Childhood and Growing Up

Excerpted from Memories that Linger by Padmani Mendis

(continued from last week)

Published in Sri Lanka by The Jam Fruit Tree Publications and is available as a Kindle eBook.

“For when the One Great Scorer comes
To mark against your name,
He writes not that you won or lost
But how you played the game”
Grantland Rice, 1941

This is what my mother would quote to us at regular intervals, lest we forget the values she wanted us to have.

My first memories are too hazy to share. Running barefoot up and down the never-ending patnas of Bandarawela with seemingly countless cousins. Ice-cold spring-baths at the peella at the foot hills below, every morning as a pre-lunch ritual. We were spending the years of World War II in Bandarawela, where many Colombo families had moved for protection from possible Japanese bombs and attacks.

And then my recall becomes clearer as it continues after we returned to Colombo to live at 11, Sunandarama Road, Kalubowila. This is where I spent a remarkable childhood. What made it so remarkable were the oodles and oodles of love that I was showered with. My mother had told me at some point in my childhood that the more love you are given now, the more you will be able to give later. It is a truism I believe in firmly. It influenced me when I chose to work with disabled people. It influences me now as an aunt and a grand-aunt to many in the next generations. Nalin and I do not have children of our own to shower my love on.

Growing up, I never had many bought toys to stimulate my development. My mother barely managed to feed her large household to be able to afford toys for me. There were always relatives living with us. Friends of Uncle Lyn (more of Uncle Lyn later) and of the siblings dropped in to visit daily, and they were welcomed warmly by my mother to share our meals.

A vivid image I have in my mind is that of a little brother and sister, perhaps of the ages of six and eight years, coming frequently to our home as dusk fell, clinging to each other perhaps with fear and apprehension. They would say something like “Mummy told to ask for a loaf of bread”. They always had a loaf and more – perhaps a couple of eggs to eat with the bread. We had plenty of those because Uncle Lyn also bred poultry on his farm. To help with the feeding of all of us and more. For this also her cousin Uncle Geoff was always there for my mother. The same Uncle Geoff who had registered my birth.

Uncle Geoff brought groceries for my mother from the Marketing Department Wholesale Store in Maradana. He would bring these in his blue Plymouth. Riding on the back seat with his legs stretched out in front to rest on the front seat. Driven by the ever-faithful Lionel. And a practice he would always adhere to was to display the purchases to my mother. He would set out what he had bought for her on the dining table. She would be sitting at the table adding up the costs which he said he had paid.

And we would love to stand by to watch this ritual being enacted. We all knew that Uncle Geoff always, always, understated the costs of the things he had bought, just to help her. She knew it. But through a mutual understanding between them his kindness was never put into words.

Of Santa, Dolls and Books

I got my first doll when I was about six or seven. My older brothers and my oldest sister had, by this time, passed the age of 21 and were entitled to a small monthly allowance from my father’s estate. They contributed to buy me my first doll. They did not disclose this to me at the time. The doll was in the pillow-case I had hung up that Christmas for Santa Claus; and, because my siblings told me, I had been a good girl. To me the doll was a living idol – in dresses that could be changed, she could open and close her eyes – what wonder! The younger of my sisters made dresses for her so I could not only bathe her but also wash her clothes regularly.

The next year that same Santa gave me a silver tea set. Who was to know or care that it was aluminum? I became the perfect hostess making real tea for any and all. With milk and sugar. With never a show of reluctance, all my guests actually drank my tea. Then I had to collect the used items, wash and dry them and have them ready for my next guests. I was eight or nine years old when, sadly, I learned the truth about Santa.

I got my first book when I was six years old. It was the prize I got in the middle kindergarten when Miss Freda Welikala was my class teacher. It was called “Thumper” and was about a rabbit. The next book I had was “The Water Babies” by Charles Kingsley. That too probably came in the annual pillowcase. It was about a chimney-sweep called Tom. I remember another character in it called “Mrs. Do-As-You-Would-Be-Done-By”. She had a significant impact on me. And only in my youth did I know that this book was a children’s classic written in 1863. I learned much from both. Both books had delightful illustrations, so attractive to a child of that age; both grew my mind with wonder and imagination.

