Schooling at Ladies College

BY PADMANI MENDIS

Excerpted from Memories that linger…..

I had started schooling at Ladies’ College at the age of five years. First memories are of dancing round the maypole with Miss Nellie, our teacher in the “Baby Class”. Her enthusiasm while with us was infectious. Singing with her “Jack and Jill”, “Little Miss Muffet”, “Humpty Dumpty” and so many other nursery rhymes is clear, is unforgettable. My favourite song was “The Pansy Flower is Purple” because to me, it was about my mother. I yet remember the words.

My best friend from our first day in the “Baby Class” was Deepthi Mendis. Our families knew each other which made ties stronger. We remained “best friends” throughout our time in school. That she is now my sister-in-law is but a coincidence. Other “baby” friends starting school together were Ruki, Chandrani, Yogarani and Sunil. Unfortunately, those are the only ones whose names come to mind.

Then there was Miss Freda and Miss Gladys, our class teachers over the next two years. I remember Miss Freda liked me and I received my first school prize that year. A vivid memory I have of this time is of the annual Kindergarten Concert. One year, one of the action songs I was selected to sing with two others was “Polly Put the Kettle On”. The younger of my brothers never let me forget this, three of them together often imitating me at home, exaggerating the performance of course. My mother was at the concert and bought me an ice-cream during the interval.

Other memories really become clear enough to recall only when I reached about the end of our time in Primary School. Mino had joined Ladies’ at the age of eight. She, with her sisters Shireen, Mali and Neelakanthi, had been at Visakha until then. Mino clicked immediately with Deepthi and me, so now we were three. When the Tamil and Sinhala streams were merged in Form I, Vasanth was put into the same class as Deepthi, Mino and me. We blended instantly and now we were four. The next year, Saro came to Ladies’ and we ended up as five best friends for the rest of our time at school.

While at school Deepthi’s sister Sita, and her friends, Kantha and Neela had been inseparable, starting school one year before us in the “Baby Class”. Savi was with us since she came to Ladies’ in the Upper Kindergarten and Deirdre since she came towards the end of primary school. Savi always carried away the class prize. So, it was no surprise when she took to the academia and as Professor Savitri Goonesekere, to become the first woman Vice Chancellor of the University of Colombo.In the latter years of school and after that, and with university, friendships merged and the group expanded. And now, nearly eighty years since some of us first came together, we have all been bound closely and remain friends. We meet frequently, sometimes on birthdays, at other times over a meal in each other’s homes.

Kantha is the most frequent hostess. She never forgets to include other friends from the past. She sometimes entertains in her home at Spathodea Avenue and at other times it has of course to be at the Green Cabin. After all she was the granddaughter of its founder, Mudliyar Thomas Rodrigo. Generosity, concern, hospitality and giving continue to be a part of her, as it is of her family. The Green Cabin continues to be a family business.

Mino at school was naughty, a born prankster. Her first prank, which we still recall with laughter, is one she played on our class teacher, Mrs. Samarasekera. Sambo was very religious. She had just been given a beautiful new Bible by her family and she brought this to the classroom every day, placing it lovingly on the front of her desk. One morning, Mino produced a metallic imitational blob of blue ink from somewhere and while Sambo had gone out for a moment, placed it on Sambo’s Bible. One does not need to describe the consequences…

Another prank I remember is related to the death of Joseph Stalin. Mino got us all, the whole class, to play a prank on “Rat” or Sugirtham Ratnanayagam, our class teacher in Form Three. She was very strict and made every one of us afraid of her. School finished at 3.15 p.m. Mino’s plan was that at 3.00 o’clock sharp, I as the class captain would stand up, and then the whole class would follow and stand to attention. A two-minute silence was to be observed for Stalin.

This we did. And there was “Rat”, not knowing what it was all about, shouting at us to sit down. As class-captain, Rat expected me to listen to her. So there she was, shouting “Padmini, sit down. Sit down.” That there was no response from her “goodie” Padmini was a surprise to her. She continued naming others who she thought would obey her, but none did. We kept our word to each other and sat down only when the time was up. Our punishment was severe …

As far back as I could remember, I had been the class captain. School was where we first learned democratic values. Class monitors and the class committees were always elected fair and square. Never selected by a class teacher. My classmates obviously liked me. And I am confident that they would not have liked me had I been loud and bossy. I was told that I was “quiet”. I believe I was diligent and conscientious and, I hope, with prejudice to none.Every year the school awarded a Class Shield for the best behaved, and our class had been a recipient of that. A Class Shield for the best kept classroom, Garden Shield and a Garden Prize were also awarded every year and we have received all those as well at one annual prize-giving or another.

Going back to Form Three. At the start of the last term of the year the new captain and committee were to be elected again. “Rat” our class teacher, had had enough of our pranks by now. So she declared, quite undemocratically we thought, that Padmini and the others could not be re-elected. She wanted a new set. So there it was.

But came the day of the announcement of prizes and Form Three had been awarded the shield for the best kept classroom. Now that made “Rat” proud. We were “her girls”. But what was she to do? She had set a dilemma for herself. Who was she to send up to collect the shield? She knew that I had not stopped being my usual diligent and helpful self.

It was in Form I that our class won the Garden Shield. Or it may have been the Garden Prize. As the school year started, any class wanting to do so could select the piece of land they wanted for a garden.So we selected a plot that was in size about 12 inches wide and may be 12 or 14 feet in length. This plot was convenient because it was close to where our classroom was located that year. We tilled the land with garden spades and other small implements we brought from home; we made proper drains for irrigation and then divided it into 12 small beds.

