Features

My hard start in life and surviving a difficult childhood

Published

4 weeks ago

2026/06/21

Diyalagoda is a sleepy coastal village near the Maggona Bazaar, about three miles from Beruwala. My ancestral home, ‘Church View,’ stood beside the backyard of St. Sebastian’s Church. The big church dwarfed our house by its side. For a few hours during the day our house stood in its shade. I remembered the church, rather than the house, as my birthplace.

I remember my father taking me to the church’s front compound in the evenings to watch the sunset. We sat on one of the steps from the narrow street that linked the church to the Galle Road. My father showed me the sunset, cars, and buses. One evening, I fell from his lap while sitting on the steps, cutting the skin just below my right eyebrow. He carried me to the nearby dispensary where a nurse bandaged my forehead. My mother was shocked to see me with a bandage and started crying.

Seven decades later, I visited Diyalagoda church with my only surviving brother, Nihal. The church had recently been refurbished, and the smell of fresh wall paint lingered. I wondered why such a large church was built in the mid-19th century in a small, remote village. Nihal told me that caste groups preferred to have their own churches, and ‘our’ church represented the Karawa caste families. It features beautiful murals and stained-glass windows and can accommodate more than 1,000 devotees.

The steps in front of the church, where I sat with my father to watch the sunset, were no more. The church compound had been flattened to make room for a car park. From the church front, I saw only a few houses and the statue of Mother Mary. It is difficult to see the sea, as I did many decades ago, because of the buildings in front of the church.

Behind the church, adjacent to our house, was the Sinhala primary school. Small kids in their school uniforms were playing in the compound. I visualized Nihal as a toddler playing in the school compound. Two women waiting to collect their children recognized Nihal and exchanged greetings. One of them was the current owner of our house. She invited us to visit the house. It was a lower-middle-class residence with a small front garden.

From the gravel road behind the church, a few steps brought us to the portico of ‘our’ house. The host invited us to the sitting room and offered tea. I could see a large cross hanging on the wall, along with a few framed family photographs. Artificial flowers and a few small toys were on the large table. There was a TV receiver on a metal stand and a music system under it.

I told our host that I was born in this house more than 70 years ago and asked her permission to see the room where I was born. It was a tiny room with a large window. A hanging curtain covered it and blocked the sunlight. The floor was the original slate and there was a baby sleeping on the bed; she was the host’s third child. I could not recall any details about that room then but thought about my mother and father, as well as my maternal and paternal grandmothers, who once lived there. They had all passed away many years ago. Nihal told me they were watching over us from heaven and would be glad to see us at our house after 70 years.

I reluctantly left the place after taking a few photographs. Outside, I wandered through the recently built turnstile-type gate meant to keep cows out of the churchyard. The jungle behind the house has not changed over the years. In the scrub, there were beautiful birds and hare. The swamp further away hosted many migratory birds in July. Some people hunt wild boar, birds, and thalagoyas there.

I walked up to the low parapet wall of the cemetery. My only sister, Beatrice, was buried 74 years ago in that cemetery. I looked over the parapet and Nihal showed me tentatively the spot where she was buried. He remembered the tiny coffin that carried her small corpse from the church to the cemetery. I felt her presence and shed a tear for her. I was sad because I had never seen my sister. It struck me that Beatrice would have been 74 years old now had she had a chance to live a normal life.

I was angry because Eusabius Uncle, my maternal granduncle, did not help my mother and my sister as he did when Nihal was born. He had a grudge against my father because of his refusal to give Nihal to him for adoption. Uncle Eusabius wanted to adopt Nihal. He paid the hospital expenses of my mother’s confinement to deliver Nihal at St Michael’s Nursing Home in Colombo. He told my mother that she could have more children, and that giving Nihal to him and his wife would not harm my mother or Nihal. Giving Nihal to them would ease her economic difficulties and he would have a better life as their son, uncle said. He and his wife bought new clothes and toys for Nihal and expected to bring him to their home soon. When the adoption of Nihal failed, Eusabius Uncle cut off his relationship with my mother.

About 18 months later, my mother went to a public hospital in Slave Island to deliver Beatrice because Eusabius Uncle had refused to pay for her confinement at a private hospital as he had for Nihal. My mother asked him for help, but he refused. She went to the hospital in Slave Island with my father who admitted her. He did not have the money to pay someone to attend to her there. My mother did not know anybody at the hospital and her only visitor was my father who came in the evenings.

