CHAPTER IV

So my life from rags to riches, from elementary education to self-acquired knowledge, from shattering adversity to rewarding accomplishment, is an epitome of the determination, the tenacity, the purposefulness, and, above all, the cultural values, inculcated in me, as a Buddhist, by the teaching and the example of the Christian Fathers and Teachers who moulded my up-bringing in the impressionable age of my youth. I then learnt never to take no for an answer!

(N.U. Jayawardena, The Aloysian 1915-1990 Diamond Souvenir, p.256)

The picturesque town of Galle, with its sea front, harbour, Dutch ramparts and walled city in the Fort, figured prominently in NU’s life in the early 1920s. During Portuguese and Dutch occupation, Galle had been the main port of the island, since it possessed an excellent natural harbour, with trade and commerce with Europe and Asia conducted from there. In the 19th century, Galle continued to be a busy entrepôt and commercial hub, and was the main port of Sri Lanka up to the 1880s. Compared to Tangalle, Hambantota and Matara, Galle was a bustling town, with a variety of ethnic and religious communities – Sinhalese, Tamil, Muslim, South Indian Chettiar, European, and Burghers of Portuguese and Dutch descent – with their temples, kovils, mosques and churches. Galle had several large girls’ and boys’ schools run by Christian missions or by theBuddhist Theosophical Society.

There were government and mercantile offices, banks, hotels, cinemas, and shops. Among the important foreign mercantile establishments in Galle were: E. Coates & Co., Charles P. Hayley & Co., Volkart Bros., and the engineering firm of Walkers. Main Street had several large shops – The Galle Stores, National Stores, Modern Drapery Stores, Abdul Rahims, and Lakmini Jewellers, among others.

St. Aloysius’ teachers residence and college hall (c.1910)

Norah Roberts (1993, pp.10-13) recalls the popularity of Galle’s first cinema hall, the Britannica Picture Palace (later called Queen’s), which opened in 1924 showing Charlie Chaplin’s The Truant. Norah Roberts (the daughter of civil servant T.W. Roberts from Barbados and his British wife Florence Tarrent) was the librarian of the Galle Library from 1940 to 1982. In her book on Galle, she notes the changes in Galle in the 19th and early 20th centuries:

Galle port won international fame. Galle town gained Municipal status. Galle Main Street was built up and the shops sold all kinds of imported groceries, textiles, crockery, cutlery, medicines, iron and steel goods, roads linked villages with the town and with each other and railroads, motor cars, lorries and buses… carried people from Galle to Colombo. (Roberts, 1993, p.115)

At the age of 12, NU was enrolled at St. Aloysius’ College and lived, as mentioned earlier, with his eldest sister Charlotte (1903-90) and her husband, Thevis Nanayakkara (1893-1976) at Mihiripenna, a village near Talpe, 6 miles south of Galle along the coast.

Nanayakkara was the District Sales Manager of the US Singer Company, the largest sewing-machine company in the world, which had stores in Colombo, Kandy, Galle and Jaffna. NU recalled attending their wedding in 1919, going there in a bullock cart. Charlotte and her husband looked after NU and his brothers Peter and David throughout the period of their education at St. Aloysius’ in the 1920s. Charlotte, who was five years older than NU, married at the age of 16.

During the time NU lodged with her, she gave birth to her first two children, Eugene in 1921, and Newton in 1923; she had seven more children, which was not unusual at the time. In fact, NU’s mother had her last two children in the same years that Charlotte had her first two. In later life, Charlotte’s daughter Madeleine recalled how NU would study with a book in one hand while holding a baby on his shoulder with the other (Chandrani Jayawardena, personal communication).

When NU went home for school holidays there were even more babies to look after, as his three younger sisters were born between 1919 and 1923. In 1927 his older sister, Rosalind, married Edwin Wijeyewickrema of Weraduwa, Matara, who was employed in the Postal Department. Edwin had been a student at St. Servatius’ during NU’s time, and according to Rosalind’s daughter Chandrani, it was NU who proposed that his sister Rosalind marry his former schoolmate.

