Nagalingam Ethirveerasingam’s life intersects with both international sport and Sri Lanka’s political history. In 1958, on the day he won the country’s first Asian Games gold medal in Tokyo, communal violence was unfolding in Colombo. Representing Ceylon at the Olympic Games in Helsinki (1952) and Melbourne (1956), he secured his place in the island’s athletic record, even as events at home traced a different trajectory.

Father Harry Miller left Louisiana in 1948 as a young Jesuit assigned to the mission in Batticaloa. Travelling by train from New Orleans and by ship from New York to Colombo, he arrived with his close friend, Father Eugene Hebert, as part of a cohort of American Jesuits sent to eastern Sri Lanka following earlier French, Belgian and Italian missions. Jesuits, he would say, did not come for a short term.

Venerable Walatara Sobhita Nayaka Thero serves as chief monk of the Galwadugoda temple, known for its dark stone architecture and long institutional history. He speaks of monastic discipline and meditation practice as daily forms of continuity. In his office, beside palm-leaf manuscripts and administrative files, stands an ageing record player. Since his youth, he has kept a collection of vinyl recordings, including Buddhist devotional songs performed by Muslim artists.

At 105 years old, Veerakathy was widely regarded as one of the oldest men in Jaffna. Born in 1906 in Velanai, he left as a child to work in Galle before returning in 1920 to farm tobacco and coconut. He married in 1930 and raised eight sons and four daughters. Six of his sons have since died. “I am still here,” he said, without emphasis.

Bala Tampoe led the Ceylon Mercantile Industrial and General Workers Union for more than fifty years. Born in Jaffna and trained as a lawyer, he moved through several professions before committing himself to the trade union movement. He spoke of strikes in terms of morale and discipline, drawing on military history as readily as on labour law.

Poet and writer Dominic Jeeva reflects on growing up under Jaffna’s caste system and explains why, despite its many injustices, he still proudly calls himself a Jaffna man.

With Sri Lankan, Portuguese and French roots, Sister Irene Bartelöt has long been part of the layered social fabric of Batticaloa. She recalls a time when people did not ask about ethnicity or nationality, when, as she puts it, people “just mixed up.” That memory remains central to how she understands the town and its history. Her decision to enter religious life followed what she describes as a quiet, persistent calling.

Mrs Sui King Chang left Hong Kong for Ceylon in 1959, making the long sea journey with her father to meet Yung-Hsien, the man she would soon marry. She travelled with two suitcases, more than ten pairs of shoes and a curiosity about the life awaiting her.

Mohammed Yassin and his family were among the more than five thousand Muslim families expelled from the Jaffna peninsula by the Tamil Tigers in 1990. He recalls the day they were ordered to leave, the hurried journey south and the uncertainty that followed.

C.K. Sankarakumaran stepped into the shoes of his father and grandfather as a guarantee shroff, a kind of banker. He reflects on his two homes of Kandy and Jaffna.

Mrs Kandiah had never been to England, but through the words of her favourite nature poets she could wander through the meadows and hills of the English countryside without ever leaving her home in Batticaloa.

Upasena Thenuwara moved from Galle to Colombo in 1965 to work at Car Mart before establishing his own small garage on Lauries Road. Over time he became known among Volkswagen Beetle owners as one of the few mechanics in the city who truly understood these cars.

Writer Jean Arasanayagam reflects on Burgher identity, memory and belonging. She speaks about growing up in a cosmopolitan Burgher household, the convivial social world that shaped her early life, and how the violence of 1983, “the watershed” moment in her life, altered her sense of identity. Married to a Jaffna Tamil, she reflects on the layered histories, friendships and tensions that have shaped Sri Lanka’s communities.

Helga de Silva grew up in the Kandyan family home that later became Helga’s Folly. Part residence, part performance, part “anti-hotel”, she turned the house into a living canvas and a distinctly Sri Lankan domestic world shared with strangers.

Former parliamentarian and retired principal of Methodist Central College, Prince Casinader is also a long-time correspondent from Batticaloa. He speaks about the singing fish of Batticaloa lagoon, a mysterious natural phenomenon said to be heard most clearly on still full-moon nights, when a listener places an oar in the water and presses the other end to the ear.

Mrs Sarojini Kadirgamar learned to play bridge as a young girl during the curfews of the 1950s, watching the adults gathered around the card table. The game became a fixture of her social life, connecting friendships that stretched back decades. Born into a prominent Jaffna Tamil family and later living in Colombo, she reflects on the rhythms of a world once organised around clubs, tennis courts and evening games of bridge.

Mallika Talwatte reflects on courtship in the 1940s and the social expectations surrounding marriage, and how she came to accept remaining single as her destiny.

