Features
Sisters under the skin – foreign mothers and Ceylonese/Indian fathers
(Excerpted from Chosen Ground: the Clara Motwani Saga by Goolbai Gunasekera
There were four of us … Maya, Kumari, Suriya and I. “We are sisters under the skin,” Kumari says to me whenever we meet. And why does she say this?
All four of us were the offspring of Western mothers and Asian fathers. Our parents were all into education and were among the best known and best loved educationists of Sri Lanka. These four sets of parents had been educated at some of the best schools and Universities in the world … Cambridge University, Yale University, the London School of Economics, London University et al.
Apart from the medical doctor in this elite octet, they were all outstanding teachers who were consumed with the desire to give the students of Ceylon the full benefit of their expertise. At the time, however, none of them thought of themselves as experts in education. Time and a grateful stream of achievement-oriented pupils have proved their worth and their outstanding contribution to this island in this field.
Of the four ladies, three were British and only one (my mother) was American. She was also the youngest of the four, and the last to arrive in Ceylon. Nor did she arrive with the intention to stay. The fact that she did stay can be attributed to an unlikely karma. As described earlier in this book, she arrived as a visitor. The other three ladies had Sinhalese husbands, while Mother was married to an Indian. These differences hardly mattered to the four women concerned, who were united not only by their professional interests and their chosen careers, but by a genuine admiration and fondness for each other. They had many qualities in common, but there was enough variation in their personalities, their ideas, their backgrounds and their methods of teaching to make them an outstanding group of individuals.
P. de S. Kularatne and his wife Hilda were parents to two boys and a daughter, Maya, who, from her childhood, was considered exceptionally good-looking. Dr. S.A. Wickremesinghe and his wife Doreen were parents to Suriya and her brother Suren. Apart from being Principal of schools, Doreen was also elected as a Member of Parliament. Doreen was a leading light of the Communist Party.
Then there was Dr. A.P de Zoysa and his wife Eleanor, who were parents to Kumari. And lastly, Dr. Kewal Motwani and Clara, parents to me and my sister Su.
This plethora of PhDs, Doctors and holders of Masters’ degrees ensured that the products of these erudite beings were pretty erudite themselves. Suriya and Kumari had such high IQs that they pretty much wandered off the scale altogether. On a visit back to her home in the USA, Mother actually had my own IQ tested by a professional. She never talked much about the result!
Apart from her degree in Education, Mother also had one in Music, as did Eleanor. Mother never actually taught piano except to me, while Eleanor did so in Doreen’s schools. All four women had pet ‘theories’, and all of them used their long-suffering children as educational guinea pigs. Suriya and I were packed off to the newly- established (and hitherto untried) Froebel School up in the hills.
There were only four Ceylonese students at this school, which catered mainly to British children. The two others were the now famous cellist, Rohan de Saram, and Anne Wilson, daughter of the Sri Lankan author Christine (Spittel) Wilson. Suriya and I attended the school chiefly so that our parents could learn firsthand what the European educator’s ideas really were. Such was their curiosity and willingness to experiment. It never occurred to these two ladies that Suriya’s education, along with mine, was highly unorthodox.
“A varied system hurts no one,” thought Doreen and Mother, so thither we went to Froebel.
Since our Mothers met professionally as well as socially, us, their daughters became good friends. Our similar backgrounds made us naturally tend to gravitate towards each other, though Suriya and Kumari met far more often than did Maya and I. Their mothers had been friends in Britain, and along with Maya’s mother, they had all known each other a long time.
As children of these four marriages, we had a rich and unusual heritage. Fathers left upbringing to their wives, so long as we were present at traditional family gatherings. These took the form, in my case, of the annual family trek to Karachi in (at that time) undivided India where, under Father’s eagle gaze, I managed to behave in a manner considered appropriate by my aunts and cousins.
