I looked at him incredulously.
"I am quite serious, friend."
We sat on the terrace of the hotel in the midday sun, drinking arrak and watching the steady stream of people along the dirt road below that wound through the jungle to the holy sites, their great pointed domes rising from the forest like white bubbles just a few kilometers away, so seemingly out of place in the endless sea of green that surrounded them.
Most of the people were locals or pilgrims. Brown skin, simply dressed, come to fulfill rituals older than the entire history of the West. And there were gods even older still. Our driver had stopped three times on the way up to pray at large trees... and ------- had rolled his eyes...
"One man's religion is another man's fairy tale..."
But this conversation had not started with the pilgrims. It had started with the tourists. They were everywhere. Pale-legged Brits with the occasional child. Tall stoic Germans looking ridiculous in their socks and sandals. Aussies and Swiss. But it was the pacifist American girls from California looking for truth who had eaten at the table behind us that set things off.
They had spoken with authority about things they did not understand while ------- and I had sat sipping the arrak and enjoying the summer breeze that came down out of the mountains and the silence. They were from LA and had graduated and remained unemployed and were now traveling the world and all this we had learned simply from sitting within earshot. They had said things like, "Isn't it beautiful here!," and "People at home will never understand this experience!," and "It's just like India, but with less people," and "Why do they eat with their hands? That is disgusting." They were searching for the profound, but did not want to get their hands dirty. They'd gotten up to leave, shouldering their branded hiking packs and we saw them, not ten minutes later, shuffling down the road towards the temple grounds.
------- watched them go and then snorted in disgust.
"Why do you come here?" he asked, still watching them as they disappeared up the road between the tuk-tuks. We had been old friends for a thousand years so I knew where we were even if we had sat in silence for an hour.
"Because our Gods fail us."
Some jungle birds erupted from the trees near the hotel and the screeching of monkeys pierced the afternoon. He swirled the arrak in his glass, carefully.
"Hmmm. So you come to see if our Gods will suffice?"
"I suppose. We give credit to that which is older. We assume it to be wiser. And if it fails us, then we look further back... for something even older. That is our rebellion against our faith. To trade one old lie for an even older one."
"But the truth is right in front of you!"
I sipped the arrak and cocked my eyebrows.
"You come here seeking happiness," he continued, "You are obsessed with the secret to happiness! I know, friend. I have lived there. It is preached in your movies. You think it is a great mystery and yet it stares you in the face. You come here in case we know a secret that you do not... Those two, they will go back to Berkley or UCLA or wherever and tell everyone of the mystical time they had here... without understanding a thing."
"Well, do you?"
"Do we what?"
"Do you know the secret to happiness?"
"Absolutely!" he had exclaimed, "It is shoes!"
"Shoes?"
"Shoes."
The queer answer hung in the air. I reached for the bottle and poured two more glasses. Then I took the lid off the tiny metal tin that held the ice and with the tiny tongs I dropped two cubes into each drink. Then I slid one across the table to him.
"Explain yourself."
"What you will not admit to yourselves is that money is your God."
"Blasphemy," I winked.
"You laugh! But it is true. What you are taught, explicitly, to value... and the values you are trained everyday are not aligned. They are opposites. I have been to your country, friend. I have been to your churches. I have read your Bible. You are taught compassion, humility, selflessness, and you are told this is the path... but we both know that it is all about the money."
"Ahhh... the dissonance of our modernity."
He paused to take another drink and I gazed out at the long expanse of jungle that reached to the horizon.
"It is a truth you are too afraid to admit. You all know it is true, but to admit it reduces the mystery of life... and as your religion fails you, you tell yourselves there must be greater mysteries that can be found, and then you come here, looking, looking for some truth to shield you from the reality of money."
The bottle was more than half empty. We were getting limber.
"And what does this have to do with shoes?," I challenged.
"Everything, friend! Everything! You know Janith?"
"Yes, of course."
Janith was his uncle, a wealthy man by Sri Lankan standards, maybe even by our standards.
"And would you agree he is happy?"
"Certainly."
Janith owned a beautiful home. He paid for his children to go to the top English school in Colombo and his eldest son was studying in America. He dressed in fine suits and shoes and carried himself professionally. I had no idea what he did for work. In a country that churns out designer clothes, it is difficult to tell the truly wealthy from those who have a relative in a high-end sweatshop. Brands meant nothing here unless you were in a tourist trap.
"Do you know how he makes his money? Shoes. He has two factories. They make flipflops. He can press ten thousand pairs in a week and he ships them all over the world. Ten thousand pairs a week!"
I had seen some such factories along dirt roads. The giant sheets of rubber tossed into the woods, sandal-shaped silouhettes where the shoes had been stamped out by some giant mechanical cookie-cutter. The acrid smell of burning rubber, the dark, sludgy burn piles that smoldered and steamed poison into the air.
"That is your great secret? Flipflops?
"Absolutely. If those two girls had brought ten thousand dollars with them, I could introduce them to Janith or any of a dozen others. That would be enough to start a factory. You can do it right by the airport in the tax free zone and we would find the workers. In a year they would recoup the money. In five, they could stop worrying about happiness and be rich. Which is all you really want anyway. Ship them all over the world. It is not glamourous, friend, to say you own a shoe-shop in Sri Lanka, but they would have the money and the 'happiness' they seek. That is the secret to happiness. Shoes."
He punctuated the argument by finishing his glass in a straight shot and setting it down on the table with finality.
I took a long breath and looked down into my own.
"You depress me," I said, and finished mine.
"Such is truth," he said, as he uncapped the bottle and poured the last of it, "You lie to yourselves and that is why you are miserable. Look at me! I admit it. Janith admits it. We are happy. Our secret is that we know money is your God and we fill your stores with products."
There was nothing to say to that. We both looked out over the jungle and nursed the drinks in peace.
"Shall we go and see the temple, then?"
"Absolutely, friend. First we will have some ice cream with honey, and then we will go. It is a wonderful place and I will show you everything! "
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