Sarath Samaranayake's Official Blog: Buying a house

Buying a house

This description will not be complete if I do not mention something about the house in which our family used to live when we're young. We lived in a typical village where there used to be one or two houses made of bricks and cement with roofs thatched with tiles. Most of the houses in our village were made of wattle and daub with a roof thatched with Cadjan (Cadjans are woven mats made from coconut palm leaves, used for roofing in some Asian countries like India, Myanmar, and Sri Lanka). Our house was not an exception to the rest of the houses in the village. Another striking thing that is needed to mention here is that our house was formally constructed to run a business by one of my uncles. Therefore, it totally looked like a small shop which consisted of one room with a small kitchen. In a typical Sri Lankan village shop, a row of wooden planks is used as a door. In other words, there is no single door instead several planks are inserted into a wooden frame in such a way that each plank, which is generally numbered from one, is fitted as a raw when closing the shop at dusk. Similarly, when opening the shop at dawn, each plank is removed and carefully placed by one side of the shop as a stack.

A typical house made of daub and wattle with a Cadjan roof

As I stated earlier, our house which was constructed to run a small shop earlier was later transformed into a house with our occupation there. It belonged to our grandparents who allowed us to stay there even though it was constructed for a shop. As far as I remember, we had one single bed, one table, one wooden chair, and a mirror. The kitchen was partly furnished with a few earthenwares and two hearths which were fueled using firewoods placed on the wooden frame erected over the hearths. This kind of wooden frame erected just above the hearths is called a “Dum Massa”. The two hearths in our house were built on a raised flat form so that one did not want to squat on the floor to kindle the hearths. In Sri Lanka traditional context, “Dum Massa” plays a crucial role in the kitchen where a number of functions related to cooking are done. The main purpose of erecting a wooden frame over the hearths is to keep the earthenwares dry and clean after cooking. In addition, “Dum Messa” is used for storing firewood that is collected from a garden or a nearby jungle. Village women use “Dum Messa” for drying lot of household stuff such as dry fish, chilies, and certain ingredients used in cooking food. Most importantly, when it comes to a place to hide something from the other members of a family, “Dum Messa” was then considered a more secured place than any in a house by most village women.

I have sweet memories of “Dum Messa” because my grandmother used to hide delicacies prepared at home in “Dum Messa” to safeguard it from us (My brothers and me) because we loved to eat sweets a lot as young ones then. My grandmother prepared different kinds of sweetmeat such as oil cake (Kewum) ‘Aggala’-is a typical dessert made from roasted rice flour and treacle honey which is formed into diameter balls and coated with rice flour (Please refer to the picture below), ‘Undu Wel’, ‘Aluwa’ and ‘Weli Thalapa- is a household sweet, usually prepared in a two-step process, first Pittu is prepared with rice flour and second, it is mixed with Kitul or Coconut treacle and cut into square blocks which are generally served at tea time were the most famous. In addition, she used to prepare a special delicacy called ‘Kee Roti’ on and off. Like other sweetmeats, preparing ‘Kee Roti’ is labor-intensive in that one has to go through several stages starting from the preparation of rice flour to the final product. As grinding equipment was not available at that time in villages, village women had to pound soaked rice in a mortar to obtain flour.

Kewun ‘Athirasa’

'Kokis'

' Aggala'

'Aluwa'

'Arsmee'

'Unduwel' or 'Pani Walau'

