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A Puff of Smoke, a World of Memory

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  A Puff of Smoke, a World of Memory Boys learn the important lessons not in classrooms, but on borrowed bicycles, dusty excursions, and quiet bridges where only crows are watching. Denzil Jayasinghe 7 min read · 1 day ago I was fifteen when I first smoked a cigarette, and I have been mildly embarrassed about it ever since. Not because smoking is a terrible thing – there are far worse habits a boy can acquire in the hills – but because I was so very bad at it. My friend Ajit could blow smoke rings with the ease of a conjurer, each one drifting up into the pine-scented air like a small, surprised halo. I stood beside him, coughing heroically, and tried to look as though I had done this before. The pines were not impressed. They have seen generations of boys make fools of themselves, and they keep their counsel. My real initiation came later, away from the hills, in the flat and ordinary heat of home. One quiet afternoon I borrowed my father’s bicycle – borrowed being the polite word...
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The Bank, the Scotsman, and the Brit with a Roaring Car

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  The Bank, the Scotsman, and the Brit with a Roaring Car Looking back, I sometimes think my real education didn’t happen at school or even at university, but in a sun-baked Dubai branch of a British bank, where the air smelled of toner ink, cigarette smoke, and ambition. It was the 1970s to early 80s when telex machines rattled like nervous typewriters and telegraphic transfers could make or break a day, a deal, or a career. Into this world I arrived: a young clerk at the bottom of the hierarchy, armed with more enthusiasm than experience, and just enough innocence to get into interesting kinds of trouble. What I didn’t know then was that my tutors would not be trainers or manuals, but a colourful procession of young lads, British managers: a Scotsman whose accent defeated my ears, a carefree lad with a roaring car and a crumpled shirt, athletes, adventurers, and gentlemen with impeccable manners and questionable driving habits. Together, they turned an ordinary bank into a stage ...
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Eugene Ellis, the firebrand

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  Eugene Ellis, the firebrand Eugene Ellis, as some of you will remember, was the first Indian to smash through the bank’s glass ceiling and openly challenge the system. Here are my memories of that great, fearless firebrand. Denzil Jayasinghe 5 min read · 2 days ago 15 It all started in the mid‑seventies in Dubai, when men had sideburns, offices had ashtrays, and banks still behaved as if the British Empire had only stepped out for a cigarette. I take the liberty of writing about Eugene Ellis as I saw him then, through the eyes of a very junior, very clueless youngster. When I joined, Eugene was nowhere in sight. He existed only as a rumour: “He’s from Bombay, you know… in London… being processed.” Processed by whom? By the high priests of the bank, of course. As far as I understood it, Eugene had come from Mumbai (Bombay to all of us then) and had been sent to London to be   sorted   as a covenanted officer. When he finally returned, he mentioned, quite casually, that h...
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