Chapter 17
‘It’s not very upmarket …’ Sampath couldn’t stop the urge to apologise.
Kalpana had insisted that they go to the lamprais place that he and Lal were planning to go to anyway.
It wasn’t a particularly tourist-friendly place.
The tables and chairs were plastic. A couple of ceiling fans stirred the warm air gently.
The ‘napkins’ were made of squares of newspaper.
It wasn’t exactly on a par with the places he’d been taking them to until now.
‘It’s fine,’ said Kalpana. ‘So long as the food isn’t going to poison us.’
‘I’ve eaten here many times before,’ said Lal. He flapped a hand to ward off a fly. ‘We’ll be fine.’
They sat down. A man came over and asked what they wanted. They ordered three chicken lamprais portions and asked him to come back in a minute for the drinks order.
Sampath looked over at the fridge. ‘There’s most of the usual colas,’ he said. Then his eyes caught sight of some familiar glass bottles, smaller than the bottles of cola. ‘Oh! They have Smak! I might have a chocolate Smak!’
‘A what?’ said Kalpana, twisting around in her seat to look.
‘Chocolate Smak. I haven’t had that in years.’ It had been one of his favourite treats when he was a kid. There was nothing more refreshing than cold, sweet chocolate milk when you came in from the heat.
‘What are you, a child?’ Lal said.
‘I was a child when I lived here,’ said Sampath.
Kalpana’s mouth twitched. ‘What is a chocolate Smak? Because it sounds … interesting.’
‘It’s just chocolate milk.’ Sampath gave Lal a glare. Him bringing down the tone wasn’t helping. ‘It’s very refreshing. Adults drink it all the time.’
‘No, they don’t,’ said Lal. ‘And you’re right, miss. It does sound like something else.’
Kalpana looked amused. That was a relief. If she found it funny, it wouldn’t be so bad. Sampath rolled his eyes. ‘Fine. I’ll have a woodapple Smak instead.’
Kalpana was now giggling behind her hands. ‘That sounds just as bad,’ she said, in a strangled voice. Lal was grinning at him.
‘Only in your twisted minds,’ Sampath said. By now their sniggering was making him laugh too. He ordered the woodapple drink anyway. Kalpana asked for tea. Lal opted for Coke.
This laughter set the tone for the meal.
The lamprais, when it arrived, was put on the plate still wrapped in banana leaf.
The two men showed Kalpana how to unwrap it.
The meal consisted of flavoured rice, chicken curry, aubergine curry, fried plantain, seeni sambol and a boiled egg.
They all washed their hands in the finger bowl provided and ate with their fingers.
He noticed that Kalpana ate carefully, pushing the fiery seeni sambol and a whole chilli to one side.
Even without this, the food was hot. Sampath had spent some time slowly building up his chilli tolerance before he came back to Sri Lanka, but it was still spicy for him.
Kalpana was probably finding it harder to deal with.
It brought a flush to her cheeks and made her lips redder. She was so beautiful.
He didn’t realise that he’d stopped eating and was staring at her until Lal’s foot nudged him in the ankle.
Startled, he quickly looked back down at his food and resumed eating.
Spending all that time with Kalpana was bad enough, but seeing her like this, relaxed and laughing, was torture.
On the one hand, she was here and she was happy.
On the other hand, she wasn’t his and he had to be careful to keep his distance.
Torn between longing and pain, he barely tasted his food.
***
The place Lal had decided they needed to see was a temple, a good half-hour’s drive inland from the restaurant where they’d had lunch.
Kalpana sat in the back of the van and half listened to the men talking.
They argued a lot, but it was a good-natured sort of bickering, as though they’d established that they were fond of each other and then dispensed with the need to be polite.
Lal was, she realised, quite cheeky, given that Sampath was several years older than him.
At some point, he had stopped saying ‘sir’ and now called him Aiya, which was rather sweet.
She knew that Lal would never switch to calling her anything other than ‘miss’. He saw Sampath as a colleague; someone in the same tourist business as he was. Kalpana and Marcus, they were clients. Foreigners.
Going out to eat with the guys had been a revelation.
So far, wherever she went for food, Marcus had been there with her.