'Unduwel' is a peculiar type of delicacy which is prepared for special social occasions such as wedding parties or especially during the Sinhala and Tamil New year. To prepare this sweetmeat, one needs expertise as its mixture should be in the right proportion. In my village, there was only one relative of ours who knew how to make ‘Unduwel’ correctly. If the mixture is not prepared rightly, ‘Unduwel’ gets hardened while frying and the honey in which ‘Unduwel’ is dipped will not absorb so that ‘Unduwel’ will become crispy like ‘Murrukku’ which is a savory and crunchy Indian snack. When a wedding took place in our village, making ‘Unduwel’ and ‘Arsmi’ were assigned to our relative who earned fame for making both these sweetmeats in and around our village. Being young ones, we loved very much to eat ‘Unduwel’ and ‘Arsmi’ prepared by this lady. ‘Arsmi’ is also a traditional sweet without which a tea party given in a wedding ceremony is incomplete. However, making ‘Arsmi’ also needs a special skill and only a few women in a village know how to make it properly. Another sweetmeat which is mostly prepared only by village women is called 'Kitul Talapa' for which you need 'Kitul Piti' (a kind of starch extracted from the pith of a 'Kitul' palm. 'Kitul' is a palm species which is native to Sri Lanka). I found an interesting recipe about making 'Kitul Talapa' published in Lankadeepa Newspaper by a journalist name Sisira Kumara Bandara, one of my old friends from Hataraliyadda. I wish to cite the web address of that article here so that any reader who wishes to know more about this traditional delicacy (Kitul Talapa) can access this (http://www.lankadeepa.lk/avurudu/1892/). However, a screenshot of this article is published here with a few photos of 'Kitul Talapa' retrieved from this website. This article was written by Mr. Sisira Kumara Bandara (A journalist of Wijaya Newspapers and Ltd, Colombo, Sri Lanka). However, the description of the recipe is in my native language (Sinhala)

Kitul Talapa partakes with a specially prepared broth called 'Kiri Pani' which includes several ingredients such as coconut milk, cardamom, pepper, a little flour of ground rice, and garlic.

The above is the recipe in Sinhala

My memory with places is curiously vivid. One such place is our grandparents’ kitchen. The kitchen in our grandparents’ house was bigger than ours and had two levels of which the second level was so high that we could not reach it without a prop. It was the practice of our grandmother to put whatever sweetmeats she made into an earthen pot and cover it with a piece of clean cloth and put it on the second level of the ‘Dum Messa’ in her house. As young ones, we knew where she kept it so it was not difficult for us (My brothers and me) to find the pot which contained the sweetmeats. When she was not at home, we either as a collective or individually began to search ‘Dum Massa’ for sweetmeats on a condition that neither one of us should tell grandmother who ate the sweetmeats if found concealed there in ‘Dum Massa’. However much we were careful in eating one or two pieces from the receptacle in which they were kept, our grandmother had such an instinct that she knew it had tampered and she used to inquire about it from us to know who did it. In such a situation, as previously agreed, we did not disclose any one of our exact identities saying that it must have been eaten by so and so (Two of my brothers’ names). Incidents of these kinds were many and each time most of us got blamed for eating stealthily.

This is my friend (Udaya Wijekoon) with whom I ate 'Aluwa' in the classroom at Rangamuwa School.

During our younger days, our grandmother and our mother used to prepare sweetmeat at least every week and when sweetmeat was prepared, it was generally shared with our neighbors who were also accustomed to this great culture-specific practice. We not only shared such things with our neighbors but also sued to share with our friends at schools. I remember one incident in which I took some sweetmeat (Aluwa) prepared by my mother to my classroom when I was studying in grade one or two in my village school. My mother gave me a few pieces of ‘Aluwa’ and asked me to eat them during the interval. However, before the interval, during the class time when one of our teachers was conducting a lesson, my friend who was seated next to me began to eat little by little stealthily. Our teacher noticed this and asked us what we were eating and we kept silent. Then, she asked us to go out of the class and eat whatever we were eating. We both felt shy and stopped the action of eating and focused on the lesson which our teacher was teaching. Since then, I never tried to eat anything in the class while a lesson was in progress until my primary education was completed in my village school.

When we were very young, living in a village was not complicated as it is now. We did not have any infrastructure facilities such as electricity, water supply, telephone or motorable roads. Most of the families in my village depended on rice cultivation except for one or two families who were employed in government or private sector jobs. Since electricity was not available, we used to illuminate our houses with oil lamps. It was easy to make a simple oil lamp using a small glass bottle as shown in the picture below.

Normal oil lamp

A chimney lamp

A kerosene lantern

A mantle lamp

In our house, we had one chimney lamp and one oil lamp whereas my grandparents’ house had more oil and chimney lamps including a kerosene lantern and a mantle lamp. Of these all, the mantle lamp produced a bright white light so it was used only in important occasions such as having a religious function, family gathering, funeral, wedding, or agricultural work done at night (paddy thrashing). It was lighted by one of my uncles and it was not allowed to handle by others because you need to know the procedure of lighting it. So, what we did was to stay around looking at how our uncle lighted it. The mantle lamp our grandparents had was a pressurized mantle lamp and it contained a gas generator and required preheating the generator before lighting.

