by GEORGE BRAINE

I moved to Boralessa, my ancestral village, in 1977. Many villagers – who earned their living as masons, carpenters, workers in tile factories and brick kilns – supplemented their income by brewing arrack. The main ingredient, coconut toddy, was readily available and so was the demand. Pot arrack was a cottage industry: men did the brewing and women sold it from their homes. Some of my immediate neighbors were brewers, the little ones mudalali across the road, being the main supplier in the region. In the evening, we saw a regular clientele of regulars entering his home. As the evening wore on, drunks, mostly middle-aged men, staggered down the road, some singing bawdy songs and others picking fights with anyone around, using the foulest language.

Obviously, the production and sale of arrack pot was illegal. So why didn’t the police crack down? The region’s MP, who was also a minister, had asked the police to be lenient with arrack pot dealers. Those who engaged in this trade were not well off and it provided them with essential additional income to “feed their families”, not to mention the damage caused to consumers’ health and family harmony. In any case, not to be discouraged, the police also visited the dealers every month to collect their share!

Distribution

When supply exceeded local demand, brewers found a market in the nearby town of Negombo and further afield in Colombo and the suburbs. Transportation was carried out by two modes, train and car. At that time, I was teaching at the University of Kelaniya and taking the “office train” to work. Boralessa has a small railway station, run by an agent (not a station manager), without any security. Men with four-gallon plastic containers filled with arrack pot hid in the bushes around the station and, as the train pulled away, rushed madly and rushed towards the train. The containers would be quickly hidden in toilets or under seats. Even though it was a daily spectacle witnessed by hundreds of passengers, not once did I witness a raid by railway security, police or excise officials.

The car ride was more spectacular. The model chosen was the elegant Austin Cambridge A50, vintage from the 1950s, perhaps the fastest and best handling car in the era of strict import restrictions. Cars loaded with arrack pot left for Colombo, day and night. The natural boundary between the North Western Province, where Boralesse is located, and the Western Province, where Colombo is located, happens to be the Ma Oya river, crossed by the legendary Kochchikade bridge. Once cars carrying arrack pot crossed the bridge, they found themselves under new jurisdiction and at the mercy of the police. Avoiding the main road on which several police stations were located, drivers took circuitous side roads, but police did their best to stop the cars. So it was a game of cat and mouse – roadblocks, checkpoints, ambushes, gunfire and high-speed chases, typical of thriller films. One of these drivers, I’ll call him Primus, recently told me about being shot at while speeding past police. He is still alive to tell this story, aged around 90 now.

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

From the arrack pot to Kasippu

In the 1980s, for various reasons, the supply of coconut toddy declined, but the demand for illicit alcohol prevailed. Always creative, the villagers found a new way to continue production. Instead of grog, they began using sugar dissolved in water, with generous doses of yeast, to produce alcohol. It was Kasippu.

The 1980s were a turning point for Boralessa as large numbers of villagers began traveling to Italy, 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 had carte blanche and could arrest and prosecute illegal brewers.

In the manufacture of Kasipputhe fermentation process took place in large rusty barrels for a few days, and the barrels had to be hidden from the police. The village had enough hiding places – coconut groves, a weed-clogged irrigation reservoir, long-abandoned rice fields, culverts, a densely forested area – for this purpose. At the back of my property is a pond surrounded by overgrown shrubs, and one day I found two barrels there. After speaking with the main suspect, the barrels disappeared.

Not all of the barrels were properly sealed, so lizards, rats, snakes, and other creepy crawlies were falling into them. To improve the “kick”, ammonia fertilizer, rusty barbed wire and whatever was practical were added. Kasippuunlike pot arrack, is largely a poisoned drink.

A grocery store not far from my house probably sold tons of sugar every week. This could be estimated from the trucks of sugar that were unloaded there. It also showed the amount of illicit alcohol being brewed in the village.

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

Lifestyle effects

A large number of villagers, young and old, consumed Kasippu. I now realize that many of those who worked as masons and carpenters were alcoholics, which caused problems far beyond the immediate homes.

Sunday was reserved for binge drinking, which meant that due to a severe hangover, no one showed up for work on Monday. A head carpenter I knew, who built roofs (backbreaking work under the blazing sun), with a small team of assistants, dreaded Tuesdays because getting his men to work took all morning. First, Anthony would call them and they would dutifully promise to show up at the job site. But often they didn’t. Then Anthony would have to drive to their house in a rented vehicle. tukbegging and persuading the men to join him. This happened every week and Anthony was fed up until the pandemic hit and shut down house building.

Kasippu

It also affected family harmony because the men were usually drunk, broke, and in poor health, leaving the women to keep the house fire going. Domestic violence was common. I know broken homes where women had fled, unable to bear their misery.