Part of our compound was a huge factory my Dad built soon after we arrived from London. There was plenty going on and I have many memories from this time, but one in particular that none of us will ever forget.
When my younger brother David, also known as Gunga, was little, he was carried everywhere; as the only one born in Sri Lanka he was a definite favourite with my aunties and our Achi. One day, though, he was left unattended and, seeing that the workers on the lathes in the workshop had run out of water, he decided to take their glass water bottle and fill it up—he had seen them do this a hundred times before. He managed to make it up the steep bathroom steps but fell on the way down, landing on the bottle and gashing his chest very deeply in about five places. This caused pandemonium, the women screaming and Mum and Dad rushing to get him to hospital wrapped in a blood-soaked towel. He survived but still has the jagged scar to attest to his and Mum’s trauma.
