Sisters under the skin – foreign mothers and Ceylonese/Indian fathers

(Excerpted from Chosen Ground: the Clara Motwani Saga by Goolbai Gunasekera

There were four of us … Maya, Kumari, Suriya and I. “We are sisters under the skin,” Kumari says to me whenever we meet. And why does she say this?

All four of us were the offspring of Western mothers and Asian fathers. Our parents were all into education and were among the best known and best loved educationists of Sri Lanka. These four sets of parents had been educated at some of the best schools and Universities in the world … Cambridge University, Yale University, the London School of Economics, London University et al.

Apart from the medical doctor in this elite octet, they were all outstanding teachers who were consumed with the desire to give the students of Ceylon the full benefit of their expertise. At the time, however, none of them thought of themselves as experts in education. Time and a grateful stream of achievement-oriented pupils have proved their worth and their outstanding contribution to this island in this field.

Of the four ladies, three were British and only one (my mother) was American. She was also the youngest of the four, and the last to arrive in Ceylon. Nor did she arrive with the intention to stay. The fact that she did stay can be attributed to an unlikely karma. As described earlier in this book, she arrived as a visitor. The other three ladies had Sinhalese husbands, while Mother was married to an Indian. These differences hardly mattered to the four women concerned, who were united not only by their professional interests and their chosen careers, but by a genuine admiration and fondness for each other. They had many qualities in common, but there was enough variation in their personalities, their ideas, their backgrounds and their methods of teaching to make them an outstanding group of individuals.

P. de S. Kularatne and his wife Hilda were parents to two boys and a daughter, Maya, who, from her childhood, was considered exceptionally good-looking. Dr. S.A. Wickremesinghe and his wife Doreen were parents to Suriya and her brother Suren. Apart from being Principal of schools, Doreen was also elected as a Member of Parliament. Doreen was a leading light of the Communist Party.

Then there was Dr. A.P de Zoysa and his wife Eleanor, who were parents to Kumari. And lastly, Dr. Kewal Motwani and Clara, parents to me and my sister Su.

This plethora of PhDs, Doctors and holders of Masters’ degrees ensured that the products of these erudite beings were pretty erudite themselves. Suriya and Kumari had such high IQs that they pretty much wandered off the scale altogether. On a visit back to her home in the USA, Mother actually had my own IQ tested by a professional. She never talked much about the result!

Apart from her degree in Education, Mother also had one in Music, as did Eleanor. Mother never actually taught piano except to me, while Eleanor did so in Doreen’s schools. All four women had pet ‘theories’, and all of them used their long-suffering children as educational guinea pigs. Suriya and I were packed off to the newly- established (and hitherto untried) Froebel School up in the hills.

There were only four Ceylonese students at this school, which catered mainly to British children. The two others were the now famous cellist, Rohan de Saram, and Anne Wilson, daughter of the Sri Lankan author Christine (Spittel) Wilson. Suriya and I attended the school chiefly so that our parents could learn firsthand what the European educator’s ideas really were. Such was their curiosity and willingness to experiment. It never occurred to these two ladies that Suriya’s education, along with mine, was highly unorthodox.

“A varied system hurts no one,” thought Doreen and Mother, so thither we went to Froebel.

Since our Mothers met professionally as well as socially, us, their daughters became good friends. Our similar backgrounds made us naturally tend to gravitate towards each other, though Suriya and Kumari met far more often than did Maya and I. Their mothers had been friends in Britain, and along with Maya’s mother, they had all known each other a long time.

As children of these four marriages, we had a rich and unusual heritage. Fathers left upbringing to their wives, so long as we were present at traditional family gatherings. These took the form, in my case, of the annual family trek to Karachi in (at that time) undivided India where, under Father’s eagle gaze, I managed to behave in a manner considered appropriate by my aunts and cousins.

