Keeping Traditions Alive, or Lampedusa’s Lesson: A Personal Memoir

By Pasindu Nimsara Thennakoon

“If we want things to stay as they are, things will have to change.”

Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, The Leopard

From the outside, a hostel seems very tight scheduled, very discipline focused, a place that makes you cry when you think about home. You are trapped with a bunch of strange faces, with horrible and ominous sounds haunting you through the night.

It was in 2014 that I entered the Hostel of Royal College. I had grown up in Rakwana and studied in Madampe, obtaining 190 marks for the Grade Five Scholarship. In my first few days at the Hostel I found it hard to adapt. But after some time, things began to change. Those strangers became best friends, the tight schedules became relaxed, and the horrible nights with ominous sounds became the best nights I lived through.

The Hostel eventually became of a student portal, a category unto itself. Students got used to a culture of helping each other out, with prefects overseeing them.

Apart from maintaining a well-disciplined institution, the Hostel Prefects also inspired the students to involve themselves in and organise many activities and events to make their life in the Hostel an incomparable one.

Indeed, at one point we all wanted to be Hostel Prefects. I nursed this wish as well. At the end of 2020 five students from our batch were appointed. These included me.

In 2022 I was appointed as Deputy Head Prefect of the Hostel. That year our Council decided to organise the Hostel Day, after a long hiatus of seven years. As hostellers, we regarded this as our biggest priority. It eventually became just that. With all the problems the country faced back then, we knew organising it would be a hefty task. From financial issues to never-ending curfews, we sensed the obstacles that lay ahead.

However, we had to make the call on this before long, as we were spending our last year as hostellers at our school. I remember how, in Grade 7, there had always been something to look forward to, some athletic event, a chess match, a drama or two to hop into and take part in. These gave us reason to be proud at being hostellers, and we didn’t think twice to say, openly and proudly, this was our home away from home.

As Hostel Prefects, we strongly felt we had to bring home what we had been privileged to witness for so many years. Yet we wanted to do so not with the intent of reviving the past, but of putting a twist to it, of updating it and making if more relevant to the present. Thus, after talking with the Hostel Warden, Mr Janaka Jayasinghe, we decided to revive the Hostel Day. Our heads brimmed with exciting ideas and plans.

During our tenure, the Prefects’ Council consisted of 12 members, five of us from Grade 13 and seven from Grade 12. Later eight new prefects were appointed from the post-O Level batch. With them we formed a team that helped us a great deal and became a strong pillar in the worst of times, giving us support to organise the event.

The Royal College Hostel has four houses. Prior to the Hostel Day, we thus organised a series of inter-house competitions, starting with cultural competitions, including essay writing, poetry, and debating, in all three languages. From these we organised an island-wide inter-Hostel competition, introducing a shield named after a key figure associated with our school and with cricket in Sri Lanka, Ashley Walker.

With these first few competitions we also organised sport events, with volleyball, football, and cricket tournaments, as well as tournaments for chess and carom, among other indoor games. While the competitions went ahead, we also put together a sumptuous dinner and various other items, including a Prize Giving. We also formed a band and put them through a series of gruelling practices, with the help of past hostellers.

Since no event of this sort would be complete without a drama item, we put together a series of humorous skits, all of which we wrote and planned with old hostellers who had been members of the Royal College Sinhala Drama Society. Everything was planned to the last minute, to ensure that it began on time and ended on time.

Despite a crippling economic crisis in the country, within four months we managed to complete all events and tournaments, readying ourselves for the final day. Yet by now people were facing two, sometimes three-hour power cuts. To manage these issues was a hefty challenge. Yet despite last minute cancellations and delays, we did our best to ensure that invitees and participants would enjoy the day.

To say this is not to understate the difficulties we faced. We had to postpone the event not once but twice. With the situation in the country the hostellers found it tough to travel. Financially, organising the Hostel Day became a nightmare, with one prospective sponsor after another backing off. But through all this we got the help of past hostellers, including ROCOHA, the Royal College Old Hostellers’ Association. We also got financial aid and help from several outside well-wishers, including from the United States.

While all this was going on, we had to focus on other work in the hostel. We were able to introduce a new structure for the hostel workflow with a projects-based working procedure for clubs and societies. We renovated the hostel Music Room with an immense contribution from Mr Chandimal Fernando and maintained a book to record who entered the room and used and took care of the instruments. We continued the Annual Prize Giving for the staff, organised an induction ceremony for captains and office bearers, and assisted ROCOHA to install a Smart Classroom and a generator in the hostel.

Finally, on August 11, 2023, the Royal College Hostel Day opened to much praise and acclaim. It was our night, to celebrate and relish. After a hiatus of seven years, we had finally revived the Hostel Day. And we had done so while breathing new life into it.

In his great novel of the passing of the Italian nobility, The Leopard, Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa reflects on the importance of changing things to keep them the way they are. In organising the Hostel Day after a long time, we had refined a tradition to keep it going, to keep it alive. In other words, we had ensured continuity through change. The Hostel Day of 2022 thus became more than an event for us: it became a baptism of fire, a lesson we will be carrying for the rest of our lives as Hostellers – and as Royalists.

Pasindu Nimsara Thennakoon is a young, aspiring researcher who is interested in medicine, history, and anthropology. He can be reached at .