Travels with Ena: Home Stays – Part 4

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A Way in the World, Affiliated University College, Anil’s Ghost, Anuradhapura, Australian High Commissioner, British Council, Commonwealth, David Woolger, Dileeni Raheem, Dodo Fernando, Ena de Silva, Ena de Silva Fabrics, GELT Centre, Gill Juleff, Herbert Keuneman, In the Skin of a Lion, Ismeth Raheem, Jeevan Thiagarajah, Many Voices, Michael Ondaatje, Nihal Fernando, Nirmali Hettiarachchi, Peter Rowe, Phyllis Ratwatte, Raji Ratwatte, Regi Siriwardena, Richard de Zoysa, Running in the Family, Scott Richards, Shanthi Wilson, Suren Ratwatte, The English Patient, The Enigma of Arrival, The Ground Beneath Her Feet, The Moor’s Last Sigh, Yala

In addition to writing and loafing, there was also much talking. In the early years there was usually some sort of a party there, one or other member of what we termed the Hard Core, the group of relations (which of course included Shanthi Wilson, her parents having been close to both Ena and Phyllis for decades) which went to Yala. As that generation, my sister and Raji and Suren Ratwatte, and those they wed in the course of the eighties, became too busy for more than the occasional trip, I found an older generation in attendance, to go with Ena to Yala and also spend time at Alu. Nihal and Dodo Fernando were the main figures early on, and later  Ismeth and Dileeni Raheem, all of them entertaining companions, full of fascinating information, not always the most useful.

I also took up several of my own friends, all my foreign guests whom I thought worthy of the honour, and the few local friends I thought Ena would find congenial. Ena’s favourite amongst them was Nirmali Hettiarachchi, who also took her family up on occasion, while Jeevan Thiagarajah also got on extremely well with Ena though I would have thought they did not have much in common. But, like Richard, his ancestors had been part of the circles Ena had moved in, and even more than Richard he had extremely good manners of an old fashioned sort, which Ena much appreciated. She did not however have any good words to say about Jeevans’s wife, and as usual her instincts proved correct, for some years later there was a most acrimonious parting.

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The Moonemalle Inheritance: Part One – Old Place – Lakshmi on her own

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Bishop Lakshman, Indo-Lankan Accord of 1987, JVP, Kurunagala, Leo Moonemalle Goonewardene, Old Place, Phyllis Ratwatte

Leo died in August 1971, and Lakshmi stayed on by herself at the Old Place for 17 years more. Of course she could not move immediately, for Ida survived till the January of 1972, and obviously Lakshmi could not have left Kurunagala while her old aunt stayed on, with her Burgher companion and, by then, I think only one old woman to cook and clean. And perhaps, having survived to all intents and purposes by herself, in the rest of the large house, and having begun to manage the estates that remained to her, she decided then that she could survive on her own at the Old Place, at least until she had set up an establishment of her own in Colombo.

Though her aunt, my grandmother, would have been quite happy to have her at Lakmahal, Lakshmi was too fiercely independent to have become part of someone else’s household.  Sometimes I wonder indeed whether, doing her own thing at the Old Place for so long, she would not have stayed on even longer, were it not for the rising tide of JVP violence, following the Indo-Lankan Accord of 1987, and the obviously increasing danger to a woman by herself in a large house.

The Moonemalle Inheritance: Part One – Old Place – Old Place in Colombo

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Bandaranaike, Church of Ceylon, Cyril Abeynaike, Elephant House, Hewadiwela Christians, J R Jayewardene, Kurunagala, Leo Moonemalle Goonewardene, Lucille Moonemalle, Old Place, Phyllis Ratwatte, Sir Richard Aluwihare, St. Anthony’s Kochchikade

Apart from the joys of staying at the Old Place during the holidays, we also had the pleasure of Leo and Lakshmi coming down practically every fortnight to Colombo to stay with us for a long weekend. They came in his old Humber Hawk, which seemed to us a very grand car, stopping on the way into Colombo at St. Anthony’s Kochchikade, a ritual doubtless instituted by Dottie, who had been a Catholic. That is why Leo and Dottie, and now Lakshmi, are not buried near the rest of the family, but lie in the Catholic section of the cemetery in Kurunagala.

Leo was not especially religious, but Lakshmi was, and was delighted when I decided once to go with her to the Catholic Church at Christmas. My uncle the Bishop was deeply upset that I had not been to his cathedral that day, and was only slightly mollified when I said I had gone to a Catholic Mass at midnight. I suspect he understood that I was getting tired of church-going, and was more interested in spectacle rather than dogma. This has lasted, contrary to his hope that it would be a temporary phase, which he said comfortingly that most young people went through, though I had started it earlier than most.