Excerpted from the Memoirs of a Cabinet Secretary by BP Peiris

(Continued from last week)

On my return from England as a fledgling barrister, I found that my kind father and mother had selected a bride for me, a close relative of mine. After about two months, he informed me of the fact, but I was reluctant to agree to marriage at so early an age because I was not earning enough at the Bar, not even enough to support myself.

Francis de Zoysa’s average of four guineas a month might, theoretically, have been a good yardstick, but for all practical purposes, my father had to give me money for my food and traveling which, for an advocate in those days meant first class travel by train.

In the meantime, every foreign mail was bringing me about six or seven letters from the girls amongst whom I had lived at Sutton and Ealing in England. They had all returned to their homes and the envelopes carried the stamps of their respective countries. They were harmless letters reminding me of old times, but parents probably feared that I might be under a promise of marriage to one of the letter-writers.

My mother was worried and her blood-pressure was rising. My father, to whom I had never lied since the caning I received from him for smoking in school and lying about it, asked me whether I had given a promise of marriage to any girl and said that, if I had done so, he would pull me out of the mess. I said I had given no such promise. Father then asked me why I was persistently refusing any offer of marriage and told me that my horoscope, which was a very difficult one to match, had been compared with the girl’s and had ‘agreed’ almost one-hundred per cent. I gave my consent. At the time of revising this (1976), I have been very happily married for 42 years.

My wife-to-be, Adeline, was related to me, but this relationship was extremely complicated. Her father, a simple and honest businessman, K. C. J. de Silva of Galle, was a highly respected man in the Southern province. The initials ‘K. C. J.’ were well known all the way from the Bentota Bridge down to Tissamaharama and the other way beyond Deniyaya.

I had an 18-month engagement. My father-in-law died three months after my marriage. He used to tell me stories about his rise to ‘power’, of his wealth and of the hard work which he had put in to earn that wealth. Of his integrity there was no doubt. This quality must have been ingrained in him; he expected it of others and he never forgave an ingrate. He held no university degree. But it could have been said of him that he had graduated in our local School of Business.

In the middle of my engagement, came one of the Supreme Court vacations. My normal visits to my fiancee was on Sunday by train. I had no car at the time, which was inconvenient as the train got to Galle at about 10 a.m. and I had to take the train back at 5 p.m. When the Supreme Court adjourned for the August vacation, I asked my father whether he could spare his car for me to go to Galle, and he agreed. I had arranged with my fiancee to come and spend the vacation at her house if her parents approved; but I had not asked her parents’ prior approval. The family had been brought up in a strict and conservative way.

On the morning following the commencement of the vacation, I had packed my suitcase for a two weeks stay at Galle. The suitcase was standing in the front verandah and the car was in the porch. I was about to leave when my father came out and asked me what the suitcase was for. I replied that it was the Supreme Court vacation. My father asked what the vacation had to do with the suitcase and I tactfully explained to him that the weekly Sunday train trips to Galle were wearing me out and that I proposed to spend my vacation with my fiancee.

He asked me whether I had obtained the permission of her parents, reminded me that I was not in England but going to the Southern province among very conservative people. I told him that I would take the bag, and that if I was not invited to stay at the house I would stay at the Hikkaduwa Resthouse. I reached the house at Galle at about 10 a.m. and my bag was taken out of the car and into a room. I asked the driver to take the car back to Panadura.

The home people knew that my only way of returning was by the 5 O’clock train. I was watching the clock – 4.30, 4.45 – not a hint from my mother-in-law-to-be, a kind woman, that I should get ready for the train. Five o’ clock. The train whistled and with it went my means of return. Seven-thirty, and I was asked to wash and be ready for dinner. And lo! I parked there for the next two weeks. The old couple were extremely hospitable. I received the impression that both of them liked me. They bought a piano specially for me; my fiancee did not know how to play.

