Extracts from the
Book Accha House & Umma House
A Mixed Childhood
in Sri Lanka
By Asiff Hussein
Umma House
‘Umma House’
as we called father’s parental home served us as ‘a home away from home’ in our
younger days. It was once a thriving estate known as ‘Darlington’ with stables
and even a circular horse track patronized by the elite of Ceylon , as Sri Lanka
Located at
No.30, Alwis Place, Colpetty, in an area traditionally known as Polwatte or Coconut
Garden, Darlington was the residence of an Englishman named Charles William
Horsfall whose son Basil, a Lieutenant in the British army, died in action in
France towards the end of the Great War in 1918, receiving the Victoria Cross
for valour in the face of great odds. One of its daughters, simply known as
Ms.Horsfall worked at the nearby Girls Friendly Society. Before long it had
passed into the hands of the Hussein family - Seyyad Mehdi Hussein and his
blue-blooded brood.
The house
seems to have been named after the beautiful market town of that name in
England famed for its Quaker heritage and old clock tower that thrived in the
Victorian era. This magnificent manor-like single-storeyed house had a frontage
quite typical of old Ceylonese houses that incorporated both native and
European colonial manor type elements in that it had a roofed porch and
verandah, not to mention two large halls and as many as six bedrooms. Its
ceiling was of Burma teak
and it was roofed with flat red Calicut tiles
imported from India Beira
Lake Alwis Place
Here stood the
famous ‘Cottonhall Stables’, which at one time served solely to house the well
known race horse Cottonhall which Mehdi Hussein trained, but in later times was
converted to as many as eight smaller stables, four on each side with a pathway
between them. Between the stables and the Beira Lake to its north was a large
circular horse track where the horses were trained and which the denizens of
Darlington, passing through a four-piece dark green folding door at the rear of
the house could view at close range.
In this manor
‘Darlington’ lived the grand patriarch of the family, Seyyad Mehdi Hussein, his
wife Rukiya, son Sharif and daughters Safiya, Zakiya, Haseena, Khadija, Hafi
and Khatoon, not to mention some of their spouses and offspring who used to ensconce
themselves there on a more or less permanent basis or drop in for a long
holiday. Darlington was welcome to anybody who
could claim kinship to its master either by blood or marriage. A large
visitor’s room near the main hall served the purpose of a bedroom for those who
wished to reside there for a couple of days or even several months. It was here
that in later times the married daughters of the Seyyad who were living
elsewhere would resort to after giving birth, spending a couple of months with
their newborns in the grand old house, all their cares being diligently looked
after by the lady of the house.
The denizens
of Darlington were a happy family. Its undisputed head Mehdi Hussein lived a
contented life as Ceylon
Mehdi Hussein
was not a man who always had it easy. It is said that he arrived in the country
from Lahore in North India
as a young and budding jockey. The punters of the day, probably of the days
shortly after the Great War of 1914-18 would observe him as if thinking whether
he would deliver the goods, and he would gently stroke his chest as if to say
his horse would be the best bet. The man settled down here after marrying a
Moor lass from the upcountry still in her blooming teens and became so
‘Ceylonised’ that his offspring were considered Sri Lankans by all and sundry. Ceylon , like India ,
was then part of the far-flung British Empire
and its residents subjects of the British Crown. The policy greatly facilitated
the free movement of peoples and goods from India
to Sri Lanka
Seyyad Mehdi
was a stout, strongly built man whose lineage went back to the Prophet Muhammad
through his daughter Fatima, hence his title of Seyyad ‘master’. His family claimed descent from the Prophet’s
grandson Husayn who had espoused a Persian princess Shahrbanoo, the daughter of
the last Sassanian emperor Yazdegird whose vast empire the Islamic Arab army
overthrew in the 7th century. Their son Zain-al-Abidin given the
title of Eben Al-Khiyaratain
‘son of the best two’, united in his person the Prophet’s bloodline, regarded
as the noblest among the Arabs, and the bloodline of Persian royalty. Interestingly
both these bloodlines could not be acquired in the direct male line, but rather
through female personalities, on one side through the Prophet’s favourite
daughter Fatima and on the other side through Yazdegird’s daughter Shahrbanoo.
Still the
Seyyads traced their descent in the male line, from father to son. They also
jealously sought to preserve their proud ancestry, often intermarrying among
themselves to preserve their bloodlines, which is quite strange since they
themselves originated from a mixed union. In fact it was almost unheard of for
a daughter of a Seyyad, a Seyyidah, to be given in marriage to a non-Seyyad.
That Sayyad Mehdi Hussein himself married a non-Seyyad woman and gave all his
daughters in marriage to non-Seyyads would have been looked upon with askance
by his blue-blooded clan. He probably could not care less. Mehdi Hussein was
nevertheless proud of the blue blood he so fondly believed flowed in his veins.
He would brag to his grandchildren that he never suffered from mosquito bites,
gloating that the little vampires had so much regard for his blood that they dare
not suck it into their unworthy bellies. He even had live caterpillars crawl
across his forearm without irritating it in any way. Naturally, it was covered
all over with hair, which needless to say, kept the critters’ bristles at bay. The
little children of course believed the story.
Strangely, he
could not acquire that uncanny knack when it came to that extremely proud breed
of animal, the camel, who were perhaps even prouder than the most blue-blooded
of Arabs. He had until his dying day a light scar on his nose which he got when
as a little boy he tugged at the tail of a camel. The furious animal, not used
to being mishandled, kicked him on the face, leaving a permanent scar on his
nose. Little wonder he switched to horses. They gave him more respect, even the
sturdy Arabian ones.
He was a
devout man and regarded his headgear as an indispensable appendage of a proud
Muslim. Though attired in suit or coat, he would like all good Muslim gentlemen
of his day, never doff his headdress, a Red Fez or Black Jinnah cap, in public
even on the most formal of occasions, even if it were in the presence of the
Queen’s representative, the Governor General of Ceylon. His favourite, I am
told, was a rather robust red skullcap done on the top with silver filigree
work like the domed headpiece of a mediaeval Islamic warrior which he fondly
called Dil Pasand (Favourite One).
Mehdi
Hussein was best known as a horse trainer for Colombo
Mehdi Hussein’s most notable achievement in
the field was as the trainer of Cottonhall, Ceylon’s most famous race horse of the
olden time. Legend has it that this chestnut with a white blaze on its forehead
arrived as part of a consignment of thoroughbreds imported from England
Although by
itself the Arabian is a small horse, the infusion of its blood with that of the
European mare makes the offspring larger and with a longer stride than either
parent. It was due to Mehdi Hussein’s untiring efforts in nursing it back to
health that the equine castaway became a legend of the turf, so much so that
whenever it raced to victory, which it very often did, it became headlines in
the national newspapers. Its trainer, it is said, loved it so much that he used
to sleep with the animal in its stable while tending to its wound as if it were
one of his own offspring. Curing a spoilt hoof after all was no easy task in a
sport which clung to the dictum: No hoof,
no horse! The concoction he is said to have employed to treat the creature
was a blend of eastern medicinal herbs in which margosa leaves figured
prominently.
The horse
repaid him a thousand-fold, for many were the races Cottonhall won, among these
the coveted Governor General’s Bowl at the hands of jockey Jack Raffaele,
earning name and fame for its trainer who had so painstakingly tended to it in
its most thorny days. It is said that when Cottonhall was taken to run in the Colombo
The Seyyad
loved his horses as much as his family. Both were, after all, high breeds. Such
was the love Mehdi Hussein had for his horses that he was often seen patting
them gently and even talking to them, addressing them by diminutives such as Baba’ baby’. The stables of Darlington located near the house were almost synonymous
with the house of that name. This is where some of Ceylon
In the late
afternoons or evenings, usually around 4.00 or 5.00 pm the horses would be
taken out for a trot, one behind the other, round the circular track facing the
Beira Lake Darlington . However
training horses called for much more than a mere trot or canter and this was
especially so of the Arab horses got down from Iraq
A proud,
stubborn and unwieldy lot, they could not put up with a man on their backs and
tended to throw him off. Their trainer had come up with an ingenious way of
training the rustics, placing upon their backs a dummy while at the same time
attaching a rope to the bridle. The horses would move about in circles while
gradually getting used to a load on their backs. That was when the resident jockey, a man
named Ramalan would get onto their backs displacing the dummy. The horses would
get used to him and eventually be put to race.