Since I had aunts who were actually my own age, there was considerable confusion among relatives who had the habit of asking in Sindhi (a language I barely understood) if I were Kewal’s daughter or Ladikdas’s granddaughter. Such were the situations faced by many joint families in India, where men often married three or four times, and produced two or three sets of children.
“Why on earth would your father want to have children when he was. already 60?” my bewildered mother would ask. “What else was there to do in the village of Arazi after sundown?” Father would reply with a straight face.
But what happened to me annually during those glorious months in India was repeated by my three other friends in Sri Lanka, except that they were exposed to a far more extended family life than I was. Our mothers set the tone of our upbringing. Dietary rules, conversational topics, study programs, leisure-time activities were all in direct contrast to those of our contemporaries at school. Ergo, we were happiest when the four of us were together.
Along with our parents we shared common beliefs. Theosophy was a great link factor. The content of discussions at our parental dinner tables was considered quite normal by Kumari, Suriya and myself, but it was unintelligible to classmates and friends who happened to be spending the night.
Then again, my parents were strict vegetarians. This meant that overnight stays in our home were certainly not a gourmet’s delight for hungry friends. Likewise, having me or sister Su over for the night sent other mothers into quite a tizzy wondering what they should feed us.
At Suriya’s home, lunch would be a glass of milk, an apple and a small bar of chocolate – a diet I was quite comfortable with. I did not have to answer questions like ‘But what do you eat if you don’t eat meat or fish?’ I would smile weakly in reply.
Sister Su, far less tactful and far more feisty, was not thus inhibited. Goaded to fury by one mother’s question: ‘So what do you eat in place of chicken?’ she replied tersely: “Grass.”
Our four mothers never asked silly questions. They understood each other’s quirks, and never did we face horrified reactions to whatever our respective mothers were doing with us. It was truly a sisterhood of the mind. We read the same books. We listened to the same kind of music (the highly classical variety), and we didn’t complain. We rather liked our specialized atmosphere. We had the best of the West and the East after all – and we enjoyed it.
But our parents had this lamentable habit of comparing us to each other. “Why can’t you speak French like Suriya?” Mother would demand of me. Needless to say, Suriya’s computer-like brain picked up French as easily as kids today pick up slang. Mine operated at a slower pace. “Slow down,” I would beg Suriya.
Or, “Learn to play the piano like Chitra Malalasekera,” Eleanor would tell Kumari. Chitra was also the daughter of a British mother who had sadly died when Chitra was very young. She was older than the four of us, and Maya was more in her age group. In fact they were cousins. To this day Chitra remains one of Sri Lanka’s best pianists.
Maya had varied interests, horseback riding being one of them. Such exciting pursuits put Maya in a class of her own, and far above the rest of us. When we were evacuated to the hills during the war, Maya went to her father’s school – Ananda College — a boys’ academy in Colombo. As one of the three girls there she pretty much had the boys of the school dancing attendance, pretty, clever and the Principal’s daughter … she had it made. We were.- speechless with envy.
As the four of us are now approaching, or are already into the grandmother stage, we have often discussed our unusual childhood. It is with a deep sense of gratitude that we now realize how liberal and farseeing our mothers really were. Several common facts emerge. Firstly, we children were comfortable with each other. Our mothers were likewise comfortable together, in that they had the same interests and also the same problems. There were many British women with Sinhalese and Tamil husbands in the country at the time, but they were not as uniquely placed as were these four ladies who were so fired with educational idealism.
Secondly, our mothers were unconcerned with ‘Society’ and social life as represented by their Colombo contemporaries, who were members of the Women’s International Club, the Golf Club, and wherever else women were wont to gather. Mother eventually became the President and Chairman of the Women’s International, but that was much later in her life.
She loved playing bridge, but was never in the same class as Maya’s formidable father, Mr. Kularatne who was a shining light of the Orient Club, right next door to the Womens’ International. Strangely enough, I do not think this group of eight ever engaged in that kind of social evening at the time their careers were just taking off.
