Once Upon a Tender Time

by Carl Muller

  When the Portuguese, after lobbing lots of cannon balls and skirmishing up- and down-coast, became the rulers of Ceylon’s maritime provinces, they were determined to make the island a part of Portugal. The King of Portugal was proclaimed sovereign of the country, but the natives, who were simple souls and picked their teeth sixty-seven times a day, could not relate to some pot-belly in Lisbon who could be, as far as they knew, in some other plane of existence. Rather, they adopted the Portuguese Captain-General as their king. At least they could see him, hear him and comfort themselves that he was among them. Later they even called him the King of Malwana, which is a sleepy hollow in the hinterland where the best rambuttans are grown.1

  The Dutch who wore long faces and tramped in in 1658, belonged to an armed merchant company with an eye for heavy dividends and the main chance. They found Ceylon in a chaotic state with the Portuguese-fashioned local administration in the hands of a bunch of sleazeballs. Also, there were a lot more sergeants than privates.

  Native converts to Catholicism rode roughshod over the common, unbaptized herd. There were titles galore, and the only way an ambitious Sinhalese could go places was to accept baptism, latch a saint’s name to his and join the brigand’s brigade.

  The Dutch found this whole boiling administrative jungle too, too complicated for words. The generals had native officials who were known as Basnayakes and Mohottiars, 2 and there were judges called Ouvidors who called the shots and sent out their sidekicks, the Maralleiros on perambulating assizes with instructions to bring back, by way of fines, as much dressed and raw provision as could be wrested from hapless native peasants who were completely overawed by the system and submitted, tamely enough.

  The Vendor de Fazenda collected taxes. He prepared a thombo (Lands Register) and, with the connivance of Factors, Secretaries and Sub-accountants, went around like the Sheriff of Nottingham’s scurvy band, collecting royal dues in cash and kind. Naturally, nobody took kindly to them and once in a while a better constituted native would slip a knife between a Factor’s ribs. This, of course, was frowned on.

  In the Forts, there were Captain-Majors and Captains of Forts and Captains of Divisions. They rode Malaga horses and wore thigh boots and bodkins and inspected pikemen and drank too much sweet wine.

  The dour-faced Dutch found the whole Portuguese edifice a hopeless mess . . . and as confusing as a wrongly laced corset. There were, for example, a lot of pompous birds with some sort of fluffy cushions on their heads and pillows tied to their middles, called Disavas (the head of a unit of territory called a disavani.) These stuffy fellows controlled gangs of Lascarins, the local militia, and were assisted by gung-ho types called Mudaliyars, Muhandirams, Aarachchis and legal bimbos called Basnayakes and Mohottalas. To rub in the salt, each disavani was made up of smaller units called korales which were in the tender hands of the headman of the korale.

  This bloke could summon, in a pinch, sundry minor Mudaliyars and Muhandirams, and in overview it was a seething, sorry picture of a lot of people swaggering around and playing silly buggers and chucking their importance under each other’s noses. The Portuguese even took the humble village headman and called him a Mayoral, which made the said headman think no end of himself, and all these little tin gods went on a binge, so to say, and became recklessly arbitrary and were imbued with the greedy Portuguese ideas of profit and be damned! What was formerly tribute and fees degenerated into open, naked bribery. Oppression followed. There were vicious punishments. The sudden desertion of villages, the break-up of lascar contingents as the natives went ‘awol’ and rebellion rumbled everywhere.

  The Dutch stuck a governor in charge and set about cleaning up. The Portuguese had made a mistake. They had imagined that, in baptizing a native and giving him a saint’s name, the convert would think, act and behave . . . well, like a Portuguese. On the contrary, the Sinhalese took the water, the Sign of the Cross, the Chrism of Salvation (which was simply a dab of salt on the tongue) and went on to be converts of the best sort. Hah! now to convert all the assets of the village!

  The Dutch Governor set up a Political Council and divided Ceylon into the Commanderies of Colombo, Galle and Jaffna. Dutchmen took on the role of Disavas and kept a few native aides who rejoiced in the name of Ata Pattu Mudaliyar—glorified headmen. (Ata Pattu was Mudaliyar of the eight partus. That’s the eight subdivisions of a korale. Likewise we have Atu Korale—eight korales which make up a disavani. This should give readers a hazy idea of the administrative pecking order.) The outstations had some half-and-half fellows called Lieutenant Disavas. All good fun, actually with hoi polloi looking on, shrugging, spitting blobs of betel juice and wondering when the circus would come to an end.