And finally, came the wedding, June 8, 1934, with all the elaborate arrangements usually expected of weddings in the Southern province, in keeping with the status of the parties concerned. My father had reserved the hostel at the Manning Race Course at Boosa for the bridegroom’s party. We arrived there, changed and proceeded at the auspicious time to the bride’s house for the poruwa ceremony.

We were received with the customary honours and conducted inside by the parents of the bride to the place where the ceremony was to be held. Jayamangala gathas were sung by half a dozen girls while the bride’s step-brother was tying our thumbs with gold thread and pouring water on them. The ceremony over, I was a married man according to the customary law of Ceylon.

After the ceremony, our party returned to the Boosa Hostel for lunch. The wedding was in the afternoon. I had done only two things – booked the Police Band and booked the photographer. To the Bandmaster, I gave the programme to be played. I had no control over the speeches and, unfortunately for me, Mr G. K. W. Perera, who was asked to propose the toast of the young couple preferred to speak in Sinhala, a speech which I understood but could not reply to in that language. I thanked him in English in one sentence.

And then for our 10-day honeymoon on a quiet rubber estate which Mr Alfred Dias of Panadura placed at our disposal. The bungalow was beautiful and one of the most modem type. An excellent cook had produced an excellent dinner. We had a lovely, quiet holiday there, at the end of which we paid a visit to my wife’s parents. After two days at Galle, my wife and I returned to my father’s house at Panadura where we were to live for the next two years.

On our return, my parents were “At Home” to about 1,000 friends. During a traffic block on the narrow road in front of the house, Joseph Light, Assistant Government Agent, directed the drivers in such classical Sinhala that the drivers were unable to understand him. In the course of the evening, Francis de Zoysa made a speech and presented me with a purse from my colleagues in the Law Library.

Though my parents were of the view that, after marriage, a child should live in his or her own house away from the ancestral home, still, as I had no house of my own at the time, they readily agreed to park the two of us. There was never any unpleasantness during the two years we spent with them. My brother-in-law, Dick Dias, was building a house in Panadura. When I saw the plan, I felt the house would suit me and said I would take it when the building was completed. It was a neat, comfortable and compact house into which we moved.

Soon after my marriage, my wife and I went to consult Proctor Clifford Pereira who had given up his practice as a proctor and taken to astrology on the Occidental system. He worked from four-figure logarithm tables and charged his fees by the guinea as a lawyer. Our first visit to Clifford lasted several hours. He was a meticulous man and had a good astrological library. I had taken with me my horoscope written on an ola leaf.

He asked me several questions for over one hour – when I entered school, when I passed each of my examinations here and abroad, when I returned to Ceylon, when I was called to the Bar, when I married, etc. He worked for long with his log tables, my wife and I sitting silently before him. He then said, “The time on your ola leaf, tested with the information you have just given me, is wrong by nine minutes. I will cast your horoscope on the corrected time. Come and see me again in three weeks.”

I called again on the due date and he gave me an amazingly correct written forecast from 1934 to 1952. First, he asked me whether my wife was expecting a baby. When I said “Yes”, he said that the child would be born on April 23 following, and he was correct, where the doctor in charge of the case from the very beginning, my uncle George Wickramasuriya, F.R.C.S., F.R.C.P., F.R.C.O.G., was wrong.

Clifford then told me that I would get a Crown appointment in the Middle of August 1936, and inquired whether I had applied for anything. I said I had sent the usual application which every advocate sends for the post of Crown Counsel. He said I would never be appointed a Crown Counsel, that I would definitely get a Crown appointment but would not be in the public eye; I would be by myself, with books and papers and with no contact at all with the public. Reading further, he said “In the year … you will have a promotion, in… your second promotion, and in 1947 you will move into a political appointment.

All these forecasts were correct. But of them, I must speak in my later Chapters. Dr George Wickramasuriya, who brought my daughter into the world, was a much respected man. As I said before, he was in charge of my wife’s case from the very start. It was his last case before he went on two weeks’ leave to Nuwara Eliya. He had fixed April 10 as the date and applied for his leave accordingly. He had sent his family up in advance and was alone in Colombo, waiting for a summons in his last case, a telephone call from me; the confinement was to be at my father’s house at Panadura.

