Myparents never sat me down to share stories of their growing up. They spared me the hard stories of their lost childhoods and the sacrifices they made as kids in a world much harsher than I grew up.
They put themselves on the line so the next generation could have a good life. I benefit from their sacrifices, blood, tears and sweat.
I want to go back in time and sit beside my mother, who had just lost her mother to mental illness. I want to know how she dared to take abuse from her sick mother. I want to know how she dealt without a mother's love at such a tender age. How she managed that large household, made of brick, without electricity, surrounded by acres of paddy fields? I want to know what she cooked for her father and siblings. I want to record how she ran the house without a mother. I want to know how she protected her younger sister. I want to sit with the teenage version of my mother and ask about her dreams. I want to know how she dealt with moving homes and schools at short notice. I want to know how she studied after finishing the housework. I want to know how she supported her single father. I want to know how she felt when visiting her sick mother at the mental asylum. I want to know how my mother helped her orphaned cousins living in her household. Is that her secret to leadership?
I want to go back in time and sit with my father, fifteen years old, who had just lost his father. How did he deal with it? Did he miss his father? Did he cry when his father’s coffin was lowered to the ground? I want to know when he decided to help his widowed mother. What time did he get up in the morning to help his mother run her shop? What was it like to distribute food orders in the morning for his mother? Did he enjoy serving customers and measuring groceries in the afternoons? How did he study under a kerosene lamp at night? Did he miss his father’s loving touch when he slept alone at night? What did he feel carrying his shoes in his school bag and wearing them at the school entrance to save wear and tear? What did he feel about walking that long distance to school every day? Did his bare feet hurt as he stepped on the pebbles? How did my father help his orphaned cousin? What was it like to be a kid during WW2? What was it like being poor?
I want to know what they laughed about with friends and cousins. What did they do to relax? Did they not get a chance to relax?
I want to make a home movie with my father and mother when both were kids and in their teenage years, when their young bodies and were hard at work paying in blood and sweat.
By some fate, the year 1942 was significant to both my parents. In that year, my father, fifteen, lost his father. In the same year, my mother, eight, lost her mother to mental illness. Traumatic events for two young kids. Though two unrelated events, that year defined their lives and mine.
I wish I had unsettled them. I wish I had pried them about their childhood, like opening a closed door. I wish I had found a small opening. I wish I pushed my head inside and witnessed their childhood. My parents had an entire life before me, which I wish I had experienced.
Cyril Stanley A story of gratitude — Denzil recalls a friend who looked out for him in his budding years in Sri Lanka Denzil Jayasinghe 11 min read · Aug 27, 2022 1 Give us a bit of background on how you met Cyril. It was the seventies in the sleepy village of Dalugama , my ancestral hometown, some ten kilometres from Colombo. With their flared bell bottoms and Afro-style hair, it was easy to notice Cyril and his younger brother Edward. I’d bump into the duo in the neighbourhood as I walked home after a day at college. A casual hello greeting turned into a conversation and an evolving friendship with the duo at an age when making friends was effortless. However, it was Cyril who reached out to me first. What did the brothers look like? C yril was a younger version of Smokey Robinson and his brother, Edward, a junior Lionel Richie but darker. Both had curly hair, grown long, copying the Afro-American idols of the seventies. Smokey Robinson, Cyril Stanley lookalike Where did they
My experiences of rebellions How waves of violence in Sri Lanka broke a young man’s heart Warning — Distressing scenes described in this story. A YOUTH INSURRECTION DURING MY BOYHOOD 1971 — There was a strong student and youth socialist movement styled on the “Che Guevara” clique. Many poor, unemployed and underprivileged young people joined this movement. My two elder cousins, my father’s brother’s children, Sisira and Marie, were also in this rebel group. In their home. They replaced Jesus’s picture with that of Mao Zedong and Che Guevara. Both of them, teenagers, boldly spoke about a future socialist society. A society in which everyone was equal in Sri Lanka. Young as I was, it was a bit gibberish to me. In April 1971, the movement turned violent. The insurrection began when the rebels started attacking police stations. The Sri Lankan government responded by deploying armed forces with brutal force. Rebels cut power lines and blocked roads with trees in the countryside. Schools wer
Arya Sinhala This story is about the significance of this costume in my family and its cultural relevance. My father wore shirts and pants as any English-educated Sri Lankan male did back in the day. Everybody gave their children English names. I am named Denzil Bernard. A few years after I was born, in the 1950s, Sri Lanka was trying to assert its ethnic identity, a decade after it gained independence from Great Britain. A new prime minister, espousing an ethnocentric identity, came into power. Emulating Indian leaders’ post-independence direction, he gave up his Western attire, despite his Oxford education and wore the national dress, Arya Sinhala. Arya is an ethnic and cultural designation to which the Sinhala race makes claims. The cultural transformation started in my family. My sister, born four years after me, was named Rekha Flora. She had an ethnic name and a Western name. Occasionally my father donned the national dress. My father’s elder brother ultimately gave up his West
3 min read·Sep 27, 2022
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