On six beds we planted vegetables – a carrot, a beetroot, a leek, a Bombay onion and the like. The space of each vegetable bed, as you can imagine, did not allow for more than one plant of each variety. Similarly, on the other six plots we planted flowers – marigold, cosmos, phlox, zenia and so on. Probably again from seeds we brought from home. Different groups led by committee members took responsibility for watering, fertilising, weeding and other associated tasks by the week. Another lesson in democracy. And oh what fun that learning was!

Much later I was a school prefect for two years, in Form six, one and two. Head prefects during these two years were the sisters Sita and Deepthi, now my sisters-in-law. The main role of a school prefect was to ensure school discipline. To ensure discipline in others, one had first to be disciplined oneself.

So being a prefect brought about within me an amazing change, responsibility together with self-discipline, one that I am thankful for to this day. That sense of responsibility and self-discipline carried me through a working life and career that was at times hard to face. These difficulties I will recall later. I am impatient now to share with you one of the happiest phases of my childhood – life with my Hulugalle cousins and their parents.

Boarding Life

But before that, to jump forward and get out of the way an experience that was to me not too pleasant. At the time I had started secondary school my mother felt I was old enough to be in the school boarding. Deirdre Jonklaas had also come into the boarding with me and was a friend indeed when one was needed. It was comforting to have her as a confidante because I was not very happy with boarding life. In a boarding full of girls, there were bound to be insincerity, petty tale-telling and broken friendships.

When I came to Form five and was getting ready to sit for the Senior School Certificate Examination, I persuaded my mother that she had to do something about my dissatisfaction. So she discussed my situation with Miss Mabel Simon, the School Principal. It was the practice at the time that our school principals would be sent by the Church Missionary Society in the UK and as was Miss Simon. By nationality, she was Australian.

She gave her permission for me to be a weekly-boarder. My mother could take me home on Friday evening and get me back on Sunday evening, in time to be taken to Evensong at Christ Church, Galle Face with all other boarders in Form one and above. That did not solve my problem. I was still unhappy. So my mother took me out of the boarding for my last year at school.

Living with Cousins

At around the year 1945 when I started school, Kalubowila, where we lived was considered to be quite distant from Colombo. Too distant for me to travel daily to school from there. It was natural that Aunty Lily asked my mother to let me live with her. Aunty Lily was my mother’s sister, Lilian, married to Herbert Hulugalle. H.A.J. as he was known in the world of journalism, newspapers and to all who knew him or of him. He was at one time the Editor of the Ceylon Daily News.

Aunty Lily was that to others, but to her nieces and nephews she was “Darla Mamma”. “Darla” because that was how my oldest brother just learning to speak said the word “Darling”. And with her unlimited affection, and equally unlimited kindness, concern and generous giving, she was “Darla Mamma”, darling to all of us nieces and nephews who were to follow.

She married after my mother and so her younger children were closer to my age. While the older ones were Damayantha, Upatissa, Harrischandra and Lakdasa, it was Lilamani, Arjuna and Ranjan with whom I interacted most. Damayantha was “Akka” to all and so she was to me. The love she demonstrated to me I can never forget. When she passed me by, she could not but resist squatting down, pulling my fat cheeks apart to place a quick peck on each. At other times she would grab me, tap me on my bulging tummy and say “what is in here?” And I would have to answer with the one she had taught me saying, “a baby elephant”. And we would both laugh happily over it.

Not long ago, her sister, my cousin Lilamani, whose father had called “Lili Budge” (and now her cousins continue to call “Budge”), and I were reminiscing about our childhood together. There was much to talk about our mothers and of the lasting influence they had on us, as they had with their other children. They were both loving and gave generously to those who had less. They were humble in their giving and made it demonstrably a sharing. They had been born with the literal “silver spoons in their mouths” and had an exotic childhood.

They had grown up in Regina Walauwa while frequenting their grandparent’s home just down the path at Alfred House to meet their cousins and to play with them. They had been schooled by English Governesses at home. They had been driven in carriages led by horses. Their father was the Consul for Chile. These were colonial times. They had witnessed their parents entertain bounteously foreign elite. It is said that their father raced horses and enjoyed that. There is still a flagpole standing in the front garden of College House. It would of course have been used to hoist the Chilean flag when occasion demanded it.

Our mothers seldom talked of this side of their childhood. Instead of what would have been stories from that life, they spoke to us of their family life at a more intimate and personal level so that they would implant in us values they considered to be important. It is clear to us to this day that this is what mattered to them and that it stayed with them; it was the foundation from which they could spin stories for us and from which we would learn and be what they wished us to be.

They spoke about the effects of losing their mother at a young age, and how they learned to cope with that; of how their father had done all he could to save her. His grief which was endless and what they did to comfort him. And more, how their father then took the place their mother in their lives so that they could use his ear to confide in; of him telling them stories at bed time.

At other times, with the younger perched on his knees and the others kneeling and sitting on the ground, encouraging them to share with him and with the other siblings, how they had spent the day. Which cousins they had met and what they had done together. What they had learned from their governess and how she had treated them. He would sing with them songs that they had learned.

Our mothers told us about the happy times they spent at their grandfather’s home in Moratuwa. They did not speak to us much about Alfred House. It was clear the glamorous side of their childhood had not remained with them. To them it seemed to be a past that could never be relived. That was taken for granted; it was a matter of fact. It had not influenced their values. And they did not wish it to influence ours.I was sad to leave the Hulugalle home when my mother moved me to the school boarding. I was used to being with loved ones all my life and I missed them. It gladdened me when many years later, Budge told me she too had missed me when I left them.

(To be continued)