately. But the message is spreading that it condemns an intelligent animal to a life of boredom in the sun, wearing out its feet on hard surfaces and plodding monotonously round and round the same route. To that you can add that an elephant has to eat constantly, which it can do only in the wild.
I'm not soppy about animals but I longed to set this one free.
| Rate this entry's writing | Heart | 5 |
| Comment on this entry | Comment | 0 |