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.

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.

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.

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.

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.