Posts

Roots and Kerosene

Image
  Roots and Kerosene Denzil Jayasinghe 5 min read · 4 days ago I think I had an unusual upbringing, though at the time it seemed entirely ordinary. Childhood, after all, accepts its world without question. Only later do you realise that other people grew up differently, under brighter lights perhaps, or with less silence around them. We lived deep in a village in Sri Lanka, beyond what anyone would comfortably call semi-rural. The house belonged to my maternal grandfather. It stood on a large piece of land, one of the biggest properties on the road, though “road” dignified it somewhat — it was really a gravel track disappearing into coconut trees and scrubland. Our house sat a good hundred metres away from it, withdrawn from the world, as if modesty itself had designed the place. There was no electricity then. Not in our house, nor on the street. Evenings arrived quickly. Kerosene lamps were lit. Feet were washed before bed. Water came from the well, cold and metallic against the s...
Post a Comment
Read more

Peons, Clerks and a Cadillac: Pakistanis in a Dubai Bank

Image
  Peons, Clerks and a Cadillac: Pakistanis in a Dubai Bank Denzil Jayasinghe 6 min read · 19 hours ago 1 T his story is for the Pakistanis who kept a certain Dubai bank running in the seventies, long before anyone thought of “shared services” or “offshoring”, and when hierarchy was as visible as the nameplates on the doors. Akram Mohamed Akram was our “chief typist”, a rank that never appeared on any organisation chart but lived securely in our minds and in his confident stride. He commanded a small empire of keys and carbons, assisted by two loyal lieutenants: the ever‑earnest Ashok Hinduja and the boyish Sunil Kataria, both from Mumbai and both condemned — so we thought then — to a lifetime of typing letters of credit. Akram himself was unforgettable: tall, with lips a permanent red and a passing resemblance to Zulfikar Ali Bhutto that made us feel vaguely geopolitical just walking past his desk. He spoke in a rich Pakistani accent, opening every conversation in a musical tone, h...
Post a Comment
Read more

Yasryn

Image
  Yunus A shy Indian bank clerk in 1970s Dubai, a daily walk to the Central Bank, a curious holiday in Thailand, and one kind colleague named Gagan. This is Yunus’s story — pint sized in stature, quiet in manner, but carrying a surprising share of humour, humility, hardship and human warmth. Denzil Jayasinghe 6 min read · 4 days ago 3 Chapter I — Yunus the Wanderer Yunus was a wanderer by habit, if not by map. He was a tiny fellow — a shade under five feet, as though the tape measure had lost interest halfway and gone off for a cup of tea — and so lightly built that a good desert breeze might have carried him from Deira to Bur Dubai without the help of a bus. His glasses sat permanently on his nose, and his hair was parted neatly down the middle like that of a conscientious schoolboy who had forgotten to grow up. He was an innocent Indian lad adrift in the great adventure of a Dubai bank in the mid‑seventies, older than most of the young clerks around him, yet looking younger becau...
Post a Comment
Read more