Dear Dalugama church and the surrounds
It takes a village to raise a child. This is my catchphrase for this writing.
This story is about the harmony and camaraderie of my home village. My experiences as an adolescent and a teenager leading to my very early twenties in a community I am proud of. The period is in the nostalgic seventies. A very different era. It is about the mementos I have carried with me from my early life in Dalugama, my home village. It is located just ten kilometres from the central business district in Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka.
I left my home village in 1977, leaving Sri Lanka for good. I did not live to see the gradual change in the intervening forty-five years. My beloved home village is neither a suburban city nor a home village. It is virtually unrecognisable to me. The memories I am about to describe are locked in my head in a frozen time bubble.
What is the best way to express my experience of the home village from that time then? I have been thinking about weaving these memories for a while. How do I describe the Dalugama church and the surrounding environment? How do I describe the people I greeted and said Hello or Machan* to with an open heart? How do I tell the embracing spirit of the Dalugama people where I felt included?
The best way to connect these disparate dots from memory is to describe my daily commute passing the Dalugama church. I lived at 248 Mudiyansegewatta Road with my parents, passing the church and its surroundings in my daily commute. Harnessing my memories, I will retrace my steps now.
The morning commute was always busy, rushing too quickly as possible. When one is young, you sleep as much, leaving little time for your morning wash. Getting up just in time, dressing ultra-quick, and gulping a quick homemade breakfast, I walked briskly to the bus stand. There was no time to chat with a friend during the morning run. I was short of time. I did it in under seven minutes. I was crazy enough to time my watch and boast about how fast I could walk.
The return trip was a different story. I walked at my own pace. There was no pressure to be late. College or your workplace duties were done for the day. You walked home slowly and leisurely, absorbing the surroundings of your friends and acquittances, relaxed and chilled out in my home village.
I am about to describe my encounters and the environment as I walked home, passing the church. It is a sentimental experience, out of this world.
The bus stop was at the Cross Junction. It was named after a Christian cross, a revered symbol of the Catholics in the area. The junction was on the Kandy Road, the main artery road linking Colombo to Kandy, the two main cities of Sri Lanka. I got off the bus at this bus stop.
From the Cross junction, I entered Rinchen Street, crossing Kandy Road. The villagers named it after a popular Belgium priest in charge of the parish of Dalugama in the 1950s. Father Rinchen was a beloved figure in the entire village hood. He was sent packing by a previous leftist government that thought Catholic foreign priests were a menace in a majority Buddhist country. Grateful villagers did not think so. They defied the government by naming a local street after the admired priest who had learnt the local language, Sinhalese, to preach to them. Rinchen was a folklore hero.
Father Rinchen baptised me in the Catholic faith when I was a few days old. He was so popular in the village that devoted mothers named their sons after the popular priest.
At the entrance of the junction on the right of Rinchen Street was a grocery shop. It stocked almost anything one could want in Dalugama. The shopkeeper was from the south of Sri Lanka. I walked into the shop and bought either a popsicle or a cashew toffee, depending on the pocket money I had managed to save up for the day. The shopkeeper trusted me enough to allow me to dip my hand into the bottle container to pick a toffee. A toffee was sold for five cents. If I had more pocket money, I opened his fridge to pick a popsicle wrapped in green and white, a bargain at fifteen cents.
A kind word or two got exchanged between the jovial shopkeeper and me. He knew my family, both my parents. My father bought his weekend newspaper from him on Sunday.
I walked along Rinchen street with my sugar hit from a toffee or popsicle. I was beaming and greeting any acquittances that I met on the road.
On my left was a butchery. It was where everyone in the village bought their meat. It sold only beef. The butcher was an all-rounder. He slaughtered the cattle in a makeshift abattoir near my home off Mudiyansegewatta Road first thing in the morning. Then he carved the carcasses and transported them in an open bullock cart to the butcher’s shop. Next, he sold the beef himself, slicing the meat and weighing each pound on a weight scale. Finally, he wrapped the beef in recycled newspapers and picked cash in exchange for payment — a versatile one-person show.