  The Dutch reduced the native machinery. The Basnayakes and Mohotallas ceased to exist, went back to their villages with their tails between their legs. Some tried to brazen things out and were, if village lore is accepted, set upon and soundly belaboured. The Mudaliyars, however, scraped through. They kowtowed to such an extent that the Dutch Governor, quite impressed by their pretensions of loyalty, even upgraded some of them to Maha Mudaliyar (Great Mudaliyar) status.

  Soon the Mudaliyars wormed their way into the korales, booted out the Vidanes and became Mudaliyars of the korales. This put paid to the Atu Korales too, who were the Vidanes’ assistants.

  Thus did the Dutch cut the native ‘nobility’ to size, and those who made protest were told to make themselves useful, promote the interests of the VOC (Veeringdee Oost-Indische Compagnie—the Dutch East India Company) and stop being so bloody pompous and a general pain in the ass. To spur them on, the Dutch also dangled ceremonial gold chains, medals and land grants. Get cracking, they were told and you’ll get a medal and a chain and a tract of areca nut land.

  The British who came in singing ‘Rule Britannia’ were appalled. Also, they found the central kingdom of Kandy thumbing a nose at Europe in general and blithely carrying on as in the days of yore with all manner of palace-bred Adigars, Disavas, Rate Mahattayas, Atu Korales, Atu Pattus, Lekams, Vidanes and Muhandirams rabbitting around in weird costumes and being exceedingly ceremonial and scheming against each other as in a sort of highly immoral obligation.

  The British would have none of it. They were determined that all Ceylon must be theirs. Can’t have Her Imperial Majesty tilt her head, wobble her double chins and ask: ‘And what, my lords, are we doing ahbaht Kandy? We are h’informed in dispatches that Ceylon is ours. We h’arsk assurance. H’all of Ceylon, we h’arsk. H’and we are told h’almost all. ‘Ow is this, my lords? H’ar we then sovereign offer h’almostall country?’

  So the British struggled up the mountains and captured Kandy as well. It was a tough campaign. The Kandyans kept rolling rocks down on them and using the mountains to carry out all manner of ambuscades, guerilla tactics and vicious stabs in the back. But, with the services of a few self-serving souls, they triumphed and so was the island truly and completely under foreign yoke . . . and in came a new infestation of white sahibs to structure a Civil Service along the lines of the ‘covenanted service’ of the British East India Company.

  It was the British belief that the Empire of India rested on European superiority. The Britishers moved into India, each with the intention of returning to England some day with sufficient loot—sorry, means—to live out the rest of their lives in comfort, laced with tea, crumpets and gin. In Ceylon, too, this was pretty much the case. Blighters from Blighty swarmed in with the sole intention of making a fortune and returning, ‘nabob’ style to Dorset, Pearson Road, N.E., Beaumont Road, Plymouth or wherever. Soon British administration at ground floor level was simply all manner of ginger-moustached square pegs bunging up all manner of round holes.

  This was a pyramid of sorts. The British sat, bandy-legged at the top. Below sat lesser Brits who were brought in for decorative purpose. Below sat the local Portuguese and Dutch settlers, the Burghers, who were, in a sense, ‘western’ and deserved such recognition. At the base scrabbled the Sinhalese
and Tamils, with the Tamils pushing harder for recognition and promotion to a sort of mezzanine floor which was as far as the natives were allowed to get. But they clung to their positions with great fondness while the Tamils exhibited a great measure of hardheadedness and a near insane fervour to rise, oust the Burghers by hook or by crook and get into the middle.

  The chronicler craves his reader’s indulgence in quoting a Minute by Englishman Robert Hobart. It puts, in a nutshell, the problems the British countenanced. On 9 June 1797, Hobart said that:

  . . . the precariousness of our position, the short period the whole of the Dutch settlements have been in our hands, the difficulty of obtaining information, the distrust of the natives, the indisposition of the Dutch, were obstacles to a successful management.

