Yellow Underpants and a Broken Heart

Denzil Jayasinghe

2 min read

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Just now

Inthe mid-seventies, when Sri Lanka was still the centre of my universe, mornings had a routine. I would leave Mudiyansegewatta Road and turn into the church compound, tracing the familiar path past the local school, along its sandy road toward the bus stand. I never went into the church, except to exchange pleasantries with the local lads chatting in the front yard. Then I’d move on, walking past quickly.

At school, and later among the machinery at apprentice school, there was a phrase that made the rounds: a hole in the heart. Someone would mention a boy who had one. Then another. Nobody ever explained what it actually meant, but the words carried a quiet weight. Before long, I convinced myself that I had one, too.

Whenever I walked, a slight, nagging pain would take root high on the left side of my chest. I’d slow my step, catch my breath, and think, this is it. I’m going to die soon.

At eighteen, death is a strange, distant concept. You know it exists — you’ve seen it, and you’ve heard adults speak about it in hushed, serious tones — but it feels strictly reserved for others. Not for you. At eighteen, life begins and ends with today. Tomorrow is just a vague promise, and death is somewhere far over the horizon.

So I kept walking past the church, carrying that tiny ache and the quiet suspicion that my heart was flawed.

I was dressed well — or at least, I thought I was. I had on a pair of blue jeans given to me by an Italian co-worker, a black-and-white floral shirt bought off a local smuggler, and a pair of leather sandals from Bata. Underneath it all, a pair of yellow underpants. I was always a fashionista.

I still remember those underpants. I have no idea why. Memory works in strange ways — it carefully preserves the yellow underpants while letting the important things slip away through the cracks.

I walked toward the bus stand in that eighteen-year-old body, carrying the quiet worry of a damaged heart. I didn’t know then that I would live long enough to look back on that walk. Nor did I know that, nearly fifty years later, I would still be thinking about that subtle pain on the left side of my chest.

The heart, it turns out, keeps its own records.