That Blue Thing: An Engineer’S Travel

By M G Ratnayake

I was born to a poor family in Sri Lanka. As a koel came to roost in our nest and my early marriage to my sweetheart I was forced to leave Sri Lanka and come to England aiming to complete my higher studies. As a student I found it extremely difficult to make both ends meet with three children. The biggest problem that I had was to find suitable accommodation for my family. On completion of my studies I found employment with Consulting Engineers and continued my career in Engineering until the present day, working on many varied projects: Motorway Bridges, Building structures, Ships and North Sea Oil Fields. You may find it very interesting to read more my charity work, Terrorism in Sri Lanka and about my overland trips.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris UK
• Release date: Sep 27, 2010
• ISBN: 9781453554135

M G Ratnayake

I was born to a poor family in Sri Lanka. As a koel came to roost in our nest and my early marriage to my sweetheart, I was forced to leave Sri Lanka and come to England aiming to complete my higher studies. I came early but my wife followed me after six months. As a student, I found it extremely difficult to make both ends meet with two children. The biggest problem that I had was to find suitable accommodation for my family. On the completion of my studies, I found employment with a firm of consulting engineers. You may find it very interesting to read about my overland trips.

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Copyright © 2010 by M. G. Ratnayake, MSc, CEng, MICE, MIStructE.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2010911605

ISBN: Hardcover    978-1-4535-5412-8

ISBN: Softcover      978-1-4535-5411-1

ISBN: Ebook          978-1-4535-5413-5

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Contents

Dedication

Prologue: Small Blue Thing

Acknowledgement

Chapter 1   The Koel in the Nest

Chapter 2   School Days, Cannibals, and Crocodiles

Chapter 3   Changing States

Chapter 4   Voyage to England

Chapter 5   Overland to Sri Lanka: A Family of Koels

Chapter 6   Working Life in England and another Difficult Journey to Lanka

Chapter 7   Terrorism in Sri Lanka

Chapter 8   Sustainable Development

Chapter 9   My Charity Work

Epilogue: Another Small Blue Thing

List of Reference

Dedication

I want to dedicate this book to my loving parents, Amma and Thaaththa, who were always there for me. I could remember well how you made sacrifices, feeding me your portion of food while you were starving. It was only you two who brought me up to be a good man to help the poor and the destitute in this world. I promise you that I will do that until my last breath. I understand the enormous difficulties you had to face bringing up five children. Thank God for letting me be your child. I respect you and love you forever.

Prologue

Small Blue Thing

It was sapphire blue and perfect, and it was mine—at least for the moment. I was lying in bed, cradling a one-inch cube, intoxicated by its alien symmetry, by its sharp chemical smell, by the strange lettering it bore. My world was one of earth and labour, of crude mud huts, of fields and forests, of the sweet scent of flowers and drying coconut flesh, and the pungent odours of sweat and pit latrines. This little box of bleach was a message from the unimaginable beyond—beyond my village of Minhettiya, beyond Yakdessa Gala (Devil Dancers Rock), even beyond my district of Kurunegala, of which I had seen but only a fraction. I fell asleep, dreaming of this place beyond, a place of curious and wonderful things.

As I slept, my mother unclasped my fingers from my treasure and slipped it back into the jar it had come from. In the morning, I no longer thought of it, but my fascination—my compulsion—would resurface often in my early years. Perhaps it was a portent. I believe the bleach came from England. The strange lettering spelled Robin. One day I would move to England and use some of my savings there to help my people back home in Sri Lanka.

Perhaps it was the astrologer who put the idea of travel in my head. When I was ten, my mother asked the local soothsayer about my future. Looking at my mother with strange intensity, he said, ‘This boy will not stay in Ceylon!’ I did not understand, as the world much beyond my village was still not fully real.

Acknowledgement

First of all, I should thank a number of people who have encouraged me to write this book.

One evening I was having a light-hearted conversation in Moira’s kitchen with her mother-in-law (Suzanne) generally about my difficult life and other associated events that was a mixture of many incidents, some romantic while others were funny and dangerous. She being an author herself gave me the final push from contemplating this book to committing with the pen and paper. She had many talents and when I was contemplating to get the cover of my book designed by her, unfortunately her husband passed away.