My granduncle’s refusal to buy some medicine and vitamins for Beatrice hurt me deeply. He was angry with my parents for refusing to given tem Nihal for adoption. My father, too, was partly responsible for my sister’s death. He should have found money to buy medicine, milk, and vitamins without expecting Uncle Eusabius to buy them. While visiting the child at the hospital, my father dropped the baby’s milk bottle and broke it. The hospital staff gave her a new bottle. Many years later, I asked my mother why my father did not buy another bottle. She said he did not have five rupees to pay for a new bottle.

My mother told me that she should have agreed to give Nihal for adoption to Uncle Eusabius and Aunt. That may have made them help bring up the little girl as well and this might have saved her life. Nihal remembered returning home from the cemetery after burying his little sister. He felt lonely at home and feared that he, too, might die soon. For many months, he avoided the small room where Beatrice had spent her short life as a sick child.

Standing by the parapet, I thought Uncle Eusabius could have punished my mother for disobedience later without jeopardizing my little sister’s life. He could have cut off his regular financial support to my mother until my father completed his studies. Beatrice contracted pneumonia at the hospital where she was born. When she was brought home, she was sick and weak. She died when she was six weeks old. She was baptized at the church in the presence of two godparents. I wanted to talk to them about my sister and mother, but I could not as they had died many years ago.

My mother was four months pregnant after my sister’s death. She was expecting me, her third child, on April 15, 1951. But on April 8 she nearly died with her unborn child. My paternal grandmother, after an argument with mother in the morning, partly cut the rattan weave of her bed and covered it with a mat, expecting her to lie down on it after lunch. My mother fell through the bed frame, hit her head on the cement floor and became unconscious. My maternal grandmother who was visiting shouted for help and neighbors came running. They raised her, head bleeding, on to a sofa and someone ran to the Galle Road to fetch a car to take her to the Aluthgama hospital.

She regained consciousness after about 30 minutes and delivered me at home that evening with the help of the village midwife. Someone told my father about what had happened and he reacted furiously chasing his mother out of the house when he came home for the first time after my birth.

My grandmother denied culpability and said she was ready to swear at St. Anne’s Church that she was innocent. But when my father threw out her few belongings fro the house, she went away promising to never return. She boasted that her nephews in Beruwala would look after her.

After my tumultuous birth, the economic conditions of our family deteriorated rapidly. My father continued to study at the Government Teacher Training College without a salary. He mortgaged our house to Uncle Eusabius so that my mother could for two years get Rs. 100 every month for household expenses. He only took a Rs 15 monthly allowance from that money for himself and, according to my mother, during his two-year training period had never even bought a cup of tea for himself at the college canteen as he did not have money.

Every Friday, he came home and played with us two kids, and early on Monday morning he went back to the College. He might not have had a sense of our home expenses. There were four mouths to be fed – my maternal grandmother, my brother, my mother, and me but my mother somehow managed to feed all of us and protect her children.

Six months later, my paternal grandmother returned home saying she could not live without her only son, although he had become a demon because of others’ influence. My mother feared that her mother-in-law would clash with her own mother. In addition, the number of people to be fed at home increased to five. The two children needed regular medical attention and medicines swallowed most of my mother’s small budget. What was unbearable for her at home was her mother-in-law’s constant nagging and accusations.

She accused my mother of having a lover. She dug up the story of my maternal grandmother’s difficult times with her neighbor in Paiyagala. She claimed that my maternal grandmother and my mother were women of easy virtue.

Because of false accusations and the lack of money to buy baby food, my mother toyed with the idea of committing suicide. She thought of buying poison to kill herself and her children. At the church, during Easter confessions, she told the parish priest her agony and the plan. He advised her not to destroy lives entrusted to her by God and to suffer until God comes to her rescue.

The priest contacted Uncle Valentine, one of my mother’s uncles, who lived in Maggona. He ran a saappu badu kade (shop selling imported goods). The priest asked him to help his niece, my mother. He met her at the church and listened to her story in front of the priest. He promised her baby food and medicine. She was grateful to Valentine Uncle for his generosity and kindness and promised to repay him. My father could not afford to pay for the baby food and medicine but he promised to repay when he got a better job as a trained teacher.

