More on having foreign mothers in then Ceylon

(Excerpted from Chosen Ground: The saga of Clara Motwani by Goolbai Gunesekera)

Having British and American mothers also meant that we were spared much of the meaningless ritual of the East. Our parents protected us from prejudice, since caste and creed were not matters of high priority to them. Their Theosophical backgrounds ensured that we grew up with eclectic beliefs, as far as religion was concerned. What was stressed was ethical behaviour.

We read about all the faiths, and they were discussed in our homes. Buddhism and Hinduism were our Father’s leanings, but as far as we remember there was no `must’ about religious observances. From Father I learnt Hinduism and Sikhism, from Mother, Christianity and Buddhism. I can say the prayers of all religions, and am quite happy in any place of religious worship.

At my Ooty convent in the Nilgiri Hills of India, I won the Catechism prize two years in a row, even though I was not a Christian at the time. Our parents encouraged us to mingle with everybody. It mattered little to them who our friends were, just so long as they came from educated and cultured backgrounds. I attended eight schools altogether, while Suriya easily topped my record by attending 11 – 13, if she counted repetition in the same school. She finished her secondary school career at Ladies’ College, and I at Bishop’s.

Unlike the normal run of Asian mothers, ours were not busy collecting jewelry for us to be worn when we ‘grew up’ – a euphemism for our first menstruation. Kumari received her first set of gold bangles from her future mother-in-law before she married. She promptly lost them all. My own mother-in-law left me a lot of good jewelry in her will.

I loved her and remember her daily, but not because of that jewelry. Mother would have rather spent the money on books, and it says much for us that we never felt deprived. Our classmates may have worn their gold bangles to school, but we simply did not notice. Our ears were not pierced till we were ready to marry, but then again, who cared ? No one, except gossipy, but good natured, family friends who worried about our futures in a traditional society.

On one never-to-be-forgotten day I had taken my Indian cousin (a boy) to the Women’s International Club for a game of tennis. Boys were tolerated there on a one-day-a-week basis, but we were not expected to know any young boys. Our mothers did the inviting if necessary.

Anyway, the ladies of the Club were treated to the sight of me cheerfully playing singles without a chaperone in sight. Unable to concentrate on so mundane a matter as bidding a hand, they hurried to the phone and collectively informed Mother of my goings-on on the tennis court. Such freedom, such laxity, such license boded no good for my matrimonial hopes, they told Mother.

And this brings me to marriage: such an important milestone in the lives of Asian girls. In point of fact, all four of us made ‘good’ marriages; which is to say, they were socially commendable, although here again, our parents only checked on whether the boy was ‘nice’… an adjective that covered a multitude of qualities to which traditional parents would not have given much thought.

Kumari married Lal Jayawardene, son of the Governor of the Central Bank of Ceylon. Naturally I wanted to know how romance had blossomed. Kumari had been studying at the London School of Economics while Lal was at Cambridge. Dining one night with an Indian friend at a restaurant in Russell’s Square, Kumari was introduced to a young man (Lal) who must have been smitten instantly, for they married a year later.

All four of us ‘sisters’ are much fairer of skin than our contemporaries. All of us are dark-haired, except for my sister who had hair that was almost golden at birth. Certainly, we do not display the conventional looks of the average Sinhalese or Tamil girl. What was amazing to us was that Lai had not noticed this far from usual Sinhalese colouring, and was surprised when Kumari mentioned later on in their relationship that she had an English mother.

Relating this story, Kumari told me in amused tones: “You might have thought that Lal should have realized something was wrong!” Blinded by love he did not. and, anyway, ‘wrong’ is not the word we would have used on ourselves.

Maya Kularatne

Suriya married Desmond Fernando, a distinguished lawyer, scion of a well known Sri Lankan family and at the time of my writing, President of the Sri Lanka Bar Association. Theirs was a typical ‘boy-next-door’ romance which blossomed in idyllic surroundings, since they lived on opposite sides of a tree-lined road in a beautifully quiet and shady residential area.

Maya married Stanley Senanayake, who ended his career as Inspector General of Police of Sri Lanka, and I married ‘Bunchy’ Jayampati Gunasekara, son of a Judge, Mr. P.R. Gunasekara who was subsequently Ambassador to England, France and Australia.

I met my husband when I was 15: it was a standard case of opposites attracting. My mother had made sure that I had imbibed her own stand-offish doctrine and attitudes vis-a-vis boys. Bunchy, on the other hand came from a gregarious, highly sophisticated Sinhalese family who entertained a great deal, and loved ballroom dancing. (I need hardly say here that I did not know how to dance at the time.)

At my classmate Malinee Samarakkody’s birthday party, my friends were twirling around happily while I just twiddled my thumbs on the sidelines. Bunchy asked me to dance. I often wondered why he came up to me and asked me to do the foxtrot but ask he did. “I don’t know how,” I told him forlornly.

Bunchy was all bright, breezy and confident. “Oh, that’s no problem, ” he said airily. “I’ll teach you.”

To this day I swear he added the words “I’m very good at it” but he denies this so vehemently that I’m getting confused myself. For the sake of family peace I shall go along with his story…..and it was never in any doubt that he was then, and still remains, a superlative dancer.As I said earlier, we met when I was just 15, and he 18. When I went away to University, Bunchy left for England to study the tea business. By all accounts, he had a marvelous time in London, and can still find his way from pub to pub if need be, while I had a pretty boring time in University being faithful to an absentee boyfriend.

The four of us found our own partners in spite of our parents’ attitudes, and not because of them. They were concerned with teaching us how to live our own lives as fulfillingly as possible, rather than telling us that such fulfillment for women lay only in marriage.

