“THE GOOD LIFE” – by Des Kelly

How can one forget the halcyon days spent in what was once our lovely Island home ?. I will never forget them.

Things are much different now, from an older perspective, I am afraid. Ceylon was this Island paradise that I was lucky to call “home”, eternal summer, days and weekends spent having a glorious time on beaches surrounding the Island, spotless beaches, without any rubbish strewn around, thosai shops, where we could have a good feed, followed by milk-coffee, or kiri-kopi, to wash it down for a couple or three rupees, a Peacock or “5 Roses” fag, afterwards, costing about 2 cents a-piece, to strut around with, showing how grown-up we were, at around fifteen years of age, Picture-palaces such as the Regal, Liberty, Savoy, Plaza etc., where, for a 50cent gallery ticket, we could watch great movies coming all the way from Hollywood, simple, but tasty rice and curry dinners, made by our Mums, or ammays, the bread-men cycling down streets with their roast-paans, bread, bunnis and other goodies that we would have for breakfast. Sometimes, it was back to the thosai boutiques for string-hoppers that were more like rope-hoppers, coconut sambol and saamball or gravy (or something), single-decker, and later, double-decker buses to travel on, when we needed to, superb steam-trains to take us up to the verdant hills, puffing through so many different shades of green, it was impossible to keep count.

The impossibly beautiful hills of Ceylon with acres of tea bushes being cared for by many Tamil ladies (mostly), who would then carry their bags of tea-leaves to the factories nearby in order to turn them into the best tea in all the World, Ceylon-Tea.

I could go on, writing a book, about the good life we had, but suffice now, to put it all into a song that I have just seen and enjoyed. This song is performed by a Group of Musos, calling themselves “Dynamites”, titled “Tharuna Jeevithe” (Young-Life), OR

“THE GOOD LIFE”, as I remember it.