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| Sunday, 2 February 2003 |
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Features |  |
| News Business Features Editorial
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Holy Family convent celebrates its centenary tomorrow by Shiranee Doss
A birthday is always an occasion for rejoicing and celebration! And when it is the 100th birthday of a Grand Old Lady, who is the loved mother to thousands of children, it is certainly an occasion. This is exactly what Familians have been doing during the last twelve months. Celebrating!. As Holy Family Convent, Bambalapitiya, Alma Mater to many generations of Familians, celebrates its 100th birthday tomorrow (February 3), we Familians, whisper a prayer of thanksgiving for a 100 fruitful years; thanksgiving for an event that has been celebrated worldwide, from London to Down Under and as far away as Southern California, where many daughters of 'Holy Family' who spread their wings, and settled down far away from their island home, have contributed their talents to cultures, societies and peoples the world over. As I look down the arched corridors of HFC beautiful and lingering memories come flooding back to my mind. The dedication and sacrifice of the Irish nuns who established and ran the school right into the 1960s, and then the Sri Lankan sisters who took over, and who continue so well the great traditions that have been established over the last 100 years. I recall the fun times that we had in those far off days when Hepatitis, Aids, mobile phones and TV were unknown. A lunch-break from 12.15 to 1.15 p.m. would see us trooping to the lunch room to eat our rice and curry lunches, specially packed and sent in by our doting mothers and to be supervised by the Sisters who sometimes insisted, that we ate everything off our plates, including the 'rampe' and 'karapincha"! the sticky, hard, brown toffee, the 'bulltoe' that went a long way and cost only 5 cents, was a firm favourite with us schoolgirls. The Big Match Days that we looked forward to, just for the excitement of seeing a few daring Peterites or Josephians, Royalists or Thomians scale the high walls and dance circles around the Sister Principal, before being firmly escorted off the premises. We didn't rush home to tuition classes in those days. Just for the record, we did do well academically and entered university too! We stayed on for sports and for meetings both religious and secular; debating societies and literary associations, Girl Guiding, St John's ambulance First Aid Classes, Community Service, the Legion of Mary. Strolling up Retreat Road after school, an inevitable stop for many of us was to buy the forbidden "achcaru" from the "amme" seated by the roadside.
As far as I know nobody suffered from any disease as a result of partaking of this gastronomical delight of questionable cleanliness. The gallons of water that we drank off the tap with no ill effects. No boiling, no filtering, we learnt to be tough physically and to survive. The journey back home at 3.15 in the afternoon for many of us was in the red comfortable double decker school buses where the driver and the conductor were friends; for some it was the rickshaw, for some a leisurely stroll home, and for still others a ride home in the family car. No over-crowded school vans in those days. Ours was and is a multi racial and multi religious school. We saw no racial and religious differences in our peers. We had friends drawn from all three language-streams of the school, who remain firm friends to this day. I am proud to say that Holy Family to this day, continues these great traditions. The same spiritual and moral values are upheld today as they have been during the past hundred years. Strong values of honesty, integrity, sincerity and simplicity, a sense of right and wrong, a sense of duty and responsibility, loyalty to family, friends, religion, and country were inculcated in us. We are there in all the professions and in almost every field of human, activity, a subtle but all pervading positive influence, on those around us, an essential component of the fabric of Sri Lankan society. |
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