1000 Rupee note on the Tantra bar
I’ve been on the bus and trishaw a lot lately and I realize that I have to carry two distinct currencies. I still go to post places but I’m on (semi) public transit and I can’t even use the same money in both. There are gradiations, but there is one note which seems to effectively divide along class lines. The 1000 Rupee note is entirely useless in a bus or trishaw. You might as well offer a conductor USD and a trishaw drive will have to get change somewhere. That same note, however, is de rigeur for buying gas, ‘posh’ food or paying cover. Finding appropriate change is now one of the constant annoyances of my life. I can go to a First World Party in Bolgoda, but then I need change for Pilawoos and the three home. No car and you miss that petrol wormhole between one and two, forcing you to deal with the third world in between.
Third World – Bus
Currency: Coins, 10s, 20s (Best), 50s
I don’t mind the bus. At rush hour it make-a-me want to die and I just don’t do it, but they have some interesting iconography. There is also a certain freedom you get from public transport, being just you and the iPod, though the heat kinda beats it out of you.
Public Transit is fascinating for me cause it develops its own culture almost involuntarily. In Montreal each metro station had its own color and the cheery blue trains would chug around quite contentedly. There was even a rainbow metro stop for the gay district. In Colombo there’s no metro (god forbid we be underground) nor is there a coherent bus line. The buses simply go and the buses simply stop, mostly where they will. The big buses are all circa one date, I’d guess the 70s. There must have been a lot of new buses then. Now they’re all old and stripped down to bare seats and metal.
All the iconography of the bus system is in the buses themselves. Many have a portrait of Lakshmi behind the driver, coins flowing from her hand. Some have a portrait of Soma Thero, the Buddhist TV monk who died a few years ago. Besides them, the commonest Saint I see is John Cena, though that I rarely see inside the bus.
Now, as to the currency, there are divisions within the buses as well. If you take the big bus a fare from Battaramulla to Kollupitiya is about 7 Rupees (honestly guessing, I just give a 10 and don’t count the change). If you give a 10 or 20 is fine, they can fit and change that amount from their money-fisted hand. Fifty is more sketchy and 100 is effectively a loan. They’ll hold the money and give you when you get off. A thousand is a joke. 1000 cannot be spent on a bus.
The private A/C Buses are a bit different, but not much. The fare is about Rs 22, so 50s are fine. 100s are still sketchy but they work. 1000 again, not legal tender.
Second World – Trishaw
Currency: 20s, 50s, 100s (Best), 500s
The Second World doesn’t really exist, but as much as it does, trishaws kinda bridge the gap. I’m not crazy about the threes, but there the best and most available point-to-point transit. They can also cut through traffic, but it’s a rather precarious existence. It’s also not especially cheap. I pay about 250-300 to get ‘downtown’ from the Mullah and 100-200 for hops about. Can end up spending 1000-1500 a day if is a lot to do. It’s also hot and if I lean back my the back of my shirt gets soaked with sweat. Colombo is also velly polluted and you get it all in the face. That said, Trishaws are always there.
In terms of iconography, you can identify the driver’s religion pretty easily. It’s either Buddha (though the Buddha often appears with Lakshmi and Ganesh), or the Hindu Lakshmi/Ganesh, or arabic writing from the Koran. Or a pink Jesus, or that bald headed friar holding the baby. Sometimes if you’re the first fare the driver will touch Lakshmi and pay obeisance. There are also the classic classic posters in the back. Big fat chinese babies, baby penises, baby bums, flowers, ultimate cheese. One of my regular drivers has Rambo and Bruce Lee, which is pretty cool. Then there’s the writing on the outside. ‘Face is the Mirror of the Heart’, ‘Mother’ and the classic ‘It’s My Style’.
Currency-Wise, Trishaws are effectively the go-between betwixt the two worlds. I don’t think any bus-rider could afford to take Trishaw’s often, but if you have to move goods or babies that’s what it is. I honestly don’t know if they can make enough money from the carless few, nor do I know what their petrol costs are. I don’t know how many people inhabit the realm between bus, motorbike and car, but it seems to be enough to keep hundreds of trishaws running.
The best note to have in a Trishaw is by far a hundred. Then you can pay the fare and walk away, asking for Rs 50 change at most. Anything low sucks cause counting it is a pain. Five hundreds sort of work but they may not have change. 1000s, however, are the worst. If I’m walking around with a few thousands I may not have any money at all cause only 1/10 drivers will have that much change (depending on time out of day). It inevitably means stopping by a kade (which itself doesn’t want 1000s) to get change. Sometimes I seriously feel like I’m carrying dollars, the note is so useless.
obviously not this car. more car photos
First World – Car
Currency: 100s, 500s, 1000s (Best), Credit
Driving makes you irrepressibly angry, so I guess it’s a trade-off, but is definitely more comfortable than the above options. You can drive around in an air-conditioned cocoon, ensonced in your own music and conversation. Parking, however, is a bitch and there’s no soul to the beast. Cars are like big culture condoms that keep people apart from each other. I’m not saying they’re not good, but there are no chance encounters in a car, no random connections, and interaction is generally limited to honking and anger. Cities without public transit are some of the most dead cities I’ve been too, mainly cause they’re lacking that interactive space.
