Sights and Smells – REMINISCENCES

When to the sessions of sweet silent thoughts;

I summon up remembrances of things past……

After almost a month, I revert to musings and memories of my childhood days in the island that
was then called Ceylon, now Sri Lanka. I had earlier written about my Trinity days at Kandy, and
am still unable to come to grips with the reality that those are bygone days and what remains are
mere memories of vibrant and youthful adventures, classroom lessons which invariably evoke the
intensity of our closeness and the grateful acknowledgements of teachers like our Principal at
Trinity, Cedric Oorloff, Rev. Lakshman Wickrermasinghe, A.J.J. Daniels, Kingsley Casinader,
Kingsley Cooray, my beloved Squellary house master, Cuddie Bennet, Gordon Burroughs and
above all or at least on par with the mighty Cedric Oorloff my favourite hero Hillary Abeyratne. I
must also not forget the unforgettable Tamil teacher Navaliyur Na Selladurai and my biology
inspiration Daniels nicknamed Surupadaya and yet another childhood hero
G.T.R.Perinbanayagam, whose most enduring and alluring English lessons were a favourite of
mine.

All these names figured above are those who had taught me from the age of ten or so, after I had
migrated to the boarding school to Kandy from a complete Tamil medium background to a British
school set up, that was Trinity. I shall now travel back a little further in time from my Kindergarten
to fourth standard, in Nawalapitiya and Hatton.

Kathiresan College, in Nawalapitiya was in the early fifties, one of the best known Hindu Colleges
in the Island. I remember faintly Mr. Anandan, a London educated academic who was the
principal. A Saivaite figure of outstanding eminence at that time was Na.Muthiah who was the first
one to teach me Tamil in the First standard. I can still recall his imperial appearance; a very fair
handsome man dressed in spotless white Khadi and was the editor of an influential Hindu journal
‘Atma Jyoti.’ Sri Arumainayagam was another Tamil teacher at Kasthiresan and I still can recite
some of the Thevarams fifty five years later,as I had learnt from these noble men.

It is due to the passionate inculcation of values, religiosity and love for the mother tongue by
these stalwart teachers of incomparable stature, grace, compassion and clarity that this treasure
trove of thoughts has with stood the passage of time. In a sense I continue to honour the teachers
in my mind and frequent summing up, the remembrances of things past and as homage to the
entire teaching community. When I realize that I had the great fortune of having none other than
Na.Muthiah a saintly Saivite savant as my first Tamil teacher who taught me the Ari Chuvadi and
Aadhi Chudi. I can only humbly bow in reverence to a greater grace that had given me this
special honour.

The first thevaram “Thodudaiya cheviyan Vidai eri or thu ven mathi choodi” I learnt from
Na.Muthiah in the small classroom for tiny tots at Kathiresan was the first verse uttered by the
child saint Thirugnana Sambandar at Sirkazhi 1400 years ago. These and many more were the
Saiva Thirumurai songs we learnt to recite flawlessly as childish prattle. Nevertheless it was so
easy to absorb and repeat all that was taught at that very young and impressionable age when
one’s mind is clear and uncluttered. I faintly recall the visit of an eminent person, Suddhananda
Bharati in the fifties. His fair Aryan looks and saffron turban had exhorted the crowd he addressed
that day to join him in a chorus of invocation to Bharat Mata, probably in the Kathiresan college
compound. I was then not more than 7 years old, yet the electrifying presence of the poet who
sang gloriously and the palpable admiration of the crowd who had thronged to hear him speak
had a mesmerising and sanctifying effect on them. The people probably consisted of an
overwhelming majority of diasporic Indian Tamils who may have come to honour their
motherland from where they had migrated in the past decades, by paying homage to a poet and
nationalist Suddhananda Bharti.
The two years spent at Nawalapitiya must have had an impact and sensitivity due to the proximity
of towering figures like Na.Muthiah and Arumainayagam which has endured through my School
and College life. The second phase of childhood days had its span at Hatton, a pleasantly
salubrious hill town, about two miles from Dickoya where our residence and my father’s small
business were situated. Our neighbours in the mid fifties and early sixties were the celebrated
Transport agents M.A.Allahpitchey & Sons.

