Lemali Widana

Sometimes I wish time machines were not science fiction material! Often I wanted to go back in time to be with my parents in that rural village just to re-live a day in my childhood. Memories are so precious to me but with time they have faded, I wish I wrote them down earlier.  It was the year 1983 my parents started building our home in a rural town called Athurugiriya. It is a lush tropical town close to the capital city of Colombo. I can remember the three of us visited the building site quite often. The builders stayed in a makeshift wooden cabin and we used to carry food for them during weekends. There were other families building their homes nearby. My mother used to complain that we will have to live in a wilderness. But my father enjoyed that wilderness and nurtured it until his last breath. In 1983 civil war was ravaging the north of the country and there were incidents to disturb life in the capital city. However, life was slow steady, and peaceful in my villa...