Tale of two staffs

by Tissa Devendra

The enormous shopping Malls of today's Britain are both intimidating and rather tiring to the elderly while being tremendously tempting to the youngsters behind whom they tag along.

One morning, not long ago, I sought to rest my tired feet by sitting on one of the benches scattered in the central plaza while my younger companions popped into brand named shops and popped out laden with bags they then deposited at my feet before they took off again on their explorations of yet more 'treasure troves'.

I whiled away my time watching, and marvelling at, London's many hued peoples with their garb so "rich and strange", and their children gambolling around with not a worried parent in sight.

I heard a sigh of relief as an elderly Briton eased himself next to me on the bench. My attention was immediately drawn to his unusual walking stick. With a thrill I realised that it was identical to the beautifully lacquered Kandyan staff that my father had bequeathed to me.

A flash of memory took me back over sixty tears ago to our home in Kandy's Horseshoe Street during World War II. Our once-sleepy old town now reverberated to the roar of military convoys and the clopping of marching soldiers Africans, Europeans, Sikhs, Gurkhas and others.

One morning a camouflage painted military truck stopped right in front of our house. A tall white soldier alighted, lifted the truck's bonnet and peered helplessly as the radiator hissed menacingly emitting jets of steam. He looked around, saw our open verandah and stepped in with an apologetic smile.

We children, who had been watching the mishap, bolted indoors but peered curiously from behind curtains as the soldier spoke to Father in a strange (to us) accent. We knew what he said only when Father invited him to sit down and came in to get a glass of water for the exhausted soldier. Our schoolmaster father and the friendly soldier settled down to a cordial conversation while the engine cooled down.

He introduced himself as Private Peter Watson of the R.A.M.C and asked Father whether he could drop in, whenever free, for a chat and to learn more about Ceylon. Thus began a friendship that lasted for many months till Peter left for Burma and, finally, back home to London when the War ended.

I was just entering my teens, old enough to understand Peter's speech, and fascinated by his wartime stories. Peter, in turn, would have been amused at my naive curiosity, which he did his best to satisfy.

Peter was a self-taught writer and most interested to learn everything he could about Ceylon. He must have thanked his lucky stars that his truck broke down n front of our house when he 'discovered' Father with his encyclopedic knowledge of our country.

When Peter left Ceylon, never to return, Father gave him a farewell gift of a sturdy, beautiful Kandyan walking staff lacquered by a master artisan of Poojapitiya. An identical staff yet remained with Father and has come down to me.

I was determined to speak to my neighbour on the bench. My opening remark "Mr.Watson, I presume" initially startled him. Having looked me over and satisfied himself that I looked no con-man, he admitted that he was, indeed, Watson. I asked him whether his father was Peter Watson who had been a soldier in Ceylon in WW II. "Yes" he said in surprise " this is the walking stick from Ceylon he gave me before he passed away a few years ago".

"So did mine" I said "Shall I tell you its story?" . He was intrigued and, I went on to speak of the friendship that flourished between his father and mine in wartime Kandy, and the farewell gift of the lacquered walking stick.

The daily walk from our home in Horseshoe (a.k.a. Cross) Street to Dharmaraja on the Hill was a daily adventure. One passed what was yet called "Sproule's Bakery" from which wafted the sweet scent of baking bread and where the large old lady sat behind a counter loaded with glass bottles of fresh cookies, 'hulang viskothu' and the mouth-watering soft candy sticks we called 'alpay'.

Then came the Senanayake mansion next to which was the Polytechnic where the amateur scholars of the Kandy Historical Association held their monthly meetings. Luckily for me school began earlier than shops opened so all I could do was to pass, with a longing look, that treasure house "Yusuf's Corner Bookshop".

A bus terminal was located at the top of King's Street with burly bus-drivers in fuzzy Afros and handlebar moustaches lounging around, in mesh singlets crocheted with lions, tigers and deer.

Next was the imposing gateway to King's Pavilion and then the wooded wonderland of Udawatte Kelay. Opposite was the Kandyan styled 'old' Dharmaraja Hall where we had our primary schooling before the College and we went up Lake View Hill. Then the Old Palace now occupied, with imperial arrogance, by the Government Agent, a lanky Englishman occasionally glimpsed on the once-royal verandah.

Next was the sacred elegance of the Dalada Maligawa where we bowed in reverence and murmured our devotions before moving on, pausing briefly to watch the Maligawa's stone masons hammering away with their chisels to carve beautiful embellishments from unyielding granite.

After that we went up Malabar Street lined with official bungalows of government engineers and the like, bordered by red brick walls enclosing spacious gardens. A delightful trellised bungalow called 'The Vicarage' was home to Rev.Lakdasa de Mel, a lover of Sinhala culture and, thus, a friend of my father.