Seyyad Mehdi’s
love for horses was also shared by his son-in-law Faacy Ghany, my grandfather,
who owned as many as three horses, namely, a thoroughbred named Tickle, an Arab
named Hilal Ahmed and another named Fazly’s Pet named after his youngest son.
Fazly’s Pet is said to have collapsed at the races and died then and there.
Faacy’s wife received the news with shock and forbade her husband from naming
any more horses after their offspring.
None of the
Seyyad’s grandchildren would ever make it big on the turf, except for his
eldest grandson Wazir, my father, who in later years went on to own a horse and
a pack of ponies stabled at the Nuwara Eliya Turf Club. Grandmother used to say
that whenever Seyyad Mehdi and Faacy Ghany went to the Grand Stand to watch their horses race at the old Colombo
racecourse, father would supplicate to the Almighty while perched high up atop
a guava tree in the backyard of the house, beseeching the Good Lord for
grandpa’s horses to win, little doubt for the ice cream and other goodies that
would come his way in case a horse or two won. This victory celebration of sorts
with ice cream perhaps kindled his interest in horses in later life.
The only
humans who seemed to have it better than the horses in the stables were the
inmates of Darlington. Mehdi Hussein, needless to say, treated himself well,
believing as he did that he was a mix of Arabian and Persian royalty. In a
country that only knew of a British sovereign and a local landed Radala
aristocracy he could not reasonably expect any right royal treatment from the
powers that be and did himself that favour, at the same time dispensing with
the trappings that went with it.
The queen of
his house, and of his heart, the fair Rukiya, steady as a rock by his side,
also lived a happy life, fattening herself on the fowl she reared in the
premises of Darlington, conveniently feeding the gluttons with her husband’s
horse feed to fatten them for the table. She also shared her husband’s love for
horses as it brought her good money. The Seyyad regularly gifted her a number
of aged or disabled horses unfit for the races. These she formed into a horse
training school in a part of the estate that extended near the Beira Lake Darlington every Monday and Friday morning for the sole
purpose of receiving some coins from her generous hands.
Mehdi Hussein’s
firstborn, and only son Sheriff was himself an accomplished horse-trainer who had
his stables somewhere between Green Path and Alwis Place. His second child, and
the eldest of his daughters, Shafiya Bee married one Faacy Ghany, an astute
businessman and social worker who eventually went on to become Deputy Mayor of
Colombo. She bore him as many as ten children, seven sons, Wazir, Nazir, Ameer,
Ashroff, Hyder, Mazahir and Fazly and three daughters Fairoze, Shafeeka and
Shanaz. Her younger sister Haseena also
married well, to a scion of a prominent Moor family of the south, Proctor
Anwar, a handsome, well-to-do and yet down-to-earth gentleman who whisked his
bride away to live with him at Brown’s Hill in Matara. Their five children,
four sons, Akhtar, Saftar, Sharwar and Musharraf and a daughter Faizoona were
all born in Colombo and spent their early
infancy as well as much of their holidays at Darlington . Khadeeja, yet another daughter of the Seyyad
married one Ariff, a dark, bespectacled lanky looking draftsman, through whom
she had a daughter Fatima, their only child. The little family lived in
Wellawatte, but moved into Darlington to spend a couple of years while Fatima was still a little girl.
If these
three daughters of the house had it good, there were three more who were not so
fortunate. Hafi, a daughter of the Seyyad who married a railway guard from Kandy
And then
there was Khatoon, the youngest daughter of the house whose fate was a sad one.
She lived a cloistered life as a cripple tucked away in a room at Darlington . It is said that when her mother was expecting
her, she had attempted to pluck a bunch of bananas which came crashing down
upon her belly. She came into the world, it is said, with swollen red eyes and
blood clots on her arms, but otherwise seemed to be healthy. In fact as a
little girl, she would, upon learning of her brother-in-law Faacy’s approach,
run towards him, inquiring Macchan, ais
kireem, ais kireem (Brother-in-law, ice cream, ice cream).
When she was
about five years old, she began experiencing terrible bouts of epileptic fits,
so intense that her elders had to hold her tight to control her till it
subsided. It was on one such occasion, when they held her harder than usual,
they heard a crack and discovered that she had broken a leg, crippling her
permanently. She could not stand or walk or even sleep upon a bed as there
remained the risk of her toppling over and further injuring her frail body. She
was therefore kept on the floor upon a mat and supplied with all the essentials
to live away her life in solitude and relative peace until God took her away.
Darlington
also had a watchdog named Jimmy who watched over the horses like a sheepdog, so
much so that if they ever tried to run away, it would bark out loud and catch
hold of the rein. Jimmy was always kept outside the house as Islamic teachings
held that angels would not enter a house where there were dogs though it
permited the keeping of hunting dogs and watch dogs provided they were not
taken inside the house. Besides letting faithful Jimmy watch over the estate
like a sentry would, the Seyyad also had this penchant for shooting his shotgun
into the air every once in a while as if to say to all those within earshot: No messing around here !
And so it was
that the denizens of Darlington lived in relative peace and security under the
guardianship of the man they all called Abba
‘father’ which included not just his children but also his grandchildren as
this respectable term of address for the sire stuck, which is not surprising in
such a patriarchal household. The little
ones had it better than anyone else here, with ample space to play about in the
house and garden and so many cousins as playmates. Though most of them were not
permanent residents of Darlington they spent a
good part of their childhood here, like in the school holidays, not to mention during
the Islamic festivals of Ramazan and Hajj when the entire family would gather
at the great house. Further company came from the Deutrom boys Peter, Ryan and
Sean and their sister Zorina all of whom lived at Darlington Estate, in a large
oblong building running almost the entire length of the Seyyad’s house which had
been rented out or leased to this lovely Burgher family.
Besides the
usual games kids of their age played, they had come up with a number of other
unconventional forms of recreation from flora and fauna in the vicinity. Near
the entrance to the house was a large and flamboyant Trumpet Flower tree that
every now and then sent forth countless flared bell-shaped pink flowers that
would, ruffled by the wind, drop to the ground like parachutes. The boys from
the Ghany, Anwar and Deutrom families would compete with one another to catch
the flowers before they made landfall, the one who caught the most number
within the stipulated time, say an hour or so, being the winner. Another
interesting game involved the large black tortoises that crawled up from Beira Beira
Interesting
encounters with the human kind also took place on occasion, sometimes scaring
the wits off the younger ones. One was when the grandfather of the Deutrom
boys, a fair Burgher of European ancestry would dress as Santa Claus for
Christmas Day. Most kids would have found him fascinating, but not so Haseena’s
little daughter Faizoona who was simply terrified at the sight of the old man
dressed in the strange garb clowning about. The poor thing had been so scared
that she would vividly recall it even after thirty years. One can only imagine
how Santa’s monotonous drawl of ho,ho,ho,ho
would have been met with a little girl’s shriek of eek!
The folk who
lived here also recall encounters of a more mysterious kind. There had once
stood in the Mukthar’s estate closer to the border with Darlington a huge mango
tree bearing pol amba, large mangos
almost the size of coconuts, that would in windy or rainy days fall over to
Darlington estate to be immediately set upon by the little Ghanys and Anwars on
one side and the Deutroms on the other, the first to grab hold of it being reckoned
its owner. However a strange thing happened one night. That was when Haseeena
was pregnant with a younger son, probably Musharraf and residing at Darlington
as it was her practice to move to her parental home whenever she gave birth,
which was always in a hospital or nursing home in Colombo. She was occupying a
room facing the Mukthar estate when she heard a loud thud which she guessed was
a falling mango that had hit the ground like a bombshell. She crept out the
window and started towards the mango, only to find it rolling towards the
stables whenever she attempted to pick it up. Suspecting that some unseen force
was moving it away from her, she gave it up and returned to her room. Was it
her imagination running riot, or was it a hungry jinn or two on the prowl
claiming their spoils. These imps or goblin-like creatures who according to
Islamic belief were created from smokeless fire are particularly active at
night and are even believed to pilfer food from humans to satisfy their needs.
Haseena was
particularly prone to strange visitations when she was expecting Musharraf who
was fondly known as Baba or Baby on
account of his being her lastborn. She once saw in a dream a woman with a
deformed hand clawing at her belly, and strangely when the child was born one
of his hands was kora, a bit
disjointed, though it was eventually corrected.
The really
good times at Darlington were soon coming to an end. The virtual ban on horse
racing in the mid-1960s by the nationalist government of the day had deprived the
Seyyad of his livelihood which was training the horses of the rich and famous.
