My grandmother Engracia Nonis lived at Boralessa, a village 43 km from Colombo. Her older brother, Charles, who lived nearby, was married thrice, and his eldest son from the third marriage was Alexander. The Nonises were Catholics. Despite their English first names (Charles, Rita, Leander, Alexander, Georgina, Calista, Ignatius, etc), they were not English speakers. The men wore shirt and sarong, and the women a cloth wraparound and a “hattey”, a narrow jacket, leaving the midriff exposed. They were mainly sawyers, mill workers, carpenters, and masons.
I recall Alexander, a colorful character, from the time
we moved to Boralessa in 1977. He was a frequent visitor to our home,
“Pondside”. Both Fawzia and I liked his company, and that of his mother
Puransina, sister Georgina, and brother Ignatius, who all lived down the road
from us. Alexander knew the history of the Braines and related stories, mainly
humorous, from the past. He did not seem to have a wife, but had a few children
at Boralessa. He drank heavily, but, on the whole, was harmless.
All that background information leads to the protagonist
of this story, Jude Chryshantha Nonis, who I will refer to as Chrys from now
on. Chrys was Alexander’s seventh child, and I vaguely recall seeing him around
in the late 1970s. He was shy, as most Nonises are, so didn’t leave an
impression. However, when we began spending more time at “Pondside” after
living abroad for years, we came to know him better. He was married by then,
and was a carpenter. Alexander had died while we were away.
At first, I got Chrys to attend to various repair jobs at
“Pondside” – fixing a door, replacing a window. As I got to know him better, I
also heard parts of his life story. His father Alexander had begun to unravel
when he was shot at and suffered grievous injury. Alexander lost his job, began
to drink even more, and, fed up with his lifestyle, his wife left him, running off
with a paramour. (She was the mother of 8 children at this time.) Most of the
children left with the mother, and Chrys, a schoolboy at that time, was left to
take care of his father. Chrys dropped out of school. (He didn’t talk much
about his life during this hardship period; I heard about it from others.) His
father and uncles had been sawyers of logs - they even went out in groups and
camped for weeks in thick jungles for work - but Chrys took to carpentry and
stayed in the village.
In the 1930s, Boralessa began to stage a passion play
based on the famous Oberammergau
passion play in Germany. Its hallmark, as in Oberammergau, was that all the
roles were played not by professional actors, but by villagers – carpenters,
masons, sawyers, and others – who had been trained. The prized role was that of
Jesus. The chosen villager had to fast and pray, and abstain from tobacco,
alcohol, and sex for months. This difficult role, which required the actor to
stay “crucified” on the cross for a long period, was played by Chrys in the
early 1990s, for three or four consecutive years. True to his nature, Chrys did
not talk about his “acting days”.
In the early 2000s, when Fawzia and I returned more often to our Boralessa home “Pondside”, we met up with Chrys. He was married to Indra and had two children. When we decided to expand our house, Chrys undertook to task, building a master bedroom and a kitchen. By then, Chrys had about five carpenters working for him. The photo on the previous page shows Chrys seated on the deck he built for us. His two children, Sriyantha and Samanthi, are with him.
After my retirement and with
Fawzia’s death, Chrys and Indra began to play a larger role in my life and at
“Pondside”. I handed over the management of the property to them, and its
income. Indra is a wonderful cook and I was assured of delicious meals, mainly
with produce sourced from the property itself, pesticide and weedicide free.
Indra’s seafood dishes – fish, prawns, and crabs – are the best I have tasted.
I traveled frequently, and Chrys and Indra took good care of “Pondside”. I
helped with their children’s education, and saw them grow up to become hardworking
students. These Nonises became my extended family.
Chrys’ specialty was the
construction of roofs, which involved gruelling work under a blazing sun. Good
workers were hard to get, and some clients defaulted on payments. Some evenings, I saw him totally exhausted
and in utter despair. He owned a three wheeler and a small van, and I urged him
to give up carpentry gradually and to drive his vehicles for hire. But he stuck
to what he knew best.
When the latest wave of
covid hit, Chrys was working on a roof job, with four helpers, and his son,
Sriyantha, now 22, pitching in. I urged Chrys to stop work and rest at home
till covid was under control, especially because he had not been vaccinated.
(It wasn’t available in his area.) But he continued to work. By mid-August, the
whole family came down, showing symptoms of covid: fever, cough, diarrhea, loss
of smell. They saw a doctor, who treated them with antibiotics. Indra told me
that, one evening, the number of patients seeing the doctor rose to 160.
Obviously, covid was spreading fast in the area.
One day, I spoke to Chrys
on the phone, and realized he was breathing with difficulty. I urged Indra to
take him to hospital. He was taken to Negombo hospital, which was overrun with
covid patients. Fortunately, at Marawila hospital, he was given a bed, and
immediately ventilated in the covid ward.
At the insistence of the
nurses, Sriyantha, the son, stayed at the hospital by Chrys’ side. This was a
harrowing time for the young man, to see the intense suffering of covid
patients, some dying in agony. Within a few days, Chrys’ older brother, Primus
(65) was admitted to the same ward. Three days later, Primus died in the
adjoining bed.
Chrys’ condition
fluctuated. He was being treated for pneumonia, perhaps the result of a chronic
lung condition. I spoke to him on the phone once, and so did Indra and the
daughter. But, suddenly, his condition deteriorated, and perhaps suffering a
heart attack and/or a stroke, Chrys died on August 29.
His family lost their
breadwinner. I lost a friend. For me, the Boralessa landscape is changed
forever.
Chrys was only 54.
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