Musings

A hotch potch of 'What not' - Part 1 :

Memories not mine but mom's (1910 - 2000 AD)

by Padma Edirisinghe

Reiterating the topic, the memories dealt with here are mostly my mother's and not mine. Needless to say, she is dead and gone in a spectacular phase of history when one millennium ended and another began. But her life by itself was nothing spectacular and no one expects any shocks out of the life of a mere lass born in a sleepy village 22 miles off the capital, sited along the Kandy road. The name of the village was aligned to a chena of pots, and bereft of any inhabitant of academic veneer, no one has ever taken the trouble to decipher why it was so named.

Anyway, despite its negligence the watery daughters of Attanagalu Oya frisked all round creating cute natural phenomena such as little islands, curves and reversals that provided paradises for little brats. No ancient heritage stuff?

Why not? A bit beyond loomed and looms the ancient rock of Varana grinning at the long passage covered since the Anuradhapura period and providing a haven for Aranyavasees (forest hermits). Today however Money Goddess reigns everywhere as wayside shops and bazaars just nestle against each other presenting a kaleidoscope of modern facets. "How green was my valley" stuff is no more. Mom attended the local school, a Balika Vidhyala or girls school which goes on even now.

Tantalizing act

The only tantalizing act mother performed there was to be selected to a group of the brightest 20 young women in the island, to the Teachers Training school, female section.

But the choice had its hassles. In fact, there was a prerequisite to this feat. One has to be appointed a Monitor first. Cynics would say that the colonial govt's education wing had discovered a clever way of acquiring teachers at little cost. But that was how the Monitor system worked. The brightest pupils in the top class about to go out to the world were given these posts and they had to perform their duties of teaching in the same school on a wee little pay. It was this group too who were considered for entrance to the Govt. Teachers College, but mind you, a mere 40 were selected annually, 20 males and 20 females.

Today 1,000 s or even 10,000 s are selected! By some frisk of fortune, years later I ended my own career as head of the Ministerial section that administered this section.

Crowning glory

There was only one Teachers Training College at that time, that is the 1930s and if what my mother told me is accurate, it was along Thurstan Road in Colombo. However, to be admitted to it was a crowning glory and the whole village, its denizens all related to one another, applauded when the girl came home with the news. But the happiness was short-lived for the very next day the headmistress summoned her and told her that there has been a mistake. Who has been actually selected is one from the highest family in the village.

The girl came home crying and gave the bad news, first to her father lounging in the arm chair in the verandah. Plummeted from a heritage of public recognition during the days of the Dutch period when the area was a frontier shield of the low lands, the family was now almost in the doldrums with two unemployed sons and three young lasses of marriageable age adding to the unsavoury dish. The aging father was used to a plethora of bad news. This was just another. He had come to a position of throwing his lot with hopeless despondency.

Sad turn

Meanwhile, the girl had been provoked at school by a group that this sad turn of events was monitored by none other than the school head. Perhaps a bribe has played a role. Or nepotism since the two families were related. But my grandfather had remained resilient and refused to have a hand in overturning the drama. His defensive mantram had been, "Podi Duwe, apata kalu gale oluwa gaha ganna baa" which roughly means, "Little daughter, we just cannot obliterate the great big rocks". But the mother and daughter would not give in. They waited till it grew pitch dark and till all in the house were fast asleep and then alighting some dry coconut fronds and armed with these Chuli eliyas they began to walk towards Gampaha via Miriswatte, the closest big town. The plan or strategy they had discussed. In Gampaha lived the younger sister of my grandmother, now married to a school inspector.

Gossip has it that he had been enamoured of her pretty looks when he visited the school she was teaching at Weeragula. Sudu achchi's beauty is a trait that others in the family never shared.

Midnight adventure

Now the duo's intended destination was their home, and that midnight adventure just was one that according to my mother never left her memory. The distance to be covered was eight miles and every 15 minutes or so, a vehicle's headlights glared that made them run to the nearest bushes and hide unmindful even of poisonous snakes that lurked. Their venom could be better than the lust of sex crazy men.

But the patronizing party in the school had warned them, that action had to be taken quickly to amend the evil turn of events. By the morn of next day the two were at the Gampaha residence of Sudu achchi and what had to be done was done quickly that day itself. Things succeeded as planned. My mother says that she almost bloated with pride when the headmistress the day after acknowledged the fact that Poddi has her own capable patrons.

Further tantalizing

But what is further tantalizing, is what happened to me when I gushed on this adventure of my mother and grandmother to a women's weekly. A close relative of mine holding a high post let off unexpected steam.

"Akka, if you have no topic to ventilate your writing mania, I will give you enough, but please do not drivel into matter that makes our family the laughing stock in the island".

I was just flabbergasted. Where lay the powder in the keg to make her so furious? I asked for explanations. "It is that chulu eliya business. So many asked me whether at that time our family did not own a torch even to use for nocturnal melodramas".

"The torch was there, nangi. But under Seeya's pillow. If we had woken him up the whole plan would have misfired".

But she was just frothing with anger. She had overlooked that spirit of adventure, of bravery, of the urge to correct an injustice. She was only worried about the social sophistication aspect. But I have got cluttered myself. That is my memory. Not my mother's .

More of her memories, later.