My name is Nishanthi and I am from Kirinda. Recently, we had our second daughter’s ceremony for attaining age. Since Kirinda is a village known for fishermen, alcohol is common among most people. Other drugs can be commonly seen too. Whenever there is a ceremonial function, it was considered a village custom to serve alcohol. We served alcohol for our elder daughter’s ceremony for attaining age and it cost us around Rs 120,000 in total. Meanwhile, a few other similar ceremonies within the village decided not to serve alcohol and those functions were quite successful. The initiation of these alcohol-free ceremonies was at the residence of Mrs Rohini, the social projects manager of the Kirindiwela Janashakthi Bank. Since Mrs Rohini had her function alcohol free, I too decided to not have alcohol for my second daughter’s attaining age ceremony.

My husband is a fisherman and he insisted that we must serve alcohol to his friends. He is not the type of person who drinks daily. However, he usually consumes alcohol during functions. I explained how much of a loss we would experience if we did serve alcohol. Thereafter, he informed his friends that he would not be serving alcohol. We had the function at a hotel and did not serve alcohol nor were any drunk people present. Everyone enjoyed the good food and music. Some people who danced and enjoyed the music were people who initially said that it was not possible to dance without alcohol! It was around 2 am when the function came to an end and it ended peacefully without any arguments or fights. Since there was no alcohol, I was not worried at all about potential fights that could have started. We saved around Rs 55,000 from the ceremony which we built jewellery for our daughter. We were able to save a small amount in our daughter’s bank account too.