Denzil's Stories

  The Year We Stopped Being Afraid Denzil Jayasinghe 4 min read · Just now In 1965, I was ten years old and in Class 5A. This was St, Anthony’s College, run by Christian Brothers some seven kilometers north of Colombo, Sri Lanka, then Ceylon. Until then, our classrooms had belonged almost entirely to women. The teachers were familiar, gentle and predictable. Then came Mr Suraweera. He was a large, burly man with a short temper and a reputation that reached us before he did. Even as fourth-graders, we had begun to look towards the next year with a quiet dread. Children, however, have a remarkable ability to adjust to almost anything. We adjusted to Mr Suraweera. His punishments were swift and, to us, endless. Boys were made to stand or kneel for hours. His reprimands were often accompanied by words we had never heard from our teachers before. When his temper broke, a slap across the ear or a heavy blow on the head was not unusual. Anything within reach — a blackboard duster, a piece...

  The Classroom of Brother Felix Denzil Jayasinghe 5 min read · Aug 24, 2026 The original story credit goes to Rohan Weerakkody, my lifelong pal and classmate in junior school who compiled this storyline in Sinhala T he first week of January 1968 began with a new classroom and a new teacher. We had passed Grade Seven and said goodbye to Mr Jayamanna. From the playing field, the large two-storey school building stood before us. We entered the last classroom on the ground floor, two at a time. It was cleaner and more orderly than the other classrooms. Thirty-six identical wooden desks stood in four rows, each numbered. At the front were the teacher’s desk and chair. Behind them was a huge blackboard built into the wall. But what caught our attention was the painting above the windows — a diver disappearing beneath the sea. No other classroom had anything like it. We liked the room. Then Brother Felix arrived. We stood. “God bless you, teacher,” we said together. “No. No. No.” He rais...