Since I had aunts who were actually my own age, there was considerable confusion among relatives who had the habit of asking in Sindhi (a language I barely understood) if I were Kewal’s daughter or Ladikdas’s granddaughter. Such were the situations faced by many joint families in India, where men often married three or four times, and produced two or three sets of children.

“Why on earth would your father want to have children when he was. already 60?” my bewildered mother would ask. “What else was there to do in the village of Arazi after sundown?” Father would reply with a straight face.

But what happened to me annually during those glorious months in India was repeated by my three other friends in Sri Lanka, except that they were exposed to a far more extended family life than I was. Our mothers set the tone of our upbringing. Dietary rules, conversational topics, study programs, leisure-time activities were all in direct contrast to those of our contemporaries at school. Ergo, we were happiest when the four of us were together.

Along with our parents we shared common beliefs. Theosophy was a great link factor. The content of discussions at our parental dinner tables was considered quite normal by Kumari, Suriya and myself, but it was unintelligible to classmates and friends who happened to be spending the night.

Then again, my parents were strict vegetarians. This meant that overnight stays in our home were certainly not a gourmet’s delight for hungry friends. Likewise, having me or sister Su over for the night sent other mothers into quite a tizzy wondering what they should feed us.

At Suriya’s home, lunch would be a glass of milk, an apple and a small bar of chocolate – a diet I was quite comfortable with. I did not have to answer questions like ‘But what do you eat if you don’t eat meat or fish?’ I would smile weakly in reply.

Sister Su, far less tactful and far more feisty, was not thus inhibited. Goaded to fury by one mother’s question: ‘So what do you eat in place of chicken?’ she replied tersely: “Grass.”

Our four mothers never asked silly questions. They understood each other’s quirks, and never did we face horrified reactions to whatever our respective mothers were doing with us. It was truly a sisterhood of the mind. We read the same books. We listened to the same kind of music (the highly classical variety), and we didn’t complain. We rather liked our specialized atmosphere. We had the best of the West and the East after all – and we enjoyed it.

But our parents had this lamentable habit of comparing us to each other. “Why can’t you speak French like Suriya?” Mother would demand of me. Needless to say, Suriya’s computer-like brain picked up French as easily as kids today pick up slang. Mine operated at a slower pace. “Slow down,” I would beg Suriya.

Or, “Learn to play the piano like Chitra Malalasekera,” Eleanor would tell Kumari. Chitra was also the daughter of a British mother who had sadly died when Chitra was very young. She was older than the four of us, and Maya was more in her age group. In fact they were cousins. To this day Chitra remains one of Sri Lanka’s best pianists.

Maya had varied interests, horseback riding being one of them. Such exciting pursuits put Maya in a class of her own, and far above the rest of us. When we were evacuated to the hills during the war, Maya went to her father’s school – Ananda College — a boys’ academy in Colombo. As one of the three girls there she pretty much had the boys of the school dancing attendance, pretty, clever and the Principal’s daughter … she had it made. We were.- speechless with envy.

As the four of us are now approaching, or are already into the grandmother stage, we have often discussed our unusual childhood. It is with a deep sense of gratitude that we now realize how liberal and farseeing our mothers really were. Several common facts emerge. Firstly, we children were comfortable with each other. Our mothers were likewise comfortable together, in that they had the same interests and also the same problems. There were many British women with Sinhalese and Tamil husbands in the country at the time, but they were not as uniquely placed as were these four ladies who were so fired with educational idealism.

Secondly, our mothers were unconcerned with ‘Society’ and social life as represented by their Colombo contemporaries, who were members of the Women’s International Club, the Golf Club, and wherever else women were wont to gather. Mother eventually became the President and Chairman of the Women’s International, but that was much later in her life.

She loved playing bridge, but was never in the same class as Maya’s formidable father, Mr. Kularatne who was a shining light of the Orient Club, right next door to the Womens’ International. Strangely enough, I do not think this group of eight ever engaged in that kind of social evening at the time their careers were just taking off.

(To be continued next week)