Learning from Nature

But it was not these rare and expensive toys and books that first made my life joyful. Nor were they the toys that I learned my earliest lessons from. My earliest toys were from nature and the toys came free. We lived in a house with a very large garden, well over an acre of it or even two. Someone wise had lived there before us. This person had covered the land with trees – not just any trees, but those that would bear useful produce.

So coconut, that-was-a-plenty; and thambili, always ready to be plucked for guests or to quench a thirst. There were many different varieties of mango, jambu and guava; there was ambarella, lovi, and other fruit trees that many will not see now – huge masang and veralu trees among them. And then there was jak or kos and breadfruit or del. Always seemed to be available cooked for lunch or dinner or boiled or fried as chips at any time to satisfy a hunger.

My brother Shatra would often take me down the garden and show me how the seeds that fell to the ground germinated and grew into trees. He would show me buds burst into blossom from which fruits magically appeared. Always with catapult in hand he would shoot down luscious fruit which we would share. We would collect the bi-coloured red and black olinda seeds.

On a rainy day when we had to be indoors, we would play games using these seeds. They suited the playing of counting games. One game I recall was to throw them up with the palm of one’s hand then see how many one could catch with the back of the hand. With others to help me, I would make garlands and chains and bouquets for guests from flowers we collected from the garden.

Our front garden at No. 11 was covered with neat beds on which my young brothers would grow an array of different kinds of flowers. Seeds were available at not much cost – zenias, marigolds, cosmos, and there had to be the pretty little phlox. At Easter, parts of the back garden would be covered with orange Easter lilies. I would collect some bulbs and plant them in areas that that did not have them so that next year we would have more lilies. This is where my love of flowers blossomed. I have pots of these lilies even now on my balcony.

There was space in this garden of wonder for animals – goats, pigs and a small dairy which Uncle Lyn took care of. Uncle Lyn was more than a relative. My mother had married again and this was her husband “Llewellyn Adolphus Dalrymple Perera Abeyewardene. Although he was married to my mother, to us he was never considered a stepfather. He was always Uncle Lyn. That was our relationship. An amiable but distant uncle – and always there to drive us around and about. Besides, no one could replace our father. My siblings talked often about him and I would listen attentively. We still loved him hugely.

So here in this environment, nature provided my first remembrances of fun and of joy and of sadness, and of my first toys. It promoted my early learning and my early development. I loved especially playing with the baby kid goats of which there was always a steady supply. So much time I spent with them that my sister Nali would call me “Padi the Kid”. And that is how I came to be called “Padi”, then and to this day.

Theva

The dairy cattle were housed in a shed in one corner of the back garden. To care for them, and for the goats and pigs when we had them, was Theva from South India. I don’t recall that we had a bull full-time. I think Uncle Lyn got one down when he felt the cows needed a bull. When Theva required an assistant, he got down his son-in-law from South India. Ranga was a graduate from the University of Madras but had no job back home, and this solved the problem for both father and son-in-law.

Theva and I had a special relationship. I would stand by when I could while he bathed and then fed the cattle with poonac and with grass he cut from the grassland he had tended; while he milked the cows and bottled the milk; while he led the calves to their mothers for their feed. Theva explaining to me what he was doing and why, talking to me about the animals he cared for and about his home in South India and the family he had left behind. Me a keen listener, but full of questions which he had only to answer, helping him with fetching and carrying, and with other little tasks.

A vivid memory I have is of the toys Theva made for me. He would, for example, clean and then cut a dried fallen coconut branch into various sizes. Then he would shape them. The largest part of the branch would be made into a bull and later sections into cows and calves of various ages. Each had their nose and ears as well as a neck round which he would tie coconut string with which I could move them from tree to tree. I had to make sure they were tied firmly so they would not break loose. Then he would help me to tend to my own cattle, while he tended to his.

He also saw to it that I had my own little house. He had not heard of a doll’s house and neither had I. But this was the real thing. Walls and roof made of thatch using fresh coconut leaves. He also made dolls and carts and other toys for me using bits of cloth and paper and empty cans from the house, and sticks and leaves and string and I know not what, except that they were all from the house and garden. Theva, who had never been to school and was not able to read and write, taught me how to be innovative and stimulated creativity within me.

Pets and Other Living Things

In the house we had many dogs – the first I recall is an Alsatian called Marina. She was beautiful and ever so affectionate. I remember Marina allowing me to ride on her back, although when I think of that now, I am angry with myself for having done so.