His favorite steed, Cottonhall was soon gone and its days of glory only a
fleeting memory. The poor creature, neglected by its once proud owner, died, it
is said, ‘a pauper’s death’ without care or nourishment and was buried in
Nuwara Eliya. Once a wealthy landed proprietor, the Seyyad was by 1970, compelled
to sell a good part of his front garden to survive the lean times.
Worse was to
come his way- a string of deaths in the family. One of his daughters Hafi died
in childbed to be followed by his only son Sheriff. But it was the death of his
beloved wife Rukiya that affected him most. Though she had a long life – she
was 72 years when she died – the man was inconsolable. A man who hardly if ever
wept could now be seen weeping like a child.
On the fortieth
day after her demise, when the family held a ceremony known as khattam in her memory, he temporarily
lost his memory. One day when he took his gun out to renew the license, the
fugue got him, and he was seen wandering about aimlessly in the streets. A
Malay policeman named Tuan, recognizing the man, conveyed him home and warned
its shocked residents never to let him out like that again. He did not have
long to suffer the solitude, for he passed away a couple of months later. He
was 86 years old at the time. It was 1972, the year that my twin brother Asgar
and I were born. Father, who was living with mother shortly after our birth at Victoria Drive , Kandy
Abba
‘father’, an Urdu word of Syriac origin widely used by the Christians of the
east in addressing their monks and even in the West in forms like French abbé was the name by which they all knew him. His
children, his grandchildren, they all called him that. His surname of Hussein
was even passed on to his daughters’ sons as their middle name with some
members of the following generation being bestowed it as their surname.
Needless to say this included me and my brothers, all of whom bear the surname Hussein, Arabic for ‘little beauty’.
Once the
Seyyad had been laid to rest, the tongues, especially of the women of the
house, started wagging. Some like Haseena thought that the inexplicable string
of deaths was the result of an evil, perhaps in the form of a spirit of some
sort, that had taken hold of the house after the destruction of a tree. There
had stood near the entrance to Darlington a
huge Pink Trumpet Tree which one of Mehdi’s sons-in-law Ariff never liked.
Given to superstitious mumbo jumbo he urged the old man to chop it down as it
was, he claimed, a ‘bad’ tree from whose wood coffins (ponampetti) were made and could be possessed by spirits (pey). The Seyyad, not wishing to fall
out with his obstinate son-in-law got the tree cut down.
However,
something strange happened the night after it was brought down. The Seyyad’s
daughter Hafi, pregnant with her first child, had looked out of the window and
heard this eerie sound, a sort of rumbling, as if somebody were dragging a heavy
chain. She told her mother the following morning Umma, umma, dar marutta ilitita poran (Mother, mother, somebody
dragged away the tree). Not much later she experienced a very strange dream
where she saw herself picking up a paper, one of several that were falling down
near her, only to be told by a mysterious voice that she would die in
childbirth. The bad dream she confided in her mother, and certain of the
premonition coming true, entrusted her child to her. The poor woman died in
childbed.
Another
explanation put forth by another daughter of the house Shafiya was that evil
had befallen the family as a result of the bad mouth of a domestic named Alice
who upon seeing the big happy family gathered together at Darlington for the
Muslim festivals of Ramazan and Hajj would utter words such as Loku nonata, mekama eti (This itself is
enough for big madam!) or Mekama eti
ogollanta (This itself is enough for you’ll) to her mistress Rukiya. Now,
Muslims like the Sinhalese believe in the ill-effects of the evil mouth, the kata-vaha or ‘mouth-poison’ where words
of high praise heaped on somebody is believed to invite disastrous results
irrespective of the intention of the speaker. If one should do so, he or she
must say Masha Allah (As God wills)
to prevent evil befalling the object of one’s admiration. Needless to say poor Alice
It did not
end there. Akhtar, one of the Seyyad’s more thoughtful grandsons had come up
with a more ingenious explanation. He felt that the deaths were the results of
the grand feasts the family gave to the poor including their neighbours as part
of the khattam ceremonies. The
Muslims of those days, though not so much today, held on the fortieth day
following the death of a family member, a function known as khattam which involved the recitation of
the entire Muslim holy book, the Qur’an in one sitting, and entertaining
family, friends and neighbours rich and poor for a meal, in the belief that the
merit so acquired would pass on to the deceased in the afterlife. Akhtar’s reasoning
was that the sumptuous meals given to the poorer residents of Muhandiram Road
The Seyyad had
died intestate and the family decided to sell Darlington so that all his heirs
could be given their fair share. Fortunately for them, one of the Seyyad’s more
enterprising grandsons, Nazir, who had by then amassed a considerable fortune,
offered to buy the property at a fair price. Darlington
was saved. The Ghanys could now come to roost in their old haunt which they had
left a few years earlier for a large upstair house at Stratford Avenue
Kirulapone. The entire family with the exception of the eldest son Wazir who
was married, moved to Darlington , all thanks
to the munificence of this young but wealthy scion of the family.
Nazir did not
stop at that. He gave the house a facelift to keep up with the times,
completely changing its façade by doing away with the pillars and roofed porch
that stuck out of the house like the wide open jaws of an angry beast and rearranging
its innards to suit his finer taste. He gave it a more Islamic touch, erecting
at its entrance an arched doorway more like a gate, somewhat in the form of an
onion dome in true Indo-Saracenic style. The see-through door had at its centre
two hemispherical pieces of wood that joined at the point of opening to form a
solar disc from which radiated ribbons of white mantled metal stylistically
depicting the rays of the sun.
Thinking big
as he always did, he also added to its front portion another storey overlooking
the garden below, like the visor of a helmeted cop, giving it a very much more
modern visage, and as if that were not enough, he also hollowed out from its
frontal portion the two eyes of the house, a pair of large windows in the shape
of ovals to see from and let in light and air, fortified in the lower part with
railings attached to semi-circular pieces of wood from which rays of metal
emanated as if representing the lower hemisphere of the sun, though it could
also convey the image of an eye half veiled by an eyelid that seemed to wink.
The spot commanded a splendid view of the garden below with its marigolds and
sunflowers and pretty little flowers of various colours known to our Sinhalese
friends as Japan Rosa but to our
Muslim aunts as Dubaai Rosa.
It was this
house that we would come to call ‘Umma House’ after the matriarch of the family
Shafiya, the eldest daughter of its one-time owner Seyyad Mehdi and mother of
its then proprietor Nazir Ghany, whom we addressed as umma or ‘mother’. The term, from the Arabic umm meaning ‘mother’ is widely used by local Muslims in addressing
their mothers, but we used it to address our grandmother. We had gotten used to
the term as her children addressed her as such and we simply took after them. Strangely,
it was only her younger children who called her as such. The elder children
called her, their own mother, data or
‘elder sister’, having heard from their very young days the word being used as
such by their aunties, who were all younger to their mother. They simply
borrowed it to address their mother and nobody thought anything about it. But
then again nobody bothered correcting us either. At least we did not take after
her elder children in calling her data.
If we did it was a sure way of bridging the much talked about generation gap.
Curiously my
earliest memories of Umma House are not of grandma after whom we had named the
house, but of another woman we called ‘Coffee aunty’ because whenever mother in
our very early years took us there for a visit, she would prepare for us little
cups of coffee. I remember her as a pleasant kindly woman clad in a long gown,
perhaps a kaftan. As I would find out
later, this mysterious figure was Zakiya, an unmarried daughter of the Seyyad
who attended to the cooking chores of the house till her last days. She
breathed her last, heartbroken at being separated from her nephew Jaufar whom
she had been looking after for several years following the death of his mother
in childbed. She died seven days after the boy was taken away by his father. We
were around four years old then which is why my memories of her are rather
hazy.
Another
obscure character I recall to this day was this rather pathetic looking figure,
always seen lying on a floor in the gloom of an unlit room. She lay there under
a pile of rags or cowering under a tattered sheet. Whenever we kids went that
way, she would, aroused by the noise, stir, sitting up or popping her noddle
out to rest her gaze upon those who had disturbed her repose. She would stare
vaguely with blank, expressionless eyes as if there was nothing behind it like
a zombie that had just woken up. Startled, and gawping with excitement, we
would scuttle away in fright as if we had just seen a monstrosity, much to the
amusement of our aunts. We had no need to fear, for she was frail and fragile,
like a flower without sunlight.
She was
Khatoon, the youngest daughter of the Seyyad who had in her young days suffered
epileptic fits and a broken leg that immobilized her for life. Life had been
cruel to her no doubt, but she always had somebody to care for her in her dark,
dim, days, living in a dungeon of sorts from which she could not break away.