People don’t really keep religious or personal iconography in their cars. Some people go to extremes, but cars seem to be mostly functional, their only expression a long-term accumulation of junk in the backseat. Maybe people that drive aren’t as religious, I dunno.
Cars are one area where Sri Lanka matches and even outpaces the First World. The 100% tax on automobiles means that every Corolla is effectively a Beamer (as someone said). In the States you can look through the paper and buy a $1000 clunker, but that doesn’t seem to happen here. What’s annoying is that the papers don’t even post prices for used cars. Gasoline is also more expensive than most other countries. All this means that a Rs 1000 note ($10) is definitely legal tender for driving, as that won’t even fill up your tank. Most people that drive aren’t going to Odel or Cricket Club, but a lot do, and those places a 1000 or Credit Card is de rigeur. When I unfold a wallet full of well-rubbed 20s and 100s for a Rs 800 bill it just feels futile and annoying. 1000s are crisp and they can cover most situations you encounter in a car.
I’m not sure exactly what I’m getting at, but I just find it curious that there seem to be two distinct worlds where I need two different sets of currency. In the States or Canada there is one default note – the $20. You can use that for a taxi, for gas, for food, or for buying a stereo. I’ve never felt like there was anywhere I couldn’t tender a $20, nor have I ever felt like a $20 was too little.
However, here I don’t know what the default note is and I don’t know what bridges the two worlds. I need 20s to take the bus and I need 1000s for a night out. There’s no default I can carry. You’d think a 500 would work, but you can’t buy a Rs 22 fare with that and they’re honestly hard to find. The ample 100 doesn’t work either cause buying a (global) meal with that is like paying with one dollar bills. You have a fat wallet and no money. The only solution I’ve found is to carry both currencies. I carry 1000s and jealously horde any 100s I can find. There is a class divide somewhere, and it starts with the two comparments in my wallet.
Did you hear that they’ve actually introduced a 2000 rupee note, today? I hope this link works:
LBO
Interesting, from the LBO report,
Strange, was thinking about this today – SL is finally coming to terms with its own inflation and the 2000/- note will be excellent, however – lowest denominators have lost so much value that you’re rarely given change in the smaller coins. I think you should still demand it though.
Agree with Ru. 20 bucks change is lunch for a beggar so couple of seconds might not do any harm. Change for the bus is a bloody curse because the 5 rupee coin which used to get me to school in Mount is now worth nothing. Nugegoda junc to my place is 16 bucks. So Mulla to Kolla is probably 20 bucks. It’s crazy. 1/5th the price of a litre of petrol for a diesel bus. It’s just not proportionate. The profit margins must be huge.
You’re right about the dichotomy of the currency notes though. It’s a bloody pain.
The 2000/s have been printed for a long while. It’s just that someone fucked up on the signature so that they had to delay the release. There’s probably hundreds of thousands of dud two grand notes sitting in the basement of the CBSL.
When I was in Edinburgh, I was obsessed with paying in exact change: a bratty quality giving me a sense of unbelievable satisfaction; that I have not had to divide fiduciary, and do not have to think of ways to spend the mountains of coins that stack up like as in some numist’s fetish shop. This was made infinitesimally easier by the pound’s /penny’s excellent purchasing power (alliterative bliss) —you’ll always get a penny piece back for something that costs £9.99, thus maintaining the value of the smallest divisible tender.
Over here, you’re fubared and the more I think about it, it’s a blanket buggering because; in a retail situation (non-first world where as Indi suggests the 1000/- is the most practical tender), only the bravest and most anally retentive of high-income earners will stand hands-on-hips at the supermarket aisle waiting for their 18 cents back, but something that should be done out of principle I believe if nothing else. In a situation like the bus, conductors will not change a 10/- for a 9/- fare, so the add-ons are theirs for the taking. It’s called breakage, like the unspent value on a gift card: a sunk cost to the consumer and pure profit to the retailer, the mathematics is relatively easy. It’s vaguely alarming at how much money slips through wallets without meaning to be spent.
Perhaps it was fundamentally fubared by your fanatically fetishistic use of the fascinating word “fudiciary.”
The 2000 ruppee note jsut gives me messed up thoughts about my country.. is it hyper inflation?? damn! imagine us in a situation where the inflation will be so rapid that when you are in the back of a queue the price of bread will be 20 ruppes, and when your turn comes it becomes some 200 rupees or somethin!! this CAN be possible..
The third world – bus, well this mode of transport may seem to be third worldish, coz we meet all kinds of ppl in it.. but it is the most cheapest that a took took that is. i wish that our public transport was bit more organised.. coz i hate when the buses are over crowded, and you are obstructed from getting down at your stop!
Your description of riding a car “Cars are like big culture condoms that keep people apart from each other.”
reminds me of a passage in The White Tiger by Arvind Adiga
“The cars of the rich go like dark eggs down the roads of Delhi. Every now and then an egg will crack open—a woman’s hand, dazzling with gold bangles, stretches out of an open window, flings an empty mineral water bottle onto the road—and then the window goes up, and the egg is resealed.”