When I was a teenager, my mother told me we still owed Valentine Uncle a lot of money for milk powder and medicine she had bought on credit from his shop. Several years later, I met Valentine uncle at a wedding. We discussed many things, but he never mentioned how he had helped my mother and her family. I thanked him for helping us when we were in dire straits and saving our lives. I offered to pay what we owed him. He politely refused to accept any money.

by Jayantha Perera

All News Advertisement

Features

Trump’s tariffs, AKD’s gazette and Sri Lanka’s diplomatic slumber

Published

11 hours ago

2026/07/17

Thilina Walpola

“We are rather respectable in Colombo. We go to bed fairly early, and we remain there till morning. “

According to Sri Lanka’s diplomatic folklore, the late S.W. R. D. Bandaranaike uttered these words while explaining the reasons for Sri Lanka’s abstention on the UN resolution condemning the Soviet invasion of Hungary. Apparently, SWRD’s foreign ministry officials were asleep at home when the diplomatic cable seeking instructions was received from New York. In those days, there were no cell phones, Internet, or even fax or telex machines. The diplomatic cables were sent through post offices. Decoding them was a slow and time-consuming process. Thus, the government could not provide appropriate instructions to our mission in New York in time, and the Sri Lankan delegation abstained on that sensitive UN vote.

Sri Lanka’s Absence from Section 301 Consultations

But then, how does one explain Sri Lanka’s absence from the crucial bilateral consultation held in Washington by the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR) during March-April on “Forced Labour” under the Section 301 of the US Trade Act of 1974? Didn’t our foreign and trade ministries send appropriate instructions to Washington in time? Even if the instructions from the foreign ministry were transmitted to our embassy in Washington by pigeon carriers, there was enough time for Sri Lanka to participate in those meetings.

In March, the USTR initiated these 301 investigations on 60 trading partners, and invited all of them for confidential consultations. Out of the 60, 46 participated in these consultations. Sri Lanka was not one of them. Other countries that didn’t participate in these consultations included China, Russia, and Venezuela! In addition to that, the Section 301 Committee conducted a public hearing with interested parties on April 28 and 29. Washington-based diplomats, representatives from few trade ministries as well as representatives from many foreign trade associations and chambers participated in these hearings. Sri Lanka was once again conspicuously absent.

As a result, when the USTR published the proposed forced labour tariffs on June 2nd, Sri Lanka ended up with a 12.5% duty. Pakistani and Indonesian diplomats participated in these consultations and took appropriate follow-up measures, and managed to enter the 10% duty category. As even a threat of a modest tariff hike could disrupt supply chains and reduce competitiveness, particularly in an industry such as garments, I discussed this issue on 15 June and underscored the importance of Sri Lanka’s participation at the next hearing, which was scheduled to be held from July 7th .

Awakening from Diplomatic Slumber and AKD’s Gazette

Fortunately, Sri Lanka finally awoke from weeks of diplomatic slumber, and Ambassador Mahinda Samarasinghe participated in the public hearing on 9 July, and promised, “…. · We have agreed to the text in our negotiations with the USTR on forced labour, …. The gazette as we speak is being printed and I’m getting the gazette tomorrow morning, and the gazette will be shared with USTR as I get it“.

As promised, President Anura Kumara Dissanayake issued a gazette on 10 July banning the imports of goods produced by forced labour. These new regulations are very similar to what Pakistan and Indonesia enacted in April, after their consultations with USTR in March. Why couldn’t we do it in April? Why did we wait till the very last minute?

Challenges ahead

“War is too important to be left to generals alone,” is a famous saying attributed to former French Premier Georges Clemenceau. Similarly, monitoring our main markets is too important to be left to diplomats alone. The United States is the largest single-country market for Sri Lanka. Therefore, Sri Lankan trade chambers and associations should become more proactive in these markets and participate in these events. For example, the chairman of the Pakistani apparel exporters association participated in the April hearings. Similarly, representatives from the Indian Agricultural and Processed Food Products Export Development Authority, the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry, the Confederation of Indian Industry, and Reliance Industries also participated in July hearings. At an event where each speaker is given only five minutes (strictly enforced), having a number of speakers from a country is an advantage. The presence of industry representatives in these kinds of events also help them understand the market dynamics and the future challenges. This is important, particularly because there will be many more challenges with Trump’s tariffs.

With the gazette issued on 10 July, Sri Lanka has imposed a prohibition on the importation of goods produced with forced labour. Now, the challenge will be to effectively enforce the prohibition. And what are the goods produced with forced labour? The USTR list only focuses on aluminum, cotton, electronics, lithium-ion batteries, rice, and tobacco. However, according to the U.S. Department of Labour, the list is much longer. Hence, this list may change continuously during the next two years and tariffs may fluctuate once again.

So, this is definitely not the time to slumber.

(The writer, a retired public servant, can be reached at senadhiragomi@gmail.com)

by Gomi Senadhira ✍️

Features

Tales of Mystery and Suspense 10 Casino for Sale

Published

11 hours ago

2026/07/17

Thilina Walpola

After the overwhelming grotesquerie of J K Rowling’s latest Cormoran Strike novel (written, I should have noted, as the others were, under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith), I thought I should return to the world of fun, and also a much shorter description since this thriller moves quickly without the layers of detail that Rowling engages in.

