The gunny bag of vegetables

A resourceful ten-year-old becomes the ambassador of abundance as he distributes his father’s vegetable bounty across a Ceylonese village, navigating childhood and grown-up duties.

Denzil Jayasinghe

7 min read

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Just now

Iwas ten when my father’s posting came through — Tissamaharama, 160 miles from everything I knew as home. The distance felt infinite in those days when travel meant the grinding rhythm of train wheels against steel tracks, the dust-choked windows of buses that broke down in the middle of nowhere, and transport options so threadbare that even my father, a government man with his pressed shirts and careful budgets, had to break his journey at Matara, where trains stopped and rickety buses took over.

You may wonder why this fascination with distances, with numbers. I was always that kind of child — measuring everything, counting the miles between us and him, the days until his return, the responsibilities that settled on my ten-year-old shoulders like my grandmother’s white blouse, too big but somehow mine to wear.

His letters arrived with the regularity of the week gone by. Thin brown envelopes with a ten-cent stamp, folded with military precision, my mother’s name written in his careful script across the front. Inside, the logistics of our scattered life: How is grandmother’s cough? Did the boy collect the rent from the Kandy Road house? Make sure the boy goes to the market early for the good vegetables and fish. The boy — that was me, the eldest of three, suddenly the man of the house in a home that felt too empty without his presence.

I became the keeper of small errands and large worries: the grocery runs after school, my feet slapping against the cool earth as I hurried to beat the heat and the crowds; the hospital visits to collect medicine for our mentally sick grandmother, the bitter smell of disinfectant clinging to my school uniform afterwards; the careful counting of rupee notes from tenants who paid their rent with reluctant hands and suspicious eyes, wondering if this child could be trusted with their hard-earned money.

Once a month, my father would return to us. Two days of travel each way — four precious days stolen from the long weeks of his exile, two spent with us, gulping down our presence like a man surfacing from deep water. We would crowd around him in those brief hours, trying to pack a month’s worth of love and conversation into forty-eight fleeting hours.

On one of these visits, he arrived bearing gifts from his distant posting. Not the usual packet of biscuits or bottle of treacle, but something magnificent — a gunny sack so large I could have crawled inside it, bulging with the bounty of Tissamaharama’s fertile earth.

I still remember the ceremony of its opening, my siblings and I gathered around like archaeologists uncovering treasure. My father’s strong hands reached into the rough hemp, pulling out vegetables with the pride of a magician: snake gourds twisted like green serpents, long beans that draped across his forearm like nature’s jewellery, okra pods lined up like tiny green soldiers. Capsicums that gleamed red and yellow in the lamplight — we had no electricity then, just the warm glow of kerosene that painted everything golden. Onions with their papery skins rustling secrets, shallots purple-pink like bruised sunsets.

The abundance overwhelmed our small kitchen, our smaller appetites. We had no refrigerator — such luxuries belonged to a different world, to the streets with power lines and monthly bills we could have easily afforded. In the heat, these vegetables would wilt and rot if we didn’t act quickly.

But my mother, practical as always, had raised me well. I knew what to do without being told. The excess became our currency of kindness, our way of weaving ourselves into the fabric of the neighbourhood. I became a ten-year-old ambassador of generosity, carrying plates of vegetables through front doors and slipping bundles through fence lines like a benevolent smuggler.

Mary Akka, our next-door neighbour with her hands greyed from kitchen smoke and a grateful smile. Siriwardane’s, two houses down, who had four kids and were still learning to fill their kitchen. Old John Seeya with his failing eyesight, who could no longer tend his own garden. Each delivery was a small ceremony, a moment of connection that made our temporary abundance feel like genuine wealth.

I remember the weight of the vegetables in my arms, the way the snake gourd’s bumpy skin felt against my palms, the sharp scent of fresh onions making my eyes water. I remember the neighbours’ faces lighting up at their doorsteps, how they would call out to their spouses: “Come see what young Denzil putha has brought us!” as if I were delivering parcels from heaven itself.

When the last bundle had been distributed and our kitchen returned to its manageable proportions, my father prepared for his return journey. The same ritual in reverse — the careful packing of his small bag, the checking of train schedules, the heavy silence that settled over our house like dust. Two days of travel stretched ahead of him, two days that would take him back to his exile in Tissamaharama.