Apart from writing books, I had not even thought of embarking on a large project like this. The furthest that I had gone was writing my thesis at Cambridge. I am fully aware of the difficulties that I had with reading hundreds of books and store the contents in my head. Through my perseverance, I completed it on time. This is one reason why I believe that research should be done in your mother tongue. The luck, however, was on my side, as I switched over to English when I was ten years old. Therefore, I overcame that difficulty.

Mr David Ball gave me the start for this manuscript but had to do a lot of research to find a suitable editor for this job. I wanted somebody who had lived in third world countries with a thorough knowledge of different cultures. At last I found Dr Eric Swanepoel who happened to be an author himself and had lived in Zimbabwe and South Africa. I admired his talent. He was quick to understand my arguments, which is a quality essentially found only in a learned man. I have had lengthy arguments with him, and on many occasions, he managed to convince me. I sincerely thank Eric for all the good work that he has done on this book.

Amma and Thaaththa, you have been gone from us as of the construction phase of the Rest Home and writing this book, but you were always in my heart, which was my true driving force.

I am thankful to my loving wife, Chandra, for tolerating me during my long sessions sitting in front of the computer.

I hope that you will very much enjoy this little work as well as find it immensely amusing and readable.

That Blue Thing: An Engineer’s Travels in Several Countries

‘Mervyn’ Mudiyanselage Gunatilake Ratnayake was born in Minhettiya, a tiny village in the heart of Ceylon, then part of the British Empire, shortly before Hitler invaded Poland. It was a place of mud huts and subsistence farming. He is now a retired engineer with vast international experience, based in the commercial hub of Europe. He devotes himself to helping the elderly destitute in his native land.

This autobiography is, on one level, a straightforward account of his cultural, linguistic, and socio-economic journey. It is also a thoughtful and balanced exposé of the pernicious effects of bigotry and imperialism, suggesting links between the colonial tactic of divide-and-rule and the horrors of the long-running war with the Tamil Tigers, with striking relevance to conflicts elsewhere. It is, certainly, a manifesto for a better world, with outspoken commentary on the damaging effects of much so-called ‘development’, and on educational priorities—the English language, above all!

More than this, however, That Blue Thing: An Engineer’s Travel is a page-turner of an adventure story (with a touch of romance), rich in intrigue, derring-do, glowing images, and striking characters. What lies behind the arrival of the sinister and mysterious ‘brother’, Tikiri Banda, a mischief-maker who poisons village life? Will Mervyn’s schoolmates survive their swim in a beautiful but crocodile-infested lake? Will the desperately shy young man succeed in wooing the lissome but equally bashful fifteen-year-old Chandra, under the noses of her strict and conservative parents? How will the ambitious young man balance his Ph.D. aspirations with the need to support a family? What mishap will befall him next, as he drives overland from England to Sri Lanka with his young children and a dangerously naïve fellow traveller (ironically named Stanley), a journey for which the word ‘gruelling’ seems inadequate? Will he overcome the apparently impenetrable barrier of the racist old-boy network in England, as bad as the oligarchy of the Tamil and Sinhalese elite that had driven him from his native country? And forced to start his own business, how will he survive when a major contractor is taken over by the receivers, and he is left many thousands of pounds out of pocket?

That Blue Thing: An Engineer’s Travel is not a simple rags-to-riches tale. Neither is it an ‘east meets west’ homily, or a dry political essay. It is an engaging and provocative biography that opens a clear window on the modern world and defies pigeonholing. Appealing to a wide readership, it will, of course, also be of interest to engineers, particularly those in the oil industry.

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Cover Picture—Look alike house similar to that where I was born at the time.

Chapter 1

The Koel in the Nest

It was Ceylon, a part of the British Empire. I was born on 26 August 1937 in the poor quarter of the village of Minhettiya in the Kurunegala District of north-west Ceylon. Later on in my life, it became a question of ‘human rights’. Innocent people were getting killed by terrorists, who believed that it was their right to kill, and equally, it was the right of the victims to get killed. There is a converse of this theorem where the soldiers killed the terrorists; similarly they both have their rights. I wonder who invented these two words. He or she deserves the Nobel Prize.

