Herbert Cooray’s life lessons – from St. Benedicts to St. Joseph’s College

(Excerpted from A Man in his Time – the Jetwing story and the life of Herbert Cooray by Shiromal Cooray)

The end of the war brought changes to the Cooray clan, as it did to the lives of many. Jeramius for reasons that are not recorded, decided to return to his hometown of Heenkenda near Ragama, Northeast of Colombo. His family had property here, including a large house and grounds belonging to his uncle, who having no children of his own, made heirs of his brother’s sons. The boys still being children, Jeramius and Lucy moved into the Heenkenda house and made it their home. By then there was another addition to the family by way of a girl, Lilian who was studying at Good Shepherd Convent, Kotahena.

Herbert fondly called Herby and Neville now lived within the bosom of family they had only occasionally known hitherto; there were uncles, aunts and cousins all down the street, the Mahagedera and Medagedera were all a mere five minute walk away. This abrupt transplantation must have been a significant, perhaps in some measure traumatic, experience for boys now in the initial stages of adolescence. Meanwhile, they continued their education at St. Benedict’s, which had resumed its former premises at Kotahena.

The boys would cycle to Ragama railway station, leave their bikes at the nearby house of a family friend and catch the train to Colombo. It was a long commute for those days, though not unbearably so. The friend who looked after their bicycles for them was also the owner of a radio set, still something of a rarity in Ceylon at the time. At his house, Herbert an ardent cricket lover, first heard commentaries on international cricket matches played in Australia, England, South Africa and the West Indies.

The radio became another window to the vast world outside. Herbert would often reminisce fondly about those adolescent listening sessions, remarking on how bad the signal had been, how hard one had to concentrate in order to follow even the gist of the commentary. It did not help that the little room with the radio was full of other cricket fans, all equally excited to hear the action described as it happened, and usually far more vociferous in their appreciation than Herbert! But all were friends together – and when there were no Test matches being played, the aficionados would turn cricketers in their own right.

Herby joined in the innumerable games that were played in an empty lot by the railway station, and when he mounted his bicycle to pedal home, it was often nearly dark. If radio was an occasional supplement to his education, reading was a constant one. He had picked up the habit as a youngster, voraciously devouring whatever came his way.

As with most of his educational influences, this too, could be traced to his mother, an avid lifelong reader herself. On Saturdays, Herbert would often make the long trudge back to the city, where the Colombo Book Club in the Fort displayed recent issues of foreign magazines and newspapers, not freely available elsewhere.

He would spend the entire day at the Club, reading. His appetite was for sporting tales and biographies, the classics and the riches of English poetry, and throughout life his conversation would be loaded with quotations from what he had read. Later, he developed an interest in politics and business and read everything he could find on these subjects. The Club librarian was so impressed by his thirst for knowledge that he began saving books and old magazines due for disposal and presenting them to the boy on his visits.

Herbert’s penchant for reading persisted throughout his life, and he actively cultivated it in his children and grandchildren. His travels abroad always included a book-buying expedition or two on their itineraries. On his first overseas visit, he shipped one big trunk-load of books for his collection. Later on, when he became a hotelier, he educated himself by reading every book or article on the subject he could lay his hands on.

The war years were instructive in another way: they gave Herbert Cooray his first lessons in hardship. This was not merely a matter of frequent changes of address, makeshift schoolrooms and improbably long commutes; there were also the very real deprivations of food and rationing suffered by all. Everybody managed somehow, but the period left lasting impression on Herbert, bringing home the lesson that nothing in life is permanent or to be taken for granted. It was an insight he often, later, repeated to his own children, advising them that they should “learn to sleep as well on a mat in a thatched hut as in a soft bed in a palace, just as the situation demanded”.

Wealth and leisure, he told them, were fleeting gifts; the only dependable treasure was a good

education, which was both the royal road to personal independence and the only treasure of which one could never be dispossessed. The period also taught him not to put stock in material comforts, but to make the most of the simple pleasures of life.

In due course, the Cooray brothers left St. Benedicts for St. Joseph’s College in Maradana in order to prepare for their university entrance examinations. Though St. Joseph’s was an unabashedly elite institution, Herby soon found a way to win the respect and admiration of his contemporaries. The eager listener to Test-match broadcasts had become an accomplished cricketer, and was quickly selected to play for the college, as he had earlier for St. Benedict’s.

Despite having won the acceptance of his peers, he did not lose his hatred of injustice and inhumanity, whether he himself or another was the victim of it. His cricketing career thus came to an abrupt end when he was dropped from the college team at the eleventh hour under circumstances he deemed unfair. Having spoken his mind out to the master in charge, he resigned from the team for good, never to play another match.

The incident however, did not sour him against the sport; he retained a lifelong interest in it, and became a proud supporter and cheerleader at college matches when his son Hiran became a member of the St. Joseph’s First XI. However, the incident was an example of the difficulty Herbert would always have in conforming to the formal expectations of society and authority.

The Rector of St. Joseph’s in his time was a strict disciplinarian, named Rev. Fr. Peter Pillai who often chided Herbert for his waywardness. ‘You will never qualify to enter university,’ predicted the good Reverend, who often compared him with his studious and “proper” brother Neville. He was however proved wrong when the examination results were published and Herbert Cooray was found to have passed within the upper division, an outcome which surprised the young scholar almost much as it did those who knew him.

Amusingly, Rev. Peter Pillai had summoned Herbert’s father to complain about yet another misdeed of his rebellious son on the very same day that the results arrived. Fortunately for Herbert, they were posted minutes before his father’s arrival rather than after! It was a case of being saved, almost literally, by the bell.