Two Islands Called Home

By Ayesha Muthuveloe

Salute to my ancestors who lives and times spanned British Ceylon, independent

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ayesha Muthuveloe
• Release date: Jul 2, 2021
• ISBN: 9781914264467

Book preview

A Memoir for My

Grandchildren

... The story that led me to you and brought you to me.

RAJAN (PAPA) AND AYESHA (MANGA)

With Love and Blessings

Written During the Pandemic of COVID 19 June 2020

Copyright Reserved ©2021

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements

Dedication

Foreword

Introduction

Chapter One - Origins

Chapter Two - My Parents

Chapter Three - Marriage Proposal and Mandapam Camp

Chapter Four - Paternal Grandfather — Parta

Chapter Five - Paternal Grandmother — Partee

Chapter Six - Maternal Grandfather — Papa .

Chapter Seven - Maternal Grandmother — Grandma

Chapter Eight - My Maternal Ancestry

Chapter Nine - Significant People in My Ancestry

Chapter Ten - My Parents Wedding and My Birth

Chapter Eleven - Siblings

Chapter Twelve - Aunts and Uncles

Chapter Thirteen - London

Chapter Fourteen - Galle

Chapter Fifteen - Jaffna

Chapter Sixteen - Kandy

Chapter Seventeen - Colombo

Chapter Eighteen - Medical School

Chapter Nineteen - Marriage

Chapter Twenty - The Muthuveloes

Chapter Twenty-One - Migration and Milton Keynes

Chapter Twenty-Two - Children, Shirley, and Chester

Chapter Twenty-Three - NHS and Psychiatry

Chapter Twenty-Four - Forensic Psychiatry

Chapter Twenty-Five - St Andrew's Hospital and Retirement

Chapter Twenty-Six - Brain, Science and Spirituality

Images That Never Fade!

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

I want to thank my daughters Mayani, for the cover design and Teruni, for suggesting the title for this book.

To Rajan, for his encouragement and willingness to share his study with me.

To Uncle Chandra Arulpragasam, for his writings about my paternal grandparents and of their time at Mandapam camp in Southern India.

To my late Grand Uncle Dr ATS Paul, who researched the ancestry of my maternal great grandmother, the Colombo Chetties.

To my sister Indira, for providing the foreword to this book and in the absence of my parents has known me all my life.

I am indebted to Mrs Nalini Macintyre in Australia and Mr Anoma Abeywardena in London who patiently read and corrected my mistakes.

To Mr Bryan Clarkson for proofreading some of the chapters though there still could be errors that I have overlooked.

All the opinions and sentiments expressed in this book are entirely mine. I apologise if they are contrary to the opinion of others. I elected my sister and a small group of friends who became my reading circle. They were kind enough to read most of the chapters and give me their feedback. I want to give my heartiest thanks to them.

Dedication

I want to dedicate this book to my grandchildren.

When I mentioned to my grandson that I was writing a book for him his prompt response was,

But Manga, I already have enough books!

My grandchildren may be too young to appreciate what I have written but I hope this will suffice, when I am no longer with them to tell them about their Asian ancestors. I knew many of them by name and grew up amongst them. I was told stories about the lives and characters of others who were no longer with us.

This book is a tribute to my grandparents who walked before me, to my parents and siblings who walked beside me and to you who continue to walk with me. To those who will carry on walking after I am gone, I pray God’s blessings on your lives, as you journey on.

Foreword

Ayesha Muthuveloe, the author of this memoir, is a born storyteller. I know this well because she is my sister. I have marvelled at her repertoire of stories over the years. Ayesha inherited her genius for storytelling from my late mother and like her Ayesha can recall the finest detail of human encounters vividly capturing their import and influence on family dynamics.

This memoir exemplifies her skill at recounting the story of her life, from her birth in the post-colonial Island of Ceylon to her settling in the British Isles with her husband, raising two daughters and practising forensic psychiatry.

