CONFESSIONS OF A GLOBAL GYPSY DIFFERENT ROLES – Part 9

By Dr. Chandana (Chandi) Jayawardena DPhil

President – Chandi J. Associates Inc. Consulting, Canada

Founder & Administrator – Global Hospitality Forum

chandij@sympatico.ca

Romantic Neighbour

Our second year at the Ceylon Hotel School (CHS) commenced with a pleasant surprise. The manager’s position at Samudra Hotel changed frequently and his/her living quarters adjoined the CHS hostel. The new hotel manager was a lady with five children around our age. Three of them were very pretty girls. Prior to our new neighbours moving in, CHS students were dressed casually when at the hostel. Sarongs, shorts with no shirts or even less, was normal. With the exception of a handful of the well-behaved and studious, we were a noisy and disorderly bunch.

That changed overnight, when we saw the three daughters of the new manager looking curiously at our hostel from their front garden. We were disappointed to hear that the elder girl had a fiancé, but happy to note that the other two did not have boyfriends, yet.

Fairly quickly our attire after school changed to more fashionable clothes. Basically, our general grooming improved to impress our new and pretty teenage neighbors. Most of us, in addition to regular shaves and well-styled hair, commenced using expensive after shave colognes. Even those who did not have such luxuries started smelling good by simply using richer students’ supplies without their knowledge. We gradually commenced locking our good shirts in our individual wardrobes as some of the playboy types simply helped themselves to impress the girls in the evenings.

One of my batchmates developed a serious relationship with one of the girls and used to have long whispering conversations from either side of the partition separating the hostel and the manager’s living quarters. For another batchmate who was less experienced with girls, it was love at first sight. He really liked the youngest girl and dated her for a short period. He was heartbroken when she ended the relationship. I was able to successfully convince one of those girls to be a dance partner at the next Graduation Ball held in 1973.

Ragging Leader

A year after I joined CHS, my batch mates and I surpassed that Fresher F***er (FF) stage. We felt the difference in our second year at CHS. We were now respectfully addressed as Lord Veterans, by the poor 28 Fresher FFs in the CHS batch one year below us. Those day only boys were allowed to the three-year management programme and had to undergo the usual ragging week. I was an ’unofficial’ rag leader determined to bring some creative group fun activities rather than individual harassments similar to what we underwent a year earlier. I was also influenced by a batchmate, Saibu, who carried his anger for a long time based on one incident during the ragging the previous year. When he told me this story, I had to try hard to look serious without laughing aloud!

During the 1971 rag, a Lord Veteran had Saibu to climb a large tree facing the Galle Road, that provided shade to the warden’s house. After Saibu was up the tree, he had been ordered to remove all his clothes and throw them to the ground. Then the Lord Veteran had hidden the clothes and gone away to a class at the Alliance Française around mid-afternoon, conveniently forgetting poor naked Saibu up the tree. Covering his private parts with large leaves while holding a branch to ensure that he did not fall, he was up there for three long hours until sunset as he could not get down before dark as the warden’s wife and young daughters were seated on their front lawn having a pleasant, long, laughing chat while sipping tea and eating chocolate cake. I told Saibu, “Machang, other than the long wait up the tree, you were OK, right?”. Saibu responded angrily, “What nonsense. That bloody tree was festered with black ants, who kept biting my arse for hours!” After a pause, he added, “One day I want to kill that bastard Mahawaduge!”

Choreographer

In spite of our good intentions some of the ragging activities were fun only for us but scary for the FFs. One such activity was a fake mass circumcision ceremony which I choregraphed with dim lighting, haunting music and chopping knife sounds etc. All FFs were lined up in a corridor and they were told that they should enter the dark room in the corner of CHS hostel one at a time, when ordered to do so. A scary-looking large chopping knife, a big chopping block and a small bucket were carried to that dark room ceremonially to commence the ritual. Owing to certain qualifications, Saibu was undisputedly chosen as the ‘Master of the Mass Circumcision Ceremony’ (MMCC).