Among the Jesuits

St. Aloysius’, a Catholic school founded by Jesuits in 1895, was situated on an elevated site called Mount Calvary in the northern part of Galle near the railway station. There were many other good schools in Galle, notably Richmond College started by Methodists in 1876, and Mahinda College, the leading English-medium Buddhist boys’ school in Galle founded by the Buddhist Theosophical Society (BTS) in 1892. To such schools, bright male students came from around the Southern Province. The parallel girls’ schools in Galle were the Sacred Heart Convent started by the Catholic Sisters of Charity in 1896, Southlands founded by Methodists in 1885, and Sangamitta School opened by Buddhists in 1919. In the early decades of all these schools, whether Christian or Buddhist, the principals and teachers included Burghers and Europeans with high educational qualifications.

Galle businesses advertising inThe Aloysian

The Jayawardena sisters Charlotte and Rosalind left school at around the age of 12; NU’s three younger sisters, Wimala, Sita and Hilda attended Christ Church school in Tangalle, a Protestant school which taught in the English medium. NU’s family, it seems, preferred an English-medium education, and valued the prestige and reputed academic excellence of Christian schools. One son of a maternal cousin of NU’s was Professor Jothiya Dheerasekera (now Bhikku Dhammavihari), who lived next to NU’s father’s house in Tangalle and attended Christ Church School, accompanying NU’s younger sisters to school. NU was at that time at St. Aloysius’, and on his vacations in Tangalle he used to bring books by British poets and writers and even an atlas to share with the other children (Bhikku Dhammavihari, 2006, interview with K. Jayawardena). Walking daily from the Galle railway station to St. Aloysius’, along Kaluwella High Street, NU would have passed through a busy area where there were several kittangi, or business houses of South Indian Chettiars who were moneylenders and pawnbrokers – the best known at the time being Letchiman Chettiar. Also along this road were jewellery shops, grocery stores, and small shops (kadey) and kiosks, and near the school were also the usual street vendors selling fruits, sweets and snacks. It is likely that NU, as he walked to school, would have observed and absorbed the commercial activity around him.

St. Aloysius’ came under the direct supervision of the Jesuit clergy, who arrived in Sri Lanka in 1893. Jesuits were mainly concerned with education, and establishing their schools in the colonies, especially in China, India, Indonesia and Japan. St. Francis Xavier was among the early Jesuit missionaries of the 16th century to work in India, and by the 19th century Jesuits were starting high schools and universities in South Asia. In all their educational ventures, the Jesuits abided by the “Loyolan principles,” which promoted excellence in all areas of activity.

Fruit Vendors

Many Jesuit schools throughout the world were named in honour of St. Aloysius Gonzaga (1568-91) the Catholic patron saint of youth. (St. Aloysius Gonzaga (1568-91) was born into nobility, and at the age of 18 joined the Jesuit Order. He was afflicted by illness from childhood and devoted his short life to caring for the sick, serving in a hospital during an outbreak of the plague of 1587. He died at the age of 23, after contracting the disease.) It is said that he was inspired to join the Jesuit order after having read a book about their missionary work in India. There is also a school named after St. Aloysius in Mangalore, India, which was founded around the same time as St. Aloysius’ College, Galle. It is also situated on top of a hill and is similar in its architecture.

Catholic schools developed fairly rapidly, and by 1892 the Catholics in Sri Lanka had the largest number of schools teaching in Sinhala and Tamil (209), as well as 14 English-medium high schools (Boudens, 1979, p.170). This hierarchy of schools was class-based. The small free schools teaching in Sinhala or Tamil catered to the urban and rural poor, while the more-prestigious English-medium schools were for the aspiring middle and lower-middle classes of the country.

In 1893 five Catholic dioceses – Colombo, Jaffna, Kandy, Trincomalee and Galle – were established. The Galle diocese included the districts of Galle, Matara, Ratnapura and Hambantota. In this carving up into religious ‘spheres of influence,’ the Galle diocese was allocated to the Jesuits. There were few Catholics in the Southern Province diocese, but many Buddhist children attended Catholic schools. A high proportion of the teachers and heads of these schools were Italian, Belgian, Irish and French priests. NU may have been enrolled at St. Aloysius’ College through contacts with Catholic clergy in his two earlier schools, St. Mary’s (Hambantota) and St. Servatius’ College (Matara). In February 1920, NU aged 12 entered St. Aloysius’ in Form 1, and studied at this school up to January 1925. St. Aloysius’ College provided a good education and training, which enabled boys to obtain positions in the colonial administration and in mercantile establishments. The levying of fees shut out children from poorer homes, but the families who could afford it, or managed to raise the money, found the expense a good investment, which could bring them status. The curricula of these schools, their methods of teaching, and extracurricular activities, were modelled on the lines of the public schools in Britain.

