Learning Discipline The Hard Way

Part 4 CONFESSIONS OF A GLOBAL GYPSY

By Dr. Chandana (Chandi) Jayawardena DPhil

President – Chandi J. Associates Inc. Consulting, Canada

Founder & Administrator – Global Hospitality Forum

chandij@sympatico.ca

As a free-spirited teenager, I resented being told what to do day and night at the Ceylon Hotel School (CHS). The senior students continued their ragging at the hostel as well as bossing us at the school for a full week. It appeared that the intention of the school’s leadership was to mould the newcomers from the very beginning. In the evenings we had surprise visits by the hostel warden who lived with his family right in front of our hostel. He was a nice elderly gentleman, but at times was annoyed by our lack of respect for CHS after-school rules.

Letting out the steam at Judo

A few days after the semester commenced, the rag leaders announced that as a reward for our obedient behaviour, all Fresher F***ers (FFs) will be given an evening off during the rag week. Each of us had to get permission from a rag leader to be released from the hostel for a few hours after informing him how that evening will be used free of harassment. I told the rag leader that I need to be present for an important championship qualifying judo bout at the Colombo YMCA. He sarcastically told me, “If you know judo, show me how you throw an opponent.” Without batting an eyelid, within seconds I grabbed his shirt front with both my hands, used a common hip movement in judo to upset his balance and threw him over a bunk bed.

While he was trying to recover from the fall and get up from the floor, there was pin-drop silence among my batch mates, who were in a line to obtain the ‘evening off’ permission. With some effort the senior collected himself and told me: “OK, you know judo. Permission granted to have an evening off”. I walked away with a grin, winking at my batch mates. I quickly went to the Judo Club, fought well, won the semi-final bout and came back to the CHS hostel feeling like a lion. Unfortunately an unpleasant surprise was awaiting me.

The word has spread among all students in the two senior batches at CHS of what I did to a Lord Veteran. In unison they had agreed that I am a FF who had to be put in his place by hook or by crook. My rag that night became worse with various physical punishments. With that extra focus on me, most of my batch mates were off the hook that night, but became forced spectators of how I was punished. I had to do many rolling breakfalls on the concrete floor of the hostel portico and push ups until I did not have any strength to stand. This treatment made me angrier, but also made me tougher and determined to eventually win. That mood helped me win the Judo championship final a few days later.

Mischief at the kitchen

The first kitchen practical was fun. We learnt about different kitchen equipment, different 

vegetable cuts, methods of cooking, filleting a fish, doing advance preparations or mise en place (French for preparation of dishes and ingredients in a professional kitchen), as well as making a bouquet garni (also French for a bunch of herbs, typically in a Muslin bag for flavouring soups and stews), a beef stock and a béchamel (a rich white sauce of milk infused with flavouring). We were thrown in to the deep end during our second kitchen practical when we had to prepare a three-course menu to be served for lunch in the CHS training restaurant.

We worked in groups of three, and made four portions of each food item. Under supervision, we made Consommé Julienne, Filets de Sole Grillés, Pommes Duchesse, Carottes Vichy, and Crème Caramel. We had to loyally follow the recipes in the CHS adopted text book ‘Practical Cookery’ by Cesserani and Kinton from the Ealing College, UK. The German Chef Instructor Herr Helmut Belling who was in charge of the practical class refused to send the four portions of Crème Caramel I had prepared to the training restaurant, as those lacked the required firmness. After that bad experience, whenever I had to make Crème Caramel again at CHS, secretly I mixed an extra egg yolk into the custard.

The chef was a fun-loving nice guy. Having observed that I stole a cube of cheese from a refrigerator and quickly ate it in the midst of the practical, he had replaced the remaining cheese cubes with a bar of Sunlight soap cut in similar sized cubes. He laughed for a long time when I tasted soap in my mouth at my second attempt to steal cheese. After the lunch we prepared was served by the 

second-year students to 36 horrified customers at the training restaurant, we had to clean and wash the kitchen. During this time, I focused more on having fun by throwing wet dusters around the kitchen at my batch mates who were working hard. My irresponsible action resulted in a hilarious water fight in the kitchen until the Chef Instructors returned fro

m their lunch to re-enforce order.