Mrs.Allahpitchey, a widow was a close companion of my mother and she had four sons and a
daughter named Raheela who was my elder sister or Akka. Now only two of her sons along with
the daughter are surviving, and her sons are nearing eighty years or more. My father and mother
were so close to the Allahpitchey family that when it was suggested that during the circumcision
ceremony of the grand son of the matriarch that I too should for health reason be circumcised
along with the other young boy. My family readily agreed and it was a double circumcision
celebration and a family affair!

Highlands College in Hatton town was a very well-known school which catered to the needs of
the Tamil children of the plantations, and kids of marginal affluence as well. It was a
predominantly Tamil school and had the sensible advantage of co-education. I was admitted to
the 3rd Std., there.

The remarkably odd thing about my memory is that even now I can with joy and enthusiasm recall
the names of all the fellow girl students and still vividly visualise their pretty faces. Closest to me
was Rukmini followed by Beatrice Sathyaraj, Mehrunissa, Usha, the Dickoya Gurukkal’s daughter
and Padmini Thambirajah who was handicapped, yet looked so angelic. In those days the
classes were small and I think there must have been a near equal number of girls and boys in
each section, though I can hardly remember any one boy’s name now at Highlands. True to its
name our school was situated right on top of a hill from where one could have a panoramic view
of the entire Hatton town below with the majestic sight of the distant mountains which were all tea
plantations. To top it all, we could have glimpse on a clear cloudless day of Adam’s Peak the
highest point in the island of Ceylon, in the shape of a gnarled and twisted oak in the distant tea
plantation town of Maskeliya. Close to Hatton Town Railway Station was also the longest railway
tunnel in the country, where we used to frequently go hitch hiking.

The days at Highlands were pleasant and that was really the age when one’s character is
moulded. My Class teacher in the 3rd Std was Mrs. Duraiswamy. She was a dusky well-endowed
lady with very long flowing hair and even at that age I used to go well out of the way to get a pat
or a hug as she used to smell so sweetly feminine, and certainly there was a wonderfully
agreeable arousal while being touched by her.

When we passed on to fourth Std, our class teacher was Mu. Nadesa Pillai who was not more
than twenty five or so, hailing from Mandaithivu an island off the Jaffna peninsula. We had
another Master called Kulasekaram of Nainathivu again off the Jaffna coast.

There was a very handsome debonair looking teacher from Batticaloa called Manickavasagar,
who was the lover of our Principal Mr. Jaisingh’s wife. Even at that age, the entire school was
aware of the romance between them – a married woman and a bachelor. There was so much
giggling and hush-hush talk amongst all of us which never seemed to bother the couple in love.
At this time our third Std. Teacher Mrs. Duraiswamy died during pregnancy in the Hatton Nursing
Home or Maternity ward or so we heard. She was so young and beautiful and I remember crying
so much as we all had just arrived at an age to comprehend the idea and reality of death. There
was also widespread news amongst kids that her grieving and distraught husband had tried to
jump into the burial pit while her coffin was being lowered. We were all so pained by all this and
had come to admire the dead woman and her husband so gloriously that we started to look upon
the romance of Mrs.Jaisingh with our teacher Manicka vasagar with utmost distaste.

Mr.Jaisingh our principal, was a very soft-spoken gentleman of outstanding academic excellence
as all teachers of that age and period were. Most of the students also felt betrayed by this
romance which was flaunted without any care for what is correct and which must have been so
unpalatable to her husband and Principal who was greatly and uniformly loved and admired by
us. All the emotions and sentiments that were experienced even at that tender age only proves
that there was an inherent moral sense as well as acceptable social norms and decency and the
vice of infidelity. This must have been deeply imbedded in most of us. The three years at
Highlands from about seven to ten years was certainly, the most formative period in the growth
of all those my age group. By the age of ten we knew of this concept of love and our bodies were
slowly progressing towards puberty though there was still absence of facial hair.

