Between Shores: A Youth Remembered
Between Shores: A Youth Remembered
A Memoir in the Spirit of Memory
The past, I have learned, is not a place we can revisit with any certainty. It is rather like those old photographs that fade with time, the edges curling inward, the faces becoming softer, less distinct, until we can no longer be sure whether we remember the moment itself or merely the photograph of it. And yet, there are some memories that refuse to fade, that insist upon their presence like the smell of smoke from charcoal irons on a humid afternoon in Dalugama.
The Laundry by Lal’s Well
Iwas just a boy then, what everyone called simply “Boy,” as if that were name enough for a child in 1967 Ceylon. The country itself was still finding its name, still deciding whether it was Ceylon or Lanka, still adjusting to the weight of independence like a new set of clothes that hadn’t quite been broken in yet.
Past Lal’s water well, where we children gathered in the afternoons — not so much to fetch water as to escape the tedium of homework and the watchful eyes of parents — there stood a laundry. It was not the sort of establishment you would find in Bombay or even in the better parts of Colombo. No, this was a humble operation, the kind that survives on the trust of neighbors and the strength of calloused hands.
Victor and Piyadasa ran the place. Brothers from the deep south, they were as different as monsoon and drought. Victor was built like a water buffalo, all muscle and methodical movement, spending his days by the narrow waterway behind the bridge. I would watch him work, his arms plunging clothes into the cool stream, beating them against the rocks with a rhythm that seemed older than time itself. Piyadasa, younger and quicker, managed the counter and the massive charcoal irons that stood like sentinels in the small shop.
The irons — ah, those magnificent instruments — were nothing like the electric devices that would come later. These were monsters of cast iron, their bellies filled with burning charcoal, breathing smoke and heat. In Piyadasa’s hands, they seemed almost alive, hissing as he sprinkled water from his mouth — a technique I found both fascinating and faintly disgusting — across the white fabric of sarongs and the stiff cotton of my father’s shirts.
I learned something there, watching those brothers work. Something about dignity in labour, about the way a man could take pride in transforming a wrinkled, soiled garment into something crisp and clean. Years later, long after Ceylon had become Sri Lanka, long after electric irons had rendered charcoal obsolete, I would remember that smell — steam and smoke mixed together — and the feel of my father’s perfectly pressed trousers, still warm, beneath my small hands.
The Nature of Curiosity
Born in the mid-twentieth century, I was a child of the post-war world, though the war itself seemed as distant and unreal as the stories in my grandmother’s collection of prayer books. My parents married in the 1950s, when optimism was still possible, when the future seemed to stretch out endlessly like the Indian Ocean beyond Galle Face Green.
I arrived at Zoysa Nursing Home around five in the morning — always an early riser, my mother liked to say, as if the hour of one’s birth determined one’s character. The tropical climate suited me, though I would not realise this fully until later, when I found myself seeking similar weather patterns in my twenties, eventually landing in Dubai, where winter felt like an Australian summer.
My parents were devout Catholics, and they raised me accordingly, though I suspect they would have preferred a more compliant child. The church taught that one must love God more than one’s parents, a paradox that troubled my young mind considerably. How could I love an invisible deity more than the mother who cooked my rice and curry, or the father who took me to school on his push bicycle each morning? It seemed a cruel sort of mathematics, this hierarchy of affection.
I broke a few commandments in my youth — something I cannot write about being the most regular transgression. The guilt that followed was tremendous, a weight I carried for over a decade until I began to understand biology and human sciences, until I learned that sin might be less about divine accounting and more about human invention.
I developed what some might call an inconvenient habit of questioning. The elders in our village found this confusing at best, infuriating at worst. I would protest seemingly trivial customs and practices, asking “Why?” when I should have been nodding respectfully. But I had discovered something invaluable: a keen sense of curiosity coupled with what my grandmother called “dangerous self-assurance.”
I was particularly drawn to visual perception, prioritising what I could see over what I was told to believe. This robust self-confidence led me to experiment with various things — some of which I can mention, others which I must leave to the imagination. These traits would serve me well later, even when they seemed to lead me into abstract and uncertain territories.
