Changing karma through coffee

KASUN'S Karma. That is the name of one of the newest coffee shops in Jaffna, formally launched on 14 February this year. The creator of it is Kasun Dishan Roy, hailing from Kataragama.

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Aged 30, he is a firm believer in Karma — the chain of past action that follows an individual through life and death.

He seems to be facing his with a unique brand of courage that not many can summon especially when the heart is involved — and bruised.

"I am from Kataragama. My parentage is connected to the Eurasian lineage — but you will see nothing of that in the way I look," explains Kasun with a laugh. He then reminisces how he arrived for the first time in Jaffna in 2021. It was one of the destinations in the travel wish list he had made together with a damsel from the East of Sri Lanka who he was to marry.

"I met her when I was working in the hospitality industry in Colombo. There were many places we wanted to visit together. I believe it was my karma that it did not work out. But as a form of catharsis, I made a vow to myself that I would travel to all the places that we had planned to go to. Jaffna was one such place."

Initially he did not plan to set up a coffee shop in this district where he did not know a single person, but he ended up doing just that with the first friend he made here. He had just entered Jaffna town, once embroiled in bloodshed of a civil war that ended when he was four years old. It was afternoon. He approached the first person seated behind a three-wheeler (a tuk tuk) and asked him in a hybrid version of English laced with Tamil where he could find a grocery store.

"I wanted a cigarette — yes, smoking is a terrible habit but I occasionally indulge," I told him, he recalls.