April 10 passed and we came to the 22nd. On that day, at about 3 p.m., I saw his car turning in at my father’s gates, and drums, gloves, sterilizers, and various other instruments were taken out. My wife was not in pain at the time and I asked him what all this meant. He said it was time she got “going”, that he had only three days more left of his leave and that he proposed to give her an injection, which he did, and left the house promising to return by 7 p.m. when, he thought, things ought to be going well.

My mother, whose cousin he was, had a room hastily prepared for him. He returned at the promised time, dressed as he always was, in a satin drill coat, waistcoat and trousers. As I stated, he came at 3 p.m. on April 22. The child was born at 7 p.m. on April 23 (Clifford Pereira’s first forecast). During all this period, throughout the night he refused to change into a sarong saying he was on professional duty and visited my wife’s room every half hour. A most conscientious doctor.

About half an hour after I had heard the cries of the baby, he came out of the room and asked whether he might have a bath. He then changed into an open shirt, his professional duties being over, and, being a most abstemious man, asked for a small whisky and soda. He must have been so very tired. After the first whisky, he took a second one, a most unusual thing with him, had an early dinner, after which he curled himself on the back seat of his large car and told the driver to drive to Nuwara Eliya. He had only two days leave available to him.

I had the greatest difficulty in getting him to send his bill. After about my fifth reminder, he said “Well, if you insist on a payment to me, give me…” which I thought was an extraordinarily low fee for such an eminent man. But he was one of those rare surgeons who had never a thought for a fee; with him service came first.

When I had a house of my own at Panadura, he used to come now and then to spend what he called a restful weekend. His medical bag was always in the car. It was an area of the houses of the wealthy, but right opposite my house lived a poor carpenter. The carpenter’s daughter was confined and the local general practitioner was having a difficult time with an instrument case when he noticed Dr Wickramasuriya’s car turning into my gate.

Before my guest’s bags could be taken out of the car, the carpenter was on his knees on my front doorstep imploring the doctor to come as the other doctor requested his presence. He returned after two hours having brought another child safely into the world. When I asked him what his fee would be in such a case, he said “I can’t charge that poor man a fee”.

He was human, he was sincere, and he was polite. There was always that smile on his face. Avaricious and selfish he definitely was not. He enjoyed helping, within his means, those who were in need, and his politeness went to the extent of raising his hat in a tram-car and giving up his seat to a basket-woman. The man, who could have had anything at all for afternoon tea preferred to have two slices of bread with a tasty fish or meat curry and I often enjoyed such a meal with him.

But there was also a streak of mischief in him. On On his estate at Pannipitiya, while he was playing tennis, he invited me to have some “barley water” which was in a large jug on a teapoy. I liked it so much that I asked whether I might have some more. Soon afterwards, I felt peculiar rumblings in my ‘innards’ and told him I was feeling ill. He smiled and said, “Not to worry, mister, you have only had a little too much sweet, iced toddy from the trees on my land.”

He died an early death and was mourned by his colleagues in the profession and more particularly by a grateful public. He had been the winner of the coveted Katherine Bishop Harman Prize by showing how many lives are lost through ankylostoma and hookworm in pregnant women. He received his prize in person at Oxford.

In the middle of August 1936, while spending a holiday with my wife at her house at Galle, I received a letter from father through a special messenger. To that, was attached the following letter ad dressed to me by the Legal Draftsman, which my father had opened:

Legal Draftsman’s Chambers,
Colombo.
15th August 1936

Dear Mr Peiris,

Will you be so good as to come and see me in my Chambers on Monday morning, about 10 a.m. I wish to offer you an acting appointment in this Department as an Assistant Legal Draftsman on a commencing salary of Rs 545/-.

Yours truly,

Mervyn Fonseka
I duly reported, was appointed and assumed duties on 18th August 1936 – Clifford Pereira’s second correct forecast. I served the Department for 11 years.

(To be continued)