The lives of these eight people shaped and moulded the lives of young Sri Lankan children for years to come. While it is true that the medical doctor and politician fathers were busy with their patients and constituents, the others headed schools like Visakha Vidyalaya, Colombo; Sri Sumangala in Panadura, Sujatha Vidyalaya in Matara, Musaeus College, Colombo, Ananda College in Colombo for boys, Ananda Balika in Colombo for girls, Hindu Ladies’ College, Jaffna, Buddhist Ladies’ College, Colombo, and Sujatha Vidyalaya in Colombo.

My own father went back to India as Professor of Sociology and was a visiting lecturer in countries all over the world. But Sri Lanka was his base and he frequently gave a series of lectures at the Colombo University campus when Sir Ivor Jennings was the Vice Chancellor.

Both Mother and Hilda Kularatne were Principals of their schools at the age of 23. Both began teaching their students to be Sri Lankans and not just good little British colonials. Accordingly, Hilda began teaching temple art and native art forms to her pupils. Mother began the teaching of Buddhism as a subject, and encouraged her Visakhians to look to their own culture for inspiration.

Chitra Malalasekera

All these ladies had been brought up with rather iconoclastic views by their own parents who had questioning and insightful minds. All four of them were pioneers of the Rotherfield Society – the first of its kind – founded by Dr. Ratnavale, the well-known psychiatrist. All four were members of the Theosophical Society and this is perhaps a good place to mention again that when India gained Independence, most of Nehru’s first Cabinet were likewise members of the Theosophical Society and had been influenced by that great Englishwoman, Annie Besant.

There was another aspect of this blend of East and West that is rarely highlighted. Much of their student life and some of the working life of these eight people had been spent abroad. Ergo, their contacts abroad were also many. Their personal friends are now regarded as being among the world’s greatest personalities.

Mahatma Gandhi, a friend of Doreen and her husband, gave Suriya a cotton sari that he had woven. The sage, Jiddu Krishnamurti, often had dinner in our home as we were one of the rare vegetarian families in Colombo. Krishna Menon, India’s great Foreign Minister, had been Doreen’s teacher and she kept up her ties with him. Harold Laski, the renowned political scientist, had been my father’s professor briefly at Yale.

Rukmani Arundale, the Minister of India’s Cultural Affairs and the founder of Kalashetra Dance School, was a family friend. Beautiful Rukmani taught me how to wear the sari when I was 11-years old ! J. B. Priestley was yet another literary acquaintance. The famous Indian dancer Uday Shankar was a guest in our home, as was Rabindranath Tagore in Suriya’s.

He visited Sri Lanka, and spoke at Ananda Balika when Doreen was its Principal. Doctors A.P de Zoysa and S.A. Wickremesinghe were members of the Buddhist Union in England, and were friends of Anagarika Dharmapala whom they worked with in London.

In the USA, Father had met Pearl Buck, the Nobel Prize winner in Literature. She autographed a set of her books for him, which he donated along with an entire library to the University of Colombo. They must be still there if anyone cares to trace them.

Through the Theosophical Society, Father was introduced to Henry Wallace, the Vice President of America during the Roosevelt administration. Wallace’s interest in Theosophy and Buddhism was well known, and the writer Gore Vidal makes mention of this incident in his book The Golden Years.

George Santayana, the philosopher, was yet another acquaintance with whom Father corresponded for much of his life, as was the famous author and co-Theosophist, Aldous Huxley.

Encouraged and supported by their husbands, the four ladies not only had significant roles to play in the emerging Sri Lanka but also left an indelible mark on the island. Writing an article titled “Heroes Day – Here are the Heroines” in 1977, the well-known journalist and Gratiaen Prize-winner, Vijitha Fernando, included Mother and Doreen in her round up of the island’s outstanding women.

Eleanor de Zoysa came from a family that had been socialist in their views for four generations. Small wonder, then, that Kumari followed suit. Suriya was Head of Amnesty International for five years (the only Sri Lankan to have had this honour) and during her tenure of office has had occasion to accept awards and citations in various countries for her work. Maya has just retired after leaving her mark on Sri Lanka’s Police Department, where as the wife of the IGP, she headed the Seva Vanitha.

She also founded and ran a handicraft village which was a showpiece for visitors who wanted a quick glimpse into the culture of the land. And I, trailing behind the headline-grabbing careers of my ‘sisters’ – I run the Asian International School in Colombo – the only one of the four of us to continue the educational careers of our mothers.

As could be expected, these four mothers had a very liberal outlook; an outlook that today would be positively dangerous. Kumari was allowed to explore Colombo freely, and she swept Suriya along in her wake as she wandered at will. The two girls would picnic (alone) on the beaches of Modera, cycle along unfrequented pathways and examine whatever took Kumari’s interest.

Assuming all was well, Doreen never asked where Suriya had been. She trusted that Kumari was doing her duty, and looking after the younger girl. In actual fact they were travelling by bus, and doing the sort of things girls from more traditional families rarely did. But our families were-not traditional, and Colombo was an unusually safe city. We were so lucky. This unorthodox upbringing has made us self reliant, independent and confident, and well able to handle our world.

To this day, Kumari and Suriya are generally regarded as the brains of the quartet. Kumari is now Dr. Kumari Jayawardena, former Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Colombo and the author of a string of books on the role and position of women in this island. When her husband was appointed to a job in Helsinki, she had to retire as professor although she still keeps up lecturing engagements at the University on a freelance basis.

She has written in detail of the impact women, and especially Western women, have made on our society, and anything I might say here on the subject would be not only superfluous but rather banal.

And so Kumari, Suriya, Maya and I –sisters under the skin’ – the offspring of these wonderful parents, have remained friends all our lives. It has been one of the great plus points of our unorthodox heritage.