Denzil's Stories

Mrs Pa’ris A terror of a teacher in grade 3 Denzil Jayasinghe 5 min read·Jun 28, 2022 1 M rs Pa’ris was my teacher in grade 3. Back in Sri Lanka, her name was pronounced, Paa-ris. Leading up to grade three, from kindergarten up, we had Mrs Cooray, Miss Yvonne and Miss Angela — our class teachers. Mrs Cooray taught us the alphabet on slate tablets. Miss Yvonne’s job was to make us God-fearing, devout Catholic boys and teach us complex matters like the Holy Trinity and life after death. Both of which we could not grasp as six-year-olds. Miss Angela prepared us to receive the holy communion and confession. But they were kind teachers. Not so, Mrs Pa’ris, who taught in grade 3. She had a reputation in primary school, not a good one. She was a terror. As the year in grade 2 ended, we did not want to move to grade 3 and face Mrs Pa’ris. We wanted to bypass grade 3 and go straight to grade 4. But that was not possible in primary education. We had no choice. With hesitation, we landed in grade...

  158th Letter Reproduction of letters to parents and kid brother in Sri Lanka Denzil Jayasinghe 6 min read · Jun 27, 2022 W riting letters was a big thing in my youth. I wrote hundreds of letters to my parents from Dubai. Here’s the thing, my parents were great record keepers, and they stored all my letters, filling up boxes. These nostalgic letters are now here with me in Sydney. They demonstrate the strong bond I had with my parents and kid brother. You may wonder what this odd title of this story is. Back in the day, it took time for letters to reach their destination, often more than a week. By the time a reply to my previous letter reached me, I had written my next letter. To avoid being cross-wired in correspondence, being the super organised family we were, we sequentially numbered each letter. Each party replied to a previous letter, the one before the last. There was no longer any confusion with the sequencing. Now you get the gist of these numbered letters, an art only t...

  Madhu church A boy’s trip to a Catholic shrine and a short-lived friendship Denzil Jayasinghe 5 min read·Jun 25, 2022 2 1 My parents knew the art of cheap holidays. They used creative tricks to make the most of school breaks. These trips were a great opportunity for chilling out and spending time together as a family. No school holiday was spared without a trip to some holiday destination. There was no corner on the tiny island of Sri Lanka, I had not travelled when I was a child. The transport mode did not matter; we took all sorts of transport, buses, trains and even aeroplanes. In my teenage years, through my father's work, we even had access to a car, a Moskvitch car, a Russian workhorse. One such was a trip to Madhu, in the north of Sri Lanka, a holiday combined with a pilgrimage in January. The  church of Madhu  is the most venerated Catholic shrine on the island. It is dedicated to Jesus’s mother, Mary. Madhu is the Mecca for Sri Lankan Catholics. This was my sec...