Even though she was not confined as a prisoner would and could come out of her
room if she wished, she never did. She cared not, she dared not, as if
invisible walls were all round her; walls her mind had formed to immure her
from venturing beyond, to what was a seemingly hostile, unfamiliar world. Her
little cell was enough for her. She died young, when we were around six years
old, though I can still vaguely remember the poor thing, lame and limp, in her
little corner of the world.
The Angel of
Death did not visit the rest of the inmates for a long long time and my
reminiscences of them are as clear as crystal, slightly tinged no doubt with
the roseate tint one’s mind’s eye acquires when looking back on those happy
days. Grandmother, or umma as we called her, was a rather
plump, pleasant-looking woman who loved having us around. A devout woman, we
would often see her silently engaged in prayer. She always wore a saree well
draped over her person with a little bit left over at the back to draw over her
head when in the presence of strange men. It very often happened that when we
visited her in the mornings, she would make us ‘egg coffee’, milk coffee to
which she added a raw egg, a most wholesome and delicious drink almost filled
to the brim which we quaffed with delight. The reason I suspect she had us
indulge in the stuff was because she thought we were too thin and sought to
give our little frames some bulk.
In later
times, when we were ten or so, she had cultivated this generous habit of giving
us a rupee each whenever we visited her, sometimes going to the extent of
winkling out the coins from her large earthen till with the help of a kitchen
knife. Very often she had no problem dispensing us the baksheesh, for she kept
a particoloured purse made of reed in her person neatly tucked in between her
breasts. Being an all too homely type, she was a bit naïve though, and readily
believed what her few friends, gossipy old dames like the one we called Nona
Sacchi from Slave Island, a fair crone with slit eyes, told her. One such fable
she repeated to us was the existence of half-fish, half-woman creatures in the
sea which she thought to be true. We were not impressed, having read that
mermaids were the outcome of sailor’s imaginations running wild upon seeing
dugongs, which is quite likely given the fact that they were without women at
sea and were quite naturally sex-starved.
Grandma
however had a keen insight into animal nature, for in one part of the kitchen
open to the backyard through glass Venetian blinds was hung a tussock of black
feathers as if matted or clumped together taken obviously from a dead crow,
which she figured would keep the living ones out. Right she was here, for not
one dared hop into the house. Local crows, despite being thick-feathered, are
very sensitive creatures when it comes to any of their number, holding
elaborate funerals for a fallen comrade with a sombre, incessant dirge,
cacophonically cawing away kaak, kaak,
kaak from boughs and treetops, loudly and very publicly lamenting their
loss.
Like many
Muslim women of her generation, she was given to two exotic habits even her
daughters would eschew. One was chewing a mixture of betel leaves and arecanut
which she pounded in a little stone mortar and mingled with chunam, a
pinkish lime paste made of pulverized bivalve shells, before shoving it into
her mouth. She chewed the mix till it stained her lips a blood red. What she
got out of it I cannot say, except that it probably gave her some sort of pep. Another was sniffing mookkuttul or ‘nose powder’, a brown coloured snuff which she kept
in a little container. A pinch of the stuff placed near the nose would result
in a sneeze or hakis (atishoo)
as we called it. The pious lady she was, she probably got a thrill out of it
since her Muslim faith required that she utter the prayer Alhamdulillah
(Praise be to God!) after every sneeze with everybody within earshot being
obliged to respond with Yarahmakallah (God have Mercy on You!).
It was of
course her culinary skills that earned for her a place in our hearts, for she
could turn out a hearty meal from whatever she had, and this even mother,
herself a culinary expert, would concede, saying that she had what they called
‘the hand’. Whether it be that rich rice dish known as buriyani or that delicious pudding known as vattalappam, or even a simple soft boiled egg in beef gravy, none
could beat it the way grandma used to make it.
Grandfather,
Faacy Ghany, we called vappa or
‘father’ because everyone else did so and we had no intention of being any
different. A self-made man he preferred an independent life and disdained getting
too involved in the family business Hijazia Press run by his father Cader Sahib
Mohamed Ghany. He rose to become a well known social worker through the good
offices of the Ceylon Muslim League of which he was a prominent member in the
inter-war years, both as ‘propaganda Secretary’ whatever that meant, and later
as General Secretary during which he played a major role in the Malaria relief
campaign following the great epidemic that claimed the lives of thousands in
the 1930s before it was virtually eliminated with DDT within a decade.
He
eventually stepped into the political arena, contesting the Colombo Municipal
elections as an independent and was elected Deputy Mayor of Colombo, a
prestigious office given the fact that Colombo was then the uncontested capital
of the country, Sri Jayawardenapura, Kotte taking its place only in 1982. In
later years he ran a thriving transport business based in Old Moor Street Colombo Port village of Dambana
Grandpa often
struck me as a wily old fox which he somewhat resembled. He was renowned for
his wit and many were those who tasted of his sharp, unfaltering tongue. Among
them his wife’s young niece Faizoona who once asked him which of his two
daughters, Fairoze or Shafeeka he loved most. She expected him to say Shafeeka!,
as she regularly supplied him, often surreptitiously, with the dainties her
mother made; surreptitiously because the couple was not on talking terms then.
Pat came the reply: If I were to ask you
which one of your eyes you loved, what would you have to say ? We too were
sometimes at our wits end to provide a satisfactory answer to his querries. He
once asked me: If you see two people in a
fight, who would you help ? I puzzled over it before conceding I did not
know the answer. He answered tersely: The
weaker of them!
But none of
it could beat what brother Asgar had to contend with when one fine day, he
formed his hand into the shape of a gun with his forefinger pointing towards
him and shot out: Vappa, surrender or die
! The repartee struck him dumbfound. He would later compose a poem about it
Bang Bang published as part of a
collection of poems entitled Termite Castle
A child, I once
aimed my forefinger
At my grandfather
for fun
And told him ‘Surrender or die’
Calm as always, he replied
‘How
can I surrender to someone
Who
doesn’t know the difference
Between his finger and a gun ?’
The
words struck like bullets
And I
realized the power
Of a
loaded tongue
Uncle Nazir, the actual master of the house looked
very much like Yasser Arafat sans his keffiyeh and gun of course. Sadly he was away
from home most of the time, in Japan ,
Hong Kong or Singapore
He always
made it for the festival days of Hajj and Ramazan to play host to friends and
relatives who visited Umma House that day, helping in the slaughter of a goat
which let out a spray of blood in its final moments and entertaining the guests
for a luncheon where its meat was served in a rich rice dish. Uncle Nazir was
by then a leading entrepreneur. He had become rich importing cloth rolls, it is
said, taking advantage of a ‘loophole’ in the law and went on to build the
country’s largest shopping mall at the time Bang Bang in the heart of
downtown Colombo. He even tried his hand in film making. That was in the early
1980s when he produced the Sinhala movie Samaavenna (Forgive Me)
directed by Milton Jayawardhana that had Tony Ranasinghe and Vasanthi Chaturani
in the lead roles. Umma House, which had until then shied from public gaze became
one of the locations for the shooting. It was around this time, while playing
upstairs that we kids stumbled upon some polythene packets containing false
blood, obviously meant to be used for the movie in true tinseltown style. We
found the packs more inviting than hungry vampires would and soon the thick
crimson fluid was splattered all over.
Though he
could not be a patron of the arts for long, uncle Nazir was a man of fine
tastes and this was seen in his home. In the front portion of the house below
the stairway was a large aquarium with one side of the wall as a backdrop
adorned with natural scenes like a mango tree that grew out of the wall to
shade the tank with a couple of overhanging branches. Even the fish in it had
it good, being fed with tiny red bloodworms that came in transparent polythene
packs. He eventually married the girl next door. The lucky lass Adilah was the
only daughter of Bookie Baron Mukthar who lived in a maginificent snow white
mansion with a lovely lawn adjoining Umma House.
The wedding
was celebrated with much fanfare at the bride’s house as was the Muslim custom
then, though the bridegroom’s house whence we proceeded to the wedding house
was also gaily lit that night. Adilah, whom we addressed as Sitty aunty was a
sprightly lady with a gift of the gab who never failed to create a sensation
wherever she went. She felt we were a bit too naughty and threatened to pull
our trousers down whenever we became too noisy, the threat sufficing to keep us
quiet for a while. Unfortunately their marriage was a short-lived one.