(To be continued next week)
It could be quite premature to claim that the US has closed ranks completely with the world’s foremost fascist states: Russia, China and North Korea. But there is no denying that the US is breaking with tradition and perceiving commonality of policy orientation with the mentioned authoritarian states of the East rather than with Europe and its major democracies at present.
Increasingly, it is seemingly becoming evident that the common characterization of the US as the ‘world’s mightiest democracy’, could be a gross misnomer. Moreover, the simple fact that the US is refraining from naming Russia as the aggressor in the Russia-Ukraine conflict and its refusal to perceive Ukraine’s sovereignty as having been violated by Russia, proves that US foreign policy is undergoing a substantive overhaul, as it were. In fact, one could not be faulted, given this backdrop, for seeing the US under President Donald Trump as compromising its democratic credentials very substantially.
Yet, it could be far too early to state that in the traditional East-West polarity in world politics, that the US is now squarely and conclusively with the Eastern camp that comprises in the main, China and Russia. At present, the US is adopting an arguably more nuanced approach to foreign policy formulation and the most recent UN Security Council resolution on Ukraine bears this out to a degree. For instance, the UN resolution in question reportedly ‘calls for a rapid end to the war without naming Russia as the aggressor.’
That is, the onus is being placed on only Ukraine to facilitate an end to the war, whereas Russia too has an obligation to do likewise. But it is plain that the US is reflecting an eagerness in such pronouncements to see an end to the Ukraine conflict. It is clearly not for a prolongation of the wasting war. It could be argued that a negotiated settlement is being given a try, despite current international polarizations.
However, the US could act constructively in the crisis by urging Russia as well to ensure an end to the conflict, now that there is some seemingly friendly rapport between Trump and Putin.
However, more fundamentally, if the US does not see Ukraine’s sovereignty as having been violated by Russia as a result of the latter’s invasion, we are having a situation wherein the fundamental tenets of International Law are going unrecognized by the US. That is, international disorder and lawlessness are being winked at by the US.
It follows that, right now, the US is in cahoots with those powers that are acting autocratically and arbitrarily in international politics rather than with the most democratically vibrant states of the West, although a facile lumping together of the US, Russia and China, is yet not possible.
It is primarily up to the US voting public to take clear cognizance of these developments, draw the necessary inferences and to act on them. Right now, nothing substantive could be done by the US voter to put things right, so to speak, since mid-term US elections are due only next year. But there is ample time for the voting public to put the correct perspective on these fast-breaking developments, internationally and domestically, and to put their vote to good use in upcoming polls and such like democratic exercises. They would be acting in the interest of democracy worldwide by doing so.
More specifically it is up to Donald Trump’s Republican voter base to see the damage that is being done by the present administration to the US’ standing as the ‘world’s mightiest democracy’. They need to bring pressure on Trump and his ‘inner cabinet’ to change course and restore the reputation of their country as the foremost democracy. In the absence of such action it is the US citizenry that would face the consequences of Trump’s policy indiscretions.
Meanwhile, the political Opposition in the US too needs to get its act together, so to speak, and pressure the Trump administration into doing what is needed to get the US back to the relevant policy track. Needless to say, the Democratic Party would need to lead from the front in these efforts.
While, in the foreign policy field the US under President Trump could be said to be acting with a degree of ambivalence and ambiguity currently, in the area of domestic policy it is making it all to plain that it intends to traverse a fascistic course. As has been proved over the past two months, white supremacy is being made the cardinal principle of domestic governance.
Trump has made it clear, for example, that his administration would be close to ethnic chauvinists, such as the controversial Ku Klux Klan, and religious extremists. By unceremoniously rolling back the ‘diversity programs’ that have hitherto helped define the political culture of the US, the Trump administration is making no bones of the fact that ethnic reconciliation would not be among the government’s priorities. The steady undermining of USAID and its main programs worldwide is sufficient proof of this. Thus the basis has been adequately established for the flourishing of fascism and authoritarianism.