They got treated as tourists. People explained things to them and helped them out.
This afternoon, the staff at the restaurant had assumed she was properly Sri Lankan.
She hadn’t been required to speak the language because Sampath had done most of the interacting, so there was no reason for anyone to suspect that she was anything more than a woman down from Colombo for a short break. It was strange. Also, quite nice.
The thing she liked even more than that, more even than the food, was the atmosphere among the three of them.
There had been jokes and conversation. It had been so much fun.
At one point, when the waiter came by and asked if the food was okay, she had understood what he was saying from context and said, ‘It’s tasty’ in her Sinhala and both Sampath and Lal had grinned at her like they were proud.
Sitting back in her seat, she had a good view of Sampath in profile.
Today he was wearing jeans and a white shirt with a batik print of a perahera – with dancers and elephants drawn in green and yellow along the bottom.
‘Literally dressed as a parade’ as Lal had put it.
The whiteness of his shirt made his skin and eyes look even darker brown.
As the van bounced over a pothole, Sampath grabbed the handle above his head to hold on.
Muscles flexed in his arm. He was handsome, in a very different way to Marcus.
Marcus. She looked away. What was wrong with her? She was engaged to Marcus. The perfect romance hero. She shouldn’t be thinking about how attractive Sampath was.
Nyssa’s voice piped up in her mind, ‘you’re engaged, not dead’. She smiled, but she still forced herself to keep her eyes firmly on the view outside the vehicle for the rest of the journey.
The temple was a short walk from the car park, which was practically empty.
It was a quiet, tranquil place. They left the van parked in front of the small ‘shop’ – which was little more than a shed built from wood, with a tin roof.
It sold a random selection of things ranging from strips of paracetamol to bananas that had to be cut off the stalk, which was hung from the ceiling.
They bought the temple essentials from there: a plastic basket of white flowers, a small bag of coconut oil, cotton wicks and incense sticks.
The temple was set in a woodland. They left their footwear in the van and all three of them walked up the flagstone path. The path was flanked by flowering trees. Within a few yards, the sound of people fell away and they were surrounded by the rustling from trees and birdsong.
‘Wow,’ she said. ‘This is so peaceful.’
Lal nodded, sagely. ‘It’s the local temple, miss. Not many people come here mid-week. When Sampath said, “Somewhere that gives you space to think”, I immediately thought of this place. Nice, no?’
When they reached the small dome of the stupa, they found an old man sweeping leaves off the sand.
He nodded to them but left them alone. They washed their hands at the tap just outside the enclosure and went in.
There were small shelters holding Buddha statues to either side.
Sampath walked up to one. Kalpana followed, feeling awkward because she wasn’t sure what to do.
She needn’t have worried. Sampath talked her through it.
She placed the basket of flowers on the ledge in front of the Buddha, touched it with both hands, then pressed her palms together.
The men did the same. Then they found the rack of lamps.
Sampath produced a pair of nail scissors from his ever-present backpack and snipped a hole in the bag of oil.
They poured it into some of the clay lamps, which were blackened with use.
Lal showed her how to dip the wicks in oil and lay them so they could be lit.
There were a few lamps already alight, so they used one to light their own.
Once the cotton wicks caught fire, they used the flame to light the tips of the incense sticks too.
There was a stand containing a bucket of sand, where you could put your incense sticks. The air smelled of oil and incense.
‘I’m going to head back to the van,’ said Lal. ‘Take your time, miss. Enjoy being here.’
Lal and Sampath exchanged complicated nods.
Kalpana was getting good at reading these head wiggles now.
At first, she’d just thought they merely said ‘okay’ or even ‘yes’, but now she could see that there were shades of meaning there, carried in the expression.
From what she could work out, Lal’s nod had said, ‘I’ll see you in a minute, will you be okay?
’ and Sampath’s had said, ‘Yes, we’ll be fine’.
She found a place to sit. It wasn’t sunny now, and the sand wasn’t too hot.
‘Remember, there’s no right way to do this,’ Sampath said. ‘I’ll give you some space. I’m just over there if you need me.’ He went over to a spot a few yards away and sat down cross-legged, his backpack leaning against him, hands resting one atop the other, in a meditation pose.