The Quiet Turmoil of Simeon

In Eldeniya’s misty lanes, Simeon began as a devoted teacher. But life’s detours, betrayals, and illness drew him into a quiet turmoil that tested love and endurance

Denzil Jayasinghe

4 min read

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2 days ago

Inthe soft, sun-dappled lanes of Eldeniya, Kadawatha, some fifteen kilometers north of Colombo, where the morning mist clung to the coconut palms, Simeon began his days as a young teacher. There was a quiet joy in his step as he walked to the schoolhouse, his books tucked under his arm, his heart full of stories to share with his pupils. He was a man who loved the chalk-dusted world of learning, and in those early years, it seemed he’d found his place under the wide, generous sky. His sisters, Anna and Agida, shared his love for books, though Agida, swayed by their mother’s practical hand, set her dreams of teaching aside. Francis, another brother, roamed from one odd job to another, while Simeon, steady and sure, carried the family’s hopes in his schoolmaster’s satchel.

But life, as it often does in towns like ours, has a way of tugging you down unexpected paths. Simeon’s father called him to Grandpass, and there, the rhythm of the classroom gave way to the clatter of a shop. Before dawn, when the stars still blinked sleepily, Simeon would rise, splash cold water from the well on his face, and trudge through the dark to lift the shop’s shutters. The work was honest, but it weighed on him, heavy as the sacks of rice he stacked. His brother Lewis, a wiry figure pedaling his bicycle furiously across town, saw the spark dimming in Simeon’s eyes. “You’re meant for more than this,” Lewis would say, his voice sharp with worry. Twice, in moments of desperation, words turned to blows, but Simeon, with that quiet stubbornness of his, stayed on, though his heart wasn’t in it.

Then came the fever. It started with a nagging toothache that drove Simeon to the Kelaniya River, hoping its cool waters might ease the pain. But the river gave him no relief — only a burning fever that clung to him like damp earth. His father, Cornelis, brought him home, frail and shivering, and it was only then, with his body too weak to argue, that Simeon returned to his beloved classroom. For a while, the blackboard and the chatter of children brought him back to himself.

But shadows have a way of lingering, don’t they? A friend, Kinnaiya, betrayed him — a cruel trick, introducing him to a woman as a bride-to-be, though she was already married. Money changed hands, trust was broken, and when the truth spilled out, something in Simeon snapped. In a moment of blind anguish, he struck Kinnaiya with a knife. The courts, seeing a man unmoored, sent him to Angoda Mental Hospital. For three months, he sat in silence, lost in the fog of his own mind, until his family petitioned for his release and brought him home. And then came Matilda, known lovingly as Kudamma by her nieces and nephews — a woman with a heart as steady as the hills, who knew his story — every jagged edge of it — and chose to walk beside him.

For a time, peace settled over them like dust after a storm. Simeon ran a shop again, and when his son Lucas was born, followed by Pablis, Joseph, Francis, and finally little Agnes, a daughter, he seemed to find a new anchor. The shop’s bell jingled, the children’s laughter filled the house, and Matilda’s quiet strength held it all together. But the old darkness wasn’t done with him. One night, when Lucas was six, Simeon woke shouting about a thief in the house. His mind began to wander again, erratic as a leaf caught in the wind. Back to Angoda he went, this time for six months, before returning home to the gentle care of Ayurveda and Matilda’s unwavering love.

Every two years or so, the shadow would creep back, though never with the same ferocity. Matilda bore it all — the frayed business, the whispered disappointments, the weight of a life that didn’t turn out as planned. She held her family together with a patience that seemed to come from the earth itself, while Simeon’s teaching days faded into a wistful memory, spoken of only in quiet moments.

By the late 1970s, when his children were nearly grown, paralysis stilled him. Around 1978, when the world was a little greyer, Simeon’s journey, with all its quiet turmoil, came to a close. He was a man who had weathered storms of the mind and heart, broken yet brave in his own way. And Matilda — Kudamma to the younger generation — with her love and resilience, had kept the family’s light burning through it all. In the quiet towns of memory, their story lingers — a tale of struggle, of love that endures, and of the fragile, beautiful thing that is a life.