Koombiyo (Ants), a Sinhala serial being telecast on ITN is perhaps the most innovative series I have ever seen on Sri Lankan television.
The drama packed with emerging young talent, is becoming highly popular in the industry saturated with tear-jerking family entertainment, senseless comedies and some jingoistic period pieces. The drama directed by Lakmal Dharmarathna shows all the promise of spawning a new genre.
Giving a new twist to the widespread youth unrest which has figured prominently, sometimes with tragic results, since the 70s owing to lack of jobs for highly educated youth, Koombiyo exposes innovative ways to exploit new technology and tact in a productive way without waiting for government handouts or bear arms and engage in sabotage.
“The last decade is for the educated, and this one is for the clever and talented,” says the protagonist – it’s hard to remember his name as he uses lot of names – brilliantly played by stage actor and university professor Thumindu Dodanthenna in the serial produced by his Australia-based brother Asanka.
“You can’t be blamed if you are born poor but if you die poor it’s your fault,” is his oft-heard catch phrase to encourage the youths around him, becoming something like a beacon of hope.
The protagonist is an enterprising youth who starts selling vegetables to busy households of rich ladies using a laptop, cellphone and a fax machine operating from an abandoned building in a rundown area in Colombo.
An accidental meeting with another young man, played by talented Kalana Gunasekera who is in search of a job, the business begins to thrive. They buy vegetables and other house hold items cheaply from street vendors and sell them with a margin of profit, disguising them as items supplied by upscale groceries.
“What we do is not wrong. This is what every company in the world is doing,” says the main actor, buoyed by the opportunities offered by free market ideals and modern communication technology. The conflict between the two main characters is that one is a street-smart kid determined to exploit avenues open for him even with audacity to trespass legal limits if his actions do not hurt anybody, and the other, a hapless village youth who has given himself up to his karma to guide his life.
After all, almost everybody in Sri Lanka is breaking the law!
But there is a problem. Purchase Sri Lanka International is not a legal venture as the owner has no money to register it! The business winds up as there is a complaint to the government by a consumer for supplying an inferior item which is not available in supermarkets. The protaganist seeks the help of his old university mates who are holding respectable government jobs to evade legal tangles and floats another venture: publishing of a lifestyle magazine.
He hires some junkies and ex-addicts living in slums. They are taught to dress neat and wear a necktie for the first time in their life. The enthusiastic young men and women hawk the magazines in passenger buses. When the business is about to take off it goes bust in a short time over a fight with a passenger who accuses the youths of cheating people, symbolizing the society’s callous disregard for young people trying to make both ends meet by the sweat of their brow.
The tele-serial has more episode to go and at the moment we are in an area where a political bigwig (played to perfection by W. Jayasiri) is seeking the help of the mass communication graduate to stop a blogger from publishing an article detrimental to the government. They don’t want to bump him off like how they got rid of real-life journalist Lasantha Wickrematunga, but use less harmful ways like blocking the approval of a bank loan by the out-of-luck blogger to build a house.
The main character seems to empathize with the journalist and tries to expose the crafty politician, the likes of whom are ruling Sri Lanka today. We are yet to see how the politician is brought to justice.
The character of the main actor is slowly being unravelled. He seems to have a shady past and has helped a mafia boss to overcome some of his difficulties with his meticulous planning of some contracts. That may be why the main character sometimes describes his ‘company’ as a consultancy firm.
Every gripping episode of Koombiyo is leading us to an unpredictable finale. So far, the handsome hero has not shown any interest in romance though a couple of beautiful damsels are smitten by him, the main temptress being beautiful Yureni Noshika. Probably, the young man puts marriage on the back burner, because money is a matter of life and death for an educated, jobless youth than marriage. If he dies poor that’s against his philosophy! – Somasiri Munasinghe