The imposing "Barber's Bungalow" of Ceylon's pioneer chocolate manufacturer could be glimpsed in its large garden at the foot of Udawatta Kelay, whose wooded hill rose opposite Lake View Hill where Dharmaraja stood and we climbed the steep home stretch of red gravel road bordered with pungent 'mana' grass and 'val sooriya' Rainy days were a menace to us schoolboys in those days before plastic raincoats were invented and all self-respecting chaps spurned the dainty parasols their mothers tried to force on them.

The only way to keep reasonably dry was to duck in and out of porticos, verandahs and 'kadays' thus hop-scotching our way to school. Our shoes were another story. They soon became water-logged as we squelched our way - but a few were savvy enough to pull off their shoes and walk barefoot to class where they put them on again Squelching shoes were soon pulled off to spice the usual smell of chalk, sweaty shirts and the mouldy stench of the wet cadjan roof of our temporary class-room.

Peter Watson was chatting with Father one rainy day when I came home sopping wet, to be whisked in by Mother, briskly towelled and put into dry clothes. "Poor fellow" said Watson "would you like a rain-cape to keep you dry?" I mumbled vaguely in response. "I have an extra cape somewhere and I'll bring it along when I next come here". And so he did.

I thus became the owner of my school's one and only rain-cape. It was a heavy, khaki item rather like a tent with a collar and two slits for arms.

Apart from soldiers it was only postmen who had similar capes of black shiny material that covered their bikes, their letters and themselves, Schoolboys are both irreverent and tolerant.

After the initial hoots of laughter that greeted my caped entrance, with spindly legs emerging from its capacious folds, my friends came to accept this curious sight. My schoolbooks now stayed dry, tucked within Watson's cape.

The only worry I had, as I tramped Kandy's rainy streets, was of being accosted by a red-capped Military Policeman and marched off to be court martialled for illicit possession of British Army equipment. But I escaped this fate because Kandy, by now, was awash with loads of stuff smuggled out of Army camps. I was thus able to safely "flaunt" Watson's cape until our family left Kandy for Ratnapura.

Ratnapura has the well deserved reputation of being the country's rainiest town. But I no longer needed the protection of the cape. We lived in Tiriwanaketiya, too far to walk to school in Ratnapura town.

A car was a luxury we could not afford. The narrow gauge train could never be relied to take us to school on time, often trotting out the alibi (unique to the Kelani Valley) of slippage due to rubber leaves fallen on the rails! Father then decided that we would travel to school by bull-powered 'buggy cart'.

There was a cart stable not far from home and one was on regular hire to us for the school run. Coming from more sophisticated Kandy, we children were initially embarrassed to travel in a buggy - particularly myself who had to sit with my legs dangling over the rear to make room for the others.

We ceased to be self-conscious soon discovering that buggy travel to school, and to town, was quite the norm in Ratnapura of the 1940s. Travelling by buggy to school proved to be great fun especially so when Father did not travel with us.

We had irreverent jibes about the regulars we saw on the road and, seated backwards watching passing cars I cultivated the minor specialty of identifying them by their radiator grills (now only seen in Vintage Car displays). Our greatest thrill was when we encouraged our carter to race other buggies, usually carrying children to rival schools.

Our favourite carter was Gilbert ,who often played truant from his school for the thrill of the morning chariot race. We clung excitedly to its sides as our buggy swayed and our bull bravely galloped, to overtake our rival "charioteers", cheered on by us and the rat-a-tat of Gilbert's stick on the speeding cart-wheels.

However, buggy travel on rainy days were a miserable experience. Our only protection was the side screens that stayed furled up near the roof on sunny days. When they were rolled down in the rain they gave us negligible protection.

They were made of black 'oil cloth', so crushed and creased that the rain sprinkled us liberally through their many chinks as our bull plodded despondently, dreaming of sunnier days.

After yet another day of such sprinkling, I remembered Watson's cape that had kept me so snug and dry on rainy days in Kandy. I retrieved it from the attic to which it had been 'exiled' and found that it was yet in good shape. But I gave up any idea of wearing it in our buggy to save me from sprinkling in the rain.

It was so thick and huge that there would have been no room for anybody else. Speaking about it at dinner sparked off a bright idea from Mother. "Why not give it to Gilbert so that he can cut it up and make two good side screens for his buggy?" Her logic, as usual, was flawless.

It was with a twinge of nostalgia that I sacrificed Watson's cape for the greater good. Soon after, our cart was equipped with truly rainproof khaki side-screens and we travelled dry to school till we left Ratnapura leaving behind a memento of Peter Watson.

My friend on the bench was fascinated by my story of his father's youth in wartime Ceylon and how he came to own his lacquered walking stick. Our time was up. My young companions had exhausted themselves and were ready to leave. And so we parted, for ever perhaps, musing on the serendipity that had seated us together on a bench in London to share memories of our fathers long gone and an age long lost.