The Sunday Times Sri Lanka

Mirror

When I was seven-years-old, I allegedly proclaimed a desire to have seven children with my imaginary husband at the time, Small-Srilal Patterson. That was his name (I named him). Patterson died in a bomb blast several days later, while building a house for the children he never lived to have. I was obviously bored of my imaginary husband, so he had to make a dramatic exit.

Respice Finem

I always wanted to expose myself to a bigger world than the one in which I grew up. I knew it would be a world that was as harsh as it was rich with wonder, and I knew that I would eventually have to carve out my own space – my own little corner – in it. Drawn by a sense of adventure and freedom as well as accounts of the adversities that I would have to go through as a student in a foreign land, I sought challenges that would push me off the edge of my known universe. I could never have imagined what I was heading into and how that journey would change me.