The Friend Named Ajit
There are friendships that define us, that shape the architecture of who we become. Ajit was such a friend.
We met during my troubled times at college, those awkward years when I was attempting, for the second time, to pass the examinations that would gain me entry to Aquinas University College. I was not a stellar student — distraction came easily to me, and the classroom often seemed less interesting than the world visible through its windows.
Ajit had a quality I can only describe as luminous. He was always looking out for me, helping me see the world as bright rather than dim, full of dynamism rather than dead ends. He taught me to see challenges as opportunities and pitfalls as lessons, though I suspect he would laugh at such pretentious phrasing. Ajit was never pretentious; he had the rare gift of making life seem both serious and absurd at the same time.
I remember planning what we would do during the Christmas holidays as the school year ended. We exchanged addresses in my worn address book, where his name still appears at the top of the list, complete with his birthday — a detail I never forgot, not in all the years since.
Then came the unexpected problem: chickenpox. Ajit sent me a postcard — remember postcards, those small rectangles of communication that required such economy of expression? — informing me he was sick. I pondered whether to visit him. The risk of contracting the disease myself was real, and my parents would surely have forbidden it had they known. But I had made a promise.
So I took off to Ajit’s home, some forty kilometers away, using a combination of bus, train, and long walks, carrying my friendship like a talisman against disease. My parents never knew that the friend I was visiting was covered in pustules and potentially contagious. Sometimes, I think now, love requires a certain amount of necessary ignorance on the part of parents.
At Ajit’s home in Moratuwa, we spent days by the river, that green-brown water where we played and swam with abandon. It was there, in that murky river, that I lost a gold ring — probably still buried in the riverbed today, a small golden testimony to youthful carelessness.
Ajit and I hid nothing from each other. This is rarer than one might think, this complete transparency between friends. When I left for Aquinas, when I eventually departed for Dubai, we maintained our connection through letters — those dying art forms that required patience and penmanship.
A few years into my Dubai adventure, Ajit came to visit. He stayed in my apartment for several days, his guitar always within reach, entertaining my friends and me with his singing. His love of life, his gusto — what we would call ballsy attitude in those days — was infectious. He had a unique communication style, could take the mickey out of any situation, made me laugh at myself when I was in danger of taking things too seriously.
Ajit still lives in Sri Lanka, in the very home where we first became friends, now renovated but essentially unchanged. When I think of him, I think of laughter echoing across the Moratuwa river, of guitar strings and sandy feet, of friendship as a form of salvation.
The First Application
The year was 1972. I was seventeen years old, enjoying what youth I had left, reveling in a freedom that seemed both vast and fragile. I was neither boy nor man, but somewhere in that liminal space between, that awkward country where one’s voice cracks and one’s confidence wavers.
The previous year had been turbulent — a youth rebellion, an insurrection that cost many lives. Sri Lanka was transforming itself into a socialist republic, attempting to address societal inequities through sweeping reforms. In this spirit, the government created a unified job application process: one application for 50,000 jobs across all industry sectors. They even imported one of the first computers to manage this grand vision, a pioneering initiative that spoke to both ambition and desperation.
My father’s best friend, Joseph Perera — my godfather, a senior government official — advised my father to explore career opportunities for me through this new system. It was, I realise now, my father’s Plan B, his insurance policy against my potential failure to complete university.
The application form arrived from the government gazette in May 1972. It was in Sinhalese, designed to be accessible to the rural public. My father, ever meticulous, pre-filled the information on blank paper first, ensuring perfect accuracy before transferring it to the actual form. He sent it off in July 1972, exactly one month after I had started my accounting course — a course I tolerated more than loved, if I’m being honest.
I wore my best clothes to the interview: beige bell-bottom pants (this was the seventies, after all), an off-white shirt, and a colourful tie that probably clashed terribly but which I thought was quite stylish. My father accompanied me to the OTS Head Office on York Street, in the heart of Colombo’s business district. He made sure I was comfortable, then left for his own work, trusting me to face this new world alone.