I did go to his butchery on Sunday, the only day my family ate beef, to buy beef for the family. When the butcher saw me among the crowd, he’d serve me as a priority without making his favour evident to the others. The butcher smiled wide, exposing his splattered red teeth from the betel he constantly chewed.
The butcher was a paid worker. The butchery was owned by Thomas Amerasinghe, fondly known in Dalugama as Thomas Ayya**, a village elder known to everybody. He was also the local councillor for the area.
Also on the left was a makeshift bicycle repair shop. It was run by Udaya, a young lad, a cousin of my friends, brothers, Jeeva and Mangala. Udaya, in grease-covered workwear, would beam at me. I stopped in front of his shop to exchange a few wisecracks. Udaya always came to my rescue when my schoolboy bicycle needed to fix a puncture or fill the air on its tyres.
Passing the bicycle repair shop on my left was Lal’s house on my right. Lal and I attended school together at St. Anthony’s College in junior school. Our grandmothers were friends. Lal was a year or two older. He was my travel companion to school and was tasked to look after me. He had a large family that included three younger sisters, and three aunts, all spinsters past their prime. They lived together in one commune in their house. Their water well was by the side of the road. Invariably, one could be found bathing on their well as I walked past.
Past Lal’s water well was a laundry with doors and a counter made of wooden planks. The laundrette was nothing as you see in Australia today. Two brothers, dark bare-chested men from south Sri Lanka, ran the show. Wearing white half-clad sarongs, they ironed clothes for the entire neighbourhood. The elder brother washed clothes in a waterway while the younger brother, with a lithe physique, ironed clothes the whole day and serviced customers. His name was Piyadasa. His iron was huge, a metal steaming iron operated by burning red charcoal. I loved the hard, crispy, warm feeling of my father’s khaki pants when they came out of his treatment.
Opposite Lal’s house was the house of the Ponnamperuma brothers. Part of their house was a sports bar where liquor was sold to the village folks. Raja, the bar owner’s son, sold watches and grey imports during trade restrictions in the country. I bought my watches from him. One of the watches was featured in a gripping story that you should read another time.
Passing Raja’s house cum bar, I crossed the Old Kandy Road and headed towards the church. One could see the towering church now, renovated and facelifted a decade earlier in 1965, at its centenary. It was a modern masterpiece at its centenary, future-proofed to a contemporary design. The church was the centrepiece of Dalugama village, particularly among the majority of the Catholic population.
On the right was the house that belonged to Winnie Jayasekera. She was a friend of my parents. Winnie was a regular visitor to my home.
Next to Winnie’s home was my friend Rajah Siriwardane’s home. On some days, we travelled together by bus on our return home. On such days, I turned onto old Kandy Road and walked into Rajah’s home. Rajah was a talented friend. He stitched his shirts and pants, a rarity on the day. In his spare time, he restored a bug Fiat, an unfettered task for a teenager. His father owned a leading optical store in Colombo. Often, his father dropped me home in his car. Rajah’s mother was a schoolteacher.
I came back to the church compound. On the left was Shehan’s house. He was a couple of years junior to me at St. Benedict’s College, my high school in Colombo city. He came to school with his grandfather and sister. Often we returned home in the same school bus with their doting grandfather.
Walk up a bit on the left was Wallace’s house. He and his wife, Maureen and their son, Royce, who was about five years old, lived there. Many evenings I have hung out at Wallace’s with my friends while Wallace played his guitar.
The imposing Catholic Church was dedicated to Francis of Sales, one of the Catholic saints from a village in France who ended up being a bishop in Geneva during the Protestant reform movement. Generations from the village had venerated their faith in this focal point and central foundation.
The church was refurbished some ten years before the church’s centenary. Its frontage was modernised to a sixties architecture design style with a simple theme, moving away from the traditional old Italian architecture adopted by the other Catholic churches in Sri Lanka. As a result, it was way ahead of its contemporary churches in its outlook.
The church was the meeting place and community hub for the youths in the area. They hung out on the front porch of the church. Any day, you’d find some fifteen to twenty kids gathered there. Some were on bicycles. Adolescents, teenagers and young men in their early twenties. They’d be chatting together and amusing themselves.