I then move to the second comic thriller by Caryl Brahms and S J Simon. This, their second story to feature Vladimir Stroganoff and Adam Quill, was Casino for Sale, as lunatic a romp as the first, though without the emphasis on the ballet that characterized A Bullet in the Ballet.

This one begins with the impresario Stroganoff buying a casino cheap from Baron Sam de Rabinovich, only to find that it was a rundown place, not the grand casino of La Bazouche, a resort on the Frenc+h Riviera, as he had initially thought. The grand one belonged to Lord Buttonhooke, and Stroganoff could not compete, until he thought of bringing the Ballet Stroganoff to the casino – which of course leads to Buttonhooke deciding to have ballet performances in his Casino too.

Stroganoff invites Quill to visit him, which Quill decides to do since he has left Scotland Yard, having come into a legacy. No one believes this, and he has to face questions as to what he did to have been sacked, with sympathy for having been found out.

Caryl and Simon

The day he arrives in La Bazouche there is a murder, of a vitriolic critic called Citrolo, in Stroganoff’s office. He had been going to write a damning review of the opening night of the ballet and Stroganoff, when he realizes Citrolo cannot be swayed, drugs him and dictates the review himself to the papers. He leaves Citrolo sleeping and finds him shot the next morning, whereupon he decides to muddy the waters and leave a suicide note and lots of other murder weapons. So much overkill, as it were, of course ensures that he is arrested.

But the excitable French detective who makes the arrest follows up his suggestion that Buttonhooke was also involved, and so the two casino owners find themselves in cells next door to each other, with the detective Gustave quite happy to provide creature comforts for a fee.

Quill decides he must investigate, and finds Gustave most cooperative, since he has a laid back attitude to work. So it is Quill that finds a notebook which makes it clear Citrolo is an accomplished blackmailer, and that there are lots of possible murderers, including Stroganoff’s croupier, who was crooked, Rabinovich, who was now working for Buttonhooke, a confidence trickster called Kurt Kukumber, whose prospectus for a dud gold mine was found in the office and Prince Alexis Artishok who was engaged in a deal to buy diamonds from the ballerina Dyra Dyrakova.

Stroganoff had been trying to get Dyrakova to dance for him, but having done so previously she had refused. But then to Stroganoff’s chagrin she agreed to dance for Buttonhooke. The clearly crooked Artishok had told Buttonhooke’s mistress Sadie Souse, who was not very bright, that Dyrakova possessed diamonds she was willing to sell cheap, and Sadie was determined to have them.

Quill meanwhile finds out that there was a secret passage to Stroganoff’s office, the obvious solution to what had begun as a locked room mystery, and that this was known by almost everyone apart from Stroganoff himself. And then Rabinovich is murdered, just after Gustave had released his two original suspects, leading him to blame Quill for having insisted on that and thus allowing them to kill again.

Soon afterwards Dyrakova arrives, and the town is full of posters announcing that she will appear in the casinos, elaborate posters for either one, since Stroganoff is determined that she will dance for him, and if she does not come willingly, he has devised a scheme to make her do so unwillingly. So, though Buttonhooke has her taken off to his yacht immediately she arrives at the station, Quill along with Arenskaya gets her into a launch and to Stroganoff’s casino, where she performs to tumultuous applause, not knowing for whom she is dancing.

When Quill asked her about the diamonds, she said she had sold them long ago, and that gave Quill the solution to the mystery. Rabinovich had known about this, and Artishok had killed him to prevent Sadie learning it from him, he had killed Citrolo who had recognized him for an accomplished card sharper, not a Russian prince at all. But before he is arrested, he gets away in a boat, and the police launch that pursues him is on the point of catching him up when it runs out of petrol.

Again, lots of excitement, and entertaining references – Gustave grows marrows – and if not quite as brilliant as its predecessor, Casino was certainly a delightful read.

Features

The challenge of being positive about SAARC

Published

1 day ago

2026/07/16

Sahan Weerasooriya

The RCSS forum addressed by SAARC Secretary General Ambassador Md. Golam Sarwar in progress. (Pic courtesy RCSS)

It was a few years back that a former President of Sri Lanka took it on himself to pronounce SAARC ‘dead’. Since then there have been other sections of Sri Lankan opinion that have joined the critics of SAARC and taken the solemn stance that SAARC has indeed died what may be called a natural death.

Their fatalism is understandable. SAARC has failed to meet at heads of government or state level for the past several years to take the SAARC process notably forward. Regional cooperation has more or less been only an appealing idea. No substantive concrete projects have taken off to make the idea a hard reality. ‘Inner paralysis’ seems to be SAARC’s lot. Hence the fatalism in these circles.