I say ‘poor quarter of the village’, but this is an inadequate description for the handful of mud huts collectively known as gangode, a Sinhalese (Sinhala) term for the less affluent part of a settlement. My father, R. M. Banda, and my mother, Ukkuamma, moved into the simple dwelling I was to know as my home in 1935, and we would live there—my parents, me, and my elder sister, Bandari—until 1946. I believe it was the second house my parents shared.

Our home was typical of gangode. Large clay balls had been stacked to make the walls, and the gaps had been sealed with more of this material, crudely smoothed by hand and trowel. The floor, too, was made of clay, which baked hard in the Sri Lankan heat. The roof was coconut palm leaves supported by a wooden framework. Like sd, this provided excellent protection against the rain, and it also helped keep the place cool. There was no plumbing, no telephone, no gas, and no electricity. And there were no windows, only a doorway; I cannot remember that we had a door. Nevertheless, the hut was solid and kept out the elements. There were three rooms: a living space, a bedroom where we all slept, and a small room on the side where my father ran a small shop. The houses in the better part of the village were of similar construction but had more rooms and were colour-washed; ours remained the unadorned ochre of the clay from which it had been made.

Apart from my mother’s brother’s place a short distance away, there were only four or five dwellings within 400 yards, and they were scattered amongst bushes and coconut trees and connected by footpaths rather than roads. As a little boy, I never dared to venture into the mysterious darkness at night—a world of chirruping crickets, strange-sounding owls and nightjars, squabbling fruit bats, and dogs barking in the distance—and I seldom strayed far in the day. Thus my early years were spent largely isolated from the world beyond my family, my sister for some time my only friend. I did not have much clothing, and I was stark naked most of the time until about I was three years old. I did have one playmate who was brought to visit me for a while—a boy named Ratnayake of the same age. He was rough and would sometimes bite me until he drew blood, sending me in tears to my mother, but I generally enjoyed playing with him. Years later, I was to learn that as a newly married young man, he succumbed to a disease that could probably have been easily treated by modern medicine. Such deaths were not unusual as there was no doctor in the area—just a healer who would do his limited best, practising the Ayurvedic system of traditional medicine that had originally come from India and was passed down from father to son. The Ayurvedic approach emphasises balance and moderation, and it has become one of the popular ‘alternative’ therapies in the West, where balance and moderation are perhaps lacking. The healer would also use herbal remedies such as cinnamon and cardamom. I think of him now as a ‘quack’, but people turned to him because there was nobody else to help the sick. Luckily, I was a healthy child.

My father’s shop was my major connection with the world beyond my family, as it drew people from the community and also supplied goods imported from further afield. ‘Shop’ is rather a grand term for it, as I think my father sold no more than a dozen items—just the simple basics like salt, soap, and bleach that the people of the village needed regularly. It was when I was about three or four that I developed the strange fetish for the cubes of bleach described in the prologue. One evening, the local teacher (who honoured us by dining with us in the evenings) and my father caught me under the bed cradling one of the little blue boxes. Nothing was said, and I was not punished. I think they must have realised that I was in the grip of a peculiar but harmless compulsion, and that it would pass. I did indeed grow out of it, but it foreshadowed my connection with the outside world, which will be described in the ensuing chapters.

