Long Trousers and Kerosene Lamps

3 min read3 days ago

In post-independence Colombo, a boy of sixteen — my father — lit his lessons with coconut husks, chasing English, friendship, and dignity symbolised by long trousers.

Inthe late 1940s, Colombo was a city learning to breathe on its own. Trams clanged through Pettah, while the harbour breeze carried the smell of salt and street food — boiled gram, roasted peanuts, and stringhoppers wrapped in yesterday’s news. In that restless crowd was my father, a boy of sixteen, thin as a reed, his schooldays already fading behind him. He had sat his exams in Sinhala at St. Francis in Dalugama, a village of paddy fields and quiet hardship. But in a world that still bowed to English, such an achievement counted for little.

His father was gone, his mother — my grandmother — left to shoulder life’s burdens with quiet courage. My father might have been forgiven for giving up, for shrinking into a life of small horizons. But there was a fire in him, though it burnt quietly.

It was a friend, K.W. — lively, restless, always quick with a grin — who pulled him into Colombo Fort. K.W. had found a job at the Imperial Bank of India, as a peon, and through a string of small favours, he led my father to J.M. Robertson & Co., a British tea and coffee firm tucked behind the Post Office. The work was humble: carrying files, sorting mail, errands across the street. Yet, for my father, it was a door cracked open. He could glimpse something beyond the narrow lanes of Dalugama.

And there was companionship, too. With K.W. close at hand, and J.L.J. — steady, loyal, with a smile that rarely left his face — the three of them formed a bond that outlasted poverty and time. After their day’s work, they walked together to Hapugoda Siddhartha. There, in a small hall lit by the wavering glow of kerosene lamps, they sat at wooden benches and stumbled through English grammar. A Buddhist monk, Venerable Somarama, guided them, his voice calm, his patience endless.

They would walk home under the stars, tired but hopeful. Sometimes they paused at Bulugaha Junction, sometimes at the church feast in Weligampitiya, where lanterns lit up the night and the smell of fried sweetmeats lingered in the air. At home, my father read by the flickering flame of a coconut husk, the smoke stinging his eyes but never dimming his resolve.

Thomas Jayasinghe from his J. M. Robertson days

Little by little, their efforts bore fruit. English began to take root, and with it came opportunities. My father left Robertson’s for the security of government service. K.W. entered Technical College. J.L.J. stayed by his side, and years later stood as best man at his wedding. Even in old age, when my father had long since retired, he remembered that first kindness from K.W., and in turn helped him find work at St. Joseph’s College.

He rarely spoke of those days himself. Silence was his habit, and hardship his familiar companion. Yet, when I piece together the scraps of story, the voices of old friends, and the faint images on yellowed photographs, I see him clearly: a boy walking barefoot through Colombo, a packet of books under his arm, carrying more hope than he could ever admit.

Like Ceylon itself, just freed from the shadow of empire, he was determined to rise. And rise he did — not with fanfare or noise, but with the quiet dignity of a man who had taught himself to dream in another language.