The Gamarala Who Never Went To The Temple
or
Gamarala Sil Gath Heti
by
Gyan Fernando
Illustrated
by Kumaran
Technical
details: This is another classic Srilankan folk story.
We recently came across
a new Sinhala version of the story in a pulp book called "Sabé
Gamarala" (The Real Gamarala) written by some prat calling himself
Jayatissa Boralugoda (ISBN 955-652-097-X), who attempts to sanitise and
politically correct the Gamarala stories with pathetic results.
Any
Srilankan who remembers the original story will agree that the new version is
totally sanitised, a travesty and has very little resemblance to the original
which appeared in the book "Ran Kekira Saha Thavath Katha" in the
1950s.
The
MadPage version is closer to the original. In fact the original was so
hilarious that the Mad Page didn't really have to jazz it up as such…
As usual
memories were jogged by our MadSister Babs..
Once
upon a time there was a Gamarala (village elder) who never went to the temple.
He
had better things to do such as drinking arrack. This activity of course
required a lot of advanced planning since liquor is not sold on Poya (full
moon) days and the moon of course follows the Lunar Calendar.
