sinhalese

The poor commit villainies because they are poor or because they have no alternative employment. But the rich do them in order to enjoy themselves more or to earn more money.

The few people who work earnestly are those who want to accumulate wealth. They are born with exceptional ability and a drive to reach the top. Even if they life as a worker, they become very wealthy. Had their needs been met at the beginning, they would never have acquired the capacity for hard work and commitment. Why is it that rich men's children fail within two or three generations?

The urban capitalists and the bourgeoisie differ in linguistic habits and dress from the workers. They don't live together in one integrated society, but as two separate societies that speak different languages both literally and metaphorically. The urban capitalists do not know the life led by workers. Workers experience hardships that are unheard of amongst villagers and these evoke malice in the urban workers, easily stirred by union leaders who use them to ride to power. Villagers are different. Teaching the villagers cannot easily change what they have inherited from the environment and the past they have known and in which they have grown up. The village entrepreneur wore only a sarong in the past. Some of them wore a sarong and slung another over a shoulder. The poor villager's dress is also a sarong. The village entrepreneur speaks Sinhalese, which is the language of the poor villager too. On the day of the traditional New Year, the children of both the rich and the poor in the village eat together and play together in the homes of the villager elite. All this subdues feelings of resentment against the wealthy villagers. It's true that villagers suffer a great deal on account of their poverty. But unlike the urban poor, poverty amongst the villagers does not incite malice toward the wealthy, due to the rural way of life.

The two qualities essential to a good man were honesty and compassion, Malin felt. His father lived his life as if he had rejected these qualities. Saviman Kabalana reasoned that loving kindness and compassion were weaknesses. Therefore he hid behind a mask that concealed his innate human qualities of love and kindness, both in his office and at home.

If their horoscopes are not compatible, this marriage is out of the question.

An urbanite does not become a civilized person just because he has had an education. What one assimilates in the city is book-learning and knowledge derived through emulating educated men. But that alone will not make him a civilized person. A man of simple tastes becomes complex through education because he desires to become complex. That is why a lot of educated men enjoy vulgar and obscene things. The cinema has become a vulgar philistine art form. The enormous motor car with its bloated body is a vulgar vehicle. It is difficult to create a complex thing without some vulgarity and grossness. Amongst the things valued by the educated, it is difficult to find things untainted by vulgarity. People who cannot distinguish between grossness and refinement are not uncommon among the urban educated because for many, the measure of civilization is its complexity.

Primitive veddhas moulded images of women with full-blown breasts and legs. This was not to evoke sensuous pleasure, but as symbolic images related to their faith in religious fertility rites with the aim of increasing their return from harvesting and hunting. The modern artist magnifies the breasts of the woman in a painting in order to derive and to evoke erotic pleasure. That is how vulgarity enters their art.

Malin had been born and bred in an upper-class family. Was that the cause of his dissillusionment and bitterness with that way of life? The way he could have peace of mind therefore, was by detaching himself from that way of life and battling against it. Would Prince Siddharta have renounced the world if he had been born into poverty?

In a front of each home garden the villagers fixed a triangular wooden lamp-house on the top of a pole planted on the ground to hold a small statue of Lord Buddha and some deities. They used to offer flowers at this small shrine and light a tiny clay oil lamp.

The war brought some changes to Colombo. But it was the villages that changed far more than the towns.

The villagers considered it lucky to make the New Year's first money transaction with her because she was a prosperous person.

Malin listened to Wickramanayake's gossip dispassionately. He did not accept Wickramanayake's opinion that it was the influence of Western customs and attitudes that prompted Savulugala, in his straitened economic circumstances, to allow his wife to befriend and exploit wealthy men. There were poor people in both town and village who exploited even their daughters to get money. Did these poor parents degrade themselves because they were enslaved by Western culture? It was the prevailing economic and social order that brought them to this.

Our innocent kids undergo much trouble. Not only do the children of high caste families look down upon our children calling them low caste brats, but even some teachers ridicule them. They beat our children for no reason.

Physical beauty or sexual attraction in a woman was not a criterion in deciding, strengthening, or the survival of such relationships of these villagers.

An outsider's inquisitiveness to know another's private affairs is natural, but not so in children with respect to their parents. Children know the overt personal life of their parents. It is a crime for children to probe into mistakes made by their parents, like detectives looking for evidence of crimes. Any man can make mistakes, however good he may be. It is wrong for children to inquisitively probe into their parents' lives, and have fun or show anger over what they uncover. It is like digging into the heads of ancient statues in search of archaeological artefacts. Nanda spoke with anger.

A new movement reinforced by activists such as Buddhist monks, physicians who practised traditional medicine, teachers, farmers, and laborers brought Prime Minister Bandaranaike into the political helm. The leaders of the Davulawatta community considered this election a personal achievement. They saw this as a people's government and appreciated its genuine interest in fulfilling the needs of the common people. They trusted that the present government would eradicate poverty and the caste discrimination, and work to promote self-esteem.

It was not to flaunt feelings of superiority that the elders of the Kaisaruwatte family clung to the traditions of their patrician lineage, but for self-preservation of themseleves and their way of life, now declining in the face of social change. It was their inability to adapt to change due to the rigidity of their adherence to tradition, that was also the cause of their decline.

Chamari: "Aravinda, have you been to Kataragama?"Aravinda: "No, I've never been there."Chamari: "What? That's unbelievable for someone born in Deniyaya!"Aravinda: "Going to Kataragama is not a custom of the rural folk. It is the middle class and wealthy urban people, not the villagers, who venerate the Kataragama god. He is the god of the urbanities. The villagers have now started to imitate the urban people."Chamari:"I thought even villagers used to go to Kataragama long ago."Aravinda: "No, It came from the rich urban Sinhalese of the towns who followed the rich Hindus.