Uncle Nazir had
his sidekicks who stuck with him longer. One fellow, a small made Sinhalese
chap whom everybody simply called A.D - after his initials no doubt - was a
frequent visitor to Umma House. He blended well with the rest of the household,
so much so that he was almost like a family member. He could be mischievous at
times, such as when he once offered us a whitish coin, rather bleached and very
light in weight, in exchange for a packet of chiclets, little pillow-shaped, peppermint flavoured, candy-coated,
chewing gum produced by Cadbury Adams that came in yellow rectangular cardboard
packets that uncle Nazir had brought home from one of his overseas trips. The piece,
he had us believe, was a foreign coin while it was actually a local
square-shaped 5 cent or a scallop-edged 10 cent coin made of aluminium which
had only been recently circulated and which we were still unfamiliar with, the
coins of such denominations circulating until then being made of a heavier
copper alloy such as brass.
Little did
we know then that the government of the day -that was around 1978 - had
commenced minting coins out of aluminium instead of brass due to increasing
reports of people melting 5 or 10 cent coins for the metal as its value
exceeded the face value of the coin itself, a result no doubt of increasing
inflation. Another good thing that came out of it was that it was lighter on
the pocket. The downside was that it got defaced within a few years of use. The
chiclets we then so gladly parted with gave better value for money than these
almost worthless pieces of inferior metal and would have probably lasted longer
had they remained undigested, so that we ended up having a pretty raw deal.
And then
there was uncle Ameer just younger to Nazir who bore a certain resemblance to
him, in that both were sturdily built and curly-haired. One trait however
marked them poles apart, for while uncle Nazir was fair-complexioned, uncle
Ameer was as black as a Nubian, being the darkest member of the Ghany family.
Being an Elvis fan, he had formed his curly crop of hair into a bump and grew
sideburns. He was a very lively character and a showman of sorts, who even on
his wedding night, held at his bride Misiriya’s residence at Quarry road,
Dehiwala in mid-July 1977 put up a ‘magic show’ just to entertain us kids.
Uncle Ashroff,
a more businesslike character, loved taking the kids on a ride, either
piggyback perched on his sturdy shoulders or on a joyride in his car. An
independent man, his presence in Umma House was less marked than his
siblings. And then there was uncle Hyder
whose real name was Farook, but had been bestowed the nickname Hyder, meaning ‘Lion’ by his maternal grandfather
Seyyad Mehdi Hussein. The Seyyad gave him the name as it was the epithet of his
forefather Ali, Prophet Muhammad’s son-in-law and fourth Caliph of Islam, also
known as ‘The Lion of God’.
A moral luminary,
he thought of us as a bit too worldly-minded and I can still remember his
sagely counsel to us in our very young days when we were pestering mother for
something or other: I cried for a pair of
shoes till I saw a man with no legs.
He was also a visionary of sorts. Once while we were discussing how hard
maths was, he prophesied that very soon there would be no need to work out sums
with pen and paper since electronic calculators which were then coming into the
country, would render it obsolete. He was right, except that at school we still
had to do our math with pencil and paper. Besides well meant avuncular advice,
however, he did not give us much else, except for some Rufia banknotes he had
brought home after a stint in the Maldives
Uncles Mazahir
and Fazly were inseparable like Laurel and Hardy to whom they bore a certain
resemblance as far as their body sizes were concerned, one being lean and the
other rather burly. In fact, being the youngest males in the family and
obviously spoilt they often banded together to do some mischief or other when
occasion arose. Like when their wealthy but somewhat niggardly father took
along with him his daughter Shafeeka and her cousin Faizoona for the occasional
treat of a buriyani at Majestic
Hotel, Bambalapitiya. The duo, sensing something was up, would find their way
to the hotel by bus before the old man and the two young ladies stepped into
the place, whereupon he would treat them as well, but not without a grumble. Uncle
Mazahir, whom we always called Maji uncle, eventually got serious and found his
way to Iraq, then under strongman Saddam Hussein, to work there for a couple of
years, eventually returning with some toys and a set of colourful stickers of
the flags of all Arab countries, kingdoms, emirates and republics, which he
proudly presented to us. Uncle Fazly always remained the stay-at-home boy known
for his carefree and easy-going attitude. A jovial chap he had ample time to
play cards with us kids and regale us with his jokes. Besides he was a man of
many parts. He once pulled out what we thought to be his mop of hair to reveal
a bald head and on another occasion casually took out his entire set of teeth.
I am still left wondering why he wore wigs and dentures at that young age.
And then
there were our three aunts Fairoze, Shafeeka and Shanaz who along with their
mother took care of us whenever we were left over at Umma House by our parents
when they were busy at the auctions. An adventurous lot, they often took us out
in the evenings to the Galle Face Green and on one occasion to the cinema to
watch The Jungle Book. It was also from them that we received our
earliest religious instruction, at about the age of four. They would have us
sit cross-legged on the floor and utter Allalla,
Allalla with our eyes closed, and as we continued with the recitation, a 5
or 10 cents coin would fall from above, a reward for our prayer. They had us
believe that it came from the heavens, from the Good Lord Allah Himself.
Aunt Fairoze,
the eldest and prettiest of the lot, married her namesake, an engineer from
Kandy named Firoze, the wedding being held on a grand scale at Umma House in
1977. Those were the days when Muslim weddings were still held at the house of
the bride, though even at that time the custom was gradually changing in favour
of having the wedding at a hotel. In this sense, aunt Firoz’s wedding was more
in keeping with tradition than those of her two younger sisters both of whose
weddings were held at leading hotels in Colombo
Also contributing
to the fun at Umma House were the members of the Anwar family who were cousins
to the Ghanys. They often visited and stayed at the house as if they owned it,
a throwback to the good old days of their grandfather Mehdi Hussein who made
everybody feel at home at Darlington . Little
wonder they cultivated a sense of entitlement to it. Especially memorable were
the antics of the threesome of Akhtar, Sharwar and Musharraf who we often saw
clad in flamboyant shirts and bellbottoms as was the fashion then. They were a
fun-loving lot obsessed with Bombay , often
singing the song Bom bom bom bom, Bombay meri hai and even joking that my twin brother
Asgar who had a slight squint was Bombay looking Calcutta
Their little
cousin Fatima, the daughter of grandaunt Khadija who lived at Wellawatte also
visited Umma House and made a good playmate, being only a year or two older to
us. With her we played some silly games like Hide and Seek, Hopscotch,
Mulberry Bush or London Bridge is falling down though sometimes we found occasion to send her to Coventry
There were of
course some things we loved doing together, like cracking open the kottang, the nuts of the Ceylon almond we found
scattered by the roadside of Alwis Place near the turn to Muhandiram Road or in
the little lane separating the Mukthar’s from Umma House. The tree grew in the
Mukthar premises but strewed its nuts all over. We cracked these open with a
stone or grandma’s heavy iron pestle which she used to pound her arecanuts and
betel with. It would, like a pearl oyster, reveal a starchy kernel with a light
brown coating resembling an almond which we popped into our little mouths. There
were nevertheless occasions when Fatima had to
pay a price for our friendship such as when one day she informed me that a
beggar was at the gates. I promptly gave her an aluminium 1 cent coin to be
given to the ragged old fellow, only to have the poor girl, visibly annoyed,
tell me a while later that the ingrate had spat at her and gone away fussing
and cussing and muttering all sorts of obscenities for giving him such a trifle.
She was quite cross with me and to think I had done her a favour. I should have
known better; beggars, in spite of their slothful temperament, haggard
appearance and tattered garb tend to have great expectations, fondly imagining
being at the receiving end of things we would not deign conjure up even in our
wildest fantasies. Nothing after all is so wild as the imagination of a beggar.
Living in the
same premises, but in a little rickety timber cabin made of wooden planks and
roofed with crinkled tin were Ramalan, the family horsekeeper, and his wife
Vimala. The superannuated jockey could not shake off his thralldom to the house
he had served for so long and was permitted by its mistress to build his log
cabin in the precincts rent-free. The old couple continued to be dependents of
the house, doing all sorts of odd jobs for grandmother every now and then. We
often saw Ramalan, a thin, swarthy balding old fellow with two little tufts of
hair on either side of the head near the ears crouching on his haunches near
Umma House looking much like a giant bat while Vimala, quite frail looking,
would regularly run errands for grandma.