The memoir is far more than the life story of an individual.

Ayesha paints a picture of life in Ceylon in British Colonial times through the lives of three generations of forbearers. She captures the influence, of an eclectic extended family, where individuals married across religious and ethnic boundaries, converted to Christianity, and adopted European names in the process. Rich in detail of family traditions, history, and values, it lays the foundation for her life course and for many others who benefitted from cosmopolitan, colonial Ceylon.

Growing up as the second of four children, Ayesha was wilful and spirited, often marching to the beat of her own drum.

She was fortunate that our parents never placed any expectations on us but provided us with a happy childhood and good education, despite financial and health challenges. Her account of

growing up with unconditional love and affirmation, without disapproval when academic performance was wanting, is not only a tribute to my parents but a lesson in raising successful adults. She describes life in Jaffna and Colombo, recounting memories that shaped her worldview and contributed to her becoming the person she is.

Ayesha is a people person, and her vibrant social life as a teenager continues into adulthood, garnering her many lifelong friends and acquaintances too numerous to count.

Following this upbringing, which instilled confidence and shaped Ayesha’s character, she was accepted into Medical School somewhat to her own surprise. There were intense competition and a new set of standards for Tamil students, especially from population centres such as Colombo and Jaffna.

Her journey through Medicine is a narrative of tenacity and hard work, tempered with camaraderie and humour. The work ethic and dedication required as a young physician at Lady Ridgeway Hospital in Colombo is palpable. Ayesha and her husband Rajan moved to Great Britain in the early eighties and out of necessity Ayesha chose psychiatry. She completed postgraduate training while juggling motherhood and marriage. Fortuitously she was drawn into the field of forensic psychiatry serving in Her Majesty’s Prison service for six years. Her harrowing tales of prisoners whose fractured childhoods and troubled adulthoods led to serious crimes and prison sentences are heart-breaking. As an Asian woman in all-male prisons, she captured the admiration of

colleagues and prisoners alike for her empathy, coupled with a no-nonsense style.

Ayesha describes her life in Milton Keynes, raising two children Mayani and Teruni with her husband. A narrative familiar to many new immigrants, she describes navigating the parenting landscape, in her adopted country. She approaches the story of her adult life with insight, recalling the seasons of adversity and joy with humour and candour. She and her husband have made a life for themselves in Great Britain by taking to heart Winston’s Churchill’s advice – we make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give. They have given generously to causes they passionately care about and supported people in need. Faith and family have been central to their lives, and she shares her philosophy on these important pillars in her final chapter. Ayesha has written this memoir for her grandchildren, who will find it invaluable when they are old enough to ask questions about where she came from. They will discover that their grandmother’s memoir describes a life well-lived.

Indira Samaraseker

Introduction

The introduction to this memoir was written three years ago.

Then, I set it aside with the intention to finish writing it when I turned 80! The pandemic struck and in the absence of life’s distractions, I sat down to complete my story.

One Christmas, I received a present of a, Dummies Guide to Memoir Writing from my daughters.

Mum, write your memoirs, they urged me.

But who would read it? I asked, unsure of my ability to comply with their request.

Your grandchildren would, they assured me.

Albert Rajakumar, my only grandchild then was 18 months old and was my greatest achievement. I secretly hoped for more grandchildren in time and knew that my story would, one day, become part of their story. It would be preamble to their curiosity, akin to the television programme, Who Do You Think You Are?

that seeks to explore the ancestry of celebrities.

My story will tell them about my family from the beautiful island of Ceylon, a British colony for 150 years (1796 - 1948) that lies in the middle of the Indian Ocean. The country was home to my parents throughout their lives and to me for the first 25 years of mine. The island became - the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka on the 4th of February 1972, changing my nationality from Ceylonese to Sri Lankan in an instant. I was no longer the exotic-

sounding Ceylonese as were my ancestors before me, who had been born into British Ceylon and grew up to experience the entwining of British and Ceylonese customs, culture, traditions, values, beliefs, and way of life.

