BROMANCE: Sealed with a kiss
Smooch that says ‘no hard feelings’
It was no torrid full blown deep seated kiss on the lips done in the manner of the French. Neither was it a casual peck on the cheek done in an offhand manner as a meaningless gesture of comradeship. But one with pursed lips passionately planted on the cheek of the outgoing Finance Minister by the new successor to that envied position. It was perhaps Mangala’s touching hope that by kissing the frog now condemned to a foreign well, he would turn into a prince of finance the nation had never witnessed before.
And by the look and smile on Ravi Karunanayake face, he did not even blush red or turn scarlet when Mangala, in all his innocence, turned physical and sprung the kiss of kisses in public which would have made a grown man wish the earth to have swallowed him whole for the embarrassment it caused. But as Ravi’s response clearly indicates, it was as natural as the activity of the bees and the birds; as if receiving a smooch from Mangala in this way in happy abandon was the most natural thing, a daily run of the mill stuff to make a grown man start his sunshiny day with a spring in his step and a song in his heart and, of course, the tingling sensation on his cheek that lingers on, long after the kissy sound had vanished.
But while Karunanayake was assuming the Foreign Minister portfolio which Mangala Samaraweera had held and performed splendidly, Mangala Samaraweera was just slipping into his hardly used finance full suit only to find its pockets bare and discovering that even the shoes he was trying on as the nation’s new finance minister were much too large for his feet. And worse. To add more woe to his exalted new found plight, finding that the national coffers which had seemed to him as foreign minister a cornucopia from which flowed limitless cash to finance his many foreign trips, empty like Mother Hubbard’s cupboard. No wonder he told Parliament this week in his first speech as Finance Minister, that he was inheriting a bankrupt treasury. And this, after two years of the present coalition government. Most probably he would have wondered whether he had been given something to bite which was more than he could chew.
And as for Ravi Karunanayake, as he went back home to pack his bags to take the next flight to some exotic destination to peddle Ceylon tea or coax some foreign sucker to stake his dough on buying a twenty buck Mahajana Development lottery ticket – since the National Lotteries Board is expected to come under his purview – he must be wondering of the quirks of fate. Only last year he was named by the London magazine Banker, as Asia’s best Finance Minister in the year 2016. Now he had been thrown out. Alas, if it’s of any comfort, he should take consolation from the much stated maxim that a prophet is never appreciated in his own land. But, as he is reported to have remarked, it’s all due to envy. At least he gets to keep the same initials he bore as Finance Minister: FM. But so o does Mangala.
For the rest of the Ministers the nonagathe which started a week before the Sinhala New Year when the President announced there would be a cabinet reshuffle after the new year festivities were done with which was then extended to Vesak and then further extended to this Monday, at least the frustrating inauspicious period of anxiety and inactivity has at long last ended.
As for the people, the cabinet reshuffle was no big deal. As evidenced by the Finance Minister being appointed as the Foreign Minister and the Foreign Minister being appointed as the Finance Minister, it was nothing more than a case of wife swapping at a New York swingers club.