Most of my teachers in classes three to five were from Jaffna and were carefully recruited by the
education authorities and they must have been graduates or trained from the famous
Maharagama Teacheres’ Training College which was the best and perhaps the only one for the
whole island then. Now when I reflect on what we had learnt then it is amazing. Our class
teachers taught us apart from geography, history, arithmetic and Art , other compulsory
subjects like Tamil and English . while the entire medium of instruction was Tamil, I should say
that most of the children had a fair knowledge of English and the same system of education of
learning subjects in one’s mother tongue continued in the Elitist British type Trinity College too
until we completed 8th Std or form three.

What has remained with me till today are some of the wonderful teachings of the major Sangam
works taught to us at such a tender age covering Naladiyar, Nanneri, athichoodi etc. Along with
some of the most sublime songs from the collection of the Saivaite saints and various other
enduring aphorisms of the Tamil Savant Avvaiyar, Thiruvalluvar, Kamban etc.. Through out the
island the standard Text book for Tamil was “Bala Podhini” and all students studying wherever
had uniform knowledge of the lessons I had learnt till tenth Std, as the syllabus covering the
entire island was the same. The most remarkable thing about Sri Lankan Syllabus was it’s
uniformity and a definite slant towards the religion and literature of the majority Tamil speaking
people which was definitely Hinduism and within it’s preference for Saivaite sect. Tamil is so
closely associated with Bhakthi poetry and literature. The pristine purity, majesty and clarity along
with a highly evolved phraseology of the Tamil language is so intertwined in it’s grand
Thirumurais and Divya Prbhandams along with epics like Ramayana, Mahabharata and Sangam
works like Silapathikaram and a whole body of sangam poetic works, it is difficult to separate
religion from its vast body as the core itself is a highly sophisticated spirituality which has
resulted in such lofty works of the Nayanmars and Alwars. This being the case the Ceylon
Education Board had devised a syllabus for Tamil with the most open mind. They realised that if
the children are to imbibe and assimilate the sensibilities of their ethos and ethnicity the lessons
and the languag to be taught should connect and as such have it’s root s in the culture of their
growth and not alien to their sensibilities; as such which language could be more natural for
expression than their mother tongue ?. More over they had to cross religious and petty
communal barriers. All the students in every school , as long as they were Tamil Medium
children, irrespective of religion whether they were Muslims or Christians, had to compulsorily
learn whatever lessons were prescribed and we had seen how the entire syllabus was Hindu
oriented. The great beauty of such a system was that almost all Muslim kids knew the Ramayana,
and other epics perhaps not in it’s entirety, but at least were familiar with the epics. .

In fact a few years ago When I got interested in the life and times of Karaikalammai, a saint who
lived 1600 years ago ,it was a very dear Muslim friend who had his education at Zahira college,
Gampola and is a consummate Islamic scholar of repute, who had guided me to the works of this
saint by quoting a few verses from her incredibly lofty poetry. This was made possible as he was
also exposed to the same lessons that have moulded me, as he is my contemporary or perhaps
slightly junior to me in age. Similarly during the span of 6th std to 10th, we Hindu students also
learnt many works of great Muslim and Christian Scholars of yore. I could still freely quote fro the
Islamic scholarly work : Seera Puranam” by Umaru Pulavar and Kunnangudi Mastan Sahib
whose poetic works are of very high order. We also learnt
Veerama Munvar’s “Thembavani” and the works of the great Christian savant Vedanayagam
Pillai . Thus it was wonderful to see Hindu children quoting Islamic and Christian works or at least
being familiar as much as them possessing sufficient knowledge of what will be considered
“Hindu’ works.

