The Nameplate
The Nameplate
Dalugama, Ceylon – 1959
After a breakfast of bread and wood apple jam – the sort of meal that tastes better when eaten without haste, when sparrows chatter on the veranda and time moves like the gentle Kelani River not too far away, Thomas pushed back his chair with the contentment of a man nursing a small joy. The door protested gently as he opened its hinges, releasing the morning into the house like a shy visitor bearing gifts of light and birdsong.
“There’s something I must show you,” he said, his words dancing with barely contained delight, the way a child might speak of a butterfly caught in cupped hands. “Last night it was too dark – you couldn’t have appreciated it properly in that poor light.”
Susan paused in her clearing of cups and plates, her curiosity awakened like a cat stretching in sunshine. “What could it be?”
“Step outside with me, won’t you?”
And there it gleamed in the tender morning sun – a nameplate, modest yet proud, bearing ‘Denzil’ in letters that seemed to proclaim themselves to the world. Thomas stood beside it with the quiet triumph of a man who has planted a jak tree and watched it grow, his eyes drinking in Susan’s face as it bloomed with the same wonder he had felt the previous evening, working by the light of his hurricane lamp with screwdriver and hope.
“How perfectly lovely,” she murmured, and her words carried the weight of genuine pleasure.
There was something profoundly satisfying in seeing her son’s name keeping faithful company with her husband’s nameplate – “D. T. Jayasinghe” – two names, two generations, standing sentinel on their modest veranda like old friends sharing secrets under the temple bo tree.
“From this day forward,” Thomas declared with the solemnity of a village headman making an announcement, “we shall no longer be merely 68, Kandy Road, Kelaniya. We shall be ‘Denzil, Kandy Road, Kelaniya.’”
Susan nodded with the satisfaction of a woman who understands the weight of names and dreams. “Our boy will make his mark someday. His name will greet everyone who passes – the market women with their laden baskets, the men on their creaking bicycles, the passengers peering from the buses, even the patient buffalo who still know these old roads better than the new motor cars that speed past our gate.”
“Lovely indeed,” she repeated, and the word seemed to settle over their small patch of earth like morning mist from the river, blessing everything it touched.
From the breadfruit tree, a mynah bird offered its liquid song to the day, and the hours ahead stretched before them like an unread Sinhala novel, filled with ordinary miracles and the quiet magic of home.
“Tell me,” Susan said, her voice carrying the weight of practical dreams, “Do you suppose we’ll grow old in this little house? When Denzil is bigger, he’ll need room to run about in the compound.”
Thomas had been turning this very thought over in his mind like a smooth stone from the Kelani’s banks. Already he could picture another child – perhaps when Denzil reached four – filling their home with fresh laughter.
“But you remember,” Susan continued, her voice taking on the weight of old memory, “there were floods about twenty years ago when you were little, and this house went under water. The Kelani can be gentle as a sleeping child one day, and angry as a wounded elephant the next.”
“You know, we have that larger place in Mudiyansgewatta,” she mused, watching the light play through the coconut palms. “All that space for children to chase shadows and climb fruit trees. It’s only let out to Peter Jayawardena at Rupees 50 now, but we could reclaim it. I’ll speak with Appachchi when I visit Eldeniya next week. He will write a letter to Peter and we could shift there. Only thing is, there’s no electric light, but the house and compound are four to five times bigger. We can rent this house out”
The morning held them gently in its embrace, full of possibilities as golden as the light that painted their little nameplate – their small declaration of faith in tomorrow, blessed by the ancient river that had witnessed countless such dreams along its journey to the sea.
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