Service industries in Sri Lanka actually aren’t. For the most part they’re a series of transactions cloaked in mystery and hopeful anticipation, where a mechanic will energetically fix the weird sound from under your Toyota for weeks on end, your OPD doctor will enigmatically treat your abdominal pain without ever quite revealing to you what’s going until you’re prostrate and screaming to know why and you just know the contractor you hired to build your new house is massively overcharging you for every single brick and bag of cement.

It’s the same at the bank, the RMV or the insurance company. They make you fill endless forms in which you reveal everything about yourself including your age, your phone numbers and your email address. Then they take the forms away without a word of explanation and leave you waiting wondering what’s happening and who’s out there fascinatedly reading your personal information while you try to focus on yesterday’s copy of the Daily News.

These are all industries where the average citizen knows little about the actual workings of the process- applying for a loan, having those funny spots on your back diagnosed or what to do about the way your computer keeps re-starting itself over and over again….

We go to the experts and we would like to know what’s going on. But no one ever wants to explain to the poor Sri Lankan consumer exactly what they’re paying for; how the bank processes work or if they’re going to die next week of a brain tumour. Every service takes place behind a veil of secrecy where the bare minimum is revealed to the client, presumably to protect the provider from being sued later when it’s all gone horribly wrong or because they themselves don’t quite know what’s happening until they’ve trial and errored their way to a conclusion, or they think we’re all a bunch of fools who don’t need to know all this stuff anyway.

Many Sri Lankans are meek in these situations and don’t like to draw attention to themselves in crowded places by having arguments with the person serving them. We’re also usually anxious about antagonising the clerk or matron or teller who might then deliberately delay or fuck up your request and make you start all over again. So we hardly ever question why, what, when, where, who…

We take what we get, whenever it transpires and are ingratiatingly grateful once it actually happens successfully. Alternatively (or simultaneously), some of us set out to learn as much as we can about whatever it is we’re trying to do or get. So we sit up half the night anxiously googling ‘stomach pain’ on medicinenet.com and getting remote diagnoses from our friends in the medical profession. We visit Noorbhoys in Armour Street to buy door handles and measure our bathroom floor area before spending a hot Saturday morning at the tile shop in Nawala. We learn how many bags of cement we need to build the house and how a proper job of grouting is done. We study books, we ask friends at home and at work, we research online and we learn how each and every task that we should be trusting to our service providers should be done so we can figure out when we’re being robbed or cheated or we can do it ourselves.

It’s great though. Very soon we’ll be a nation of multi-skilled amateur doctors, lawyers, mechanics, IT experts and architects who will hopefully share – not mystify – the knowledge we’ve gained.