Studying in the Train

NU’s life was heavily regulated by train schedules from Talpe, where he lived with his sister Charlotte, to Galle. He described his train journey to school:

My period in College was in the aftermath of World War I and the ensuing depression. I travelled by train to Galle and back from Talpe. Trains were invariably late, particularly the Colombo-Matara Express scheduled to arrive in Galle at 7:30 p.m., but [which] usually made it by 9 p.m. to 10 p.m. So, I arrived home rather late in the night. (The Aloysian 1915-1990, p.255)

Galle Ramparts

NU would talk with emotion of his experiences and the hardships he endured, travelling between his home and school:

I used to get three cents as pocket money, which at that time was enough for a tea, a bun and a plantain. However, though I had the opportunity of travelling to school by train, it was yet a very tedious journey. Once again I would get up at about five in the morning and walk to reach the (Talpe) railway station, for the train arrived any time between 7:00 and 7:30. I reached school by 8:00 or 8:30. On my return journey there was only one train, which was usually delayed, and invariably, I would get home at about 9:00 in the night or sometimes as late as midnight. However, this travelling did help me in my schoolwork. (interview by Manel Abhayaratne)

St. Aloysius de Gonzaga

NU frequently recalled, with some pride, how he spent the time while waiting for trains:

All my reading and homework was done at the railway station in Galle. Perhaps, that is what helped me in developing the formats of grammar and spelling and even the pronunciation of words. At that time the people in rural areas were not very conversant in English. In fact, many of them did not even speak the language, and so the dictionary was my teacher and companion. (interview by Manel Abhayaratne)

He utilized the hours spent in the train and station waiting-room, which became his ‘study’ for reading and memorizing, while his brothers played cricket on the platform of the station. The many accumulated hours of study paid dividends in later life. As his daughterNeiliya Perera writes:

His language and versatility of writing, even at the age of 94 years when he died, was something unbelievable! He impressed on us the need for education and reminded us that when he had to stand on the way back home as the train was invariably crowded, he would stand under a light with an Oxford Pocket Dictionary in his hand and memorize the words and their meanings.

NU epitomized the Victorian slogan of ‘Self-help,’ popularized by a best-selling book of that name by Samuel Smiles, about the virtue and rewards of hard work and individual enterprise. This book in later years had pride of place in NU’s library.

Drawing of vendors by an Aloysian schoolboy

The Rail-Bus Phenomenon

The excitement of train travel for schoolchildren, including NU and his younger brothers, is reflected in an article in the school magazine written by NU in 1922. (The article was signed: “D.U. Jayawardena (Form 6)” – an obvious mistake. Reading this interesting essay in the school magazine, the ideas, flow of writing and content flag the article as having been written by NU, who would have been in Form 6, and not his younger brother DU, who would have been only 12 at the time.) The amusing and surprisingly perceptive essay lends some historical insight into the introduction of an interesting mode of rail transport, the ‘rail bus.’ It is also significant as probably the earliest article with an economic angle published by NU, aged 14 – and his next known article would not appear until 12 years later.

In the school article, NU explains how the creation of the ‘rail bus’ occurred after the motorbus – a more economical and comfortable form of travel – was introduced into Sri Lanka. NU describes the ‘rail bus’ as:

… a long bogie carriage which can go either way like a centipede. It runs on the ordinary rails, and is driven by steam. The carriage is lit with electricity and it has even electric fans.

According to the article, while in theory it may have been a good idea, in reality the rail bus was often overcrowded, and frequently broke down, resulting in delays and inconvenience for its passengers. He concluded the article by questioning the logic of running

the rail bus, pointing out that “an ordinary train run at the same time and at the same rates would give the same return at less cost” (The Aloysian, 1924, pp.315-16).

(Excerpted from N.U. JAYAWARDENA The first five decades)
By Kumari Jayawardena and Jennifer Moragoda

To be continued