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My Parents

My early years in the village and its immediate surroundings were not themselves without incident, but before I go any further I should describe its setting. The ‘main part’ of Minhettiya (it has no real centre) is sprawled along a ‘road’ leading south, a badly potholed dirt track running along the bottom of a narrow ridge of hills. To the east, the land rises up to this ridge, over a hundred metres above the surrounding terrain and averaging some three hundred metres across at the base. The steep slopes are clothed with dense tropical jungle, which used to include some very large trees, most of which were cut down by villagers for the construction of their dwellings. Although the area was officially protected in the 1940s, logging continued, and the future of the jungle is uncertain. To the south-east of the village is a rocky peak that thrusts up out of the greenery. It is known as Yakdessa Kanda or Yakdessa Gala, the ‘Devil Dancer’s Rock’, although no ‘devil-dancing’ apparently ever took place there[1]. When I was a teenager, my friends and I would climb it—very exciting! The footpath that led there through the jungle was faint, but I could find it without difficulty. We seldom encountered snakes, but birds and animals abounded and are still to be seen and heard. I remember woodpeckers, junglefowl, parrots, owls, bats, trogons, kingfishers, wild boar, porcupines, and monkeys. In the village itself the most common birds are house crows, brown flycatchers, and mynah birds—the latter, noisy and extrovert and excellent mimics. Jungle crows (also known as large-billed crows) haunt the fringes of the jungle, and their deep, resonant ‘kaaa-kaaa-kaaa’ calls were part of the sound tapestry of my childhood, but another species was more important in this regard. House crows, jungle crows, and mynahs—all intelligent and resourceful birds—are parasitised by the Asian koel, a large, black (male) or speckled (female) long-tailed cuckoo. The female koel sneaks into unguarded crows’ and mynahs’ nests to deposit her eggs. While she may hoist out a host’s egg or two, her chick doesn’t generally try to displace its nest-mates, possibly because it would risk falling out itself if it attempted to eject them from the deep bowl-like nests of the crows. It has a crow-like call as a youngster, but loses this when it is old enough to become independent; the popular belief was that it was only when it revealed its ‘real’ voice that it was recognised for the intruder it was and expelled by its foster parents. The adult male koels (or kohas as they are locally known) start calling in March, and are in full voice come April. Most Sri Lankans associate the call—a shrieking ‘koo-Ooo’ or ‘ko-Haa’ more penetrating than the mellifluous European cuckoo—with the start of a new year, as both the Sinhalese and the Tamils celebrate this in the middle of that month. The full Sinhala name, therefore, is the Avurudhu Koha, which means the New Year Cuckoo. Lately it has begun to sing late, and this has been attributed to changes in the rainfall pattern associated with global warming[2].

On the other side of the road from the jungle, the land is comparatively flat and covered with paddy fields. Beyond the paddy fields, there is a Buddhist temple, and there used to be a few more rough dwellings there where poorer people lived. I say ‘poorer people’ but life for most of the people of Minhettiya was relatively simple, and we all had to depend on our own resources to survive. Even my parents had to live off the land, and almost everyone in the village owned some, whether by inheritance or through business deals. Ever since Prince Vijaya’s invasion (ca 543 BC), Sri Lankan culture has been greatly influenced by Indian culture, the exception being that the feudal system that they practise in India to this day (with poor serfs working thousands of acres for wealthy landowners in return for a measly share of the crop) was, as far as I know, not seen to any great extent in Sri Lanka. (The Land Reform Law of 1972 limited land ownership to fifty acres, although it was overturned in 1981.) Although the people of Minhettiya in the 1950s would be called ‘peasant farmers’ they should not be underestimated. Through experience and knowledge handed down the generations, they understood the soil, the weather, and the seasonal cycle of the monsoon rains. There are two seasons called yala and maha when they would cultivate paddy. Yala is the dry season when the soil is dry and paddy is sown; Maha is the wet season when the soil is wet and muddy where the paddy is sown. They would always keep back enough rice to feed themselves until the rains and the next harvest. The rest they would sell; some directly to people who would come out from the city to buy it cheaply, and some they would cart into the nearest sizeable town and sell to the shopkeepers to make a better profit. However, the poor farmers started suffering when the West introduced the recently invented fertilisers and insecticides, and ‘improved’ varieties of crops. They were told they could get a better yield by using these things, but little did they realise that they are rather like heroin—use them once and you are hooked; you have to use them over and over again as your soil becomes depleted. The pests’ natural enemies are wiped out, and your monoculture crop is vulnerable without chemical protection and fertiliser. These agents and crops are designed this way, and now poor farmers find it difficult to survive. Perhaps, if they practised crop rotation, and gradually returned to organic production using native varieties, they might get a better and more sustainable return on investment. It is certainly worthwhile trying this as an experiment.

You might gather from what I have written so far that the two major crops were (and are) rice and coconuts. I have mentioned the use of coconut palm leaves for roofing. Coconuts were also an important cash crop—one that helped my father escape from poverty. Though poor and uneducated, he was intelligent, hard working, and determined to do more than eke out a subsistence existence. His entrepreneurial endeavours were not limited to his shop; he realised that simply selling unprocessed coconuts brought a limited