As noted above, we used to play with our friends all afternoon until dusk and when dusk approached, we began to reach our respective homes. If we did not come home when dusk approached, our mother used to call us by our names. As soon as we returned home, we were led to the well to take a bath. The well that we used to take a bath in was not properly constructed with cement and stones. It was like a pit dug out from the earth. A few stones were placed from one side where bathing was done standing at the edge of the well. Most of the water that was taken out from a bucket to pour over the head and body generally flew back to the well and after some time, the water in the well got muddy making difficult to continue bathing. It was at this point we used to stop bathing and returned home quickly. Some days, we used to go to a ‘Pihilla’ to bathe. ‘Pihilla’ is made using a stem of bamboo or an Areca nut tree. If it is an Areca nut stem, its inner part is removed to make it like a tube through which water can flow. As such ‘Pihilla’ is fixed to a watercourse that descends over a steep surface of the ground. As a result, a column of water is ejected through the Areca nut stem to a few feet from the steep surface so that one needs to stand under ‘Pihilla’ and hold his head to an outflow of the water. Therefore, bathing from a ‘Pihilla’ is easier than taking a bath from a well. It was not only the village folks that used to bathe from a ‘Pihilla’ but also the kings of Kandyan kingdom in the days of yore. History records that King Kirthi Sri Rajasinghe bathed from a water spout which is now known as Rajapihilla or Royal Bath found situated in the vicinity of Dalada Maligawa.

A photo of Rajapihilla (Royal Bath) Photo credit: http://amazinglanka.com/wp/rajapihilla/

‘Pihilla’ or water sprout which most villagers use to bathe. As described above, for this Pihilla, an iron pipe has been used, whereas, in villagers, bamboo or Areca nut log is used.

Returning to the topic of this description, I should say that our family moved to a house in a housing scheme which was constructed under the concept of village reawaking movement initiated by R. Premadasa, who was the third President of Sri Lanka and before that he was the Prime Minister when J.R. Jayawardane was the president. This housing scheme consisted of 20 houses with a land of 6 perches. The house consisted of two rooms with a kitchen and an attached toilet. The kitchen was not used and we had a small kitchen built attached to the house. Since our house was in a scheme, there were two houses close to ours: one was behind while the other was to the right. The people who lived in them had come from various villages in Galagedara Electorate. Therefore, neighbors were united and friendly unlike in villages where people mostly pretended that they were friendly from outwards but envied each other inwardly. However, if someone got into a trouble, the whole village tended to act as if they were members of one family which we should consider as one of the greatest qualities of villagers.

Once we settled down in the new house, my visits to our grandparents’ house as well as meeting my village friends became frequent because our new house was situated about 10 kilometers away from my village. I lived in this house until I got my job as an English teacher in a government school after that I went to different places in my country to serve so my visit to this house was limited to once or twice a year to see my family members. Later, this house was sold and my brother and mother moved to Kotmale because my brother found a teaching position in a ‘Pirivena’ there. I got married and moved to my wife’s house which was in Danovita. At that time, I worked in Kandy while my wife worked in Colombo. So, both of us left home in the morning for work and returned in the afternoon. Even though my journey from Danovita to Kandy was tedious, I could come home earlier than my wife who had to undergo numerous troubles in transportation from Danovita to Colombo, Pelawatta. Since our son was small, we had to employ someone to take care of him. My wife's mother also stayed with us. However, we finally decided to move to Colombo for thinking about our son’s schooling. There were no good schools nearby Danovita on one hand and on the other, transportation to either direction (to Kandy or to Colombo) was rather difficult. Those days the roads were not in good condition as they are now so it took many hours to get to Kandy or Colombo from Danovita. Given all difficulties mentioned above, we rented out a ground floor of a house in Pelawatta, Battaramulla near to my wife’s place of work (Isurupaya) and I also got a transfer from Kandy to Dehiwala. The portion consisted of two rooms, a kitchen and a bathroom. The portion was not roomy enough to keep any furniture except the most required ones. However, the location was very convenient for all of us. The house owners did not poke into our affairs so we stayed for nearly 10 years in that house. By this time, I was out of the country (Thailand) and I visited Sri Lanka during a vacation. Time passed and I left Thailand and went to Oman where I could save some money. One of our biggest dreams was to buy a house of our own. So, we began to search houses in and around Thalawatugoda. Pelawatta and Battaramulla area became urbanized and the prices of land and house went up to a great extent which we could not afford to buy a piece of land or a small house in that area. Therefore, we decided to look for a house in the vicinity of Battaramulla.

