Savin Edirisinghe is a 25-year-old writer from Imaduwa, a quiet suburb in the Galle district. An only child, Savin’s earliest connection to English was forged at Sussex College, Galle, where he began what he calls a love-hate relationship with English — a relationship that would grow into a pursuit of stories, voices, and meaning.

He later completed his A/Ls at Mahinda College, Galle, an experience that shaped his resilience and versatility. He often says that Mahinda made him a man who could live on the streets if he had to or in absolute comfort if he chose to.

Today, Savin is a final-year undergraduate at CINEC Campus, reading for a BA in English. He freely admits to being terrible at mathematics and believes that since numbers never welcomed him, language became the only way to uncover the secrets of the universe.

His father, as a schoolboy, had read every book in his school library—except for a few in the farthest, darkest shelf, written in English. That boy grew up with a singular dream: to ensure his own child could one day read every book without limitation. Decades later, Savin finds himself shortlisted for a prize that represents more than literary excellence—it represents that dream fulfilled.

Savin describes his connection to the Gratien Prize as deeply personal, not merely as recognition but as a symbol of possibility. He draws inspiration from writers like Michael Ondaatje and acknowledges that while he cannot compare himself to such literary giants, he shares with them a certain kind of selfishness—the selfishness of dreams, of language, of imagining lives never lived. To him, writing is born of this very tension: the desire to understand, to escape, and to express.

Excerpt from “Dukkai! Vedanai!” a short story from Savin’s book

In the first few months, he felt like the parrots he and his appa used to trap near the paddy fields. He would put them in a stick cage that was flimsily put together by him and his brother. They didn’t keep them for that long. Their amma always scolded and occasionally pounded them with the same type of sticks they made the cage with, for entrapping the poor birds. So, they let go of them after a couple of weeks. He always thought the parrots were much happier in the cage than they were out. He and his brother fed them 3 or 4 times a day. The birds would sing and talk with them constantly, the only thing they couldn’t do was fly. They fly to find food, so what’s the point in flying if your stomach is full? Every time he had to release a parrot due to his amma’sdeath threats and vicious attacks, he thought “That poor bird will never be the same.”This was his karma acting up, for caging those birds, he thought. He was locked up in a room all alone, only the four walls as company. Well, that’s not entirely true. He had other company. He was boarded in a small room made on the concrete slab of a house under renovation. A family was living downstairs. Renting out rooms in the incomplete upstairs of the house was their way of earning some extra cash to, hopefully, someday finish the renovations of the house. But why they wanted an upstairs was a fascination for our protagonist. The entire upstairs of the house was rented out. It was under construction. He was living on a slab of concrete with asbestos sheets on top. There was another room right next to his. The rooms were so small only a bed and a chair could fit in one room before it got crowded. It was the cheapest room he could find. The other room was empty for about 4 months even after his arrival. But then it had three inhabitants in quick succession. Not one of them could survive the heat and the storm that followed in the monsoon seasons. The living was like an old rag that was forgotten on the clothesline, drying in the sun then getting soaked by the rain and repeating. “Krish, start learning some Sinhala, it’s hard to live in Colombo without talking or listening, you are bound to go mad”, said one of his professors at the campus who was a Tamil too and had a liking to Krish because they were from the same village. He always thought if one had to learn a language, it should be English. “What is the point in learning from others?” he thought. Tamil was a beautiful language, though to the  Sinhalese and foreigners, it often seemed noisy. It was not Tamil that was noisy, it was  their own thoughts of vanity, fear, and ignorance that made Tamil a noise. Tamil is one of the oldest languages in the world and one of the richest too. Krish suddenly  remembered one of his favourite stories his Amma used to tell to get him to sleep. But it  never made him fall asleep. The story was the great motivator which kept him awake. He kept himself awake until the end of the story. For what is a story if not for the end of it? The story was about a rich landlord. The landlord had two houses on either side of his  house. He rented out the two houses to two goldsmiths. At first, it was great, the landlord got his rent in time and there was no issue. But the two neighbours were  goldsmiths, so every day they worked on their craft by hammering down on metals to create exquisite jewellery. It was their livelihood. The hammering sounds became  increasingly annoying and unbearable to the landlord, and one day he decided to ask  his two neighbours to leave. He was the owner of the houses after all.

Finding custodians for the Piprahwa Relics

Other stupas maybe grander but Thuparamaya stands tall

The significance of Vesak

Timeless relevance of the Buddha Dhamma

Appreciations

From the first Buddhist flag unfurled in 1885 to a shop called Deepaduththara

A Mexican artist in town