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| Tuesday, 11 January 2005 |
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by Sharm de Alwis Upali Gunasekera is a man of strapping Herculean proportions but now in his mid 70s and afflicted with a spinal ailment and cellulitis he has abandoned his youthful frolicks when he would drive his favourite Daimler. He now prefers to travel by bus the hundred miles to Colombo. Upali lives on a well appointed spot of land in "Matara, overlooking the estuary of the Nilwala river, the Fort and the sea. In the sprawling house were his sister and his menagerie of dogs. Often in the late afternoons, he would sit on the lawn and a crocodile from the estuary would visit him and eye him in grim melancholy. Upali would converse with the croc and say, "I know why you have come here. You have come to take away my dogs. "After a lengthy period of silent togetherness and having basked in the glowing sun the croc would pour himself into the waters and disappear. On the fateful Sunday after Christmas, Upali who was strolling in the garden was swept away by the tsunami tidal wave. His sister climbed the stairs, removed some roof tiles and gingerly walked the roof top to safety. But Upali was awash. He clutched a floating stool with one hand and a chair with the other to keep himself afloat. Another wave rocked the stool off his grip and as he grabbed the chair to his bosom he saw a log moving towards him. He hung on to the log for dear life. But there was something strange about this log. It had a scaly surface and was no ordinary log. It was a crocodile. As he began to despair he felt his belly being nudged and he was pushed a good half a kilometer towards the embankment. There he lay for some time through sheer exhaustion, having been in the waters from 9.20 in the morning to 4.30 in the afternoon, an ordeal of seven hours for an elderly man who has to resort to crutches on dry land. And then he heard human voices, "Yakko, he's not dead. Pull him out". Mercifully, Upali, with the help of the crocodile who would frequently visit him for unilateral conversation, is alive today. |
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