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Monthly Archives: October 2011

Colombo Changes 4 – Return to a new world

26 Wednesday Oct 2011

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Colombo, Lakmahal, Oxford

When I came back in 1975 in between degrees, Lakmahal was as full as it had always been, my sister and her friends still at university, my brother engaged to be married. By 1978 however they had gone away. My sister was at Cornell after having done a year at Oxford, my brother was still there, mainly to work towards his FRCS but, given my father’s keenness that all his children get Oxford degrees, I had also managed to persuade my old College to give him a place for an MSc, which he duly obtained.

My father’s enthusiasm for the old English universities, which he had not been able to attend because of the War, was not on behalf only of his family. He had previously sent to University College both Gajan Pathmanathan, one of our neighbours on Alfred House Road, and Chanaka Amaratunga, the College accepting them without interviews on his recommendation and mine. Gajan proved a model student, Chanaka not quite that, given his devotion to the Oxford Union. Also, he had only done Arithmetic for his Ordinary Levels, and his Economic Tutors found his ignorance of Mathematics difficult to deal with. I  spent much time therefore promoting his case with a History Tutor from Prussia, who approved of his cut and dried view of the world, and the Chaplain, who had a heart of gold, and in the end he was able to obtain his degree. There was no question but that he was enormously able academically, provided subtle calculations were not required, and he went on to obtain a doctorate from the School of Oriental and African Studies in London.

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Lakmahal 4 – Making a Match: A Time of Promise

22 Saturday Oct 2011

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Cyril Wickremesinghe, Esme Goonewardene, Lakmahal

Cyril and Esme Wickremesinghe when he served in Puttlam

Cyril Wickremesinghe and Esme Goonewardene married in 1919, and were stationed in various places in the country over the next seventeen years, before finally settling down in Lakmahal at the beginning of 1937. Their eldest son, Cyril Esmond Lucien, was born in 1920. Interestingly, they moved thereafter to Ceylonese names, Tissa in 1923, Lakshman in 1927, and in between their only daughter Mukta, named in memory of the pearl fisheries Cyril had supervised when he was stationed in Puttalam.

He had risen rapidly in the service, becoming the first Ceylonese Government Agent in 1930. This was in Sabaragamuwa, and there is a wonderful portrait of him and his wife seated in state along with the Sabaragamuwa chiefs in their traditional costumes, headed by old Maduwanwala Dissawa with his flowing white beard. But even more evocative for me of that bygone age is a photograph of a much younger couple, stunningly attractive both of them, taken it seems in Puttalam, which would make it the early twenties. They are surrounded by young men in studiedly casual European sports clothes. The womenfolk are much more formal, staid almost, with my grandmother looking almost ethereal in the middle.

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Colombo Changes 3 – The decline of old elites

04 Tuesday Oct 2011

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Colombo, Old Place, W J Fernando

Outside Colombo too things had changed by the mid-seventies, as the privileges of those who had enjoyed them before were reduced. In some respects this was obviously a good thing, but in others the new privileged class that emerged was that of the politicians and their associates and, even more often than in the past, privilege tended to be abused. Under the United Front government there was at least the possibility of rejection at the polls, so that there were – or should have been – some restraints on licence. With the practices introduced by Jayewardene however, not only his zany electoral system, but also the manner in which he avoided elections altogether for over a decade, there was no possibility of relief for the people from some at least of those who abused them.

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