Then I ushered the first FF in the line who was shivering in fear into the mysterious looking dark room. Once I brought him into the room, all my batch mates sitting on bunk beds and chairs around the dark room made a howling cannibalistic noise. At that point, the first FF begged me to let him go home and he told me that he wants to quit CHS. I then whispered into his ear, “FF Abeysundara, don’t worry. This whole event is a joke. All I want you to do is when Lord Veteran Neil Maurice makes a big chopping noise, cover your fingers with this red paint, run pass all your batchmates and scream as if you are in deep pain.” He understood and played his part perfectly. Whilst he ran covering his private parts with red paint covered fingers, screaming, “Budu Ammo (Holy Mother), my penis was cut off!”, some of the FFs waiting in line fainted.

Assistant Barber

The third-year and second-year students partied daily during the ragging week. In 1972, when CHS Principal Sterner returned from his summer vacation in West Germany, we noticed that he had cut his hair very short in keeping with then popular ‘Crew Cut’ style. We called it ‘The Sterner Cut’. One evening during the ragging week, my batch mate and friend Neil Maurice told me that during the summer break he learnt hairdressing. He needed to practice his newly acquired skill to perfect it. To support my friend’s ambition, I lined up all 28 freshers FFs from the new batch and told them that in consideration of their good behaviour, they would be rewarded with a free haircut by an expert.

Neil did a lousy job with the first haircut. Consuming a couple of shots of Gal Oya arrack prior to the haircutting practice was not a good idea. Having cut off too much on one side of the head of the first FF in line, Neil tried to balance it by cutting more on the other side. At that point, I told Neil, “Machang, this chap now looks like Herr Sterner.” Neil was motivated. The bottom line was that after three hours of aggressive mass hair cutting, we had 28 heads looking l

ike Herr Sterner’s. Next morning, Fresher FFs marched to CHS to be greeted by Herr Sterner. Baffled by seeing near bald first-year students, the principal asked, “What happened!?”. We said in unison, “Sterner Cut, Sir!”. He did not comment and was not amused. At that moment we realised that we had crossed the line and overdone our ragging. Later that day, someone influential had complained in Parliament that there were human right violations committed by the second-year students of CHS.

Friend

We quickly organised the end-of-rag celebration booze party at the hostel and became friends with all FFs. I became life-long friends with most of those colleagues in the batch junior to me, particularly because they were closer to my age than my own batch mates. Forty-nine years later all their CHS buddies still address some of these FFs by the funny nicknames given to them during the CHS rag in 1972. These nicknames include, Arthur Aiyya, Johnny Weeraya, Boothaya, Chabba and Herr Hartmann (as this FF, Saman looked like the cartoon character in our German language text book). Now when we occasionally meet, we have a good laugh about our ragging era, pranks and mischief at the CHS. Ragging was a bad thing and I am happy that ragging stopped at CHS in 1973.

Dr. Chandana (Chandi) Jayawardena

has been an Executive Chef, Food & Beverage Director, Hotel GM, MD, VP, President, Chairman, Professor, Dean, Leadership Coach and Consultant. He has published 21 text books. This weekly column narrates ‘fun’ stories from his 50-year career in South Asia, the Middle East, Europe, South America, the Caribbean and North America, and his travels to 98 countries and assignments in 44 countries.

Fast Forward to 2021 – My Post-Pandemic Roles

After 50 years in the Hospitality and Tourism Industry, I am pleased to get more opportunities to serve the industry. My work in 2021 focusses on far more serious functions compared to my roles in 1972. My primary focus now is to help rebuild the industry. Since the beginning of the year 2020 the tourism and hospitality industry has been struggling in an unprecedented manner, facing its biggest global challenge in 100 years. A few examples of my current work are:

Webinar Moderator/Panellist

Two weeks ago, on May 24, 2021 I was happy to present at the first of a series of webinars organized by the International Institute of Knowledge Management (TIIKM). The theme of this webinar series is, “Future of Tourism & Hospitality Management – Post Pandemic”. The full video clip of the webinar is now posted on the TIIKM Facebook page.

Conference Chair

On November 4 and 5, 2021, I will co-chair the Eighth International Conference on Hospitality and Tourism (ICOHT), with Professor Suranga De Silva of the University of Colombo. This annual conference brings together tourism and hospitality industry leaders, educators, researchers and scholars from around the world. This year we are focusing on learning from the best practices around the world in rebuilding. The theme for the conference this year will be: “Post-Pandemic Tourism & Hospitality”. It will be held in Colombo.