Yet, the US currently reflects a complex awareness of foreign policy questions despite having the international community wondering whether it is sealing a permanent alliance with the main powers of the East. For instance, President Trump is currently in conversation on matters in the external relations sphere that are proving vital with the West’s principal leaders. For example, he has spoken to President Emmanuel Macron of France and is due to meet Prime Minister Keir Starmer of the UK.
Obviously, the US is aware that it cannot ‘go it alone’ in resolving currently outstanding issues in external relations, such as the Ukraine question. There is a clear recognition that the latter and many more issues require a collaborative approach.
Besides, the Trump administration realizes that it cannot pose as a ‘first among equals’, given the complexities at ground level. It sees that given the collective strength of the rest of the West that a joint approach to problem solving cannot be avoided. This is particularly so in the case of Ukraine.
The most major powers of the West are no ‘pushovers’ and Germany, under a possibly Christian Democratic Union-led alliance in the future, has indicated as much. It has already implied that it would not be playing second fiddle to the US. Accordingly, the US is likely to steer clear of simplistic thinking in the formulation of foreign policy, going forward.
by Upali Gamakumara,
Upali.gamakumara@gmail.com
The Clean Sri Lanka (CSL) is a project for the true renaissance the NPP government launched, the success of which would gain world recognition. It is about more than just cleaning up places. Its broader objectives are to make places attractive and happy for people who visit or use services in the country, focusing more on the services in public institutions and organisations like the SLTB. Unfortunately, these broader objectives are not apparent in its theme, “Clean Sri Lanka,” and therefore there is a misconception that keeping the environment clean is the main focus.
People who realise the said broader objectives are excited about a cleaner Sri Lanka, hoping the President and the government will tackle this, the way they are planning to solve other big problems like the economy and poverty. However, they do not see themselves as part of the solution.
From the management perspective, the CSL has a strategic plan that is not declared in that manner. When looking at the government policies, one can perceive its presence, the vision being “A Prosperous Nation and a Beautiful Life,” the mission “Clean Sri Lanka” and the broader objectives “a disciplined society, effective services, and a cleaner environment.” If the government published these as the strategy, there would have been a better understanding.
Retaining the spirit and expectations and continuing the ‘Clean Sri Lanka’ project is equally important as much as understanding its deep idea. For this, it needs to motivate people, which differs from those motivators that people push to achieve selfish targets. The motivation we need here is to evolve something involuntarily, known as Drivers. Drivers push for the survival of the evolution or development of any entity. We see the absence of apparent Drivers in the CSL project as a weakness that leads to sporadic hiccups and free flow.
Drivers of Evolution
Drivers vary according to the nature of envisaged evolution for progress. However, we suggest that ‘the force that pushes anything to evolve’ would fit all evolutions. Some examples are: ‘Fitting to survival’ was the driver of the evolution of life. Magnetism is a driver for the unprecedented development of physics – young Einstein was driven to enquire about the ‘attraction’ of magnets, eventually making him the greatest scientist of the 20th century.
Leadership is a Driver. It is essential but do not push an evolution continually as they are not sprung within a system involuntarily. This is one of the reasons why CSL has lost the vigour it had at its inception.
CSL is a teamwork. It needs ‘Drives’ for cohesion and to push forward continually, like the Quality Improvement Project of the National Health Service (NHS) in England. Their drivers are outlined differently keeping Aims as their top driver and saying: Aims should be specific and measurable, not merely to “improve” or “reduce,” engage stakeholders to define the aim of the improvement project and a clear aim to identify outcome measures.
So, we think that CSL needs Aims as defined by NHS, built by stakeholder participation to help refine the project for continuous evolution. This approach is similar to Deming’s Cycle for continual improvement. Further, two more important drivers are needed for the CSL project. That is Attitudinal Change and Punishment. We shall discuss these in detail under Psychoactive Environment (pSE) below.