The Portuguese captured the coastal towns (1505 -1658) but not the central kingdom followed by the Dutch East India Company (1640-1796) who isolated the central hill country from the island’s periphery. Generations of my ancestors had incorporated some of the European customs, cuisine, language, beliefs, and clothing into their way of life which extended back to the 16th century. The accidental presence of the Portuguese traders on the island reached back to the 15th Century. The Portuguese failed in capturing the central Kandyan Kingdom that eventually fell to the British in 1818 when the last monarch of Kandy, King Rajasinghe was taken captive and killed. The entire island came under British rule and was governed as a crown colony until its independence in 1948. In total, the country or most of it was under foreign rule for 450 years.

I moved to Britain at the age of 26. It was a country I had become familiar with, on account of reading English literature, listening to anecdotes of British rule, and growing up in post-independent Ceylon, with its fast-fading colonial influence.

All these factors had a subconscious impact upon me and my move, to Britain for postgraduate medical education seemed the natural next step. I was granted British nationality, after a period of employment within the National Health Service and in time became the proud possessor of its citizenship. The country gave me

a haven within which to live, work and raise a family, away from the turbulent years of the civil war in Sri Lanka (1983-2009).

My identity has been nurtured and nourished by two of the most beautiful islands of this world. My esteem has been further fostered and enriched, by my nuclear and extended families and strengthened by my friends and work colleagues during my life in Sri Lanka and Britain. I feel a great sense of belonging to both countries, one which possessed me by birth and the other that claimed me by adoption.

These two spectacular islands that are separated by over 6000

miles of land, sea and air have varying patterns of weather and are blessed with an abundance of natural beauty; one is a tropical paradise the other a temperate green and pleasant land where I have felt at home the most. Both countries have been the backdrop to countless social interactions, experiences, and life events that can be described as joyful, fun-filled, sorrowful, terrifying, mundane, important, significant, exciting, informative, educative, trivial, tragic, painful, and even comic which has coalesced into shaping all of WHO I AM.

There are more profound things within all of us which make us mysterious and different. These are stores of memories and mental associations that tell us about ourselves. The old family stories told and retold of overflowing joy and of aching sorrow lie hidden in the recesses of our minds. These are the tales of family gatherings and of family feuds, stories of patient forbearance and of unbearable turmoil; the memories of an exotic aunt, a loving uncle, and a beautiful cousin; a relative cheated in business and an

ancestor’s conversion to Christianity the sadness of infertility and a family forged through surrogacy; the recollections of childhood games, school friendships and of teenage love.

Marriages that brought great joy and others that were bitterly opposed. The hurt of acrimonious divorces, and the burden of alcoholism. The pain of physical illness, the sadness of premature death, the heartache of suicide and the stigma of mental illness.

These stories shape our imagination and condition our reactions. They lessen our prejudices, flavour our judgments, and strengthen our compassion. To know the older, deeper, bottomless reservoir of narratives that have shaped all of us from the very earliest of our days helps us understand ourselves and others better.

Life must be lived, as there is no other way to go from birth to death. We all search for stories that give our lives meaning and instil hope. Winston Churchill claimed, ‘Success is not final, failure is not fatal, but the courage to continue is what matters the most.’

This journey so far with its kaleidoscope of memories, images, and happenings is MY STORY

Chapter One - Origins

I sprang out of two families that originated from the north and south of colonial Ceylon. Both sets of my father's ancestors and my mother's paternal ancestors came from villages and hamlets around the town of Jaffna in the north. They would have descended from the Dravidian stock of southern India.

My mother's maternal ancestors for generations before me came to reside in the south-west of the country to become educated, progressive, and married into the cosmopolitan society of Colombo. During that time, my father's ancestors continued to reside in the north and married into the traditional Tamil community of Jaffna.

