From Moonshine to Whiskey and Beer

From Moonshine to Whiskey and Beer

I moved to Boralessa, my ancestral village, in 1977. Many villagers – who made a living as masons, carpenters, workers in tile factories and brick kilns – supplemented their income by brewing pot arrack. The main ingredient, coconut toddy, was readily available and so was the demand.  Pot arrack was a cottage industry: the males did the brewing and the women sold it from home.

Some of my immediate neighbors were brewers, the small time mudalali across the road being the main supplier for the area. In the evenings, a steady clientele of regulars could be seen going into his house. As the evening drew on, drunks, mainly middle aged men, would be staggering down the road, some singing bawdy songs and others picking quarrels with anyone around, using the foulest language.

Cleary, the making and selling of pot arrack was illegal. So, why didn’t the police crackdown? The MP for the area, who also happened to be a cabinet minister, had requested the police to go easy on the pot arrack dealers. Those who indulged in the business were not well off and it provided an essential supplementary income to “feed their families”, never mind the damage done to the consumers’ health and family harmony. Anyhow, not to be put off, the police also went around to the dealers every month collecting their cut!

Distribution

When the supply exceeded local demand, the brewers found a ready market in nearby Negombo and further afield in Colombo and the suburbs. Transport was through two modes, train and car. In those days, I was teaching at Kelaniya University and took the “office train” to work. Boralessa has a tiny railway station, manned by an agent (not a station master), with no security whatsoever. Men with four-gallon plastic containers filled with pot arrack would be hiding in the bushes around the station, and, as the train was pulling off, make a mad dash and scramble on to the train. The containers would be quickly hidden in the toilets or under seats. Although this was a daily spectacle witnessed by hundreds of passengers, not once did I see a raid by railway security, the police, or excise officers.

Transport by car was more spectacular. The chosen model was the sleek Austin Cambridge A50, vintage 1950s, perhaps the fastest and most maneuverable car in those days of tight import restrictions. Cars loaded with pot arrack would set off for Colombo, both day and night. The natural boundary between the north western province, where Boralessa is located, and the western province, where Colombo is, happens to be the Ma Oya river, crossed by the legendary Kochchikade bridge. Once the cars carrying pot arrack crossed the bridge, they were under a new jurisdiction and at the mercy of the police. Avoiding the main road on which a number of police stations were located, the drivers took circuitous back roads, but the police did their best to stop the cars. So it was a cat and mouse game - roadblocks, checkpoints, ambushes, gunfire, and high speed chases, the stuff of thriller movies. One of these drivers, I’ll call him Primus, recently told me of being fired on when he sped past the police. He is still alive to tell the tale, about 90 now.

Austin Cambridge A50

Dankotuwa, a nearby town that was surrounded by large coconut plantations (providing coconut toddy, the essential ingredient for pot arrack), also supplied the brew to the Colombo area. The best of the liquor, on par or even better than the legitimate variety, whether from Boralessa or Dankotuwa, was known as “Dankotuwa Special”. Many local musicians in those days were heavy drinkers, and a top musician told me not long ago that whenever he managed to get a bottle of the coveted “Dankotuwa Special”, he would get together with another well-known musician to enjoy the treat.

From pot arrack to kasippu

In the 1980s, due to various reasons, the supply of coconut toddy declined, but the demand for illicit liquor prevailed. Ever creative, villagers found a new way to continue with production. Instead of toddy, they began to use sugar dissolved in water, with generous doses of added yeast, to produce alcohol. This was kasippu.

The 1980s were a turning point for Boralessa because large number of villagers began to travel to Italy, both illegally and legally, in search of work. Because the “Italians” had brought more prosperity to the villagers, the local MP, took a hands-off approach to the illicit trade; the police were given a free rein and could arrest and prosecute illegal brewers.

In the manufacture of kasippu, the fermentation process would take place in large, rusty barrels over a few days, and the barrels had to be hidden from the police. The village had enough hiding places – coconut groves, a weed-choked irrigation tank, long abandoned paddy fields, culverts, thickly wooded area - for the purpose. The bottom of my property has a pond surrounded by overgrown shrubs, and one day I found two barrels there. After I spoke with the prime suspect, the barrels disappeared.

Not all barrels were properly sealed, so passing lizards, rats, snakes and other creepy crawlies would fall in. To improve the “kick”, ammonia fertilizer, rusty barbed wire, and anything handy was added. Kasippu, unlike pot arrack, is very much a poison brew.

A grocery store not far from my house probably sold tons of sugar every week. This could be estimated from the lorry loads of sugar that were unloaded there. It also showed how much illicit liquor was brewed in the village.

The Italian sojourn brought prosperity and some villagers developed a taste for whiskey. The dealer across the road, who had given up his illicit trade because he now had two sons in Italy, once boasted to me that he now drank only “whishkey”.

 

Effects on the Lifestyle

A large number of villagers, both young and the elderly, consumed kasippu. I now realize that many, who worked as masons and carpenters, were alcoholics and this caused problems well beyond the immediate households.

Sundays were reserved for heavy drinking, which meant that, being severely hungover, nobody turned up for work on Mondays. A head carpenter I knew, who built roofs (backbreaking work under a blazing sun), who had a small team of assistants, dreaded Tuesdays because getting his men to turn-up for work took all morning. First, Anthony would call them, and they dutifully promised to turn-up at the worksite. But, often, they didn’t. Then, Anthony would have to go around to their homes in a hired tuk, pleading and coaxing the men to join him. This was repeated weekly and the Anthony was fed up, till the pandemic hit and put an end to house construction. 

Kasippu also affected family harmony because the men were habitually drunk, broke, and in poor health, leaving the womenfolk to keep the home fires burning. Domestic abuse was common. I know of broken homes where the women had fled, unable to bear their misery.

Beer

About ten years ago, a liquor store opened in Boralessa. Hard liquor was too expensive for most locals but beer sales exceeded expectations. The consumers were mainly young men, who had not developed a taste for the hard stuff. Perhaps, they had also seen the scourge that kasippu caused, even within their families, and spurned the stuff. Most evenings, they would converge on the beer shop and hang out for hours, even sitting on the railway tracks.

Boralessa had come a long way from the days of pot arrack. People still drank, some copiusly, but I no longer see anyone staggering down the quiet Kiragara Road that runs along my property, singing bawdy songs. Most of the heavy drinkers have passed away, and the younger generations, bolstered by cash infusions from abroad, have become “respectable”. But I do miss the old Boralessa, where moonshine was king and daredevil drivers played cat and mouse games with the police.

The quiet Kiragara Road that runs past my house