Their sons
Razik and Farook were accomplished jockeys with the elder serving millionaire
industrialist Upali Wijewardena and the younger serving father during the great
horseracing days of the early 1980s. Facing Umma House at the turn from Alwis Place Muhandiram Road
Park and Prom
Whatever is
said of rustic village life, there is no doubt townies have it better, and none
have it as good as Colpetty people. Here is where life is, plentifully pregnant
with possibilities to get away from the hustle and bustle of it all. Be it a
stroll on the Galle Face Green, a ramble round the Beira Lake, an outing with
the family at Vihara Maha Devi Park, shopping at the Liberty Plaza or a visit
to the Liberty Cinema, Colpetty folk do not have far to go.
Galle face figured
prominently in our outings as it was not very far from home, providing us ample
space to gambol about amidst the balmy breeze and sea spray. This large
esplanade with a nearly mile-long promenade fronting the Arabian Sea to the
West seems originally to have been cleared by the Dutch to give their cannons a
clear line of fire to keep away invaders from their prize colony which they
called Ceylon
The British,
whom the big guns of the Dutch could not silence, did much to develop the place
as a recreational spot. The Galle Face Walk along the sea-wall, a long
promenade about a mile in length was commissioned as far back as 1856 by the
Governor of Ceylon Sir Henry Ward in “the
interests of the ladies and children of Colombo”. Horse races were also
held here until about 1892 when the Havelock Racecourse in Cinnamon Gardens
Pleasant were
the evenings we spent as children on the picturesque turf; frolicking on the
patches of grass that carpeted the place and gave it its sobriquet of green,
and strolling along the walkway on the sea-wall that faced the lapping waves
which then as now swarmed with happy families and merry makers. It was not only
our parents who hauled us over to the green, but also our aunts, father’s then
unmarried sisters who itched for an outing once in a while chaperoned by a
brother or two or even us little ones, in stark contrast to their arch
conservative mother who preferred to remain at home tending the hearth. Curiously,
mother’s Sinhalese kin never seemed to have had a fascination for the spot in
the way our Muslim aunts did and I cannot remember even one occasion going to
the green with them. For some reason Muslims seem to gravitate more to this
kind of place, so that even today, a foreign visitor, beholding the concourse,
might easily get away with the impression that Muslims are a majority here.
The invariable
treat a visit to the green brought was an ice cream cone, and in our very young
days we would casually comment to one another about an ice cream van being here
or there to get mother’s attention, hoping she would get the hint. We would say
in a roundabout way “Hmm, there are a lot of ice cream vans today”. Not
to be fooled, she would pretend that she did not hear us as she thought that
buying us the cones then and there might spoil us, preferring instead to get us
the cones a while after the racket had died down.
The Alerics
ice cream vans then parked in the kerb between the road and the green did a brisk
business selling cones. Anybody could make them out by their distinctive logo which
had the word Alerics in red capped by
a snow white layer as if topped with ice cream. We were almost always bought
vanilla, our parents’ preferred flavour which they foisted on us as well. At
the time Alerics was the leading ice cream manufacturer in the country.
Established by Alerics De Silva it rose to great heights in the 1960s and 70s,
and even set up the country’s first ice cream parlour, Picadilly Café in Wellawatte, an exclusive hang-out patronized by Colombo
The area
nearer the sea wall was occupied by a few see-through hand-pushed carts with
glass windows which with sundown would be lit with glowing lamps or lanterns,
displaying an array of crunchy savoury snacks like cassava chips loved by both
kids and grown ups. Also plying their trade here were small-time vendors
peddling their wares-tinkiri karatta,
miniature toy carts craftily turned out of discarded tins of condensed milk
that when trundled about with a string gave out a rattling tuck tuck sound, and red or multi-coloured paper flowers made of
wax paper that rested on a pin fastened to a stalk and whirled with the breeze
like a little windmill.
Kite flying
was another popular pastime at Galle Face and many were those who found their
way to the green just to show off their rustling paper belles. These would
dance, caressed by the lusty winds wafting from the waves to the west,
sometimes with such ecstasy that their masters had a hard time keeping a grip
on the line that bound them, as if trying to hold on to a dog gone mad on the
leash. Kites galored then as now at the green and even national kite festivals
where kites of all shapes and sizes vied with one another for beauty and grace
were held there annually. There were the usual diamond shaped ones made of oil
paper and bamboo pieces and the longer serpentine ones that billowed in the
breeze.
Even the veil
of night here could not hide its charms, for the wide expanse of star-spangled
sky the esplanade opened out to at nightfall seemed as if the celestial vault
so manifest in the day like an etherial dome had been split asunder to reveal a
planetarium of sorts. Lying on one’s back on the grass, spreadeagled, as father
often did, one could gaze at the nightly heaven in all its splendour with
countless little stars twinkling high above that simply refused to melt into
the night. Distinct and aloof they stood in all their arrogance as if looking
down on us puny earthlings.
One such
occasion when we paid the green a nocturnal visit was when we tagged along with
mother, her auction assistant Zameen and her young nephew Afzal who was about
our age. Having seated ourselves on the grass under a starlit sky, Afzal, the
great storyteller he was, regaled us with a fascinating tale from the film Star
Wars, and all this well before it actually showed on the big screen here.
We would listen to him with wide, intent, open eyes, for it all seemed so real
under that stellar setting.
Another
interesting feature of the green were the battery of grand old cannons towards
the north with their huge barrels aimed at the sea, as if some sea monster were
lurking nearby. These were probably mounted by the British artillery replacing
the older guns the Dutch had installed at the site to keep their maritime
enemies, including the Brits at bay. Passing these big guns, we would find our
way to the lighthouse further north with which we were equally fascinated. The
beacon, set up to warn ships entering the shallow bay very appropriately called
gal-bokka or ‘rocky belly’ had been
built in the 1950s, replacing the older British-built one that crowned the
clock tower near Queen’s House, now the President’s House at Janadhipati
Mawatha, Colombo Fort.
And then there
was Victoria Park, which we called by that name, despite its having been
renamed Vihara Maha Devi Park
Here we
resorted to every once in a while with our grandma, Accha and our duo of spinster aunts, Nandani and Chandani, walking
all the way as it was a very short distance from home. True, the park had many things to boast, but
it were the swings that attracted us the most, and I remember swinging to and
fro with such force that there were moments I thought I would go under the
board through a 360 degree course. Among the other interesting features of the
park was a tree house built of wood, prettily perched atop a sturdy tree, a
tall tower-like slide which one climbed from the inside as well as a gigantic
tortoise made of concrete upon whose back we would sit as if for a ride.
And then
there was the Beira
Lake Beira Slave Island
A part of the
lake formed a body of water close to our two family homes much like a gigantic
pond. Unhappily, it had turned a sickly bilious green. This abomination father
thought was the work of mercenary firms that had introduced it with the
ulterior motive of getting government contracts to clean up the mess. His
theory could have met its match with the one that held that the scourge was
introduced by the British in the days of World War II to camoflague the lake so
that Jap planes sent to bomb the city would not be able to identify the spot at
night. Needless to say, both hold no water. The lake had simply been overgrown
with blue green algae that fed on the wastes dumped by the shanties near its
banks.
Shanties then
flourished on both sides of the lake, in the Navam Mawatha area, which is today
a thriving commercial quarter famed for plush business offices, and in the area
of Perahera Mawatha which was then occupied by about a hundred shanties made of
timber. It was called koriyava (Korea
All this was
a far cry from the balmy inter-war years of the thirties when the Lake Road
that went past the Beira was lined with elegant Royal Poincianas with their
flamboyant flourish of scarlet orange blooms, so conspicuous that they were
reflected in the placid blue waters of the lake, not to mention the teeming
animal life it supported like tortoises, pond herons and the infamous lake
flies that would, during a certain season, storm the nearby Bishop’s College in
such numbers that they fell into the soup served for dinner to the boarders who
would take it in good spirits, jokingly calling it ‘fly soup’. It was very
likely this pool of life that rubbed off on the environs of the school which
included a rare gold beetle that haunted the giant Madras Thorn trees that
fringed it on almost all sides.
In the middle of the lake was an island even the denizens of
There was even
a bathing place simply known as Totupola (Ford) by the locals near the
Slave Island area which a few members of my paternal clan like Hyder and Akhtar
used to visit when they were little. It had these huge steps that led to the
lake. The boys would ask the bathers to catch them the little fish known as Beira
Batto. They would push the water with their hands towards the steps and the
boys would take their pick, the crows carrying away the rest.
