Childhood by the Grilled Window
Childhood by the Grilled Window
The trees of 248 Mudiyansegewatta
Ilived in our old ancestral house, just ten kilometres from Colombo, in a quiet village where a narrow road wound past our gate and hardly a motorcar ever passed. From my bedroom, with its grilled window looking out to the lane, I could watch the world go by in slow motion — a solitary cyclist in the morning, a creaking bullock cart at dusk. There was even a little door of my own, apart from the main entrance, and that small liberty filled me with a quiet joy known only to children who dream by windows.
Beyond the window stretched our garden — vast and untamed, with trees that had grown there long before I was born. A ten-foot-wide path led from the house to the lonely lane, a hundred metres of gravel and fallen leaves that glowed amber in the evening light. And just by the open-air wash basin stood a rose-apple tree, its branches heavy in season, offering fruit that tasted of rain and childhood.
In front of the house stood a tall coconut tree, planted long ago by my grandfather. It rose straight into the sky, strong and patient, while a money plant had found its way around the trunk, climbing halfway up, its broad green leaves glistening after rain. I had planted that money plant myself, years earlier, carrying a small cutting from the boarding school where I lived. Each time I looked at it from my window, I felt a quiet pride — as though something of me had taken root in that old garden.
Sometimes, late at night, when I woke and felt the urge to pee, I would not bother to go to the back of the house. Instead, I would lean out of the window and relieve myself into the darkness below — a small mischief I thought harmless enough, imagining my mother’s potted plants getting a secret sprinkling from me. It seemed, in my childish mind, another way of being part of the garden.
Below my window, on the narrow crawl space, my mother kept rows of flower pots — crotons in a riot of colour: yellow, green, red, and deep forest hues that changed with the light. There were also hibiscus and anthuriums, their red blossoms bright against the old walls of the house. I watered them faithfully on hot days, hauling up buckets from the well about fifty metres away, my hands raw from the coarse rope. Beneath the pots, fat frogs — some as big as my palm — lived and croaked through the humid nights. Many of those pots, along with the frogs, had come from my grandfather’s home in Eldeniya, when my uncle and aunt moved in with us.
On either side of the front yard grew low shrubs and ferns, carefully tended by my mother. I was in charge of watering them, a duty I performed with the earnestness of youth, never realising that, in those small tasks, I was learning the quiet rhythm of care — the same rhythm that still echoes in my memory of that old house and garden.
In the front of the yard, where I played soccer, cricket and elle with the neighbourhood boys, stood a cluster of guava trees. Their slender branches bent under the weight of small green fruit, and I would climb up, barefoot and carefree, to sit among the leaves and eat the guavas straight from the tree. The juice ran down my chin, and the taste — crisp, tart, and sweet — belonged only to those long afternoons of boyhood when the sun lingered and the world felt endless.
Beyond the coconut tree with the money plant were rows of coconut palms, perhaps fifty or so, some tall and old, others still finding their strength. Between games with the neighbours in our wide front yard, I would climb the shorter ones, or an occasional guava tree, just to feel the rough bark beneath my palms and the breeze on my face. Around the well grew thick shrubs and the maruthu trees that gave privacy to our evening baths. Often, when dusk had settled and the crickets sang, I would strip and bathe in the open, the cool water from the well washing away the day’s dust.
Beside the well was a nam-nam tree, heavy with fruit, and behind it a tall pepper vine that climbed into the sunlight. The water that spilled from the well nourished clumps of rampa that thrived without much care. To one side stood a large tree that bore hundreds of egg fruits — a soft, strange fruit that only my uncle seemed to enjoy, claiming it was food fit for the gods. Nearby grew a sapodilla tree, its brown fruits sweet but oddly heavy on the tongue. I preferred to leave them to the birds.
Behind the kitchen was a thicket of banana trees, wild and exuberant, their broad leaves glistening after the monsoon rains. Beside them stood a cotton tree, and beyond that, an ambarella tree whose sour fruit my mother sometimes cooked into curries. Along the kitchen wall, a passion fruit vine sprawled — its golden fruits turned into syrupy drinks for us children, and sometimes my mother would make a tangy salad with its tender leaves.
At the far end of our property stood three towering jackfruit trees, their heavy fruits ripening in turn throughout the year. The unripe ones found their way into our meals; the ripe ones filled the house with a sweet, heady fragrance. Nearby, a few coffee bushes grew, their red berries plucked and roasted by my grandmother, who ground them into a fragrant powder that perfumed the mornings.
That house — with its trees, its frogs, its shadows and smells — was my first world, and perhaps the only one that remains whole in memory. Time has moved on, but whenever I think of home, I see that quiet village road, the grilled window, and the boy who dreamed by it, watching life go slowly by.
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