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The grease yaka goes through the roof
By Rajpal Abeynayake
There are too many grease yakas around. On Thursday five people entered the British parliament. They slipped in unnoticed like grease yakas. Now they are crying blue murder there.

But they are crying blue murder in Ratmalana, Moratuwa and Mt Lavinia. There is a grease yaka who jumps from roof to roof and steals women's underwear. Maybe he read the Mahawamsa. The Mahawamsa it is, which says that in ancient Sri Lanka you could get from Dondra head to Point Pedro if you jumped from rooftop to rooftop along that stretch or something like that. The grease yaka must have a better knowledge of Sri Lankan history than I do.

But some residents in the yaka-hit areas are complaining. Why don't the politicians address their real concerns, they ask. They should talk about this grease yaka at least on those television shows.

The moderator can ask "emathithuma me grease yaka janathavage devena prashnayak neda?'' No doubt Sunil Handunhetti will say, in Sinhala of course though I have to give you the translation "the opposition is talking of the cost of living which they say is climbing but they don't talk of the janathavage devena prashna or climbing grease yaka. No the grease yaka will never give us the slip. We will catch him and embarrass him like we embarrass the “IMF.”

But it is Mangala Samamraweera who will be announcing (at the Cabinet briefing) the real government policy on the grease yaka. "Everytime the grease yaka hits the roof the UNP says it is like the cost of living. In Cabinet we discussed it and at first we thought it was a LTTE plot to distract the nation to push through their ISGA plan. But now we have information that this is not a LTTE plot , it is a plot undertaken diabolically by the nation's real enemy, the Ranil Wickremesinghe led UNP.''

He also adds that since new standards are to be introduced by the state media, the story of the grease yaka could be treated in a serious way. "The private media has a joke of it, but look at the way BBC is taking up the intrusion of the British parliament. We are going to take up the grease yaka issue in such serious way. The day the British ban fox hunting we will ban grease if we can't get the yaka.''

But we at Sunday Times got this down the grapevine: Ever since Mangala gave that speech and banned grease, the grease yaka prowls with layers of powder on his skin. And he is now stealing men's underwear.

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