Asthe oldest among my two siblings, I grew up with a load of family duties. My father was away most of the time, working in a distant town in Sri Lanka. With that, I became the man of the house by stealth. I assisted my mother in many ways. One of them was buying groceries. Every day after school, it was my regular duty after school.
My mother gave me ten rupees and a list of things to buy. Tucking the money and the list in my pant pockets, I raced to the shops, fish and vegetable stalls and grocery stores. With a huge bag of groceries on its handle, I rode the only mode of transport in our household, my father’s bicycle. I enjoyed the bike ride and the opportunity to interact with shopkeepers and vendors, learning the art of negotiations. To top it all, I enjoyed meeting friends while riding along in our neighbourhood streets.
The routine shopping junket started with the fish vendor. The fish stall was nothing like what you’d get here in Australia. All types of fish, big and small, were on display on a huge steel tray, blood oozing from the fresh fish. The stall was owned by a big made woman with huge breasts jutting out of her tight top. With her hawk eyes, she supervised her assistant slicing fish while looking sternly at her customers. The assistant, a middle-aged man with a huge belly, never wore a vest. He knew the art of handling a huge knife, slicing fish exactly to measure. His fingers were dead white, having soaked the ice from the fish all day when there were no hand gloves. His lips were red from chewing betel. While the assistant loved talking to the customers, the owner never took her eyes off the scale. She did not trust her assistant to take the money, instead collecting it herself, putting the cash in her wallet placing it tightly between her breasts inside her top. Kingfish was rupees 2.50 a pound, sailfish coming a close second in price. The cheapest was the small fish like sardinella at sixty cents a pound.
Vendors were everywhere in town, but many cheated on their prices and weight. Honesty was not a virtue among many of them. My mother’s favourite was ‘Prisca’, a shop run by four young brothers. They sold everything from vegetables to groceries. Prisca was reputable, not the cheapest but reliable. They knew who my mother was, often mistaking me to be her youngest brother. The eldest of the four brothers minded the till. He gave me an itemised receipt written by hand.
Sri Lankans love rice, chillies and sugar in their staple diet. The country could never produce enough of these high-demand products. A single cooperative store on the production of ration cards distributed them. That was my next destination, lining up in that store. The cooperative, run by the government, was the monopoly of rationed groceries. The whole neighbourhood turned up to queue in the cooperative; mothers, grandmothers, grandfathers, children and time wasters. It was a huge commune; everyone was waiting in lines, chatting and engaging in small talk. The odd inquisitive woman would ask how old I was; as if to mate their daughters with me. Some would ask whether I passed my exam; and my result. I hated this intrusion into my private life. I gave them a deflecting answer to annoy them like the results were lost or I got a double promotion. My answer matched my mood for the day.
On my way home, I’d drop in at my friend Ananda’s home along the main street. Under his bed was a collection of raunchy magazines, much valued and hard to find in socialist Sri Lanka. Sitting on either side of his bed, we turned pages of these hard-to-find erotic magazines, imagining the lives of grownups. A shopping trip was incomplete without a jerk-off, a pastime for the two adolescents.
Not everything was without incident. On Sundays, it was my duty to buy the weekend paper from the newsagent. The owner, a middle-aged man, had other ideas about me, trying to feel my legs. I stopped going to his shopfront, determined to challenge him when I grow up. That I did a few years later. The marauding arsehole chickened out when confronted. He hid behind his shop.
Those challenging episodes notwithstanding, it was not only the shopping, but I was also the logistics guy. I took paddy from our farm to the grinding mill, where the tradies turned them into rice. I travelled to the main hospital to fetch medicines for a grandmother. Once a month, I travelled to my mother’s estate to pick king coconuts and pineapples for the family. I collected rent from our tenants, confidently issuing receipts from my father’s rental receipt book.
These were good crafts to learn early in my adolescence.
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
4 min read·Dec 11, 2022
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