  Yes, the British found it a hard nut. Civil servants from Madras, well schooled in their work, were shipped in . . . and this caused more problems. It is an age-old story, actually: wherever one Indian goes, others quickly follow. With the coming of the Madrasis, south Indians flocked in and soon, the Madras bureaucrats picked Malabaris to take over the duties of Sinhalese Mudaliyars and Headmen. The Tamils, through the good offices of the Madras government, began to ride the wavecrest. The Burghers continued to be ‘looked after’. The Sinhalese, tragically, were left out in the cold . . . and this, tragically too, was their land. The Malabaris became the tax collectors and called the shots in the villages. The Sinhalese fretted and fumed. Open revolt was their only recourse.

  When revolt came, the British realized that they were losing their grip on the country. Clearly, Indian forms and administrative methods had proved disastrous. The usual things happened, just as they happen today. A Committee of Investigation was appointed, and in the proceedings we find this sad-faced mea culpa:

  The habits and prejudices of a nation can only be changed by one or two means—gradually, by mildness and a clear demonstration of the superior advantages they will derive from the proposed alterations: or violently, by the compulsive efforts of superior force . . . mildness and persuasion, it appears, were not the distinguishing features of our change of system, and our force was inadequate to compel obedience.3

  And so, things got better and by 1801 it was decided that Ceylon would be turned into a Crown Colony and the dust began to settle . . . and through it all the Burghers went blithely on, quite happy in the fact that they were the only section of an explosive citizenry with no axe to grind and being quite content with whatever rung of the ladder they stood on. They brought into the world large broods of handsome children who were looked upon lecherously and sought after to adorn office or wear uniforms and be pressed into marriage at the first hint of ripeness. Of them, Sonnaboy von Bloss drove a railway engine and wife Beryl bore his children (and aborted those that were not) and son Carloboy, who was a very imaginative child, spent the first six years of his life firm in the belief that sisters did nothing but urinate alarmingly and that Mummy was there to beat him, sew clothes, read True Confessions, sing, and make funny noises at night when Daddy was with her.

  It was best, Sonnaboy said, to put Carloboy into a ‘proper’ school. St Lawrence’s School in Wellawatte, run by the Pouliers, was all very well for a little boy with a Radiant Way and a box of well-chewed Parrot crayons, but where was the ‘serious’ education? Sonnaboy had been startled at the Lower School demands: cartridge paper, plasticine, a primer, coloured paper, tracing paper, pencil, eraser, gum and scissors, a big pastel drawing book, crayons, scrapbook . . . He went to the school one day, looked in and came away muttering.

  ‘Holding hands and singing “Three Blind Mice” and some nonsense and building blocks all over the floor and all,’ he growled. ‘Just paying the fees to go and play? Sending to learn, no?’

  Beryl was young enough to know how nursery schools operated. ‘So never mind. And anyway he is reading much more here, no?’ she would say. ‘Just let be for now.’

  ‘Kindger garden!’ Sonnaboy snorted. ‘No wonder no one studying when sending to a garden! Fine bloody school, just to go and play and come!’

  ‘So never mind, men,’ Beryl said again, ‘threeanaharf hours peace in the morning now. Otherwise just fighting with Diana and no rest for anybody.’

  Sonnaboy grunted. Beryl had a point. He liked to take a turn in bed with her on his mornings off. It was easy to get rid of Poddi and Diana and the baby. Just tell Poddi to keep the children in the veranda. But Carloboy was another matter. He would scuttle around the house, bang on the bedroom door, demand to know why it was locked. One day he had shinned up to the window and Beryl, luckily, had seen his shadow against the blind. ‘My God,’ she hissed, ‘that damn child is going to look through the window! Get up! Quickly! Put a towel or something!’

  It was close. Carloboy clutching at the window bars, saw his father’s thunderous face and Mummy breathing heavily on the bed. There was a sheet and two pillows on her but one leg, from mid-thigh lay uncovered. Sonnaboy roared so loud, so long, that the boy fell off his perch into a bed of balsams and screeched. Mummy rushed out, slapped him, slapped Poddi too, for not keeping an eye on ‘the devil’. The window was closed thereafter and Carloboy would remark on this.

  ‘There, can see? Now door closing, window also. Don’t know why.’

  Poddi would snap, ‘For that never mind. You just come here and play, will you.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Last time saw, no, what happened.’

  Carloboy considered, ‘So what there they are doing?’

  ‘Just being there, must be.’