This spot,
being almost a stone’s throw away from home, we took for granted until our teen
years when we resorted to the Colpetty Grand Mosque for Subah, the Islamic dawn prayer. Having prayed with the congregation
which included about a hundred godly souls or so, we would saunter along to the
banks of the Beira Beira Lake that we frequented, not for the ambience, but to
skateboard the sloping road that skirted part of Beira Lake
There were at
the time only a few modest-looking houses and the road was not at all a busy
one except for the occasional car or two whose right of passage we dare not
hinder.
Here we would
resort to with our skateboards accompanied by our neighbourhood friend Hilal
who shared our love for adventure and take our stand at the elevated portion of
the newly tar macadamised road at the turn from Navam Mawatha to Uttarananda
Mawatha whose gentle slope provided the perfect launch for the skates.
The right
foot firmly on the board, a gentle push or two with the left foot would lunge
the board forward to a splendid ride though some maneuvering was necessary to
navigate the winding road that sloped downwards towards the left. The
skateboards, one of which was a rainbow-coloured fiberglass board depicting a flock
of geese in flight and the other, a thicker blue plastic cruiser with a
slightly elevated tail, never failed to disappoint us. Firm and hardy, they
would survive even thirty years later in almost the same condition we knew them
in our younger fun-loving days.
Shows of colour, shows of valour
Sri Lankans
if given a choice between bread and circuses, would go for the breadunlike the
citizens of Rome
Circuses then
came only once in a blue moon, for the swinging sixties when that enterprising
impresario Donovan Andre dominated local showbiz with teaseshows like Haarlem
Blackbirds and wrestling champs like Dara Singh, Ali Riza Bey,
Angel Face, Hooded Terror and King Kong were long gone. But
when they did, they enjoyed immense popularity, like the Apollo Circus that
rolled into Havelock
Park India , but other parts of Asia
as well, having started from Bulanshahr in Uttar Pradesh in the late 1950s. All
I can recall of it is enjoying it with our parents one evening quietly seated
under a sprawling tent with vague recollections of some sort of breathtaking trapeze
act and a caged lion whose arrival on the stage was met with a hushed gasp by
the audience.
The Army
Tatoos, stunning displays of military skill we also enjoyed as any child would.
Held at the Sugathadasa Stadium and commencing around 1978, these shows of
valour attracted a great number of people from all walks of life, spectators
both young and old who would revel at the sight of the ‘war shows’, a sort of
raid or attack with a lot of action and daredevil motorcycle stunts among other
incredible feats performed by our service members.
These tattoos
continued for a few years, but were later discontinued, no doubt due to the
escalating conflict with Tiger terrorists in the north and east of the country,
being revived only after the defeat of terrorism thirty years later. The
curious word tattoo used for this
sort of show has an interesting history. It seems to have its origins from the
Dutch word taptoe ‘beat of drum’ or
may well be a corruption of an old Dutch command Doe der to tap toe ‘turn off the taps’ issued by a drummer ordering
innkeepers in war zones to cease selling liquor to soldiers so that they could
return to their quarters by nightfall somewhat still in their senses in
preparation for battle the following day. The call seems to have evolved into
an army musical show before being beefed up with bold displays of military
might to become what it is today-a popular spectacle for the general public.
Among the few
sports events we attended were the motorcycle races held at Katukurunda, an
abandoned World War II airstrip not far from Kalutara which had been converted
into a motor racing circuit. This circuit meet venue with its many bends ideal
for motor racing had been discovered many years before by an avid racer Andrew
Mirando. The Ceylon Motor Cycle Club he formed was soon into organizing races
here, not just for motor cycles, but also for cars where man and machine merged
as one in the race to be ace. It naturally attracted young blood like our
uncles Suranjan and Chandana.
It was at one
such grand event held in early 1981 with its line up of over 30 racing events
that uncle Chandana participated with his Suzuki 200 cc in no less than three
events. And there we were amidst the maddening crowd. As the riders zoomed past
with their high pitched screams and the crowds cheered, mother would cry out “There’s Chutti Uncle!”, all to no avail
as we had great difficulty making him out at that distance. At any rate he was
not a man who stood out from the crowd, small made as he was, even on his
machine.
Then there
was the Navam Perahera, a colourful procession in honour of the founder of
Buddhism, Gautama Buddha that went past our house towards the Beira Lake on the
night of the full moon in the month of February. The Perahera, conceived by
Galboda Gnanissara who was fondly known as Podi Hamuduruvo or ‘Little monk’ was
held for the first time in 1979 when we were about seven years old and
thereafter became a yearly event organized by the Gangarama Temple in
Hunupitiya. The vaudevillian parade which featured traditional Sinhalese
entertainers drawn from far-flung rural areas, would with time rival the famous
Esala Perahera of Kandy that had gone on for centuries, ever since the days of
the Kandyan Kings.
Accha House
and the neighbouring houses peopled by our kith and kin faced a broad
throughfare that lay in the path of the procession as it made its way to the
picturesque Beira lake to its north. This was General’s Lake Road, perhaps an
extension of the red sandy Lake Road that once skirted the placid waters of the
lake and took its name from one General Lawrence who had his bungalow there.
It did not
take our folk long to evolve a tradition whereby we could watch the colourful
proceedings in comfort seated on chairs, oblivious to the plight of thousands
of others who had begun to throng in from late evening and had to stand,
sometimes for hours, to watch the procession that would come their way like a
gargantuan millipede, from head to tail. Our elders would sequester the
pavement area closer to the kerbs in front of our houses with chairs when the
night drew nigh, while we little ones, restless as we were, preferred to watch
the spectacle standing or seated on a low rampart-like wall built in the front
of our house as a form of protection much like the face mask of an American
football player.
The parade would
soon roll down our street, a train of man and beast, some real, some unreal as
if drawn from another world, one after
the other, marching past in waves in almost endless succession; a hotchpotch of
the sacrosanct rites of an ancient oriental faith promiscuously blended with an
ever so surreal menagerie of monstrosities fit only for a Victorian peep show;
a kaleidoscope throbbing with life in all its hues and shades; a tapestry
tumbling into life and rumbling with a roar; an ever so unreal hallucination
after an acid trip; call it what you will, no words suffice to describe this
great pagan pantomime.
It would
commence with the kasakarayo, the
whiplashers, soundly walloping the road with their long whips which not only
gave out a thunderous din but also sometimes seemed to emit sparks of fire upon
hitting the tar; it was they who cleared the way for the rest of the
procession, the torchbearers who flared up the night with their crude flaming
torches, fire jugglers who twirled and swirled fire to form a blazing vortex; majestic, gaily caparisoned tuskers prodded on
by their mahouts, stilt-walkers known as boru-kakul-karayo
or false-legged ones who strode the road with pomp and who towering so high up
seemed to us little ones like Gullivar’s Brobgingnagans, and yakku, furry, dark-brown monsters somewhat
like long-snouted sloth bears that seemed as if they had just popped out from
some mediaeval bestiary, a rather fearsome sight, especially at night.
Other shows
then were few and far between though there were also some regular events we
attended, but very rarely. One such was the St.Margareth’s Day Fair held once a
year as part of the Bishop’s College Calendar. The fair was held, as it still
is, at St.Margareth’s Convent along St.Michael’s Road, Colpetty, not far from
Bishop’s College and was one of the few links that still connected the school
to the Sisters of Saint Margaret of East Grinstead, England
In those days
the fair had for sale a variety of items from books and foodstuffs to cloth
dolls ingeniously turned out by Miss Margareth Dias, the Matron of Bishop’s
College. It is said that the good old matron used to collect the bright red
seeds of the Madatiya (Coralwood tree) then strewn all over the front
garden of the college to use as boot button eyes for her soft toys. The lady is
also said to have been an expert in making bonbons. Another regular feature of
the fair then as now was the merry-go-round. The only occasion I recall
visiting this eventide fair was when we were around five years old while still
studying at the Bishop’s College Nursery, though all I could remember of the
visit was being given these lovely red, deliciously sweet marzipans which we
fancied were real strawberries.
Fasts, Feasts and Festivals
The moon
plays a big role in Muslim religious life, determining when we fast and when we
feast at our festivals. This is because the Islamic calendar is a lunar one
with 12 moons from new moon to full moon making a year, simple enough even to a
very primitive mind.
There is one
hitch though, that is, there are no fixed seasons like we find in the solar
calendar so that a given lunar month may fall on a summer in a particular year
and on a winter after several more years. As a result, even the events
associated with them are not fixed, but rather rotate throughout the year,
based as it is upon the sighting of the crescent or new moon at night.
