PAMANKADE -THE TOWN THAT VANISHED !

by Hugh Karunanayake

Pamankade was an old world town that existed half way between Wellawatte and Kirillapona. It was connected by High Street one of the oldest roads in Colombo which was a mere narrow single carriageway that linked Pamankade Junction with Galle Road Wellawatte.

Up to the 1920s High Street was a gravel road used by carts bringing in produce from the hinterland. I grew up first in Havelock Town and later in Pamankade proper. In the old days there was no public transport along High Street which meant no buses as taxis were not heard of then. Consequently, Pamankade was a veritable self sufficient little town with its own grocery stores, fish market, butcher and toddy tavern. The toddy tavern was closed down in the early 1940s following a “temperance poll”.

People living in Pamankade rarely ventured to Wellawatte where the market had a bigger variety of produce and was a growing cosmopolitan town. Most of the residents of Pamankade in the 1940s and 50s were Sinhalese, Burghers and Tamils and a good proportion lived in rented housing. Most worked either in government service or in the old British mercantile houses in the Fort.

There were a handful of popular shops which catered to the basic grocery needs of the locals. There was Annachie’s shop which sold basic stuff like coconut and kerosene oil, rice, sugar, etc Although there was electricity in the area many houses used kerosene for domestic lighting. The only other enterprises run by Tamil traders was the barber salon and adjoining it a “plantain” or banana boutique There was also a shop called Ariya Sinhala Stores along Havelock Road which sold more sophiscated goods such as school requisites, newspapers, decorative stuff etc.

For frozen foods such as sausages and bacon or lamb, one had to go to Cold Stores at Slave Island, or to Swastika Stores at the Galle Road end of High Steet The other prominent shop serving the middle class was at the Pamankade end of High Street run by a Bharatha shopkeeper called Aloysius Stores – this was more like a news agency and apart from the Times, Daily News,and Observer and their vernacular counterparts, also sold school books, pens, nibs and ink. Most of us carried a bottle of ink with a pen holder to school in those days.

There were two small tea boutiques which really did not cater to the middle class and mainly served the labouring classes at a time where there were distinct class distinctions. Only the English speaking wore trousers, the others were either in sarong or in tweed cloth. If one wore trousers he was expected to speak or understand English. That unwritten code was strictly observed, woe be it to the trousered person who could not speak English, and when discovered was the object of snide ridicule.

All trousered folk were “mahattayas” or “gentlemen” in the eyes of the locals.The two boutiques one called the Sirisanda Hotel and the other merely Pamankade Hotel, both of which catered mainly to the weary carters and bus travellers on the Colombo Kesbewa bus route who disembarked at Pamankade to proceed to Wellawatte, Kirillapona, and such places. Pamankade Hotel was run by twin brothers of the old world Sinhalese countenance replete with long hair tied in a bun or konde. They were referred to by the local English speaking folk as “kondayas” !

The two apparently were temple drummers who came to play at a religious festival at the Dharmodaya Pirivena and were inveigled by a temple patron to buy a Galle Gymkhana Sweep ticket which turned out trumps for them. They did not return to their village but promptly bought a building in the junction which they ran for many years as the Pamankade Hotel.

Opposite the hotel which was open till midnight, lived the Joachim family which included a girl called Carmen. She was one of the few female cyclists seen in the area. One day when I was about 12 years of age, I was cycling along High Street just behind Carmen when she turned around and told me ” small boys should not follow girls”! I was taken aback, looking shocked, and turned around and went home!

Right in the centre of the town facing Pamankade Road was the fish auction room where fish were auctioned daily on week days and were bought by local fish vendors plying their door to door trade. The butcher was located in a stall at the end of High Street next door to a tailoring shop. I believe the shop was owned by Wilfred Peries, produce broker for Mackwoods and father of the late Tony Peries. Next door to the Pamankade Hotel was a “Club” which had a full size billiard table and also catered largely to the working class.

The ‘club’ was housed in a cottage at 511, Havelock Road, a building owned by my grandfather and later by his descendants until road widening erased it from the face of the earth. The working class of Pamankade almost entirely were employed at the Wellawatte Spinning and Weaving Mills. In fact the area was demographically a low to middle income area which was left oriented politically, with its Municipal Ward member being Doric de Souza, followed by Osmund Jayaratne and Ananda Premasinghe all Sama Samajists.

Ethnically the area was an old Sinhala village with a high representation of Burghers. Tamils were rarely seen.These are some of my memories of a little town that has been almost completely obliterated by road expansion and by the transport revolution.

Arguably the first signs of modernisation appeared in the early 1950s with the introduction of a bus service from Kirillapona to Wellawatte. It was run by Ebert Silva Bus Co and traversed along Pamankade Road, then through High Street to Wellawatte. The service was later extended to Polhengoda. The bus fare was five cents which was low enough to encourage many living in Pamankade to venture to the more suburban town of Wellawatte which provided consumers with a wider choice where consumable products were concerned.

Two factors appear to have contributed to the decline and later obliteration of Pamankade as a town. Firstly the introduction of public transport, followed by road widening which completely obliterated the bazaar of the once thriving little town of Pamankade.