You may be inclined to notice dearie as you absent mindedly flip the pages of the Siththara paper or dig your ear with the thick end of a strand of coir, that there comes a time in a man’s life when he desires to wear two hats. Perhaps may be even three or more. Perchance he wishes to be the cat in the hat.

Nirj Deva a.k.a. Niranjan Deva Aditya for instance is a man who likes his caps. Whether he is contemplating a gayer and more unrestricted life in the more leafy areas of Dambulla as a Thoppi Velenda or hat vendor Thellie cannot say at first glance but there it is.

He is for instance the ambassador at large for Paradise. What it means is immaterial but that Nirj is at large is pretty certain. In fact Thellie must admit I’m quite often taken aback when the substantially native looking chap refers to ‘us,’ ‘our,’ ‘ourselves.’ I never know quite to whom he is referring. He could be talking about MEPs, Britishers, colonialists, Paradisians, lovers of excessive usage of hair oil, hat vendors…the list is simply staggering.

Anyway darling there he was toddling about everywhere with the EU delegation headed by Robbie Evans and quicker than you could say chicken in a biscuit come Tuesday morning he had bitten this Evan’s guy in the bottom area.

Nirj being a member of the EU House sat through patiently as Robbie warned you of sanctions and what not saying nary a word. Indeed he penned his own words to the missive. But no sooner than Robbie flew off back to Europe there Nirj Deva was all but calling his fellow delegates Euro trash.

Having first right royally castigated the EU mission in Colombo for its lackadaisical attitude in its attempt to secure an aircraft for the delegation to visit the east, he went on to heap accolade upon accolade on you and Boggles and anyone even remotely connected with the ruling goons.

And Thellie was pondering upon this very subject last Friday when it came upon me like a bolt from the blue. Lights flickered everywhere in my ample cranial cavity and By Bally George I’d got it!

Thellie has not personally been privileged to hear Nirj croon a love song but one is advised by more informed counsel that the fellow has a habit of singing for his supper.

And as I wondered with a dark frown hanging over my eyes, what had possessed him to castigate his own delegation and heap praise upon a regime that let’s face it old friend, has been less than cordial towards the little matter of human rights and so on and so forth, it suddenly hit me.

It was the fellow‘s unholy love of boiled oysters in garlic sauce. His eternal craving for a seafood bisque and a lobster thermidor. His desire for a canape of ham and caviar to be washed down with a nice whisky and soda.

The late Kadi would often have occasion to refer to the rather clownish Nirj Deva with fondness as the banquet beggar. A little nickname he earned for having begged for invites to state banquets.

And then and there the mystery was solved. The reason Nirj had turned upon his own men like a pitbull on a school girl was because he was literally singing for his supper. Or should I say banquet.

And it paid off too. The fellow was invited to Boggles’ banquet last Thursday not two days after his little performance before the journos. Score one for him. But many miles to go before he sleeps, me thinks.

And many banquets there are to be invited to belatedly in these jolly old days of the SAARC Summit. There is a large amount of 5.1 billion smackers to be spent and it can’t all be frittered away on the décor either.

And Nirj, an eating drinking kind of fella would know that if Boggles had a banquet, his arch rival Kohona would try to top it by having a Banquet with a capital B.

In gastronomical terms and those are the only terms worth mentioning these days, as far as Nirj was concerned if Boggles served Lobster from Hikkaduwa, Kohona would serve clams especially flown down from the Great Barrier Reef. And to hell with conflict of interests and too many hats and so on Nirj was determined to pluck off an invite to any lavish state banquet.

So there he was saying that the Evans delegation diminished the EU’s standing as an authoritative friend to Paradise. That they had shot themselves in the foot.

He praised you for turning Pillayan from a terrorist to a politician with weapons. Thellie was a little confused at this darling as I thought and thought and couldn’t see any difference between a politician with a gun and a terrorist but it is my third glass of Eagle Hawk Reisling and life is too short to be looking for answers to the obvious.

But what had me for a space was when Nirj said that Paradise can teach a thing or two to newly emerging democratic nations in the EU. It is one class I wouldn’t want to be in dearie whatever this hat filled man says.

But that wasn’t all. He even went so far as to say that Paradise was a model of institutional stability and rectitude. Darling this man takes the cake. And knowing his bally appetite he wipes the bally plate clean.