Last Years of School Life

A/L days were fun. Some of the best years of my life. As is the case with any Sri Lankan male who happen to be born to at least a reasonably alright family. So little responsibilities, fed by parents, not many restrictions, a lot of free time and a distant future you shall not yet worry about. What more can you ask for? I would even call them THE BEST years (as opposed to 'some of the best' years) if not for a year that will come later, which will change my life forever.

As said before, I wasn't the top student who everyone knew where he'd end up; i.e. university degree, higher education, excellent job, get married, kids, etc etc. No I wasn't that, but neither I was the idiot. I was a very good student and deep down inside I always knew I had not much to worry about. Of course I hated studying and loved wasting time with friends. So I made friends with some of the like minded students. We were the pain-in-the-ass bunch for the teachers. We skipped classes, wasted time by hanging out in small Kadeys which were designed for the schoolboys to smoke in whites, going to the movies and the like. Of course the chick were of interest but never the priority. Come the term test time we would do the minimum and get through to get enough results to not piss off parents. You have to keep your sole source of funding happy.

There was this one trip I went on with some of the friends back in those days. Looking back I guess it changed my life a lot. There were about 10 guys and the trip was technically supposed to be an educational trip. In reality it couldn't have been further from the truth. It was supposed to be a four-day trip but we were back home in three days. Reason? We were homesick? Not at all. Rather we spent all our money on getting drunk so had no option but to come back. During that trip I strengthen my friendship with some of the friends there who would go on to become my closest. Or so I thought. Today, one is abroad in a distance land and slipped off the radar. Another is still in Sri Lanka but he too is busy married and getting on with his life. There are another three of which two are still the closest things to friends I got but the last one showed that I was mistaken all this time. Son of a bitch.

So among these things I lived a happy life in my A/L days. The exams came pretty quickly, and I got through them OK-ish. Not the greatest results, but good enough to be eligible to earn a degree. I didn't want to be bothered for another time, and come the right time I would enter one of the most prestigious universities in Sri Lanka. So yeah, the last years of my school life went well, is all I can say.

And then I liked this girl. Let's call her M. The best definition for her would be Short and Sweet. I had a brief 'crush' on her if you could call it that at all. But after a couple of months I gave up. Because I was bored, she pretty much didn't give a shit and I couldn't really be bothered. To be honest I think I didn't really want a girlfriend back then. I didn't want to be committed. So thus ended my brief love life at that stage. I did not fall for someone seriously for another three or so years. But that someone who came along changed a lot of things in my life. She came into my life like a breeze, and left it like a storm. Read about her, and me, in the next post.

The Early Years

I had a perfectly normal childhood. It had the good, the bad and the worst, probably very little of 'the worst'. Born into a very much normal middle class family in Sri Lanka, I didn't have a shitload of money. Both my parents had to work hard, earnings were less, and they couldn't buy me everything I wanted. But neither did they let me starve. We ate well, dressed okay, and though the toys I had were not the most impressive, they were okay. Simply put, I have nothing much to complain about my childhood.

Both the parents are university graduates and that's all they had. No inherited fortunes. Father was, and still is, a leftie which didn't go really well with the brothers and sisters. So they practically kicked him out of the family and the earliest days of my childhood were spent going from one place to another. One of the earliest recollections of my memories is inside a middle sized, dark, single room apartment (for the lack of a better word) where we lived. But with the little savings they had, my parents managed to build a house and after a few years we were settled.

I was lucky enough to be able to go to a very good college, and had a very good education. Even in school, I was pretty much the normal kid you all see day in and day out. I was good with the studies, was always in the top 10 of the class but not the brightest kid either. Unlike today the competition was very little. My parents were wise enough to not want me to get better grades than the neighbor's kid, so I had a fairly stress-free childhood. I progressed through the years pretty good. 

I made good friends, attended very little tuition classes and played a lot. I was small built, but I always good with any sport I tried my hands on. Cricket was the big thing, as is the case with any child growing up in Sri Lanka. Girls were always a species we tried to impress, and I had my fair share of crushes on a few of them. None of them were serious enough to develop into something that you could even call a relationship.

By the time I was in my Ordinary Level class, on par with the interest of girls was the interest of 'taboo' stuff. Alcohol, Cigarettes and Pot to be more precise. I tried them all. Smoking a cigarette was a risky affair, but it also was cool. Pot was dangerous, and should be handled with extreme care. We didn't have much money for regular booze though, so it was only for special occasions like the Big Match.

So, by all means, those early years of my life were absolutely normal. I was fun loving, outgoing, not-bad-at-studies typical guy you'd find everywhere. And I got through the O/L examination with very impressive grades and was qualified to the A/L class easily. I'll save that chapter of my life for the next post though.

The Beginning

Life sucks. It wasn't always the case though. Not so long ago I was such a happy man. Everything seemed so perfect. I earned good, I spent well, friends were awesome, work was good and I had the sweetest and most wonderful significant other with me.

And then the disaster struck.

Want to know what happened? Well, you'll have to wait. Before I tell you the tragedy, I want to tell you the story of my life. How and why I came to be where I am today.

Stay tuned.