Musings:  

Data of death

by Padma Edirisinghe

One day, in a morbid mood perhaps precipitated by all that was going around, I began to draft data of death. I did not break into a total new field but attached the data into a topic I was already involved with.

Topic is The British governors of Ceylon. Medium - The sister newspaper. Note the word Ceylon because all the governors led the island in the phase it was named so.

Anyway, I began to notice what can be called "common denominators" among them.

Outstanding is the Anglican faith. Then they all belong to the male gender. No British female had braved the oceanic waves just to rule a part of the expanding British Empire. But the lucky males were all set to go pell-mell around the globe. Really what was needed then in the very adventurous days when sea travel was so hazardous was man power not woman power. And women, then even the thick skinned White women were sensitive to scandal and ghosts as you meet them in the course of things.

Females

For example, no woman liked to be called a member of the Fishing Fleet. What was that? That was the name given to the brave battalion of females who occasionally opted to sail overseas, ostensibly seeking for suitors. I too began looking for more common factors after observing a recurrence of the date of death.

Excuse me, I have to thank that persevering journalist H.A.J. Hulugalle cum researcher for laboriously probing into the dates of birth and death of these gentlemen. What was the particular common factor here? Did they all die together? No. In fact they came one after another, here to Ceylon every 5 or 6 years, but in a few cases going on to 6 or 7 or reduced to the term to even a year in rare cases.

What I noticed then was that longevity was not their strong point. Only 3 or 4 out of the 30 governors have managed to live up to 80 and only a few others, four, lived 70 or more. Did the tropical heat or load of work eat up their stamina? In fact, though much literature has been expended on the subject of longevity or even gerontology (the study of ageing of which Dr. Leel Gunasekera is an expert), no effort seems to have been taken on the interesting topic as to the ageing process of bureaucrats or putting it less pompously, that of public servants. Do they age faster? Does the stress caused by work make them more easy subjects of death and decay? On the other hand isn't the stress undergone by menial workers that tells on their physique more taxing on their lives and health, especially as the lower incomes lock the paths to the consumption of nutritious and rich food? And are statistics available to show that either the rich live longer or the poor live longer? In both cases what is the cause if so, I mean why the rich die earlier or why the poor die earlier? Patas, would erupt the answers, that all that rich food the rich consume lead to various diseases, some incurable, while the poor die earlier due to the low quality and quantity of food they take. There is also the matter of access to doctors. So there are many complicated issues embroiled in the topic.

Task

Before going on, a bouquet has to be given to H.A.J. Hulugalle for the onerous task of fishing the dates and deaths of the 30 governors, though the labour gets mitigated as the author fishes out facts from records kept in churches in England.

Here I remember a certain source book, that mentions the fact that fishing for bio data of this nature is very easy in Xtian countries as the churches are their custodian. I surmise that it is Mr. Saparamadu in his preface to Tudugala saga who dwells on the difficulty of delving into such facts from non-Christian countries. This is due to the concept of Sansara, that never ending cycle of births and deaths that almost makes redundant the recording of births and deaths! No temple would ever record such facts about transient life and death.

Now let us wade into the subject in hand and please don't utilise any error (printing or fact-wise ) to cause my own death which haunts just around the corner in these deadly days. Out of the 30 governors, only four seem to have lived more than 80 years, Gordon (83) Ridgeway (86) Chalmers (80), and Stanley (82). Remember all the 30 have all gone home, that is to England, to die. Even if they have been transferred to another station, finally it is Home Sweet Home.

Died

The only Governor who died here was Sir John Anderson (1916 - 18), who still enjoys all the honours at Lanka's main graveyard of Borella. He enjoyed the longest funeral procession too, all the way from Nuwara Eliya to Colombo after he died of appendicitis there. Almost all these governors had been roving all over the British empire, and proving their colours. The shortest rule had been that of Sir Edward Paget (1822-23) though he too has left a commemorative venue, Paget Place. Almost all governors except 2 seem to have enjoyed good health.

Only two have been called back for misrule, that is Lord Torrington after 3 years and Sir Robert Chalmers too after 3 years.

The former deserved the punishment though one feels sorry for Chalmers who adored the Pali language and Buddhism but the times were bad, the second world war was in full swing and there was even a legend about the death of their sons. Did they die as young lambs in the cause of the 1st WW then in full swing?

A waiter at a posh hotel in Nuwara eliya has a secretive story to tell about the governor's wife attempting a suicide bid at dead of night on hearing the news. (A good part of them seem to have lived more in N'Eliya than in Colombo, the climate no doubt akin to the English climate beckoning them). But everybody else when contacted was silent about this ghost story for Ghosts are no attraction to residential hotels. It discourages lodgers, for no one wants a dead white or black hand on them as they bed.

Circumstances

Despite the immediate circumstances of the demise of some of these governors it is strange as you wonder and ponder on the commemorative marks they have left behind by after they had made their way to heaven. These are Crescents and Places as left by those such as North and Maitland, Brownrigg, Barnes, Longden, McCarthy. Anderson, Blake, Clifford, and McCallum, some as Brownrigg and McCallum road re-named after patriots such as Keppetipola and D.R. Wijewardena.

And before going to the upper spheres, Gregory has left a museum, Manning a market, Gordon, a garden, Gregory a lake. Ridgeway has left behind a hospital for children followed by a dispute whether the credit of its development should go to Lady Ridgeway or to Lady Havelock. But Havelock has left behind one of the longest thoroughfares in the city and even, a bustling town named Havelock Town.

Measure

Death has not effaced their memories while life goes on within them in full measure. Going further up Queen Victoria stood for years right in the middle of Victoria Park till somebody remembered Vihara Maha Devi and brought her there. Even Victoria Bridge has now joined the land of the Dead.

Queen Victoria however was very popular with our monks often corresponding with them in return of which they let sculptors and other aesthetes in the south be generous with her plump figure in temple murals forgetting that she was non-Buddhist. Such is egalitarianism in Buddhism at one stage in contrast to fanaticism today.