The American Christian Mission arriving in Ceylon in the 19th century was sent by the British colonial government to Jaffna. There they set up schools to educate its people and to introduce Presbyterianism which was a denomination of Christianity. The Portuguese had spread Catholicism centuries before, to the fisherfolk living along the coastal towns of Ceylon.

The British brought Protestant Christianity to establish schools run by the (CMS) Christian Missionary Society and English theologians set up the Anglican Church of Ceylon, the Methodist Mission, and the Baptist Churches.

The island was an ancient land known by many different names. Centuries ago, it was known as Lanka later to become Serendib, from the word Serendipity, meaning you expect one thing, and you find something else which is typical of the island.

The names of Taprobane, Ceilao, and Ceylon then followed, and the island finally came to be known as Sri Lanka. Its original

inhabitants were the Veddahs, who were similar in appearance to the Aboriginals or Africans who had curly hair and were dark in complexion. During that era, there were only two routes through which trade could pass between the east and the west. One was the Silk route and the other the perilous sea travel across the Indian Ocean. The teardrop shaped tropical island off the coast of India with its lush green vegetation became a popular staging post for those journeying across this route during that time.

In the 8th century, Arabs came to trade in cinnamon and thereafter, the country attracted the Greeks, Moors, Indians, Romans, Chinese, Europeans, and sailors from all other seafaring nations in search of spices. They all stopped to enjoy the shelter of the island and to trade with its indigenous and hospitable people.

Sailors from Portugal followed wave after wave of Indian tribes who had moved to settle on the island over the several preceding centuries. By the 1500s, the Portuguese captured its coastal areas followed by the Dutch East India Company that took control of its strategic coastal towns of Galle, Jaffna, and Colombo. The British who was present since 1796 claimed victory in 1815.

They captured the country's Kandyan kingdom in 1818 to amalgamate it with the rest of the island and governed the whole country as a crown colony for the next 150 years.

By the 1900s the indigenous people of Ceylon comprised of the various races that had invaded the island and had made it their

home. The population was a mixed group of migrant people of different cultures and beliefs that did not seem to hinder their peaceful coexistence. It was during the 150 years of British rule that my ancestors six generations before me were born into British Ceylon.

Historically the Dravidian Tamils migrated from southern India and brought with them their culture, religion, classical music, and dance of Bharatanatyam. They were mainly vegetarian and Hindu by faith, making up less than a third of the population that settled in the north and the northeast regions of the country. About 2500 years ago, Vijaya, on account of his rebelliousness was banished from Kalinga which is present-day Orissa. He and his raiding band of a horde of 500 associates travelled down to the island that lay to the south of India. During that time, the majority of Orissans' were linguistically Tamilised due to the South Indian influence and spoke Tamil. Pali and Sanskrit came to dominate Orissa after Ashoka conquered it in 260 BC. His son Mahinda and daughter Sanghamitta came to Sri Lanka in 253 BC to spread the religion of Buddhism. The language of the elite and the clergy in Orissa at that time was known as Prakrit. The Mahawamsa that documents the origins and philosophy of Buddhism was written around 500BC in the classical form of Prakrit known as Pali.

People from the east of India, maybe Bengal but from Orissa gave birth to the Sinhala race who came and settled in the southern regions of the island. The Sinhalese language came to be spoken amongst them around the 4th century AD. There is far

less evidence of a Sinhala link to the Aryan race from Northern India or to the foothills of the Himalayan region. There is no evidence that they brought with them the food, music, dance, or culture of the north Indian people as happens with any group of migrant people to indicate their origins. There are genetic similarities between the Tamil and Sinhala people that point to them having originated from the same area or from locations that were close in proximity to each other.

Apart from the languages of Tamil and Sinhala and the religions of Hinduism and Buddhism, there are no other significant differences in appearance or stature between these two groups of people. Over centuries they insisted on being separate and lived within in two kingdoms on the landmass of one island.

