The Boy with the Pilot Pen
The Boy with the Pilot Pen
A lonely fourteen-year-old finds solace in his books and in rare companionship during a difficult holiday. At boarding school he meets Rohan – reserved, kind, unlike the rowdy boys around them – and in shared moments of writing, family, and small adventures their quiet friendship blossoms. Decades later, it lingers.
Ithad been a lonely sort of month for a boy of fourteen. The holidays began cheerfully enough, with a few bright days in Dalugama in the company of my parents, sister, and brother. But then Father left for Teldeniya, and Mother, absorbed in her own mother’s company, seemed to forget me altogether. My other grandmother, Kadayamma, was there – watchful, fussing over meals and ensuring I was cared for – but companionship is something else altogether. The house grew too still, as though waiting for voices that never came.
Now and then, the neighbour’s boy, Linton, appeared like sunlight after rain. In the mornings we set off together along the narrow paths of Mudiyansegewatta, the smell of damp earth rising from the fields, dragonflies flashing in the sun. After lunch we wandered again, poking about in forgotten corners, or simply walking until the shadows lengthened and it was time to return. When he wasn’t there, I turned to books. They kept me company with voices from other times and places.
Sometimes I drifted to neighbours’ houses. Nothing much had changed there. Children played on verandahs, cousins had come for the holidays, and laughter carried down the lanes. For a boy often left alone, that sameness was a comfort.
By the end of the month, I found myself almost looking forward to boarding school in Colombo. Not that school was easy – it never was – but loneliness can weigh more heavily than noise. The hostel teemed with boys, their energies spent on pranks – scratching names on desks, chewing gum hidden under chairs, tricks played on masters. Had I grown up with them, I might have joined in. But my father’s optimism and the warmth of home had shaped me differently. I listened more than I spoke, more adult than boy in some ways.
It was during the third term that I noticed Rohan. Quiet, reserved, never joining the teasing of our master. There were many Rohans in school – Dias, Silva, Perera, Fernando – but this one was different. Once, when he caught me looking at him, he smiled faintly, as if to say, This noise isn’t for me either. I saw in him something of myself.
He lived in the boarding with a younger brother, and on weekends wore sunglasses, practising perhaps to be a grown-up. Responsibility seemed to sit easily on his shoulders. Even before we spoke, there was an unspoken understanding between us. We nodded in corridors – two boys a little apart from the crowd.
Our friendship grew when both of us were chosen for the All-Island Handwriting Competition. After-school practices gave us time to talk. He wrote with a black-ink Pilot pen, more elegant than my blue-ink Cial. Boys notice such things. But beyond the pens and papers, we found easy company.
We moved beyond school grounds too – at football matches on Fridays, or at inter-school dramas where unfamiliar corridors became our playground. He told me about his family – his mother who had died giving birth to his sister, now in a convent school at Kegalle; his father, an estate manager. His family was better off than mine, but it made no difference between us.
One afternoon we wandered into St. Lucia’s Cathedral, where candles burned at the feet of statues. I showed him my journals, scribbles of thoughts and notes. He read a few pages and smiled. “They’re interesting,” he said. “But be careful – if Mr Chapman finds them, you’ll be in trouble.” He was my first reader, perhaps my first critic.
He asked questions in the way boys do.
“What’s your middle name?”
“Bernard,” I said.
“Unusual. Why did they call you Denzil?”
I told him about home and Kadayamma, leaving out the grandmother who lived in shadows.
“Will you go to England one day?” he asked.
“I don’t think so. I’ve no one there. I’d rather stay here – with my family, with Kadayamma.”
It was enough – those quiet exchanges. Friendship doesn’t always need adventures. Sometimes it’s just two boys finding each other in a noisy world.
On Founder’s Day, Brother Victor handed out prizes beneath the old banyan tree. I went up in my white shirt and trousers, black DI shoes, to collect one – perhaps for literature. He spoke about confessions and sins, urging us to visit the Cathedral. I wondered what sins I had to confess.
Later, Rohan pointed out the Tamil classes and said they were “different.” I could not see the difference – they wore the same uniforms, ate the same food, laughed at the same jokes.
He once told me the story of a film he had seen – Hanthane Kathawak – scene by scene, with great excitement, as if sharing a precious secret. I listened, happy just to be his companion.
I told him how I had once seen Prime Minister Dudley Senanayake travelling in a plain car, eyes buried in his newspaper. Rohan said his time was up. He was leaving for Kandy, to board at St. Anthony’s College with his younger brother.
That was the end of our days together.
More than fifty years have passed since then. I did hear of Rohan again – living quietly on a remote estate, looking after someone’s property in my old country, Sri Lanka. Life must have been hard on him. His brother I never heard of. Rohan has remained beyond the reach of the easy connections of today’s world.
And I wonder, now and then, if he has any inkling of what became of his old friend.
Friendships made in youth are like trees that grow quietly. We forget them for years, only to discover one day how deep their roots have gone.
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