DS Senanayake recommends sending my daughter to the Kundasale Farm School

(Excerpted from A Cabinet Secretary’s Memoirs by BP Peiris)

G. G. Ponnambalam, always smartly dressed, was one of the few Ministers who came to a meeting thoroughly prepared on his own matters. He knew his Cabinet paper as he knew his appeal brief, and he would present his case as he would present a case in the Appeal Court. His language was also excellent. In one of his Cabinet papers, he had used the word “guesstimate”. The typist came to me and asked whether this was a mistake. I looked up Fowler under Hybrid Words but got no assistance.

I directed that the paper be typed as received as I was not prepared to correct Ponnambalam’s English. Where a Minister was arguing what I thought was bad law, I used to hand a legal authority to Ponnambalam to disprove the argument. He was quick on the uptake and would say “Sir, Mr Peiris has just handed me this U. K. Act which says…” and that was the end of the other Minister’s argument.

We have in the office a special red label to be used when delivering top secret documents. It is stuck on the outer envelope and reads “To be opened personally by the Hon. the Minister”. In 15 years it has been used about five times. One Minister had a confidant, known as ‘egg hopper’, a top man in the newspaper world, not a reporter, but one unofficially at Director level. The Minister used to keep ‘egg-hopper’ supplied with background information which, I must stress, was never published.

I had issued one of these red label documents. A few days later, ‘egg-hopper’ invited me to his house for drinks and added that there would be about four others. After some time I inquired for the toilet and was directed to go through his bedroom. On his toilet table, I saw my top secret document. I looked at the number at the bottom of each Cabinet paper we issue. For example, the Governor-General gets No. 1, the Prime Minister No. 2, and so on. The number at the bottom of the paper I saw was the Minister’s.

I did not mention to any one what I had seen because I knew that there would not be a leak to the Press.

During the next few months, there were several leaks. Ministers naturally wanted to know how information could leak to the Press when Cabinet papers were delivered to them in double envelopes marked ‘Secret’. The Minister I mentioned then made a remark which was quite unworthy of him. He turned to D.S. and said, “Put Peiris under arrest for three weeks and watch the situation.”

The inference was obvious. This undeserved remark hurt my pride, my honour and my good name and I blurted out. “I have at no time had any contact with the Press; but I have once seen with a pressman a top secret paper which I had issued”. The Minister demanded details. I had, in my haste to vindicate myself put myself into a most difficult and dangerous position. I might have been disbelieved if I disclosed what I had seen. It was the Minister’s word against mine.

D. S. said. “Never mind, gentlemen, let’s get onto the next item on the Agenda.” On the termination of the meeting, he stayed behind on purpose, fumbling with his papers until all the other Ministers had left the room and said, “Peiris, I want to apologize for that remark made about you. I know these things don’t leak from you or your office. I also know the Ministers who give out the information to the Press.” He did not ask me which Minister’s paper I had seen on the toilet table – a truly remarkable gentleman.

S:W.R.D. was a pipe smoker who smoked that excellent tobacco, Old English Curve Cut, packed in a neat, slim tin case which slipped easily into the hip pocket. One day, he came to a meeting with a tin of local tobacco. I saw him struggling to open the tin with its cutter. He was not used to it because his former tin had no cutter and opened easily.

I walked across to him and asked “May I help you, Sir?”. “Please do,” he said. I took the tin and found that he had been trying to cut the thick bottom foil which was impossible. I turned the tin round, put the cutter in place, and opened it in about ten seconds. I handed the opened tin to him saying, “Sir, you were trying it the back way.” He roared with laughter saying “That’s a bloody good one my dear fellow, a bloody good one.”

He was intellectually arrogant. In spite of his attempt, for political reasons, to camouflage himself in a cloth and banian, he could not divest himself of his aristocratic background and upbringing.He had many human faults and weaknesses, but, if you caught him at the right moment, you could make that steeliness in his heart melt because there was kindness, sympathy and understanding in him.

I have a vivid recollection of a fatherly talk D.S. had with me sometime in 1949. My daughter had passed the Senior School Certificate Examination at the age of 15 and could not proceed further until she was 16. She had the gift of the gab and appeared to be a chip off the old block. One meeting day, I was in the Cabinet room early, looking at a map of Ceylon, to see what D.S.’s agricultural, irrigation and colonization schemes were.

I had not been able to obtain leave to see these places for myself. The Prime Minister himself walked in 10 minutes early and asked me what I was looking at. With his finger on the map, he explained everything to me in five minutes—irrigation channel 20 miles long here to irrigate 15,000 acres, bund here, anicut there etc.

When he finished, I asked him whether he would be kind enough to give me some advice on a personal matter. He was an old friend of my father. I mentioned my daughter’s case and said I could not make up my mind whether to make her a doctor or a lawyer. He said, “These are both faculties in the University. If that is your only child, don’t send her to the University. Send her to my Kundasale Girls’ School. She’ll be a good wife, a good mother and a good cook. I am going there in a fortnight. Come with your wife as my guest and bring the girl along. Let her see the place and make up her own mind.”