­Then there were the Cocker Spaniels, Chappie and Bessie. Each dog spent a lifetime with us and made us so sad when they left this earth and us. But they were soon replaced with other dogs.

We had two monkeys in the garden. To recall that they were always tied with chains to sturdy posts now makes me wonder how we could have done that. We had, at one end of the verandah, a green parrot who was the same age as my oldest brother, then in his twenties. She was called peththappu. At the other end, we had a white cockatoo Uncle Lyn brought from Anuradhapura where he had inherited paddy lands. Called Polly, she was a very polite cockatoo, and sociable, always ready to greet us in the morning and at other times, and greet also any visitor. She would love to have us sit down in front of her cage and converse with her. Uncle Lyn was a hunter, and on our walls hung leopard and deer skins and antlers of various sizes, and on the floor were bear skins.

Of Songs and Relatives

My mother had a beautiful voice and she had many favourite songs. Some that had been taught to her by her English Governess. My fondest memories of her are when she was relaxing on a sofa, singing. Equally happy singing when we would be traveling in a car with many of the children jostling together on the back seat. I would often be sitting on her lap in the front seat. No seat belt requirements then.

A routine weekly trip would be to Moratuwa because that is where my aunt Violet, my mother’s oldest sister, lived with her brood of eight. My mother had to see each of her sisters at least weekly. I recall those songs she sang often – “One day when we were young” and “After the Ball is over”. The favourite of all was however “Jerusalem”. I can sing those to this day even in my now ageing and crackling voice.

My mother also used to visit her surviving aunts and uncles regularly. So almost always, on the return trip from Moratuwa we would stop by to visit Eddie Seeya. This was her father’s brother, her uncle E.L.F. who lived in a “cottage” on his coconut plantation, situated in what is now Ratmalana. As we drove up the long straight drive, the cottage under the tall coconut trees came into view. It was painted in colours of green and gold.

E.L.F was a well-known horse-racing enthusiast – for several consecutive years, the winner of the Governor’s Cup with his horse called Orange William. His racing colours were green and gold. These are the colours worn by the jockeys who rode his horses. But it seemed to us children that to E.L.F., everything he owned had to be in green and gold. I recall clearly those green and gold flower pots at the end of the drive and surrounding the cottage.

One day Eddie Seeya gifted to me a toy Daschund pup. He told me I could call it Gypsy. She was my loving companion at Kalubowila for many long years.

With me hanging on to her sari pota there would be visits to Mary Archchi and to Willie Seeya in Colombo. There were also regular visits to other relatives in Moratuwa and Angulana where many of them still lived on their large coconut properties.

Anura, Summa and Shatra

The younger of my six brothers, Anura, Summa and Shatra, I came to know better than I did the older three who had already embarked on their post-secondary studies. And those three did tease me with tall stories. A favourite was that my mother had found me in the “kaanuwa” or drain at Kadugannawa, felt sorry for me and brought me home. They even had a rhyme that went with that story – “kalu, katha, kota ape nangee, Kadugannawa kaanuwen gedara genawe ape ammi”.

To the extent that sometimes I believed stories like this and that would have me in tears. But there were always loving sisters to admonish them and send them off to do something more productive. And comfort me with stories of me as a baby and of my father, and action songs I liked to hear. These would end with tickles and hugs and kisses.

One thing that I have not forgiven those three brothers for is that even after plea after plea, none of them ever taught me to ride a bike. And after that I could never do so, in spite of trying over and over again. It must have been a mental block.

Anura was the one who had the most number of interests and hobbies, was always looking for something creative to do. At one time, he produced a family newspaper, a replica of the real thing with current news of family members and sketches of their activities. At another time, he was an amateur photographer. He started with a Kodak box camera and then, when he saved up enough from the allowance he got as an accountancy apprentice, bought a real fancy one which had to be focused each time before taking a photograph. He developed his own films in a dark room he made, sectioning off a corner of the front room with dark curtains.

,I would love to join him there, smell the chemicals and watch his photographs as they came to life. With this he introduced me to elementary science, which I learned later was physics and chemistry.Anura and Summa were boxers at school. Shatra still has his trophies earned in his childhood from his prowess in athletics. They played rugger at school and later for the Havelock’s Sports Club. I had no interest in sports and, come to it, in any physical activity. At school, I would be standing at the back of the class when we had physical education hoping I would not be seen.

(To be continued)