Aside from the above, Competition is another driver in the business world. This helps achieve CSL objectives in the private sector. We can see how this Driver pushes, with the spread of the Supermarket chains, the evolution of small and medium retail shops to supermarket level, and in the private banks and hospitals, achieving broader objectives of CSL; a cleaner environment, disciplined behaviuor, efficient service, and the instillation of ethics.
The readers can now understand the importance of Drivers pushing any project.
Three Types of Entities and Their Drives
We understand, that to do the transformation that CSL expects, we need to identify or adopt the drivers separately to suit the three types of entities we have in the country.
Type I entities are the independent entities that struggle for their existence and force them to adopt drivers involuntarily. They are private sector entities, and their drivers are the commitment of leadership and competition. These drivers spring up involuntarily within the entity.
Type II are the dependent entities. To spring up drivers of these entities commitment of an appointed trustee is a must. Mostly in state-owned entities, categorized as Boards, Authorities, Cooperations, and the like. Their drivers do not spring up within or involuntarily unless the leader initiates. The Government of a country also falls into this type and the emergence of drivers depends on the leader.
Type III entities have neither independent nor dependent immediate leader or trustee. They are mostly the so-called ‘Public’ places like public-toilets, public-playgrounds, and public-beaches. No team can be formed as these places are open to any, like no-man-land. Achieving CSL objectives at these entities depends on the discipline of the public or the users.
Clean Sri Lanka suffers the absence of drivers in the second and third types of entities, as the appointed persons are not trustees but temporary custodians.
The writer proposes a remedy to the last two types of entities based on the theory of pSE explained below.
Psychoactive Environment (pSE) –
The Power of Customer Attraction
Research by the writer introduced the Psychoactive Environment (pSE) concept to explain why some businesses attract more customers than others who provide the same service. Presented at the 5th Global Conference on Business and Economics at Cambridge University in 2006, the study revealed that a “vibe” influences customer attraction. This vibe, termed pSE, depends on Three Distinct Elements, which can either attract or repel customers. A positive pSE makes a business more attractive and welcoming. This concept can help develop Drivers for Type II and III entities.
pSE is not an all-inclusive solution for CSL, but it lays the foundation for building Drivers and motivating entities to keep entrants attractive and contented.
The structure of the pSE
The three distinct Elements are the Occupants, Systems, and Environment responsible for making a pSE attractive to any entity, be it a person, institution, organization, or county. Each of these elements bears three qualities named Captivators. These captivators are, in simple terms, Intelligent, Nice, and Active in their adjective forms.
pSE theorizes that if any element fails to captivate the entrant’s mood by not being Intelligent, Nice, or Active, the pSE becomes negative, repelling the entrant (customer). Conversely, the positive pSE attracts the entrants if the elements are Intelligent, Nice, and Active.
For example, think person who comes to a Government Office for some service. He sees that the employees, service, and environment are intelligent, nice, and active, and he will be delighted and contented. He will not get frustrated or have any deterioration in national productivity.
The Significance of pSE in CSL
The Elements and the Captivators are universal for any entity. Any entity can easily find its path to Evolution or Progress determined by these elements and captivators. The intangible broader objectives can be downsised to manageable targets by pSE. Achievements of these targets make the entrants happy and enhance productivity – the expectation of Clean Sri Lanka (CSL).
From the perspective of pSE, now we can redefine the Clean Sri Lanka project thus:
To make the Elements of every entity in Sri Lanka: intelligent, Nice, and Active.
How Would the pSE be A Remedy for The Sporadic Hiccups?
