Aachchi – My Heroine

by Jayantha Perera

Aachchi (my paternal grandmother)’s claim to fame was a story about her mother’s bravery. My great-grandmother was 160-years old when the Krakatoa Volcano in the Javanese Sea erupted in 1883. She ran with her brother to the seabed to catch gasping fish left behind by the receding waves. When the sea swelled and exploded, it took her about a hundred metres before dashing her onto a building. If we pressed for more drama, Aachchi would say that her mother rode high waves and swam home over the railway track and coconut trees.

Aachchi’s father was a carpenter at Wakari Binkari (Walkers and Briggs) Company in Colombo. After work, he bathed in the Beira Lake before going home. One day, while having his evening bath, he saw someone stealing his clothes. He came out of the lake and hit the thief with a club. The thief fell into the lake. My great-grandfather thought the thief would try to stay underwater and waited ten minutes for him to resurface. As the thief did not, he hurriedly wore his white sarong and cotton jacket and went home, never to come to Colombo again. Aachchi was his third child. She attended Sinhala Catholic Girls’ School until fourth standard and left school to look after her sick mother.

My paternal grandfather was a school dropout. When he was 20, he joined a rubber estate as a field assistant. On several occasions, he smelt cigarette smoke but could not see anybody nearby. One day, a fellow worker found him fallen face down and unconscious in an abandoned block of rubber land. When revived, he complained that a demon attacked him. He had bruises on his neck, face and chest. The parish priest, an expert on demonic possession, had taken charge of my grandfather. After a week of prayer and negotiations with the demon, the priest claimed that he had expelled the demon and sent my grandfather home. The experience with a demon changed his personality altogether. He roamed the village aimlessly and occasionally joined fishermen to pull seine nets and empty boats after their return from the sea. Some people thought that he was still possessed by a spirit.

Soon after marrying my grandfather, Aachchi realised that she had to earn a living as she could not depend on her husband for money. Fortunately, she owned a few pieces of land, which her father had given her as a dowry. She started a small business in her verandah with the money she got from selling a piece of land. She bought vegetables, fruits, and rice from the Sunday market in Kalutara Town and sold them with a small profit. Her husband frequently demanded money from her to buy cigars and arrack. Whenever she refused, he assaulted her, and neighbours had to intervene to calm them down. Men in their neighbourhood were notorious for frequent fights and the beating of wives. The neighbourhood was known as ‘alakalanchi Usaviya’ (noisy courtyard).

Thaththa (my father) received much attention from his mother as an only child. Aachchi wanted to send him to Holy Cross College in Kalutara to study in the English medium. She started saving money to send him to the College. Aachchi cooked food, chopped firewood, and fetched water for several households to earn an extra rupee. When Thaththa was about seven, she took him to Holy Cross College and met the College Principal, a French priest. The priest agreed to admit Thaththa but refused to exempt him from paying hefty school and facilities fees. Aachchi then enrolled him in Lansi Palliya (Dutch School) at Paiyagala. The school’s history goes back to the 18^th century. The Dutch established several palliyas (schools) in the Western Province, and the Lansi Palliya was one of them. In the 1920s, it was known as an excellent Government-funded Sinhala Buddhist school.

The parish priest learned that Aachchi had enrolled Thaththa at Lansi Palliya. He sent for Aachchi and told her that thaththa must not attend a Buddhist school. She demanded that the priest should help Thaththa to join Holy Cross College. He refused and excommunicated Aachchi from the church. He prohibited her from attending Sunday mass and receiving holy sacraments.

While chopping firewood, Aachchi cut her ankle and bled profusely. At the Kalutara District hospital, her health deteriorated, and she wanted to get Catholic last rites. The parish priest refused to visit her at the hospital. My grandfather promised the priest to take Thaththa out from the Lansi Palliya. The priest then administered the last rites on Aachchi after admonishing her for straying away from God and his love.

A few months later, the principal priest of Holy Cross College saw some drawings of Jesus and the Apostles at the entrance to the church of Kalamulla. The priest wanted to meet the artist. The artist was Thaththa. The priest recognised him as the boy who had come with his mother to meet him. The priest appreciated Thaththa’s drawings and asked him to visit the College with his mother. The priest waived school fees and asked Aachchi to pay a rupee monthly as facilities fees. Her nephew loaned that money to her. She arranged for Thaththa to have lunch at her cousin’s place in Kalutara on school days. The cousin treated Thaththa well, and Aachchi gave her a piece of land as a token of gratitude.

