Denzil's Stories

The Visitors from Imbulgoda Denzil Jayasinghe 2 min read 10 T he visitors from Imbulgoda arrived on a Sunday as if the afternoon heat had carried them to our doorstep. Two boys, rigid in white shirts and blue shorts, hovered behind their father like uneasy shadows. The man – grey threading his temples, his sarong starched to a sharpness that suggested careful preparation – spoke with the deliberate politeness of someone who had rehearsed his lines. His voice, smooth as aged teak, wove a fragile claim of kinship to my mother’s side of the family. A thread so faint, I wondered if it would snap under scrutiny. I had never met them. Their names had never been uttered in our home. Yet here they stood, their smiles not quite settling into their eyes. They became regular visitors after that. The father – Jayamanne – wielded his sons like credentials, presenting them as proof of something – perhaps legitimacy, perhaps obligation. The boys, village-bred and wide-eyed, seemed carved from a diffe...

A Whisper from Grandpa’s Ageless Sanctuary Denzil Jayasinghe 2 min read 5 A short walk from the noise of the main road, my grandfather’s house waited — patient, unchanging. Sixty-five years had passed, but the house stood as it always had, its walls holding the quiet of another time. Once, there had been open fields around it, and next door, pineapple plantations stretched far in Bandarawatta, their sharp leaves glinting under the sun. And there, at number 635, his life remained — small, certain, complete. The verandah stretched forward, its sloping roof supported by thick pillars. Three arched windows lined the side, their curves soft in the afternoon light. Against the wall inside, an almirah stood heavy with books, their spines cracked with age, their pages holding words no one read anymore. At the centre of the verandah, a teapoy, its surface covered in stiff white cloth, held a brass bowl resting on three elephants — their trunks raised as if in silent celebration. Armchairs, worn...

  The Landlord and the Shopkeeper Denzil Jayasinghe 4 min read T hat year, the rains came early to Dalugama, painting the red-earth roads in slick, liquid strokes. But neither the weeping sky nor the shifting ground could keep Ruhunusiri Mudalali from his morning rite. As dawn stretched its pale fingers over Ceylon, he unlatched the wooden shutters of his shop with the quiet certainty of a man who knew time not by the clock but by the rhythm of survival itself. It was 1970, and the island trembled on the brink of becoming Sri Lanka. But politics was a distant murmur to a man whose kingdom was four whitewashed walls and a ramshackle tile roof that sang beneath the rain. From seven until seven, through the press of heat and the damp that clung like a second skin, Ruhunusiri’s shop stood — unyielding, unchanged. Today was Poya when the government declared no groceries should cross a counter. The law was clear, but Ruhunusiri had long known rules that were like those of the monsoon — l...

  The Exorcism of Nagahawatta Ceylon, 1975 Denzil Jayasinghe 3 min read T he house smelled of incense and sweat, of candle wax and something darker — something that slithered between the whispers of prayer. Rienzie’s home was a stage, and tonight, the devil had the starring role. Dalugama had raised its children on fear. Shadows were never just shadows; faith was never just faith. It needed teeth. So when Rienzie called them — his friends, the curious, the thrill-seekers — they came not to worship, but to witness. The boys from Nagahawatta arrived first, their grins wide, restless energy in their eyes. Then Cyril, Edward, Suneth, Leonard, Mahinda, Nelum, and Denzil, the church gang, drawn like crows to garbage. Even Merril and Shirley, who usually haunted the junction with their lazy mischief, pushed inside, their eyes alight with hunger. Then — the house erupted into chaos. Swarna, Rienzie’s sister, tore through the lace curtains like a storm, her eyes wild, fingers clawing at her...