Denzil's Stories

Mother Mary Catherine Denzil Jayasinghe 5 min read · Just now In trying to understand my other mother — my aunt, my mother’s younger sister, Mary Catherine Jayawardane — I often felt as though I had wandered into a little maze of my own making. There were twists and turns everywhere, each one asking me to pause and look at her life from a different angle. What had hurt her? What had shaped her? Why did she choose some paths so boldly and leave others untouched? She was so different from my own mother, Mary Susan, who slipped away quietly in her sleep at seventy-eight. I knew my mother for only a brief portion of my life, for I left home when she was just forty-two — not to another town or district, but far beyond her sight, to another country. And even before that, I had been away for four long years in a Christian Brothers’ boarding school, learning the loneliness of dormitories and the comfort of letters from home. Trying to look at Mary Catherine without the colours of my complicate...

AN UNBROKEN THREAD The Boy Who Appeared The summer of 1973 arrived with the weight of a held breath. In Dalugama, afternoons were long and slow, the heat lying flat across the gravel roads, dragging even the sound of cricket chirps to a lazy rhythm. The Pamunuwila canal shimmered like a silver ribbon, carrying whispers of faraway places, though nothing ever truly changed here. People lived as they always had – quietly, carefully, as if watched by unseen eyes. I was caught between schoolboy certainty and the unknown shape of adulthood. I did not know I was searching for anything – until Ajith walked into my life. He appeared first as a rumour: “That boy from Wattala… the one who doesn’t listen to anyone… the one who runs wild.” Then he appeared in flesh – skin browned by sun, hair falling over his forehead, shirt unbuttoned at the collar, walking as if the world had no claim on him. He arrived at our gate without warning. I still remember the sound of his voice. “Machang,” he called to ...