MAT PETER

Peter was a village lad who attended a prestigious English school. His parents, though poor, said even if they were to starve, they would give their son a good education. 

Peter was not only intelligent, but also persevering. When he could not afford to buy a book, he borrowed it from a friend and copied down notes from it during the holidays. In position, he was not below the third in any term test. 

One day during the Hygiene period his class teacher was discussing the advantage of going early to bed and rising up early rather than the other way about, and casually turning towards Peter he asked, “Peter, at what time do you go to bed?" 

"l don't go to bed, sir," replied Peter. "I go to the mat," and the whole class laughed in derision. Not only that, his classmates and even his teacher (the latter only in a joking way) nicknamed him “Mat Peter." But Peter did not care two hoots. On the contrary he was proud that a poor boy like him could rub shoulders so far as studies were concerned with his rich class-mates. 

During the Catechism class, the teacher made the lessons very popular by relating exciting stories from the Bible. That day the story was about Moses. How Moses led the Israelite's out of bondage, how he crossed the Red Sea, how manna rained from heaven, and how the excess manna stocked by greedy people turned to gall. But Peter was not interested in all that. He allowed his thoughts to go astray. In fact he was wondering why he was so poor when many of his class-mates were so affluent, and why God has kept such an imbalance. 

At this point the teacher noticed that Peter was in a world of his own. So she asked Peter to repeat what she said last. The astonished Peter said, "As Moses was refused heaven in Manner, he turned to Galle l” 

One day ”Mat Peter" met with an accident-he fell from his bicycle and sprained the ankle of his right leg This made him a stay at bed for about a week. Even after one week he could not go to school He could, however, get out of bed as the pan was not so much then. Nevertheless, he could not walk without limping. His mother told him that there was no sugar it the house to prepare tea and asked him whether he could go b the nearest boutique and bring some sugar. While Peter was going on limping on the road, he saw a cripple going limping ahead of him. The latter turned round, stood for a while, all the time gazing and staring at Peter, and began scolding him saying, "You damned rascal, owing to my ”karma‘ l have become a cripple from birth. Instead of sympathizing with me, you imitate me in order to ridicule an unfortunate being. 'Nahadichcha kolla( ill-bred boy )!" 

Poor Peter tried to explain but the man would listen to nothing of the sort. He was so furious that he even raised his hand to assault Peter! Peter could do nothing except to run away from the scene and that too limping, which made the man more angry ! 

Peter went on studying hard and eventually he got a place in the University and became entitled to the Mahapola scholarship too. After leaving the University he took up the competitive Administrative Service Examination, passed it with flying colours and became a staff officer in Government Service. Although his jealous enemies still call him Mr. Mat Peter, in the case of Peter it is a matter of "T he dogs bark; the caravan passes on."