Hostel coming live at night

At the end of our first week at CHS, the ragging was coming to an end, but I was given an individual warning by the seniors that if I do n

ot strictly follow the golden rules of the Shefton (name of the CHS hostel), the seniors hold the right to do a second rag to my whole batch. In fact, we had to take an oath promising that we will follow these golden rules which included items such as: “FFs will always obey Lord Veterans”, “FFs will always be last” (when collecting hostel food etc.), “FFs are seen, but not heard”, so on. After the rules were memorized and repeated, the ragging officially ended. The seniors finally gave us a warm welcome, which included a big arrack booze party till the early hours of the morning.

The party mood at the hostel continued throughout the three-year period. When we had pocket money, we found any excuse to have a party and get drunk, particularly after CHS sport teams took part in games with various external teams. Our motto was: “Win or lose, we booze”. In between these big parties, we used to get together in small groups of f

our to have an occasional drink. In this case all we needed was each of the four students to contribute Rs. 2.50 to bring the total collection to Rs. 10.00 (little more than US$ 2.00 at that time). This was enough for us to buy a bottle of arrack, a bottle of ginger ale, and a packet of Bristol cigarettes. After two hours all four were drunk.

Movie nights and water fights

When we could not afford to get drunk, we went instead to see movies at 9:30 pm and walked back to the hostel close to midnight. That entertainment cost each student only 50 cents (for the cheapest gallery ticket right in front of the screen). Regularly, we upgraded ourselves to more comfortable seats at the back of the cinema during the interval without being noticed by the cinema attendants. Usually, the other hostellers who did not even have 50 cents to go to the movies, had their entertainment by challenging those returning from cinemas for a midnight water fight. The attackers usually waited with buckets of water and hose pipes hiding behind the trees in the hostel grounds. Often it was l

ike a guerrilla ambush.

On days we made too much of a noise after midnight, we made the poor warden lose his sleep as well as his temper. If his wife and daughters too were awoken, we got into deep trouble. If and when the angry warden came to t

he hostel to check, we pretended to be fast asleep, some in wet cloths.

One minute late

I was in the largest room in the hostel which was called ‘The Dirty Dozen’, named after 1967 classic movie about 12 of the US Army’s worst prisoners turned into commandos to be sent on a probable suicide mission. It had bunk beds for 12 students. There were 10 first year students and two second year students who supervised us as our room bosses. During our second week at CHS, owing to some late-night fun, I overslept the next morning. In spite of efforts by my room mates to wake me up, I and two other students were late by one minute to enter CHS. For our bad luck, the Principal was standing at the entrance, and immediately assigned after school ‘punishment’ tasks to three of us. The other two students got easy punishments – one had to clean a few toilets and the other had to polish some brass door knobs. As the Principal was targeting me based on his philosophy: ‘hit the toughest hardest’ to teach others a good lesson, I got the worse punishment.

Memorable punishment

I had to prepare two large stock pots for the next day’s kitchen practical, clean the kitchen windows and then spend the whole night in the kitchen as the kitchen door was under repair. I was very angry and could not understand why Herr Sterner could not arrange a night security guard. Late afternoon, during my guard duties, my old buddies from the Ananda College Rugby Football team came to practice at the army grounds which was just behind the CHS kitchen. During their practice break, through a window I treated them with lots of ‘free’ snacks I collected from the CHS kitchen stores. My former team mates were impressed. Later I ate some left-over food kept in refrigerator for my dinner and slept on a stainless-steel kitchen table. In my later career when I became a Hotel School Principal and a College Dean, if I ever gave this type of punishment to any student, I would have to spend very high legal fees defending myself. Those days were different. However, Principal’s cruel punishment worked. I was never late again!

In spite of my challenges during the first month at CHS, I was able to jump start my hospitality career with a few part-time jobs towards the end of 1971 while experiencing some ‘real life’ ups and downs.

(More, next week.)