Learning English at Maris Stella College, Negombo

“I was always coming third in the class – the first was Wilfred Jayasuriya and Carlo Fonseka was second”

(Excerpted from *Leo Fernando’s Biographical sketches of a professional generalist)

It was when I was nine years old that I was enrolled in a school in Negombo called Maris Stella by my eldest brother Peter, to learn English. Up till then I was innocent of the language of our colonial masters. Maris Stella imparted a solid education. My three older brothers, Peter, Cyril and Vincent were also students about this time. As we, my cousin Oscar and I used to talk in Sinhala during the school interval we had to beware of other students who were hovering about ready to pounce on us talking in the mother tongue.

One day, during the tea interval I got caught talking in my mother tongue to Oscar while another student who had the red baton, unknown to me, was prowling around for a possible victim. No sooner I received the baton I managed to find another boy indulging in his mother tongue to whom I handed over the dreaded baton. The rule in the school was that at the end of school session the victim holding the baton has to hand it back to the principal who would give him a caning. This method of punishment had both good and bad results. Good because it forced us to learn to speak English, bad because a punishment enforced for speaking in Sinhala, the mother tongue of 90% of the students was an insult to the ethos, dignity and spirit of the

One day our class lessons terminated early and we were free to go home. I proceeded to go through the Negombo town on foot as by this time my eldest brother was no longer there to take me on his bicycle. My landmark on the road through the main street was the high dome of the Grand Street church which was visible even to little boys like me from any corner of the town. Close to the church a gentleman in shorts addressed me and said something in English which I did not understand. I dared not ask him in Sinhala what he said considering it infra dig to speak in the mother tongue.

He was probably a Burgher. He kept asking me to do something for him. Finally, I used the words we were taught that morning at school “I cannot”. He still kept talking and I kept repeating the same words “I cannot”. Fortunately, my uncle Martin Rosa appeared on the scene and saved me the embarrassing situation. That gent only wanted me to drop a letter in the post box at the Negombo Post Office. He may have been somehow aware that I was passing the PO.

When Oscar and I were seen together, other students used to ask me whether we were brothers. As I did not know the English word cousin, I would simply nod my head. So we were known as Pandikutty, the Tamil word for piglings. This was because Oscar’s surname was Panditharatne and as first cousins we probably resembled each other as it happened when we were in our forties. An engineer friend of Oscar stopped his car on the road to ask me “Aren’t you Oscar?” when I didn’t recognize him.

In the second year, the fourth standard, we were taught by Rev Bro. Nizier, the Principal of the lower school and Mr. Shirley Lawrence. At the term test Mr. Lawrence got each student to say few words in English on a subject he chose. When my turn came, he asked me to say something about the elephant. By some fluke I used the word “gigantic” about this animal. He finished my test immediately. He did not expect me as I thought afterwards to use that big word.

My performance at the year-end test was good and I was placed second in the class. Those were the fee levying times. One morning I was asked to leave school for not paying fees. However, I managed to get the monthly fee from mother and settle the dues on the day after. In the following year we were lucky as our school became a free education school.

The fifth standard class teacher, Mr. Leonard Obris somehow found out that I had a good singing voice. So, he would persuade me to sing some English songs. The best song I remember was “You are always in my heart”. There was a difficulty in the pronunciation of the Anglicized French word “rendezvous” found in this song. Many years later, probably 50 years, a classmate, Wilfred Jayasuriya, remembering the words of this song wanted me to sing it. But with the lapse of time over 50 years, I could not recollect the words in order to oblige him. I learnt these songs from my eldest brother Peter, my loku aiya who in turn had learnt them from his close University friend, Shirley Fernando of Moratuwa.

Shirley was a versatile guy. He had come first in the Island at the SSC and HSC examinations and was reading for a special degree in Physics. I had later seen him singing while playing the Hawaiian guitar when he came to our home in Pitipana with some other Varsity friends of my brother. I then thought that I could improvise a musical instrument like the guitar by salvaging an abandoned antiquated Japanese mandolin which lacked the typewriter-like keyboard and the steel strings, lying in the store room of our house.

I got the strings from a fisherman living close by and contrived to make a guitar like instrument for playing. For the “steel” that needs to be sliding along the strings in order to play the melody I used a small glass bottle. All the contraptions put together helped me play some of the Sinhala songs of Sunil Santha and also the melodies of the English songs my brother taught me.

About this time a friend of my older brother, Vincent, named Aaron Silva visited our house and saw me playing some melodies on the makeshift “guitar”. Aaron was a gifted singer and actor. In the village Sinhala school, he acted as St. Francis Xavier in a school play. Before that he acted as Andare, the court jester, in a school play written by the Principal Manamalage Gabriel Fernando. I recall the scene as to how Andare ate sugar in the King’s palace. In later life, Aaron entered the cinema world and was known as Pitipana Silva. He borrowed my guitar for a few days in order, I guessed, to learn to play it. Even after keeping it for months he did not return it.

