Superintendant under Father, and later he became a Manager in his own right doing mainly acting jobs for people on leave, and keeping his main home in Colombo. He suffered from diabetes and had to inject himself daily. We had a wide ranging talk covering all sorts of things, Work, Politics his home etc.and I then raised the question of ‘caste’ , and if it affected him in any way as he was a Catholic and his family had been for 400 years from the time of the Portugese invasions of 1500 AD.
“I will tell you what caste is” he said. “I am now working on Coombe Estate Haputale, and my youngest son is next door as an Assistant on Poonagalla Group. If I wanted to see his Boss Mr Pilimitalawa who is a Kandyan Chief High Caste, about some matter he would speak to me outside his house. Only if it was pouring with rain would he possibly invite me on to his verandah. I know that he would never dream of offering me a seat, and he would sooner die than invite me in and offer me a drink. In his eyes I am low caste, as the Portugese converted all the coastal Sinhalese to Catholicism and they were mainly fishermen, a low caste activity, as it means killing and taking life. So 400 or so years on we still bear a stigma!” A sobering conversation that is all but impossible for a Westerner to comprehend.
Ceylon was deteriorating fast with imports getting rarer all the time. I dont know how David had got his pink toilet paper, it was a commodity so rare that the Air Mail Edition of the Daily Telegraph could be more use for that purpose than merely reading it. Once in Colombo at the end. I caught my finger in the car door and it was bleeding profusely. Luckily it happened just outside the chemist shop at the rear of the Galle Face Hotel.
“Can I buy some Elastoplast” I inquired.
“Sorry we cant supply, now imports are impossible”
“Well can I have some cottonwool”
“Cant get that either”
“Well what about some lint to pad it with”
“We have not had lint for a long time now”
“ We can only supply a small bandage” So I settled on that doubling it up and patched up my sore finger.
Once at the latter stage of this nightmare with the Exchange Controller, I sat alongside his desk and passed him all my papers for his signature. He looked at the forms intently and said with a smile
“Well they all seem in order I will just have to consider the application”, With that he lent back in his chair, smiled and dropped his hand to the side and pulled open a drawer. In it were at least half a dozen Rolex and Omega watches. In a flash I saw that I was in a quandry and that something must be forthcoming or else I was stuck , and there would be no farm in England and no dairy cows. In a quick flash I thought of my options and said:
“ I am sure that you are a tea drinker, and so is your family. I could arrange next week to have sent down to your home a chest of the very finest dry weather tea from the best Estate weighing 120lbs.”
“ That sounds excellent to me, and I would appreciate it very much” he said “ I am sure this application can now be processed quickly” And that was done, the tea chest was sent, my application was all ready and approved though not to be finally signed until the very last day of my departure. David and I had both booked onto the P&O Orontes, the new manager who was taking over from me on the estates Tony Boyd Moss arrived on the 15th March and I signed off my job to him. The lorry laden with all my luggage and goods went down to Colombo and I looked out the following morning from the Galle Face to see the great liner steaming into the Colombo from the South. I went to get my Exchange Control forms finally signed and waited and waited all morning and then all afternoon in the final frustration of trying to depart, and the great man was busy. “Come in ,” he finally said at about 5 o’oclock in the afternoon as I sat down. This is all straightforward, you could have gone and I could have posted this to you.
“I know however that you are a very busy man and I want to get this all straight to help you, as there are lots of bits and pieces which could possibly raise a query” He smiled and finally and most courteously signed my forms at 5.30 pm and I rushed off to see if I could still join David on the liner with my lorry full of my cases. But it was too late, the loading was closed and about a hour later she sailed out. Next morning I rushed into the P& O Offices and luckily there was another ship the Oronsay coming in a just over week and I managed to get a small inboard cabin booked on her. The very next day a complete clamp was brought in on the remittance of money from Ceylon, so I was lucky to have persevered and get my cash out which was enough to help us buy our present home in England. I had ten days to kill and drove later that afternoon out of Colombo to stay with friends. It was strange driving back to the estate, this time with no responsibility, and one felt suddenly like a tourist seeing the country from the out side and not actually working there. In the late after noon as I came out of Colombo there was the most frightening thunderstorm I had ever seen. A flash of lightning about a foot wide screeched across the top of the Land rover momentarily stopping my heart with fear as it tore into the coconut trees by the roadside. There was a small cadjan village garage nearby and I pulled in to regain my breath....The Sinhalese mechanic came out and enquired what was wrong and I told him of my scare. “Oh dont worry ” he said pointing to the high tension power lines above “here we are quite safe as the power lines take the current of the lightning away” I was not sure but I believed him nonetheless. Back at Luckland now with Tony Boyd Moss in charge, I felt like being a guest or an onlooker in a hotel. The chaps at the local Dicksons Corner Tennis club were still there, playing hard in the bright March sunshine, knocking back copious beers, Rocklands Gin and finishing it all off with Green Creme de Menthe liquer which was the fashionable end of party drink at the time. All without exception thought I was mad for leaving this paradise, and all without exception themselves had to leave within three years or so mostly virtually penniless. I drove down to Colombo this time via Galle to savour a few last days of warm seas and visit a Ceylonese friend who lived near there. He took me to the Club and we sat on the beach with a doctor friend of his and started chatting. He told the doctor of my impending departure:
“Why do you want to leave such a lovely country with such friendly people, dont you like it here?” he inquired.
“Yes I love Ceylon with all my heart, but it is going Communist and everything is falling apart and especially they are about to try nationalising the education system and my children wont have a chance. I dont want them all to end up just being bus drivers”.
“ So what is wrong with that. Every one has too many desires and too many ambitions. I myself have a Triumph TR 3 and I yearn for a Ford Thunderbird. If I was a bus driver I would be pining for a bicycle....Everything is relative and people with a western education all merely pine for consumer items, and never think of their inner selves but are all consumed by greed. As a western English educated doctor I am the same, but I know in my heart it is the wrong way in life”
He was right to an extent, except that that being a middle class educated man he was theorising from a lofty perspective, but his basic philosophy was true.
So finally on the 28th March I boarded the Oronsay and sat on the deck over looking the busy port of Colombo. I was joined on board for a most touching send off by about half a dozen of the Estate staff from Luckyland and Hugoland, Amarasekra the Dispenser, Thomas my loyal Head Clerk, and Santosum my efficient and ebullient Head Tea Maker. They like me knew it was the end of an era and had journeyed down for five hours to Colombo to pay their final respects not only to me personally but through me to Father who had gone before
