The dark side of my pink palace

I love my house. It is quirky and a little odd. But you can tell someone built it with a lot of love. Indeed my landlords are a lovely family. Ajith and Damika are a couple in their 30s.



They have two tiny and painfully adorable daughters, Purnima and Taru. They also live with their aging parents.

They all live just on the other side of a fence that separates my palace from their ramshackle much less palacial home. They built a castle and they live in a bit more than a shack in its shadow.

This I am told is very common. A family spends beyond their means to build a nice house and then tries to find a wealthy foreigner to rent it to pay back their debts. They often double as servants for the wealthy foreigner. The hope is that one day, eventually they will be able to afford to live in the house. But many have quite a long road ahead before they will really be able to afford such a reality.

Unfortunately as an incoming renter there is no moral highground. There are no or almost no apartments in Ampara. It’s really an old farming settlement that doubles as a seat of the district government. So I’ll contribute to this cycle and hope whatever financial help I can share with them will move them a little closer to finally moving into the pink palace.