Leftovers

2 Things will be combined in this blog.

1. A scene from movie Blind Side
2. A scene from a World Cup match.

So all the jazz about the World cup is fading away. Thus Let me start with the World Cup.  People have started to feel the side effects of the loss. – The increased petrol prices. WC is not news anymore! New topics are in the scene like the pension scheme for the private, death of Sai Baba and Moon’s report on civil war. Saw Indi has blogged about it here.To think about it, he writes about everything! From MR in Time 100 list to Ranjit Fernando’s commentary. So no biggie there,

Ok, back to the scene from WC; I had the liberty of attending all the matches Sri Lanka played home. From Hambantota to Kandy to Colombo. It was as tiresome as playing the actual game. But enjoyed every bit of it. Specially the crowd and the atmosphere. Had to go to the ground around 12noon to secure better seats, and had to leave the ground almost after 1 hour after the presentation because I had to wait for the car of some friends to come and pick them. The hours before the game were filled with getting ready to cheer, trying to fight the sun, trying to locate prettier girls and enjoying the face arts. The after hours were all about enjoying the winnings, and dancing to the papare, except at the Pakistan match.

The organizing was surprisingly done well. May be there was a haahoo about selling tickets, but the ground organizing was beyond normal Sri Lankan standards.

Only the official sponsors had food stalls inside the ground. There were Pepsi and beer to drink, hot dogs and KFC food to eat. And the foods were not over priced either!! Everyone was enjoying a sip of pepsi when a boundary from Dilshan was changing the game. It was fun just to enjoy the amazing nice noise.

As mentioned above, I had to wait for a while after the game was done. When most of the people had started to depart. That is when I noticed the thing that took away all the winning joy!

Kids!

There was a bunch of kids, running around the pavilion looking beneath the looking for KFC food, Pepsi bottles, collecting as much as possible. It was as if they were waiting for the match to end so their battle for a meal could start. Most of the kids were below 10. At least pre teens, none of them “looked” 13. (May be the malnutrition is responsible for that if by any chance they were older) remember the scenes from Slum dog millionaire? Ah, the same kids here too. The only difference being, these kids were REAL, no make up!

 They were so active. Some had a drum stick hanging from his lips whilst running from one row of seats to another. May be they couldn’t wait to have a taste of this rare, expensive piece of meat. They were so happy and cheering gathering all the left over food. The cold pieces of KFC were enjoyed they are from London Grill.

By that time, I had enough chicken legs inside me to form a Scottish dancing troop. All the legs had started to kick my intestines so hard that I wanted to puke my brain out. I felt like a jerk for eating that much food. Felt helpless and responsible in a way but didn’t know what to do, how to react! This is when the incident 2 comes in. the scene from movie blind side. There is a scene in the movie where Big Mike sits at a Volleyball match and waits till the people walks out after the match. And then he does the same thing the kids did.. Collets all the left over popcorn bags. Days later, Big Mike – Michael Ohre gets adopted by a Leigh Anne Touhy and her family and ends up being an all American. Sandra Bullock who played the role of Leigh Anne won an oscar- for the best actress.

America too has poverty as one of its major social issues despite being the most powerful nation in the word. With a population over 300million- the biggest population after China and India, guess such divides in wealth is expectable in a country of that demographic scale. It is amazing how the poverty is spread among a small community like Sri Lanka in the same magnitude. The difference is huge. The gap between the levels is enough to lose ones’ soul. That is what happened to my conscious. Unlike Leigh Anne, I decided to do nothing about the kids. I just observed it, got a shock seeing the incident but made the choice of walking out of it.

Even weeks after the incident, the best I can do about it is blog. May be out of guilt, but, what matters is that my actions/ inactions did not benefit the kids. They continue to find leftovers as we speak. And that have left a hole in my stomach that could not be filled with any amount of food.

That’s what’s left by the kids.