We waved goodbye from the veranda, watching his figure disappear down the lane until he became just another passenger in the morning’s procession of commuters. The house felt deflated without him, like a balloon slowly losing air.

Then came the telegram. I can still see the red bicycle of the postal worker wobbling down our lane, the urgent ring of his bell that always meant news — good or bad, you never knew until the yellow envelope was in your hands. The message was brief, as telegrams always were in those days when words cost money: PARCEL AWAITING COLLECTION KELANIYA RAILWAY STATION STOP.

I was too small for such official business. At ten, I existed in that liminal space between childhood and responsibility — old enough to distribute vegetables and collect rent, but too young to sign for parcels or deal with the stern men behind government counters who demanded identification and signatures in triplicate.

My mother, the doer in our household as she was the doer in all things, understood this immediately. She folded the telegram carefully, as if it contained something more precious than information, and made her decision. My mother’s elder brother — with his government teaching job and official bearing — would handle this task. He had the gravitas that came with age and employment, the kind of presence that made clerks nod with respect rather than suspicion.

My uncle, the one who does not talk to me, turns up on the weekend. I am given the bus fare of ten cents to accompany him to the train station. The journey feels momentous — not just because of the destination, but because of the rare company. My uncle walks with purpose, his government-issued shoes clicking against the platform as we approach the station master’s office.

The station master gives the order to the porter at the station to clear the package to my uncle. The bureaucratic dance unfolds with familiar precision — documents examined, signatures compared, the weight of official responsibility passing from one set of hands to another. Then the porter emerges, wheeling a trolley that carries our treasure: another gunny sack, this one even more imposing than the first.

My uncle hefts it with both hands, testing its weight. Surprisingly, he can carry it, though I see the strain in his shoulders, the way his jaw sets with determination. We pick a bus — route 138 to Kadawatha — and climb aboard. The conductor eyes the bulky sack suspiciously, but my uncle’s official bearing and exact fare dissolve any potential confrontation.

The journey home becomes a study in endurance. My uncle pulls the gunny bag behind him when the bus deposits us at our stop, wiping his forehead of sweat that beads despite the mid-morning air. His silence remains unbroken, but I sense something different in it now — not the cold distance of disapproval, but the focused quiet of a man completing an important task.

When we arrive back at home, the ritual of distribution begins anew. First, my mother picks up what she will keep — examining each vegetable with the practiced eye of someone who knows how to stretch abundance into sustenance. The spare vegetables spread across our kitchen floor like a farmer’s market: snake gourds coiled like green question marks, long beans cascading in emerald waterfalls, green chillies promising heat for the weeks ahead, okra standing at attention, capsicums glowing like jewels, and Bombay onions with their purple-streaked skins rustling promises of flavour.

Once again, I become the distributor in my home village, carrying plates and bundles to my neighbours, getting recognition in the process. But this time feels different. This time, I am not just the boy who brings vegetables — I am the boy who went to the station, who helped retrieve the parcel, who witnessed the serious business of adult responsibility. My neighbours seem to sense this subtle shift, their gratitude carrying a new note of respect.

I watch my mother prepare for this small delegation of authority, the way she smooths her frock and checks the address one more time. In her movements, I can see the weight of managing our scattered family, the careful calculations she makes every day to keep us whole whilst my father serves his exile in Tissamaharama, 160 miles away from everything we call home.

That parcel, no longer waiting in a dusty railway station but transformed into nourishment and neighbourly bonds, had taught me something about the machinery of family love: how it required not just affection but logistics, not just care but coordination. How even my silent uncle, who does not talk to me, could become part of the intricate network that kept us connected across impossible distances.

I was learning, even then, that some mysteries required patience, that some responsibilities belonged to adults, and that being ten meant living in the space between knowing and not knowing, between independence and childhood, between the vegetables I could distribute and the complex web of relationships that made such distribution possible. The gunny bag had been emptied, but the lessons it carried would stay with me long after the last okra had been shared and the final onion had found its way to a grateful neighbour’s kitchen.