Some Sinhala Buddhist Nayaka kings married south Indian Hindu princesses. Ceylonese politicians capitalised on the supremacy of the Sinhala race, proclaiming them to be the original inhabitants of the island. To gain power, they sowed the seeds of superiority and dominance of a majority race over its minority communities. In time this led to a bitter conflict and a bloody civil war that shattered the peace of the island since it gained independence from Britain in 1948.

Besides people of the Sinhala and Tamil races, there were the Malays, Moors, Chetties, Indians, Chinese and Parsees who came and competed for trade. The Burghers were descendants of the European settlers, namely the Portuguese and the Dutch who married the native people and made many contributions to the country's life and culture. The much-loved folk dance of Baila

originated from the Kaffirs who lived along the coast of Sri Lanka and were the descendants of Portuguese traders and the Bantu slaves. Wally Bastiansz created the chorus form of the Baila in the 1960s that is heard at most Sri Lankan dances and parties of today. The art of lace making called Beeralu lace was popular in the royal courts of the central Kingdom. The craft was taught by the wives of the Portuguese descendants to the noblewomen belonging to the Sinhala Kandyan court.

The Burghers were the instigators of popular Sri Lankan foods such as Lamprais that is a fusion of Dutch, Malay, and Sri Lankan flavours. Love Cake and Rich Cake can be traced back to the Portuguese Bolo Rei and Bolo di Amor. Modern Sri Lankan culture would be poorer if not for the contributions of the Burghers. Those of Dutch descent looked down on those of Portuguese ancestry as they considered themselves to be of Caucasian blood, paler, and more superior in form. The Portuguese married the indigenous people from the south of the island, who spoke Sinhalese to produce a group of 'happy go lucky' people who were called the 'Paranghis.' They interacted fully with the local community imparting their religion of Catholicism and names such as Pereira, Salgado, De Silva, De Soysa, De Saram, Dickman and Fernando, by marriage and food, clothing and dance through their friendship and associations with the native people in the south of the country.

The British did not marry the indigenous people. There are many stories of children being born out of wedlock to be of mixed English and Ceylonese parentage. These children were

forcibly removed from their native mothers and raised in orphanages to be wholly British, skewing their ethnic identity for generations. The British remained reserved and held all the vital administrative posts with their social clubs being exclusively for their use.

My genetic heritage is predominantly Dravidian South Indian, mixed with various ethnicities of Sinhalese, Colombo Chetti and maybe even Burgher. I consider myself to be neither a Tamil nor a Sinhalese but am wholly Sri Lankan carrying within me a snapshot of the human journey of migration into the island. My roots are healthy but deeply knotted. The mother tongue of the British spread throughout the empire by way of commerce, education, administration, law, nursing, medicine, and religion.

Over time with education and opportunities, my ancestors'

beliefs altered, values shifted, and their cultural outlook changed.

I decided to migrate to Britain due to the emerging civil conflict in Sri Lanka. I sought employment, bore my children, and settled down in Britain. In choosing to emigrate, I inadvertently changed the identity of my children from being Sri Lankan to that of being culturally British. They identified with their English peers and accepted the country's values and ideals. In time they were attracted to people of the host nation and went onto marry men of Irish and English descent.

The story of my grandchildren will be different still. It will be about two diverse strands of ancestry, one from the east and the other from the west. Both sets of ancestors dreamed the same dream and began a journey that led them towards each other.

Over generations, these two islands that lay oceans apart held a magnetic attraction for migrants. The people who had travelled to these countries spoke different languages, had varied skin tones and were from diverse ethnic, religious, and cultural backgrounds. In time, their journeys which had commenced centuries before, by foot, on horseback and by boat began to merge across the continents of Asia and Europe with greater speed due to motor vehicles, ships, and aeroplanes. Both sets of ancestors imagined they would find happiness at the end of their journey's rainbow.

They had all hoped to find a new place called HOME.