  ‘For why?’

  ‘I how to know?’

  Life had too many mysteries for an imaginative six-year-old.

  Chapter Three

  Sonnaboy was an ‘old Joe’—having schooled, albeit sketchily, at St Joseph’s College until that institution had grown so crowded that the Roman Catholic Bishop of Colombo (who was later made Archbishop and made his Borella residence a ‘palace’) decided to create another school to ease the strain. Thus was St Peter’s College set up in Bambalapitiya and Sonnaboy and about 200 other junior schoolboys transferred to the new school. He was, thus, a Josephian turned Peterite. Soon, the schools developed a rivalry (as most schools do) and met in an annual cricket encounter (also as most schools do) and hordes of Peterites to this day carry blue, white and gold flags and jeer the Josephians who brandish their colours of blue, white and blue and call the Peterites Shit Pot Carriers because the initials S.P.C. also stand for St Peter’s College. This is a pattern zealously followed to this day.

  As said, this was a queasy year. In Europe, civilized people were priming to kill each other en masse, mothers found Hitler useful in getting children to bed and Sonnaboy was going to spread suburban unease by planning a move to Wellawatte. Last year his father, Cecilprins, had died, putting paid to the family Christmas as effectively as if he had used a flame thrower and with the coastal towns rapidly emptying as families headed for the hills for fear of air raids, old Pheobus came bearing glad tidings. Sonnaboy could move to 34th Lane, Wellawatte—to his old house and pay much less rental too.1

  Carloboy, like all small boys, was self-centred and couldn’t relate to death. Also, it was Christmas, and why did Grandpapa have to die anyway? He had stared, and wondered at all the hullabaloo and demanded to make his jigsaw puzzle, and had crept into the storeroom to stamp his foot and scowl at the old cupboard with the torn mesh, after Beryl had clouted him and snatched the box away.

  ‘Damn little brute!’ she had stormed. ‘Your grandpa is dead, do you hear! Just see, will you,’ she told Anna, who was heaving like a whale who didn’t fancy Jonah, ‘time like this he’s taking the jigsaw puzzle. Not a tear in the eye.’

  Anna gave a low moan and slumped on the settee which immediately released a protesting spring.

  Beryl warmed to her theme. ‘Next time ask to take the batanball and go to the cemetery. Get out of here! Can’t even cry in peace!’

  Carloboy was annoyed. He couldn’t understan
d what all the frenzy was about. Daddy had given him a jigsaw puzzle. His Christmas present. He was entranced with the big box and the picture on the cover—a Greek temple, cypresses, blue hills, stone columns and a mackerel sky. One thousand pieces, the box proclaimed. Sonnaboy had also given him a penknife. That, too, was utterly scrumptious. Two blades, a corkscrew, and another flat blade with a cut-out slot for opening crown corks, and a spatula-like projection which was ideal, he thought, for prising objects out of wood or plaster. The blades were marvellous. The main knife, notched at the top to be drawn out by the application of a fingernail, was a shiny thing of pure venom. It caught the joy light of the boy’s eyes, and both shone together in a constellation of belonging.

  Beryl was angry. ‘Nice thing to give,’ she had scolded, ‘now will take and cut something or cut himself or do something devilish, you see, will you. Don’t come to say anything afterwards. That a thing to give? And . . . and you’re not to take that thing to school, you heard?’

  Carloboy heard and nodded dumbly. The longer he lived the more he was convinced that Mummy hated him. Daddy, he reasoned, was not so bad. Carloboy admired his father. He would regard Sonnaboy’s massive frame, meaty forearms and biceps and the pantherish way he moved and then consider his own thin, white arms ruefully. But Daddy was always away, driving trains to places he had never seen or known. It wasn’t that Beryl made life for her son unpleasant. It was just her way and the fact that being married reminded her that she was only twenty-two, had three children and was once again feeling that morning queasiness in this queasy year and was haunted by images of babies by the dozen, clotheslines full of diapers, cupboards full of gripe mixture and Dr Rutnam’s latest wisecrack: ‘Better if reserve a bed for you in the maternity home.’ But between her bouts of temper and shaking Poddi by her hair and screaming at her son and daughter and nursing the baby, there were those softer periods when she sang, and sewed, and sang, and brushed Diana’s hair and sang . . .