We have seen two possible reasons for sporadic setbacks and the discontinuity of some projects launched by the CSL. They are:
The absence of involuntary Drivers for evolvement or progress
Poor attitudes and behaviors of people and leaders
Remedy for the Absence of Drivers
Setting up a system to measure customer or beneficiary satisfaction, and setting aims can build Drivers. The East London NHS principles help build the Aims that drive type II & II entities. The system must be designed to ensure continual improvement following the Deming Cycle. This strategy will create Drivers for Type I & II entities.
This process is too long to explain here therefore we refrain from detailing.
Attitudinal Change
The most difficult task is the attitudinal and behavioural change. Yet it cannot be postponed.
Punishment as a strategy
In developed countries, we see that people are much more disciplined than in the developing countries. We in developing countries, give credit to their superior culture, mitigating ours as rudimental. The long experience and looking at this affair from a vantage point, one will understand it is not the absolute truth. Their ruthless wars in the past, rules, and severe punishment are the reasons behind this discipline. For example, anyone who fails to wear a car seatbelt properly will be fined 400 AUD, nearly 80,000 LKR!
The lesson we can learn is, that in Sri Lanka, we need strong laws and strict punishment together with a type of strategic education as follows.
Psychological Approach as a Strategy
The psychological theory of attitude formation can be used successfully if some good programmes can be designed.
All attitude formations start with life experience. Formed wrong or negative attitudes can be reversed or instilled with correct attitudes by exposure to designed life experiences. The programmes have been developed using the concepts of Hoshin Kanri, Brainstorming, Cause-and-Effect analysis, and Teamwork, in addition to London NTS Quality Improvement strategies.
The experience and good responses we received for our pSE programs conducted at several institutions prove and have built confidence in our approach. However, it was a time, when governments or organisations did not pay much attention to cultural change as CSL expects in the country.
Therefore, we believe this is a golden opportunity to take the CSL supported by the pSE concept.
Although they are visually impaired youngsters, under the guidance of renowned musician Melantha Perera, these talented individuals do shine bright … hence the name Bright Light.
Says Melantha: “My primary mission is to nurture their talent and ensure their sustainable growth in music, and I’m thrilled to announce that Bright Light’s first public performance is scheduled for 7th June, 2025. The venue will be the MJF Centre Auditorium in Katubadda, Moratuwa.”
Melantha went on to say that two years of teaching, online, visually impaired youngsters, from various parts of the island, wasn’t an easy ride.
There were many ups and downs but Melantha’s determination has paid off with the forming of Bright Light, and now they are gearing up to go on stage.
According to Melantha, they have come a long way in music.
“For the past few months, we have been meeting, physically, where I guide them to play as a band and now they show a very keen interest as they are getting to the depth of it. They were not exposed to English songs, but I’ve added a few English songs to widen their repertoire.
Melantha Perera: Invented a notation
system for the guitar
“On 7th June, we are opening up for the public to come and witness their talents, and I want to take this product island-wide, giving the message that we can do it, and I’m hoping to create a database so there will be a following. Initially, we would like your support by attending the show.”
Melantha says he didn’t know what he was getting into but he had confidence teaching anyone music since he has been in the scene for the past 45 years. He began teaching in 2015,
“When I opened my music school, Riversheen School of Music, the most challenging part of teaching was correcting tone deaf which is the theoretical term for those who can’t pitch a note, and also teaching students to keep timing while they sang and played.”
Melantha has even invented a notation system for the guitar which he has named ‘MelaNota’. He has received copyrights from the USA and ISO from Australia, but is yet to be recognised in Sri Lanka.
During Covid-19, Melantha showcased MelaNota online and then it was officially launched with the late Desmond De Silva playing one of his tunes, using MelaNota.
Melantha says that anyone, including the visually impaired, can play a simple melody on a guitar, within five minutes, using his notation system.
“I’ve completed the system and I’m now finalising the syllabus for the notation system.”
Melantha has written not only for the guitar, but also for drums, keyboards, and wind instruments.
For any queries, or additional information, you could contact Melantha at 071 454 4092 or via email at thebandbrightlight@gmail.com.
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