Lads from the local school would hang out with boys who attended elite schools in Colombo. The church frontage was the common denominator and equaliser. A classless society for youth.
I stopped at the church front, chatting with my fellow lads. There was hardly anyone that I did not know among them. I talked to almost all of them, sometimes carrying multiple parallel conversations, a unique art unfamiliar to Westerners. Often, chats led to useless banter many would find meaningless. But it was solid fun. Youthful cheer and adventurism were on display. One learnt lessons in fairness, tolerance and mutual respect, mixing freely among the carefree crowd.
The sports ground was on the right. Many a cricket match was played on the weekends. Soccer games were played every afternoon. Cricket was played with soft tennis balls, and soccer was played barefoot. Villagers had average incomes, and boots and sports gear were only affordable to some. Occasionally, an ‘Elle’ game was played there too. Elle, an ethnic game, can be compared to American baseball, except for the bowling action.
Carnivals were held on this ground when the villagers celebrated the annual church feast of the birth centenary of Saint Francis of Sales at the beginning of every year. The whole area came alight when the village feast and the carnival were on. It had many attractions for the village youth. There were Merry Go Round, Ferris Wheels and Pit of Death, where motorbike riders circle inside a well made of large planks. Many romances were incubated during these carnivals.
Occasional Sri Lankan pop music shows were held on the sports grounds facing the church. The annual Sri Lankan New Year celebrations were held there every April. The church ground was for everyone; it belonged to the community.
It was not all fun at the church. The rituals of the Catholic faith involved waking early on a Sunday, cleansing oneself, and donning impeccably clean attire. The devout then strolled to the church, witnessing the highly regarded and esteemed congregation. Men and women in kneeled positions and women adorned in pristine white veils. Both engaged in devout ceremonies, holding rosaries and expressing remorse for their sins.
By the side of the church was a sports club frequented by the youth. Many of the Catholic youths were members of this club. Young men and schoolboys played carom and other games in this small building. Some lads played basketball, volleyball and badminton on the adjoining pitches. The club belonged to the church parish. The priest could be seen frequenting the clubhouse regularly, almost as if to keep everyone in check.
Nestled between the sports ground and the church was the St. Francis school. The school had a rich heritage. Many in Dalugama attended this school, particularly in their early years. My father completed his primary schooling in the school. The local member of Parliament, a minister of the then government, also studied in this school.
Passing the school was the convent, run by Catholic nuns who lived there. My younger brother’s preschool was in this convent. The convent school hall acted as a community hall for the village. It hosted dramas, concerts and community events.
Between the school and the convent was a passageway leading to a closed gate. By the side of the gate was a tightly twisted pathway that only one person on foot could navigate at a time. It had been purposely designed and built to allow only churchgoers through it, one devotee at a time.
Exiting the twisted pathway, I set foot on Kohalwila Road and turned right. On the left lived the local village officer appointed by the government. He was also my younger brother’s godfather. He was a distant relative of my mother’s side of the family. When I turned eighteen, the village officer issued my first Sri Lankan identity card.
A man with elephantiasis disease was on the right adjoining the village officer’s house. One of his legs was the size of his torso, a horrible sight. You’d see him in his garden with his massive foot.
Next was the shop, Ruhunusiri Stores, a landmark in the area. It adjoined the road turning to my neighbourhood at Mudiyansegewatta road. The shopkeeper ran a general store where he dispensed small quantities of groceries to the neighbourhood folks. He issued groceries on credit, marking dues in a book. His elder brother assisted him in the shop. Many in the neighbourhood gathered in his shop for street conversations and tea.
From there, I turned left to my neighbourhood street. But that journey is for another day, another story.
It was a rare community spirit only known to islanders locked in a commune village in Sri Lanka.
Related links:
Next leg of my walk on my home street
This story in Sri Lankan ආදරණීය දළුගම දේවස්ථානය සහ අවට
Machan* means friend.
Ayya** means elder brother, not necessarily biological. A salute is used to denote respect.
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