However, being one of the worst cash-strapped regions of the world and a teemingly populated one with people virtually left to their devices, what choices do the ‘SAARC Eight’ have other than to try their best to band together and continue with their cooperation efforts, however small they may be?

There is no escaping the mounting debt trap for many of these countries and bankrupt Sri Lanka is a glaring example, but ‘throwing in the towel’ and abandoning themselves entirely to the diktats of the strongest economies and their agencies will prove a ‘living death’ for many countries in the SAARC fold.

The gains may be meagre but giving-up on SAARC cooperation in full would prove self-defeating for the organization and South Asia. Right now, the collective intention ought to be to salvage what the region could from the tenuous cooperative efforts. Moreover, such initiatives could go some distance to generate a degree of goodwill among the Eight and help in sustaining a dialogue process.

Given this backdrop it proved ‘a stich in time’ for the Regional Centre for Strategic Studies (RCSS), Colombo, to recently host the SAARC Secretary General Ambassador Md. Golam Sarwar to a round table discussion on the unifying potential of SAARC and its future possibilities, besides other related issue areas.

Held on June 24th and moderated by RCSS Executive Director and former ambassador Ravinatha Aryasinha, the forum brought together a vibrant, wide ranging audience comprising academicians, diplomats, senior public servants, civil society activists and many others. Following the presentation by Ambassador Golam Sarwar titled, ‘Reigniting SAARC: Achievements, Challenges and the Way Ahead’, a lively Q&A followed.

The above forum could be described as an act of lighting the proverbial ‘candle’ rather than ‘cursing the darkness.’ It surely is a ‘darkness’ that could be seen as daunting considering that the region’s pivotal powers, India and Pakistan, are failing to act in a spirit of accord but are engaged in bitter finger-pointing on a number of questions of vital importance to SAARC.

On the other hand, what is the rest of the region doing to bring the above sides together? It is disappointing that to date the rest of SAARC has failed to launch a major diplomatic drive to bring peace between the feuding regional heavyweights. It needs to act without delay and establish its earnestness and this effort would need to prove SAARC’s staying power in the unfolding months and even years.

In assessing SAARC’s seeming failure local opinion in particular has failed to factor in what could be described as weak leadership. Since Sheikh Mujibur Rahman of Bangladesh, the founding father of SAARC, the region has failed to produce a visionary leader who could advance the SAARC cause with charisma and drive.

Among other reasons, weak leadership accounts considerably for the faltering and stuttering status, as it were, of SAARC. Badly needed are leaders who could go the extra mile, think less of narrow national interests and work diligently towards the collective well being of the region but SAARC’s millions of ordinary people have been made to wait in vain for leaders of such stature. Instead, they have been burdened with politicians who seem to be relishing the apparently moribund state of SAARC.

Looking back, it could be said that it was the dynamic leadership factor that led to the launching of the Non-Aligned Movement and for its sustenance for a few decades. True, it could be seen in some quarters that NAM is no more, but as in the case of SAARC, the former too has been unfortunate to be burdened over the years with politicians who lack the vision and drive to unflaggingly advance the fortunes of the South. NAM and SAARC lack the dynamism and vision of leaders of the stature of Jawaharlal Nehru, for example, to give them the required guidance and intellectual depth.

The reasons are complex for there not being among us currently political leaders with the vision and the steadfast commitment to advance the legitimate interests of the South. However, it could be stated with conviction that the majority of Southern leaders have too easily caved in to the demands of the global North and its financial agencies.

These leaders have failed to see, for instance, that the largely market economy oriented Northern governments would not view with favour a centrist economic model that attaches priority to the interests of the dis-empowered publics of the South. This realization ought to have dawned on the current government in Sri Lanka, for instance, some while ago but it has no choice but to abide by IMF dictates since economic survival at present is unthinkable without the latter’s succour.

Accordingly for SAARC this should be the time for some soul-searching. Priority needs to be attached to ending the feuding between India and Pakistan since at present the material fortunes of the region hinge largely on these regional giants giving peaceful relations among them a try. This is no easy challenge to meet but some daring, visionary diplomacy needs to take hold among the rest of SAARC.

There is some sense in SAARC bringing the peoples of the region together through programs that address their best collective interests. A meeting of minds among SAARC nations could enable SAARC and its agencies to build a region-wide people’s movement for progressive political and economic change that could in turn lead to the region’s political leaders sensitizing themselves more to the neglected needs of their publics.

However, the time is ‘now’ for the initiation of these progressive changes and the voice of SAARC well wishers would need to drown out those of their critics.