I had never been to a job interview. I had not prepared, didn’t know what preparation would even mean. But I had confidence — that dangerous companion of youth — and no fear to speak of. The interview was on the first floor, reached by an elevator with a collapsible grille door operated by a lift operator, a man whose entire profession would soon become obsolete, though none of us knew it then.
I remember walking into that room and thinking: this is the beginning of something. I didn’t know what that something was, couldn’t have predicted the trajectory that would take me from Colombo to Dubai to Australia, from youth to middle age, from Son to Father to Grandfather. But I knew, with the certainty that only the young possess, that life was about to change.
Between Dreams and Waking
Inthe days of my youth, dreams painted my reality with strokes of wonder. Each dawn, I would sift through the echoes of my sleep-time sagas, trying to hold onto their colou rs and shapes. But as daylight strengthened, these painted dreams would fade, leaving only faint traces behind.
Some dreams, though, more daring than others, would linger like haunting melodies. They blurred the edges of the real and the imagined, especially those dreams filled with faces that captured my heart. Were they fantasies or premonitions? These whispers in the night often sharpened my senses, offering caution or cheering me on in silence.
Life and dreams performed a delicate waltz, blending the everyday with the extraordinary. At times they would crash into each other, making me wonder about the nature of my own existence. My dreams mirrored the tales I consumed, the escapades with companions, my growing consciousness of the world’s complexities.
As I aged, the intensity of these dream encounters dimmed. Art, cinema, and literature began to eclipse them. The relentless march of time reshaped me from youth to man, bound by the roles of husband and father. The first sip of morning tea would wash away remnants of the dream realm, leaving me to ponder their significance.
Yet the thread connecting me to my dreams never fully frayed. The youthful visages of family and old friends now inhabit them. In those fleeting moments, I’m whisked back to the fearless days of childhood and teenage years, to my carefree life in Sri Lanka as a youth.
Epilogue: Writing the Past
Now, decades later, living in Australia with children and grandchildren who know nothing of charcoal irons or Moratuwa rivers, I find myself compelled to write. Not for myself — I lived these stories, after all — but for them. For my descendants who will never know Ceylon, who will never understand what it meant to live in a country finding its identity, who will never smell the particular mixture of smoke and steam that rose from Piyadasa’s irons.
I started writing my life story years ago, but it was dull — a historic narration rather than a compelling connected story. I wrote from my birth but stopped at age fifteen, struggling to write honestly about my sexual awakening and coming of age. Some truths are harder to tell than others.
Then my eldest daughter, a journalist herself, suggested I try short stories. Self-contained pieces that could stand alone, that wouldn’t require me to connect every dot, that might capture the truth more effectively than any comprehensive chronology.
So I write now. Every day, balancing work duties and home errands. I write about my grandparents and their stories, about Victor and Piyadasa and their laundry, about Ajit and the river, about my first interview and my last glimpse of the island before the plane lifted me away forever.
I write because memory is unreliable, because the past fades like those photographs, because if I don’t capture these moments now they will be lost to time. I write for the same reason we all write: to make sense of what happened, to understand who we were and thereby comprehend who we have become.
The tropical island of my youth is gone now — not literally, of course, but gone in the way that all homelands are gone once we leave them for too long. Sri Lanka continues without me, has continued without me for decades. But in my stories, in these small narratives I construct each morning, Ceylon lives again.
And sometimes, late at night when I cannot sleep, I can still smell it: smoke and steam, charcoal and clean cotton, the particular perfume of youth itself — that strange, precious time when everything seems both permanent and desperately fragile, when friendships are forged in river water and promises are kept despite the risk of chickenpox, when the world is simultaneously enormous and small enough to fit inside a laundry by Lal’s well.
That boy I was — that “Boy” everyone called Boy — he would not recognise the old man I’ve become. And yet, he lives in me still, curious and questioning, watching Victor work his magic at the stream, listening to Ajit’s guitar, walking into that first interview with his head held high and his bell-bottoms flapping, believing, truly believing, that anything was possible.
Perhaps he was right.
For my children and grandchildren, who carry within them the blood of Dalugama and Moratuwa, of Colombo and Dubai, who are both Sri Lankan and Australian, both past and future. May these stories help you understand where you come from, even as you create your own stories in this new land.
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