Esan has driven passengers around Jaffna in his Morris Oxford for nearly twenty years. During the years of embargo and fuel scarcity, when many vehicles stood idle, his car remained on the road.After the mass displacement in 1995, he left Jaffna and returned in 2006. On his return, he found that few vehicles could run on the available fuel. The Morris could be adapted.

Christy Mihindukulasooriya was the first person to portray Jesus Christ in the Duwa Passion Play. Before that the role had been represented only by statues. He reflects on the long history of the Passion Play and recalls performing the role for forty years.

Sri Naguleswaram Kurrukkal, chief priest of the historic Naguleswaram temple at Keerimalai, reflects on the temple’s great festivals, the devastation of the surrounding area during the war, and the gradual return of pilgrims in recent years.

V.S. Alagan, the Hindu keeper of a Catholic cemetery, reflects on his life among the graves and the burial customs of different faiths.

Samarakone Bandara performs poojas and other rituals at his devalaya in Kandy. He reflects on his life as a kapuwa, his years living in the forests of Sri Lanka, and the journey that eventually brought him back to Kandy.

T. Arasanayagam, poet and English teacher, spoke about his childhood in Jaffna and his first encounter with what he later called “the other.” As a schoolboy he described crossing village boundaries — sometimes literally crawling under fences — before discovering that certain roads were not meant for him.He recalled a friendship with a boy named David that was quietly disrupted by the recognition of difference.

Retired schoolteacher D. S. Amarasekara reflects on the history of his village, Baddegama. Drawing on stories passed down by elders, temple traditions and fragments from the Mahavamsa, he traces how the village’s name and identity evolved over centuries — from the rice-producing lands of Sahalgamuwa to a tax-paying settlement under Dutch rule.

Mrs Haniah Sultanbawa became the first Muslim woman from Sri Lanka’s Southern Province to graduate from a university when she completed her degree at the University of Ceylon in 1960. She recalls the expectations placed on young Muslim women at the time, the encouragement she received from her father and a missionary teacher, and the challenges she faced as the only Muslim girl studying at Methodist College in Colombo.

Dr Sivarajah is an expert in community medicine and a lecturer at the University of Jaffna. He reflects on the last thirty years of living in Jaffna and how the challenges keep him on the peninsula.

Sister Pushpam Gnanapragasam reflects on Jaffna identity, the arrival of French missionaries in the nineteenth century, and the role Catholic nuns played during the final months of the war.

Parakrama Dahanayake reflects on growing up in the political shadow of his uncle, former Prime Minister Wijeyananda Dahanayake. Having served for years as his uncle’s private secretary, he recalls a life shaped by politics and explains why he eventually decided to enter public life himself.

Mrs Rasheed remembers the sudden death of her husband and the life she built afterwards, raising five children on her own. Nearly forty years later she still speaks of their marriage with devotion, saying that her greatest satisfaction was knowing she had been “a good wife”.

Poet and teacher Somasundramoorthy Pathmanathan — known as “Sopa” — remembers a time when the baker in Jaffna was Sinhalese and the tailor was Muslim. He reflects on how war reshaped everyday life in the peninsula.

Retired school principal S. Thoradeniya reflects on a lifelong love of reading and a long-held ambition to translate the novel that first captured his imagination as a schoolboy — Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. Encouraged by a Belgian missionary teacher at Ampitiya College during the difficult years of the Second World War, books opened a world beyond the classroom and helped shape his life as a teacher and educator.

Dushyanthi Nugawela Wijeyawardena reflects on growing up in a household where her father was Buddhist and her mother Christian. Rather than choose for her, her parents encouraged their daughters to respect both traditions and make their own decisions about faith.

Lejmal Hussein reflects on the vicissitudes of working as a migrant labourer in Saudi Arabia for nineteen years, away from his family.

Mohammed Hussein Ismail, known to everyone in Galle Fort as “Major Hussein”, is believed to be the oldest man living in Galle Fort. He recalls the years he spent working in Trincomalee after the Second World War and the British soldiers who became his customers.

Mr Reuben, a former teacher from Pedlar Street in Galle Fort, is remembered by many of his former students, including doctors, lawyers and police officers who still show him quiet respect. He inherited a small lending library in 1958, once a meeting place for readers and political discussions.

Jaffna’s Catholic bishop, Rt. Rev. Dr. Thomas Saundaranayagam, reflects on a time when the north and south of Sri Lanka were closely connected — through shared schools, travel and worship. He speaks about the ruptures that followed, and the role of the Church in advocating for truth and reconciliation.

Jayaseelan inherited a 150-year-old public bathhouse in Kochikade, north of Colombo, from his grandfather, who had bought it with his pension. Born next door to the baths, Jayaseelan reflects on the stories he heard growing up and on the changes he has witnessed in the neighbourhood and the bathhouse itself.

