Love of a boy with a fruit tree and an experiment with ChatGPT — The fruit tree next to our home is my refuge. It is my escape. It creates ripples in me when the fruit season is on. The tree’s pink rose apple fruits are full of hidden desires for a boy. The rose apple tree is intergenerational, planted by my grandfather decades…

A lad’s bedroom is his fortress in the 1970s — A boy on the threshold of adulthood has this strange capacity to experience sensations that escape the notice of others. His bedroom becomes his fortress. That’s what it’s like, the door to a boy’s room through which generations ooze and drip. First, long before me, it was my grandfather’s room…

Part 3 of 3-part series — Before I go any further on this story, if you did not read the earlier stories of this three-part series, their opening lines go something like this. Randy and I go a long way back in Sri Lanka to school-going days. I knew him long before I met my partner…

Part 2 of 3 part series — I am after work. It is late afternoon on a hot summer day. Randy and I are walking in Deira. We are near the Abra station where wooden boats ply passengers for 25 fils for a trip across the Dubai creek. Our walkway is on the opposite side of the…

Part 1 of 3 part series — It is Friday morning, the rest day and my day off. The time is seven. My partner is fast asleep. I slid off the bed, careful not to make any noise should I wake my partner. In my sleeping gear, the boxer shorts, I come down the apartment’s lift to…

How a radio show provided a sanctuary of self-expression — With loads of self-doubt, I found it hard to find my place in a boys-only high school. Other boys found their communities in various areas like rugby, cricket, and scouting. I was lost. Everything changed when a radio show was held in the school, led by the Sinhala literacy union…

The ritual of daily pocket money — When my father dropped me at school, he gave me ten cents. I could buy whatever I wanted during the school break with that money. As I got off his bicycle in the morning, in front of the school, the ritual of waiting for him to open his wallet was…

Nothing is as euphoric as when a plane ascends, especially when you are in it. — Looking out from a window, the runway, the acceleration, the roars, the take-off, and everything becoming smaller by the second. As if I have wings now. The enormous terminal building at Ratmalana becomes smaller in front of my eyes. The airport looks like a running pitch. The Ratmalana — Colombo…

Memories of landing in Colombo in the seventies. — As the Air Ceylon plane starts its bit-by-bit descent, I tighten my seatbelt. I see an archipelago covered in green from the window of the DC-8 aircraft. Green everywhere on land. It is such a drastic change from where I fly from, from the deserts of Dubai. I continue to…