Islamdom has
only two festivals, both based on the lunar calendar, the Ramazan festival and
the Hajj festival. The former celebrates the culmination of the Ramazan fast
and the latter the conclusion of the Hajj pilgrimage, both of these being
duties binding on every Muslim man and woman, just as much as the Shahadah or
Declaration of Faith, the Salat or Prayer and the Zakat or Alms Tax, all of
which constitute what are known as the Five Pillars of Islam.
The moon-long
fast in the Islamic month of Ramazan when Muslims have to abstain from food,
drink and sex is no easy task for the worldly minded, but once one’s mind and
body is attuned to it from one’s very young days, it doesn’t prove to be so
difficult after all. It increases piety, inculcates patience, instills
discipline, stimulates empathy with the poor and leads to good health – not a
bad prospect after all.
Like most
Muslim children we were taught to fast from our very young days, at about the
age of seven or so. Our parents would wake us up in the wee hours before dawn
broke to partake of a meal known as sahar
or savar. I still wonder how they
managed to get us up at that time; perhaps an alarm clock did the trick. In the
olden days though, before we were born, there were fakeer mendicants with
hurricane lanterns who would do the rounds in local towns, knocking on the
doors and shouting a mumbo jumbo “Otto Bawa Otto” to wake up the faithful for
the last meal before the fast, a tradition still found in certain parts of the
Arab world where a wake-up call man known as Misarahati appearing as if mysteriously in the dead of night and
shortly before the break of dawn, and holding a lamp,would sing and beat his
little drum to wake up people, sometimes even calling out their names; a Wee Willie Winkie of sorts, only with
the roles reversed, for he woke up people, not ensured that they were asleep.
We would not
have anything to eat or drink till dusk set in, when we would break our fast,
usually with dates and water in the tradition of our beloved Prophet, though
after this we freely indulged in some well deserved delicacies like samosas, triangular pastries filled with
minced beef and gulab jamoons,
ball-shaped cakes soaked in sweet syrup, washed down with faluda, a refreshing drink made with milk and rose syrup. This last
was almost out of the world; nectar, elixir, ambrosia, all in one, so relieving
to a parched tongue.
My favourite
were the gulab jamoons, an item of Indian origin we got from Bombay Sweet House in Colpetty. So much
so that once when our Islam teacher at Mahanama College Sitty Miss inquired what
we had for our pre-dawn meal or dinner I blurted out ‘gulab jamoons’ without
giving it much thought. Quite taken aback she advised me that we ought to take
something more substantial. “You must
take rice!” she told me matter of factly. I wouldn’t ever forget that piece
of sagely counsel, or that shocked look on her face, perhaps imagining us
spoilt brats greedily stuffing our little bellies with these gulab jamoons,
slurping and burping till we could take no more.
Some of our
fasts we broke at home and some we broke at father’s family home Umma House to
which we resorted to once in a while. The folk there had it as good as us or
even better, given grandma Umma’s culinary
skills, including that invigorating gruel known as kanji she used to
make with rice, coconut milk and garlic with a generous quantity of beef bones
and flesh thrown in for good measure. This regimen would go on for a month, or
rather a moon of about 28 or 29 days before it would all end with the Ramazan
festival the very next day.
On that day
we would resort to Umma House clad in our finery, new clothes mother had sewn
for us, and instinctively cluster round a large table that groaned with goodies
of all descriptions. Liberally spread out on the table that day were a variety
of sweetmeats Umma had herself prepared, so numerous that I am not even able to
recall what they were except that they included sanja, a firm jelly made of seaweed cut into square or diamond
shapes and coloured red or green, sooji,
a soft yellow confection made of semolina, margarine and sugar and ambarella dosi, a juicy brownish fruit
preserve made by boiling hogplum in sugar syrup.
The luncheon
that followed in the afternoon that day comprised of an exceedingly rich and
delectable rice dish known as buriyani of grandma’s own making, ably
assisted by her faithful accomplice, an elderly Muslim woman from Slave Island
we called Nona Sacchi. What went into it was of course no secret. The rice,
usually the long-grained basmathi,
was cooked in a very large aluminium vessel in the kitchen along with ghee or
clarified butter, perfumed with rose water and coloured yellow, varying from
grain to grain, from a deep yellow, almost orange to a lighter yellow. It was
spiced with various condiments and embellished with chunks of beef or mutton.
The meal was served on a platter upon a large rectangular table in the inner
hall with its usual accompaniments of chicken curry, mixed pea, cashewnut and
liver curry, mint sambol and slices of pineapple.
In keeping
with local Muslim custom, it were the males who ate first. The master of the
house, uncle Nazir, would be seated with his kith and kin, sidekicks and
stooges around the long table as if in a sumptuous banquet the likes of which
we saw only in our Asterix comics when the Gauls feasted after the return of
their hero, only that it was without the wild boar. We kids were always or
almost always given a place in the table at the very first serving as uncle
Nazir loved having us around. The womenfolk would have their meals after the
men had partaken of theirs. It was the law of the lion here. The aromatic rice
and meat meal we would indulge in to our fill, and as if that were not enough,
would be served at the end of it, a cup of vattalappam,
a soft brown pudding studded with little pores that oozed with sweet syrup
which grandmother had prepared earlier in the day by steaming in ceramic or
aluminium bowls a mixture of coconut milk, beaten eggs, palm sugar and
cardamoms. Later in the day, before we took leave to return home, some of our
elders, grandma and uncle Nazir particularly, would force into our hands notes
of money which they called perunaal salli
(festival money) to do with it as we wished.
The fact
however is that living in a largely non-Muslim tropical isle, we kids missed
out on much of the revelry and merriment that characterizes the Ramazan
festival and even the moon-long evenings and nights after breaking the fast
seen in Islamic countries, particularly in the Arab world where it is
considered the most joyful of months with happy families picnicking in green
areas like parks and zoos when breaking their fast, a custom that has only
recently emerged in our country when whole families would resort to scenic
spots like the Galle Face Green to break their fast picnic style, but one which
we never saw in our young days.
As part of
the festivities in these countries which unlike ours has evolved over time,
getting merrier and merrier as people partook of the cheer of the good season,
one finds the streets and shops gaily decorated with brightly lit lights often
in the form of crescent and star, lucent lanterns of white and myriad colours
and even golden and silver tinsel decorations, again of star and crescent which
is widely considered the symbol of Islam ever since the days of the Ottoman
Turks. And when it all crescendos in the day of the festival, little children
would be gifted with beautifully decorated gift bags of toys and candy or money
to spend time at amusement parks, while towards the evening and night, people in
festive mood would gather to enjoy communal meals with cookies for the little
ones filled with nuts and coated with sugar, musical plays and even fireworks,
all of which dwarf the Christmas celebrations of the West. But all this we in
our little country missed.
The Prophet of
Islam, despite his abstemious lifestyle, was no killjoy and always had the
happiness of people and especially of children in mind, so much so that one day
when an over-zealous companion found some little girls singing in the Prophet’s
house and cried out: “Musical instruments
of Satan in the house of the Messenger of God!”, the Prophet rebuked him “Leave them alone, Abu Bakr, every nation has
a festival, and this is our festival”. This was somebody from whom even
Oliver Cromwell and his roundheads - who in their puritanical fervour banned
Christmas celebrations in England
The Hajj
festival was celebrated much like the Ramazan feast except that it was not
celebrated as grandly and involved the sacrifice of a goat or sometimes a bull,
a ritual going back to the days of the patriarch Abraham. The sacrifice we were
told was reminiscent of the times when Abraham, the friend of God and forbear
of the Arabs was told in a dream to sacrifice his son Ishmael. If that were the
Will of God, then it should be done said the brave boy, when his father told
him about his dream. As Abraham was about to sacrifice his son, a ram appeared
as if from nowhere and Abraham was told to sacrifice it instead of his beloved
son. God had indeed been merciful to Abraham and his son who had passed the
test the Almighty wished to try them with, the test of devotion to God even at
the cost of parental love. The boy, Ishmael, whom Abraham had fathered through
an equally strong-willed Egyptian woman named Hagar would go on to sire a great
nation, the Arabs from amongst whom the final messenger of God to mankind,
Muhammad, would emerge. Little wonder then that it was a cause for celebration.
In the morning
of that festive day, we would come across the sacrificial animal, usually a
billy goat, in the front garden
of Umma House
Late that
evening or the following day, a heavy shower of rain known as the Haj mala
‘Rain of the Hajj’ would fall from the heavens, cleansing the earth of the
blood of the sacrificial animal - little doubt a Sign from God that He was
pleased with the sacrifice.
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