Not a day passes without at least ten visits by men and women asking for handouts. Some don’t ask for money but for essentials like a packet of milk which costs over 250 rupees or a killo of rice.

I remember my grandmother doling out a chundu of rice to mendicants but that was nearly seventy years ago and two large ‘atuwas’ contained rice far in excess of the needs of the family.

Yesterday we were visited in the afternoon by a mendicant who acted well the part of a monk. Hordes come with exercise books, seeking money for all manner of things. The requirements of these wandering mendicants are beyond the normal ten rupees for a limp.

That they act in concert is evident because no woeful tale is ever repeated.

I am told that a large house with high walls in Kandana is the abode of beggars who fan out in the mornings and the daily collection is around a thousand rupees each.

I watched a beggar exchange his coins for a fifty rupee note at a sweep ticket stand. On buying a ticket myself and on enquiry I was told it was a routine enacted twice a day, and that was twenty five years ago in the Colombo Fort.

There is still a beggar on crutches on the Millers arcade who has a lunch break from ‘work’ to knock down 100 mg arrack and retreat to a corner of the modest bar-cum-hotel with a bottle of beer and a packet of lunch.

Back to my home front, a fierce German shepherd in the kennel at the gate whose bark is our door bell does not deter beggars. They keep coming like door-to-door salesmen. The frequency of their visits is well planned and my wife is a sucker for any yarn.

As it is I will soon have to do the rounds myself in sack cloth and a begging bowl in hand.