04/05/2026
Walking behind these two on the beach at Pamunugama, I remembered one of my aunts, a woman of considerable vocabulary, dismissing someone with the immortal phrase: “He’s a real pariah bugger.” I was about eight. I didn’t fully understand it, but I understood the tone. It wasn’t entirely an insult. It was an assessment.
The word pariah arrived by colonial post, borrowed from Tamil and weaponised by the British to mean beneath consideration. What they didn’t anticipate was that we’d take it, feed it some rice and curry, and make it entirely our own.
The pariah dog has been walking Sri Lankan roads since long before any empire arrived to name things improperly. He sleeps outside temples and three-star hotels with equal authority. He was named to be forgotten. Instead, he became the street, the neighbourhood, the morning, the stubborn ordinary life of a place that outlasted everyone who tried to classify it.
These two, walking ahead of me like they own Pamunugama - which, frankly, they do - are the most complete argument I’ve seen for a word’s full rehabilitation.