Thaththa disliked the new school. Boys bullied him and criticised his old clothes and shoes. When Thaththa dropped out from Holy Cross after passing JSC at 18, Aachchi thought thaththa had suffered because of neighbours’ evil eyes. Thaththa wandered aimlessly in the village in his sarong and shirt as his father did many years ago. Aachchi suspected someone had used black magic to harm him.

Thaththa passed the junior clerical examination and was posted at Kandy General Hospital. Aachchi was devastated when she heard that thaththa would leave home. When thaththa did not come home for four months and did not even send a postcard, she made up her mind that Thaththa was dead. When Thaththa returned home, she fed 20 poor persons and requested them to pray for Thaththa’s well-being. She expected a good time for herself and Thaththa soon.

Three years later, Thaththa married Amma, and Aachchi joined the new family. She could not believe that her only son now belonged to another woman. She started to harass Amma by spreading rumours against her. Amma treated Aachchi well. When meals were prepared, Amma served Achchi first. Once, she tried to kill Amma by slashing the ropes of the bed where Amma used to rest after lunch. Achchi spread a mat over the bed to hide the hole. On that day, Amma was getting ready to go to the Kalutara District Hospital to deliver me, her third child. She fell through the bed when she lay down after lunch. She was unconscious for an hour but delivered to me on the same day at home with the help of a local midwife. Aachchi denied that she had cut the ropes. It was the beginning of her troubles with her son. Thaththa chased her away from home. She spent two years with her nieces in Beruwela before returning to her son’s house.

Aachchi remembered who had helped her in bringing up Thaththa. She sold her residential house and homestead to an outsider because her relatives in the neighbourhood had ignored her and Thaththa when they were trying to survive as the poorest family among them. When I visited Achchi’s village many years later, an old aunt complained that Aachchi had destroyed the neighbourhood’s solidarity by selling her property to an outsider.

Aachchi had rented several coconut trees annually on two plots of land by the beach to a toddy businessman. The rent was for tapping coconut trees for toddy. She took my elder brother or me on her rent-collecting trips. Once, the businessman told her that the trees on her land had died when lightning struck them. She did not accept the explanation and demanded the rent, which she got after arguing with the man. She spent the money on her grandchildren. She brought two packets of Maldivian halva, four neckties for her grandchildren, and three handkerchiefs for thaththa. She did not buy anything for Amma. She opened the halva packets and put halva pieces under the outer cloth that she was wearing so that we could not snatch them from her. After that, we refused to eat them, saying that she smeared them with her urine.

Aachchi took her grandchildren to visit her relatives during church feasts. Once, she told us to wear the ties she had bought to attend the Kala Eliya church feast. My necktie had the pattern of running tigers, Gamini had a necktie with frogs, and Nihal’s necktie had dancing cobras. My youngest brother, Parakrama, refused to wear his tie with swans. Achchi wore a thick, colourful kumbaya and an embroidered long-sleeved jacket. If the relatives did not welcome us, Aachchi told us to entertain them. Gamini often demonstrated ‘China-footing’, which he had learned from Thaththa. Gamini punched an imaginary foe with his fists and elbows with a peculiar scream. I recited a poem in English. Nihal showed a piece from a drama he had performed at the School.

Achchchi loved to take her four grandsons to Sunday mass. Once, after the holy mass, she bought mango achchar (pickle) for us with the money my Amma gave her to pay for our haircuts. She took us to a hair salon and got our hair cut. She asked us to show our skills to the saloon keeper and other customers. When we got up to leave the saloon, the salon keeper asked Achchi to pay for the services. She asked him, “How often do you get four handsome boys to perform and entertain you? You should be ashamed to demand money from them after such a great performance”. We never went back to the salon.

On Christmas Eve, thaththa gave Aachchi one or two ‘drams’ of arrack, and Aachchi wanted more. While smoking a crude black cigar, she sang a street song that she learned as a young girl during the 1915 Muslim-Sinhala riots:

Kauda bole pare morae
Lunsi kabalunge morae
Gal gahala marala marala…

(Who are those bastards shouting on our streets

White (English) ruffians are shouting on the streets.

Let us stone and kill them, and kill them—).

Aachchi had fallen ill and was paralysed when she was 77. She was bedridden for three months before her death. A village physician suggested to my father that he dip his thumb in water and give the water to Achchi to drink to finish the close relationship between him and Aachchi. Such severance, he explained, would help her to die peacefully. Thaththa refused to do it and left the house angrily.

One morning, Aachchi called me to her bedside. She could hardly talk. I told her that I loved her and would miss her. I could see tears in her eyes, and she confessed lightly, holding my hand, that she did not mean to kill Amma by cutting the ropes of the bed. I felt sorry to see her tears. I consoled her by saying that I had escaped death on that day so that I could look after her and Amma.