Sri Lanka, Jan. 27 -- The attic is a place or room just below the roof of a house, often used for dumping unwanted household items. In modern houses you hardly find an attic, but there is always a backroom allocated for storing things not necessary for daily life. Even this is not possible in modern apartments where people live vertically. In the olden days rich people built spacious houses with attics. Those who lived in such houses never threw away any empty bottles, broken pieces of furniture, old clocks and crockery. All of them found a place in the attic.

A friend of mine used to live in an old walauwa in the South of the country. He was living with his doddering parents. Whenever I visited him, we used to rummage around the attic. ...