Mustaffa Mohamed Atham Bawa has worked in his family business since leaving school at the age of ten. From his small shop in the heart of Batticaloa, he reflects on changes to working life, the violence the town endured during the war years, and how Muslim and Tamil communities have slowly rebuilt trust.

Gerald Fonseka speaks about his late father, known locally as Rathu Mudalali. His father’s ethical treatment of workers on the family’s coconut plantations and fibre mills in the 1950s inspired the son to follow the same example.

A member of Negombo’s Bharatha community, Selvam Croos Moraes reflects on discovering an archival photograph of the Donoughmore Commission in which his father appears among the staff. He speaks about his distinctive community and the challenges he faced in having the photograph recognised as part of Sri Lanka’s history.

Justinus Lawrence’s father came to Negombo sixty years ago to start his own garage. Full of laughter, Lawrence speaks about taking over the business and the challenges of running it today.

One hundred and fifty years ago, Lawrence Saravanamuttu’s grandfather, Soosaipillai, came to Negombo from his hometown of Jaffna to open the shop that would become famous for selling Jaffna cigars. The shop still sells cigars, but as Saravanamuttu explains, they are no longer from Jaffna.

Seventy-five-year-old Batticaloan annaviyar Arasaratnam is a koothu master. Originally from Karavetti, he knows more than twenty koothus. He reflects on the history and forms of this ancient Tamil theatre, and his struggle to keep the tradition alive today.

“But Dutch Bar is the best,” Margaret Ootschorn repeats. At ninety-two, she is among the oldest members of the Portuguese Burgher community in Batticaloa. Displaced after the 2004 tsunami, she now lives in Thiraimadu, a resettlement village built for her community. Though she has moved many times in her life, it is Dutch Bar she still calls home.

Seventy-one-year-old Seenithamby still throws his net on the Batticaloa lagoon. He reflects on the traditions of lagoon fishing, the father who taught him the craft, and the time he believes he encountered the kadal kanni, part of local fishermen’s folklore.

Veteran journalist Kala Keerthi Edwin Ariyadasa reflects on 64 years with Lake House as a reporter and editor, working on both Sinhala and English publications. He recalls his voracious appetite for books as a child and the long career in journalism that followed.

Sri Lanka’s legendary filmmaker Lester James Peries reflects on his early life in cinema, his mentor Lionel Wendt, and the films that launched his career. The interview features excerpts from his film Rekava (1956) and The Song of Ceylon (1934), directed by Basil Wright.

Each year, during community sermons, Inayet Akbarally recounts a story about how the first Bohras arrived in Sri Lanka. Around two hundred years ago, famine struck Kutch Mandvi in Gujarat. During a trading voyage carrying dried Maldivian fish, his great grandfather Careemjee Jafferjee was forced by storm to divert his vessel and land in Galle. That unintended arrival, around 1830, marked the first Dawoodi Bohra settlement in Ceylon.

Chandra Schaffter opened the bowling for Ceylon against England in 1954. He recalls a period when club cricket in Sri Lanka was organised almost entirely along communal lines: Sinhalese, Tamil, Moor, Burgher, Malay, Parsi, Bohra. Membership was often restricted to those of a particular community. Yet he remembers these divisions not as sites of hostility but as the basis for what he describes as “the friendliest rivalry that one could see.

One hundred-year-old Jesuit priest Father Vito Perniola came to Ceylon from Italy in 1936 and has lived here ever since. Granted Sri Lankan citizenship in 1970, he devoted his life to the study of Buddhist texts. A linguist, he learned both Pali and Sanskrit and later taught Pali to Buddhist monks and nuns.

Judge Christopher Weeramantry is a former judge of the International Court of Justice and Sri Lanka’s senior-most retired judge. His dissenting judgment on nuclear weapons at the ICJ reflects a long-standing commitment to peace, environmental responsibility, and ethical jurisprudence, shaped by the influence of his elders and multiple religious traditions.

Byron Unmani was an elder of the Veddahs, Sri Lanka’s indigenous people, known as the Wanniyala-a-Aetto or “forest dwellers”. Displaced several times over the years, his community eventually settled along the coast and adapted to a new way of life as fishermen, living off the sea where they once lived off the forest. Today they are known locally as the “Sea Veddahs” of Vaharai.

Sam Wijesinha has had several careers, from criminal lawyer to Chancellor of the Open University. As President of the Prisoners’ Welfare Association, he worked to improve the lives of prisoners and their families. His commitment to education extended beyond his own relatives in need to the children of junior staff while serving as Secretary General of Parliament.

At eighty-three, Mrs Subramanium continues to work as the personal assistant to the head of Uthayan, one of Jaffna’s most widely read newspapers. While her sisters emigrated to London and Canada as conflict intensified, she chose to remain. Despite constant invitations to join her family abroad, she refuses to leave Jaffna, her work, or the life she has shaped around what she calls simplicity.