An infant for sale

            It was in the mid 1970’s. I was Resident Surgeon at Kandy occupying the spacious RS quarters situated on a hill, adjacent to the Kandy General Hospital. The quarters gave a lovely view of the Bogambara grounds, the jail which was a former British fort and the town of Kandy. It was more beautiful with the night lights. On a Full Moon day the distant drums of the Dalada Maligawa, and the entire scene bathed in milky white colour was even more enchanting. The sound of railway diesel engines, shunting carriages in the railway station and goods yard in the valley of Deiyanavila below, were the night sounds which kept one awake at night.

            The United Front government of the SLFP and allied left parties was in power. Dr.N.M.Perera the veteran LSSP politician was the Finance minister. It was the era after the JVP uprising of 1971. After the defeat of the JVP, the government did not tolerate dissent. Very severe economic measures were taken by the government to meet the food requirements of the populace. Any available land was cultivated. Lovely tennis courts were ploughed up and manioc planted, to feed the hungry. My wife had a lovely vegetable garden where butter beans, radishes, brinjals, ladies fingers etc were cultivated to exceed our house-hold demand. Rice transport from district to district was limited to 2 Kilogrammes. Rice was banned from the menu of eating houses and hotels two days a week. Wedding invitations for meals was limited to 100 guests. The rich found ways to overcome this. The middle class and the poor were severely affected. Kandy town was crowded with beggars and the displaced Indian Tamil workers from the tea estates, who were being forcibly repatriated to India. This was to fulfil the 'Sirima-Shastri pact'. The tears of those hardy workers who built the economy of this country, was an appalling sight, in the Kandy railway station... It was a sad page in the history of our nation.

            I was on relief duty as Acting Surgeon to the Matale District Hospital. I would come down from the RS quarters, to the railway station at 5am, to go by train to Matale, on Monday mornings after spending alternate week-ends with my family in Kandy. It was on such a morning I approached the railway station. I saw a large crowd in front of the ticket office. I peeped in and saw a mother seated on the ground with an infant, maybe a few days old and another three year old child seated near the mother. I asked from an on looker what was happening. He told me that the mother wanted to sell that new-born infant. I was so much in shock that the next few words hardly penetrated my mind. He added that the mother wanted Rs.10/- for the child, the cost of three gallons of petrol at that time.

            Looking back, it might have been that the mother was unbalanced, after delivering the child. But it was a rare sight and I was sure, would have been induced by the serious economic conditions at that time. It represented to me, not a single mother trying to sell her new-born child, but an entire nation trying to adapt to a new economic reality.

I have a dream

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