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Yellow Underpants and a Broken Heart

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  Yellow Underpants and a Broken Heart Denzil Jayasinghe 2 min read · Just now In the mid-seventies, when Sri Lanka was still the centre of my universe, mornings had a routine. I would leave Mudiyansegewatta Road and turn into the church compound, tracing the familiar path past the local school, along its sandy road toward the bus stand. I never went into the church, except to exchange pleasantries with the local lads chatting in the front yard. Then I’d move on, walking past quickly. At school, and later among the machinery at apprentice school, there was a phrase that made the rounds: a hole in the heart . Someone would mention a boy who had one. Then another. Nobody ever explained what it actually meant, but the words carried a quiet weight. Before long, I convinced myself that I had one, too. Whenever I walked, a slight, nagging pain would take root high on the left side of my chest. I’d slow my step, catch my breath, and think, this is it. I’m going to die soon. At eighteen,...
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What if?

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  What if? Denzil Jayasinghe 7 min read · 1 day ago 1 T The years stack up, and you start looking back at the scaffolding. You begin to see how precariously a life is built. How much of it depends on decisions made in rooms you were never in, by people who were simply trying to get through their own days. One small decision leads to another, and another, until you are standing somewhere you never imagined you would be. And you begin to wonder. What if? What if Lewis, my grandfather, had never stepped up to carry the weight of his brothers and sisters? What if he had simply been allowed to live as an ordinary man, instead of becoming the pillar everyone leaned on? What if the thyroid deficiency had not stolen my grandmother Euphracia’s mind when my mother was only eight years old? A little girl losing her mother to a quiet, hospital-walled darkness, forced to grow up before she had ever had the chance to be young. And sometimes I wonder about something else. What if Lewis had decide...
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