My paternal grandparents, Dr and Mrs, Albert Rajaratnam Arulpragasam, had high expectations and great dreams for their four children. They decided against educating their three sons in the north of Ceylon, despite a prestigious boys' school, St John's College, in Jaffna being close at hand. Instead, they chose to send their sons, to the country's foremost boy's school called Royal College in Colombo which had been set up by Reverend Joseph Marsh in 1835. My grandparent's decision to admit Dad to Royal College caused my father to begin his migratory journey at the tender age of six. He left Jaffna in the north of Ceylon to travel down south to be boarded with a rather strict aunt and uncle, who were his mother's brother and his wife. They resided in the town of Colombo. My father hated his time away from his parents and yearned for home. Being a sensitive, anxious little boy, he missed his mother and spoke about the separation being hard to bear. As

a result of this experience, Dad never wanted any of his children to be boarded away from home.

My father attended Royal College, and my mother, whose ancestors were from Colombo, went to Bishop's College, a prestigious private school for girls. This meant that they belonged to an educated middle-class, and the European influence of education, administration and justice had impacted upon them.

Their sociocultural exposure had conditioned their tolerance towards the different religions of Hinduism, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism Islam, and the various denominations of Christianity. Peoples tolerance towards each other under foreign rule further helped the peaceful coexistence of the various ethnic groups that were Sinhala, Tamils, Burghers, Indians, Parsees, Moors, Chinese, Malays, and British who lived in the cosmopolitan capital town of Colombo and in the tea plantations on the hills of Ceylon.

Three of my mother's uncles had broken with tradition to marry North Indian and English women. Mum's great grandfather Dr Simon Aserappa had returned from England after completing his medical education with an English bride named Emily Julia Wake.

These culturally mixed marriages within the family had made my maternal grandmother, whom I called Grandma, more open-minded and accepting in outlook. She was born and raised in Colombo, and three of her siblings having married outside the community meant that she accepted difference to be a good thing.

However, my paternal grandmother, whom I called Partee, was far more traditional and conservative in outlook. She had been born and raised in Jaffna and disapproved of marriages outside of the Tamil community. Her ancestors had all married within the Hindu or Christian communities of the north. Caste was never an issue for those who had converted to Christianity.

To Partee who hailed from Jaffna, ethnicity and difference mattered a lot while for Grandma who came from Colombo it mattered if at all, truly little.

Pre-and post-independent Ceylon in its early years had led the way in multi-religious and multicultural peaceful coexistence well ahead of any western democratic country. The peace was shattered when Mr Solomon West Ridgway Dias Bandaranaike, a Christian who converted to Buddhism to gain power won the election as a Sinhala nationalist prime minister. He ushered in the divisive policy of 'Sinhala Only' which in 1956 kick-started the hate-filled politics of the majority dominance over its minorities.

It also elevated Buddhism to be the foremost religion of the land.

While Ceylon then and Sri Lanka now has never been a Buddhist theocracy, subsequent Sinhala prime ministers continued to shift the country away from the true virtues of democratic secular governance. By doing so, they dispensed with the freedoms for all its minority citizens.

The 'Sinhala only policy' caused the community of Burghers to leave the country and be welcomed by Australia, New Zealand, and other Christian countries around the world. The exodus of this educated principled, fun-loving and patriotic group

of citizens was a great loss to Ceylon. Many countries colonised by the British who had failed to develop economically after independence due to corrupt politicians and poor governance continued to apportion blame to the empire for plundering, robbing, and ruining their lands. The British had unified the country by amalgamating the Sinhala and Tamil kingdoms, making it easier for Sinhala nationalist to falsely claim that the whole country had always belonged to them. They forget that the Buddhist Dhamma had been brought to the country from India in a language that was not Sinhalese, but politicians always dispense with historical truths to beat a path to power.

Countries such as New Zealand, Australia, Israel, Singapore, Canada, and America that had also been colonised, robbed and plundered by the British seemed to have progressed well after gaining their independence and developed economically to welcome refugees and foreigners into their lands. They have not wasted time bemoaning the atrocities of the colonialists but set