Packet Brigade
If you’re ever out in Colombo around 11:30am, you will be witness to a colourful transformation – brightly painted sun umbrellas pop up like mushrooms at many a street corner. Day after day, these urban flowers bloom again and again – announcing the lunch packet brigade. Then, around 1:30pm or when the lunch packets are all sold, the streets wilt back to their dreary city-grey to anxiously await another noon hour of brilliant colours.
A lunch packet is basically a mound of rice wrapped in newsprint about 2 inches high and 5 inches square. From what I can see, they come in all flavours of curry – fish, vegetable, and chicken – and sell for about 60 cents Canadian – a cheap, healthy meal.
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Mark has had lunch packets at some of his training workshops. He described the lunch feast as a version of biryani rice with a spicy piece of meat included. Depending on what you order, you get a different kind of ‘hot paste’ (Mark says it ranges from ‘very spicy’ to ‘very, very’ spicy!!) and in his experience you always get a boiled egg at the bottom of the rice.