I told my wife of the invitation and of the impending visit and asked to have a picnic lunch ready on that day which we could have under a shady tree at the Farm. I intended to go in shorts. Two days before the event, the Prime Minister’s Secretary inquired how many there were in my party, I asked “Which party?” D.S., a busy man, had not forgotten that he had invited me a fortnight earlier.

I was ordered to come in tie, collar and coat; we were to be the Prime Minister’s guests at lunch, the Governor-General, Lord Soulbury, would be present, and we should be at the Farm before 9 a.m. We were on time.

Permanent Secretaries, Heads of Departments and other officials, all numbering over one hundred, were there. My daughter was the youngest present. Every one of the guests was introduced to His Excellency by the Prime Minister. He introduced my daughter as a prospective recruit. The Prime Minister was genuinely fond of the place and never failed to visit the school if he was in the area.

The tour of the farm started. Lord Soulbury’s Rolls-Royce could not take the narrow roads and he therefore got into a small Ford car with the lady Principal. The Prime Minister got into a jeep. We, minor fry, followed in other cars. When we came to the piggery, the Prime Minister shouted “Where’s that little girl?” I asked my daughter to go forward and to say “Sir” if any question was asked.

D.S. asked a man to take some of the piglets out of the sty and told my daughter that if she could not hold a piggy, she was not fit to be a pupil in his school. My daughter picked up two piglets, one of which D.S. took, and while they were both holding the piggies, the camera man clicked and I possess a delightful picture of the Prime Minister and my daughter holding a couple of the little fellows in their arms.

We went round the classrooms and the dormitories which were clean and tidy. The 100 girls in the school, dressed in slacks and shirts, were having a holiday. They had helped in cooking an excellent lunch of rice and about 20 curries. Lord Soulbury was amused when one of the girls served him with rice, not with a spoon, but with a saucer. He was a small ‘eater’ and the saucer was too large a measure.

After lunch, served by the girls, Lord Soulbury and Mr Senanayake made speeches and signed several autograph albums for the girls, and the party came to an end.

Kundasale is a beautiful place – the headquarters of Lord Mountbatten during the war. The military buildings, which the girls occupied, have since been replaced by more substantial structures. The girls get a practical training in animal husbandry, agriculture, home science and several other subjects useful in later life. The outdoor life and the climate contribute towards the .good health of the pupils. The farm life knocks out the nursery ideas about storks bringing babies and leaving them under the bushes.

My daughter left the school after her training, a much matured woman with some sensible ideas in her head. The two year period of training is hard work. The day starts which the milking of cows at five in the morning. The girls then attend lectures and do practical agriculture, poultry keeping and other activities. In due course, my daughter obtained her diploma and left the school with regret.

The boarding house food was just like the food in any other boarding house. About once a month, my wife and I received a begging letter from the daughter asking us to come the following Sunday with three hundred string hoppers. We took all the food and went to spend the day at the farm. We carried mats and cushions, water bottles and glasses and, after arrival at the farm, filled the car to the maximum capacity with my daughter’s friends and came back to the Peradeniya Botanical Gardens for lunch which we had seated on our mats under a shady tree. On our return to the school, the girls used to take me to the concert room and make me play the piano and sing.

This had a most interesting sequel several years later. I was a member of the Havelock Sports Club. The club house at that time was like a caravan on wheels. It was a Sunday; several members were having their pre-lunch drinks. A private bus turned in at the other end of the Park and discharged about 60 girls. A quick thought told me that these could not be girls from a nearby school; they were probably from Kundasale.

The club boys refused to go and invite the girls on my behalf to the Club. I said I would go myself. Watched by all, I walked up to the girls, right across the park, and asked one of them whether they were from the Kundasale Farm School. When she said “Yes”, I told her that my daughter had been ‘I there and asked them all to come with me to the Club, which I pointed out, and have a soft drink with me. She said the girls would have to get the teacher’s permission, and I asked that I be taken to the teacher.

I introduced myself and the teacher asked whether I was not the gentleman who used to come to the school and play the piano. Permission was granted. I walked with the teacher to the Club, heading the procession, with all the girls following. I had been watched all the time by the members and they were surprised to see the snakelike two-by-two procession wending its way across the Park led by someone like the Pied Piper of Hamelin.

I ordered drinks all round and the girls shared the glasses as there were not sufficient to give them one each. I bought all the gram from the seller who had come along -and gave it to them to munch on their way back. The girls left after throwing me up inside the little club house to the tune of “He’s a jolly good fellow”.

My daughter was later offered a post at the Labuduwa Farm as instructress in Animal Husbandry at Rs 60 a month. She naturally had to refuse it because she was to be sent to a lonely spot – and to have somebody to look after her, and could not therefore run an establishment on the salary offered. She put her training to good use at home and reared poultry as a hobby.