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LIVING ON A KNIFE’S EDGE
A lazy Sunday afternoon. Most people have had a sumptuous lunch and are comfortably snuggled in bed having a snooze or relaxing with the newspaper when a high-pitched cry echoes down the lanes and byways.

"Pihi muvath………kathuruuu muvath………pihi muvath."
A rarely seen 'scissor-man' - who sharpens knives and scissors - is doing his rounds and The Sunday Times takes the chance to chat with 55-year-old Waidya Wilson, to get an insight into the times and lives of people who are plying this fast-vanishing trade.

Yes, he concedes, he meets very few of his ilk on his journeys through the byways and alleyways crisscrossing towns. "It is a dying trade and soon the machines in posh shops will take over," he says explaining that he does a full day's work on Sunday because "Nonala gedera inna davasa nisa".

Armed with a few essential tools and also an umbrella with broken hinges, his day starts at 8 in the morning. As he spreads out his tools - big and small peera, hammer, pliers, screw-driver, a block of wood and the weli gala on which he sharpens his tools - he casts anxious glances at the sky. It is 4 p.m. and he laments that he may not be able to work till evening. For, the sky is overcast and lightning streaks across the gloom.

He squats on the ground and extricates his tools from a small black bag with a torn zip. But the bag still retains a lump and when asked he says kind nonas give him food sometimes. "Today I got a packet of rice with two big pieces of fish and a lot of dhal," he smiles. He had his fill and kept the rest for his night meal. He does not eat egg or papadam or drink tea with milk. "Mata kahata hondai."

While his hands work skilfully, sharpening, testing the edge of the knife or scissor with his fingers and sharpening once again he talks of his lonely life on the road. "I don't have a home, I don't have any relatives," says Wilson almost aggressively, sharpening with renewed vigour. "I also do coconut scrapers," he adds and we get a whiff of kasippu.

When probed about the kasippu he laughs guiltily, questioning whether we are from the newspaper or the police. "Yes, yes, I did have a shot," he says, stressing that he needs it to keep him going the whole day and kasippu is easy to find wherever he goes. He would look at people with bloodshot eyes and approach them for directions to the hooch den. "Once a woman showed me the way," he adds.

From then on, as the sky opens up and he is compelled to seek shelter for a while, he unwinds and out comes his life story. "Gederak ne, gamak ne." Wilson's father was a bus driver and they lived in Piliyandala. His brothers and sisters still do. He studied only up to Grade 7. "Atata giya, eth pail." That was when he dropped out and loitered around doing odd jobs – dara peluwa, kadawala weda kara. Then he met this girl, fell in love and married her. His parents had given him a five-perch block and he put up a tiny hut. They were struggling to make ends meet and a pihi muvath karayek moved in next-door and Wilson "copy gehuwa".

Life was okay and they had a nice little boy. But happiness was still elusive. One day he returned to find his wife gone. He was a single parent with a toddler to look after while plying a trade that kept him on the road for long hours. He felt crazy and just put the boy on his bicycle and took off.

At nightfall he found himself in Kolonnawa with a hungry child. He looked around and sought refuge in the temple there. The monk took them both in and fed them, allowing them to put their weary heads down on a mat in the temple hall. The temple became their temporary home and he speaks with gratitude of the monk who arranged for his little boy to attend the pre-school in the temple itself while Wilson went to work in the morning and came back in the evening. Father and son stayed in the temple for sometime finding solace and refuge from a cruel world.

The monk promised to look after the boy and he did and Wilson went back to the place he called home, only to find that his own siblings had "acquired" it. He left home that day, once more, never to return. "Mage paduve mage rakshava karagena inna." Now his home is the pavement.

He sleeps where his trade takes him……….Nugegoda, Kohuwela, Maharagama, Narahenpita, Dehiwela, Panadura, Kotte, Battaramulla, Bangala Handiya, Beddagana or Dehiwela. At the crack of dawn, he is up and about attending to his morning's ablutions at the public toilet in the area, having a shave and a bath. He takes a bus along a main route, gets off and walks the by-lanes. His earnings are just enough to keep body and soul together.

As the children of the household watch his every move, he warns them against touching sharp knives. He relates how a child's death upset him. "One day, I went back to the house where I had gone many times to sharpen knives and there was like a party. They told me that it was an alms-giving for the little child who used to watch me carefully. They are rich people, couldn't they have taken her to hospital," he says wiping a tear from his lined cheek. That was the day he took to drink.

The monotony of his life is broken only by the much looked forward to call he gives his one and only son weekly and the once-a-month-visit he pays to the temple. "He has turned out to be a good human being, he is a monk now," Wilson says with pride.

What of his expectations? "To go to kanatte," he says. "I do not have a place to call my own. No place to keep my tools, no place even to keep a savings book even if I were able to save a few rupees a month. What will be will be. No one can change it."

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