Our fourth and fifth Std Teacher Mr.Benjamin hailing from Jaffna, as was the case then when the
entire island must have been covered by teachers who had been trained in their profession
making their living out side their places of nativity. Jaffna then was the academic hub of Ceylon
and many eminent scholars , the fore most of them all Ananda Coomaraswamy, Arumuga
Navalar and innumerable other brilliant academics occupying various Govt posts throughout the
twentieth century. Almost all my teachers from Kindergarten to my School final at Trinity, Kandy
were from the Jaffna Peninsula and i write all this as a homage to the Teaching fraternity who
played an immense and unforgettable role in moulding us. Mr.Benjamin at Highlands had so
lovingly nurtured love for some of the immortal works from ancient Tamil literature. We had learnt
about Avvayar and her unparallel works , and about Irrattai Pulavars the famous twin scholars of
whom one was blind the other lame. He taught us the story of the valiant mother

Who had sent her son hardly ten years of age to battle after having lost her husband and other
kin in war.

Yet so bravely and with the utmost sense of duty to her king and country she dresses up the child
soldier and bids farewell to him knowing fully well her child will never return and will be gone for
ever.

We learnt to memorise and recite so many of the ancient Tamil poems from almost all the major
works in the fifth std itself. This is the main reason why Sri Lankan Tamils still excel and are
infinitely more attached to Tamil literature and Saiva Thirumurais. The love for the language,
culture and tradition is so inbuilt into the psyche of the Tamils of Lanka and till today one will not
hear colloquial vulgarity in any of the Tamil media unlike in Tamil Nadu where the spoken
language is so repulsive, and semi literacy is glorified in the name of realism and
contemporoneity. None of the Tamil kids in Tamil Nadu know their religion and the mighty works
of the Saivaite Saints as much as the brethren in Lanka to day. We learnt Pugazhendi Pulavar’s
immortal “Nala Venba” or at least ten verses or so in the 6th Std at Trinity! All the kids in our
class room consisting of a fair amount of Muslim and Christian Children learnt without prejudice
some of the glorious verses from Kamba Ramayanam upto 10th Std. Indeed it is a foregone
conclusion in the minds of the tamils of the island that in it’s novelty, grandeur as well us
modernity Tamil stands unrivalled, and perhaps is the only language that remains spoken for
more than three thousand years retaining the same idioms and with an unchanged structure.

During this period I had spent at Highlands, That Mr.Sarajudeen AllahPitchey, who was closer to
me than any relative, and a gentleman of great dignity, poise and discretion had impressed upon
my father who as I said were good friends and neighbours, to remove me from Highlands and
admit me at Trinity , Kandy.

Trinity was a prestigious and at that time a fairly expensive proposition for my family who were
not really that affluent to afford an education in a British style boarding school, which had always
attracted Tea Planters’ children and other upper crust fro Colombo and elsewhere. Compared to
many of my friends at Trinity my background was humble, but I was always the First rank student
when I left Highlands and admission to Trinity was a cake walk when I was eleven years old. I
can never ever forget my beloved “Mama” Sarajudeen Allapitchey who had always carried me
and urged me to speak in English while being a catalyst to a young and curious boy with ready
answers for all the questions that a child of my age would ask. His wife who pre deceased him
by a couple of years was foster mother to me. She used to bathe, dress me up and sent me to
Highlands many times when I had spent the nights with the noble couple, in an old Ford Anglia
driven by her father who used to ferry children from Our Dickoya town to Hatton two miles away.
So many of my evenings were spent at the Mosque adjacent to Allapitchey’s sprawling
compound.

It was such a memorable and pleasant experience to accompany my Mama to the mosque which
had a vast

Water tank replenished by the cool springs from the perennial water source near by and was full
of colourful species of fish. Mama Sarajudeen had died only this year in Colombo and the
vacuum felt by me at this loss will last through as in the case of many of the great teachers who
had moulded and have had a lasting impact till the last call comes to me too.