The garden of our Danovita house

The garden was full of flowers

We had a concrete bench erected in our garden

Now the house is abandoned

Another view of the house

The house we rented out in Pelawaata on MDH Pura road

Another view of our rented house located on MDH Pura Road

How Pelawatta city, once used to be a sleepy town, looks at present

We used www.ikman.lk website to search for a house and after searching for a few months, we found one house in Kothalawala, Kaduwela. Kaduwela is a city situated along New Kandy Road around 10 kilometers away from Battaramulla. The house looked nice and consisted of a 3-bed room with a big living room and a bathroom and a small kitchen. The original price the seller told was reduced to a little and we bought the house at 5.2 million in Sri Lankan rupees. The only problem we had was that it was situated around one kilometer away from the main road. Once my wife and son went to live there, they found traveling rather difficult from there to the workplace of my wife and to a school of my son. One of the strangest things was that I could not stay in that at least one night. We bought the house in 2014 and moved all our goods there during August. We made some renovation to the house so it looked new.

My wife and son stayed in this for 3 months and then they complained about the difficulties they had to undergo by staying there further. So, we rented out another house from Koswatta, close to Battaramulla again, and occupied it soon. Some of our goods were taken there. It was a storied house in which the owner lived on the ground floor while we lived on the first floor. It had two bedrooms and a large living and a kitchen with a bathroom. It was spacious for a small family like ours. Now my family began to stay there and our House in Kothalawala was kept under lock and key. My family sued to go there once a week and do some cleaning and came back. This routine went on for time and finally, we decided to sell that house so I put up an advertisement on the same website as above and found that it was not easy to sell. Later we reduced the selling price and re-advertised. After a few weeks, we got an offer from a buyer and who agreed to buy the house at the price we wanted to sell it. Ultimately, we could sell that house at 5.3 million Sri Lankan rupees which was a loss in terms of money.

The house we bought in Kothalawala, Kaduwela

Front side of the house

The garage

Small compound

Spacious living room

Following are some photos of the rented house at Kowatta.

We stayed at Koswatta house for one and half years and then we found that the owners of that house wanted to increase the rent. Another reason was that this house was not comfortable to stay in because of the heat. As we stayed on the upper floor, during the daytime, inside the house was very hot and we started to sweat all the time. Because of this and the other reason as mentioned above, we decided to move from that house soon. We searched for another house for rent in and around Battaramulla and we found one in the heart of Battaramulla on Pannipitiya road just opposite the Electricity Board of Battaramulla. We could rent the ground floor of it. The house consisted of two bedrooms, a bathroom, a kitchen, and a living room. As this house is located close to Battaramulla junction, transportation to anywhere was not a problem. Now, this house became the third we rented out in the Battaramulla area.

This picture shows our third rented house. (At the time of writing this, we are still staying at this house-7^th November, 2016)

Another view of the house just opposite the Electricity Board of Battaramulla. When talking about Battaramulla, it is difficult not to mention a public park called Diyatha Uyana which has been built on the bank of historic Diyawanna Oya. This park has recently become one of the attractions of both locals and foreigners living in and around Battaramulla. Since it has been built on the bank of Diyawanna Oya on one side and a famous hotel ‘Water’s Edge’ on the other side, it is visited by many people with their families every day. The lush greenery and the peaceful environment of this park provide the public with an ideal place to rest, jog, dine, listen to live musical shows, shopping and viewing different varieties of fish kept in Minmdura from morning till late night. This park becomes generally gets crowded during the weekends. The park was erected on marshy land between the Parliament complex and the Diyawanna Oya at the Polduwa junction to enhance the beauty of the historic city of Sri Jayewardenepura, Kotte, near Battaramulla. This park has become one of our family’s interesting places to visit at least once a week. The credit of construction this park should go to the former secretary of defense, Mr. Gotabaya Rajapaksha, a brother of former President, Mahinda Rajapaksha who got defeated in the presidential election held in 2015. When we visit, we are used to taking photos of Minmedura and other places in the park. Followings are some of them.