I then told my mother about it. She had visited his home requesting him to return it. Still, he did not comply. I complained about it to my eldest brother who knew about the basic musical talents I possessed. As by this time University education was free, he had some savings with which he bought me a second-hand steel guitar, which I later came to know belonged to his friend Shirley Fernando. Along with the guitar I was given also a book showing the method of playing it along with the musical notations.

There was no one who knew the guitar notes to teach me how to play it. Peter aiya had, in fact, requested the Church organist John Master to teach me the musical notations. But he could not be of any help as he did not know to play the guitar although he knew all about playing the organ. The two signs or symbols I used to see in music books and in the books of my older brothers that fascinated me were the crotchet and the Greek letter sigma, later the integral, an elongated sigma, used in calculus.

My brother Peter invited some of his university friends to spend the night at our house in Pitipana. When our “help” Eliza had prepared dinner, she had informed Peter aiya in Sinhalese “Malli. dinner is ready.” On hearing her voice, his friends had asked as to how come that a sister had suddenly appeared in the scene when they had been told that he had no sister in the family.

I still remember how Eliza used to feed me lunch with her fingers and my protest about the hot curries which made my tongue and mouth smart unable to swallow the food. I was fond of her and called her Eliza akka as a sign of the sisterly bond I forged with her. During this period at Maris Stella College, , now in the fifth standard, I had to walk about three miles to school and another three miles back to Pitipana as Peter aiya was no longer there to take me to school on his bicycle. There was no bridge during our school days connecting the Pamunugama-Pitpana stretch of the peninsula with the Negombo town. So, we had to cross the lagoon at a point cheek by jowl to the sea in outrigger canoes.

There was no charge for the men folk unless one had to take a bicycle in the canoe when there would be a levy of 10 cents. One afternoon on the return journey across the lagoon the canoe capsized. Fortunately, we did not go down and our end of the canoe, called aniya in the language of fishermen, was near the land. I was taken ashore by a man who was already out of the water. The women returning from the Negombo market with their paraphernalia were in difficulty. They were ail saved.

I did not wear shoes to school. Those were difficult times for mother to feed the four members of the family. The coconuts from the land did not yield enough income for the boys to wear shoes or well-ironed clothes to school. I used to wash my trousers and a few shirts on Saturdays so that by Monday morning the clothes were ready for wearing.

One Monday morning the short trousers I was to wear to school were still wet due to rain the previous day. But there was one trouser available, one in two colors, partly deep brown on one side and light brown on the other which was never worn by my two older brothers. Complaining to mother was not going to help. So, I took the bold step of wearing it hoping no student in my class would notice the difference.

On the Monday I wore it no student noticed the slightly multicolored shorts. So, I happily wore it on the second day too. To my great surprise and some humiliation one student, the son of a doctor, was heard to tell the others “Look he is wearing a trouser of two colors”. I just turned away. The students did not laugh nor sneer, but out of sympathy probably, turned their attention elsewhere. Probably, I guess, they had some respect for me as I could sing English songs well and was the best at arithmetic, and was always coming third at the monthly and the two-term tests.

The first and second were Wilfred Jayasuriya and Carlo Fonseka. Wilfred was very good in English in which he later obtained a degree and a doctorate from a US university. Carlo was good in English too and would pronounce English words like the English schoolboys but was always second to Wilfred. Carlo became an Emeritus Professor of Physiology at the University. However, at the final government examination held in December, I happened to be placed first. I guessed this was due to the full marks I got for arithmetic.

There were only three subjects along with Arithmetic, namely, English and General Intelligence. Later in life, I remember hearing Dolly Parton’s song about the coat of many color she sang and nostalgically remembering those good old days of my boyhood at Maris Stella where my three older brothers had their entire education in the English medium. In the final term, there was an inter-school drama competition. Mr. Obris, the class teacher prepared those of us who could sing and were good in elocution for a Christmas play.

Our play won the first prize. Wilfred acted as mother Mary of infant Jesus while Carlo played the role of Joseph and I was the narrator, the pothay gura. Our class won a trip to Colombo when we were taken to see the zoo just before X’mas. Our music teacher, Mr. Ferdinand, taught us to sing a X’mas song which I have never heard afterwards in my life. Its melody had a X’masy flavor and the only line I remember is “we wish to bring pleasure by singing in measure ……..

(*The writer worked as a senior SLAS officer in several government departments and public corporations. He is a professional accountant who took a Master’s degree and Ph.D, while working in the SLAS)