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by Deloraine Brohier

The name Muthukrishna has been carried down the years, to us today through an Institute that commenced in 1901.

Violet Muthukrishna was possessed of indomitable pluck and perseverance. Having gone to Madras to follow a course of studies, in the twin arts of stenography and typewriting, in which she was later joined by her sisters and a younger brother - she started the first 'stenotyping' office in the island, at the beginning of this century.

The enterprise commenced in a modest and experimental way on the verandah of their home. The whole stock-in-trade was one typewriter and a few other office requisites.

The Muthukrishna family lived at No. 9, San Sebastian Hill in the Pettah. Now the Pettah was, up to the early 20th century not what it has developed into today. We of this generation who jostle thorough this area of Colombo side-stepping the hurrying crowds, and avoiding the piles of garbage, find it hard to imagine what Pettah was before.

It was once the fashionable and leisured residential area of society, in a period of history when the Dutch and British occupied Ceylon as colonial powers.

The cobbled streets were cool and watered twice a day to keep the heat and dust down, planted with shady trees-particularly the suriya, described as the "tulip tree" by the colonial Dutch.

Single storeyed villas, their roofs slung from a common ridge and pitched low over narrow verandahs, gave the homes their privacy and the Pettah an air of respectability.

The Muthukrishna family were from the community of 'Colombo Chetties' kin to a respected class drawn from India. Even in the early years of this century the members of the community wore their traditional dress.

The men looked distinguished in a curious turban and sported immense gold rings in the lobes of their ears: they wore loose coats over a waistcoat, and the lungi or cloth - though some were beginning to take to the trouser which was coming into fashion with the local population at the turn of this century.

The ladies covered themselves in a profusion of jewellery and had as their dress a long skirt with a shawl wrapped around and covering one shoulder. The Colombo Chetties were generally of the business class and many were employed as accountants.

Lawrie Muthukrishna, Violet's brother, served on the staff of Loyds Press as a young man. Additionally he devoted himself to the Institute his sister had founded.

It was first known as The Shorthand and Typewriting Institute, for only much later did they take on the name of the Polytechnic.

The Institute has been mentioned by Arnold Wright, the Editor of Twentieth Century Impressions of Ceylon, a book published in 1907. Wright acknowledges that "Lawrie Muthukrishna, one of the conductors of the business, typed from the manuscript a large portion of the letterpress of the book, in the form in which it was sent to the printers."

The foresight to start an institute specialising in the business of stenotyping arose from the growing use of the typewriter - a machine invented at the turn of the previous century.

When the typewriter was introduced to Ceylon the general preference for typed matter compared with the old-style method of handwriting, created a keen demand in the local and commercial world for a coping establishment.

An office where such work would be undertaken and executed with all necessary precision and rapidity was a decidedly new advantage. The discovery was described as "a saving to the otherwise embarrassed writer and his helpless hampered reader."

The copying business of the Muthukrishna family succeeded beyond all expectations. For Violet Muthukrishna had the foresight to realise the advantages of the growing demand and to equip not only herself, but her sisters and younger brother to train themselves in the technicalities of the trade.

And they did so by even having ventured abroad, since the demand was not supplied by local talent in providing for such an educational institute at the time in Ceylon. Violet Muthukrishna was imbued with a spirit few young women of that age could have possessed.

The young Muthukrishna's had dogged determination to succeed. For, the custom and patronage these pioneers received in their first office, was "fitful".

It has been noted in old records that when first they started they experienced "some measure of opposition." They preserved however, and the business carried on. Thus, "by the excellence of the work executed, it secured the patronage and support of the leading private and professional gentlemen in Ceylon and established for itself a wide reputation both in the metropolis and in the outstations of the island," says the account in the Twentieth Century Impressions. Their clientele were from the mercantile and planting circles, the commercial and professional classes-as well as those official, from government and private concerns. With a degree of 'push' and judicious advertising the orders for work assignments soon came in steadily and was of great encouragement to the young pioneers.

In a short time it was considered necessary to move the concern into more spacious premises. These were conveniently found in an adjoining house. Additional equipment and machinery, together with a larger staff were found necessary. The Institute then began to undertake outdoor stenographic work and reporting engagements. Typewriter repairs and the supply of machine accessories were also introduced.

Six years after the Institute commenced its class, in 1907, 150 students had gone through training in shorthand and typewriting. Those who passed out from the Muthukrishna Institute found openings for themselves easily, in various local business houses and government offices.

A large proportion of the trainees, from the very inception of the Institute were girls - no doubt they and their parents were influenced by the example of Violet Muthukrishna and her sisters.

Besides, it was soon recognised that there were handsome profits offered in this line of business and that it was also interesting type of work.

In time, other concerns of similar business came up locally. But as pioneers in this field of industry the Muthukrishnas had built up a reputation with the public and satisfied their clients, and so the Muthukrishna Shorthand and Typewriting Institute continued to hold its own, despite the competition, over the decades which followed it expanded and flourished and was recognised for its foremost position by the patronage it continued to receive.

To further increase its efficiency, management and staff training and advancement was recognised. The Firm also realized the continued need to update and renew its machinery and its office equipment. And so in the mid-years of this century, as pioneers, they sought membership in schools and guilds in UK, like Pitmans; and they also obtained first-class certificates from the Government of Madras. By such advancement the status of the Institute, both in then educational medium as also in business continued to sustain itself.

In the first decade of this century the Institute was moved, first to Bambalapitiya and then, during the Second World War to Wellawatte.

The Pettah begun to lose its glamour as a residential location and the population of Colombo began to seek newer areas with the turn of the 19th century.

The elite moved to build their homes along the littoral fringe of Colombo, the inlets of the Beira Lake or in what came to be known as Cinnamon Gardens. Till 1900 and its first decade, the Galle Road was still a Sunday strip bordered by a few large villas which were set in acres of sprawling gardens.

In a few years all this changed. Building went on apace and the development we see along the Galle Road today began to take place, while the suburbs of Bambalapitiya, Wellawatte and Dehiwala came to grow.

Lawrie Muthukrishna was now married to a lovely lady he had met in Bombay. Their three children two boys Prabhakar and Dinkar and an only daughter, Manorama grew up in Wellawatte.

Their old house in the style of the 1930s was so typical of the architecture of that period - a three sided verandah trellised at wither end, large drawing and dining rooms with a wide archway between.

It was built in the day when there no fans or the air-conditioners and had a high ceiling with deep windows and large doors for a free flow of air.

This old house remains the centre of the Polytechnic complex today, though much altered in structure its verandahs and outhouses having now been demolished.

Expansion of the school and its business was inevitable with the growth in numbers of those seeking training. And with the years diversified courses of study and specialisation, to meet the needs of the developing century were commenced.

The rising cost of maintenance of the establishment led to the leasing out and sale of the periphery of the property. And now, crowding out the original home of the family, there have come up high-rise structures all around it.

A younger generation of the family have grown to take on the legacy of their forbears. 90 years of the Muthukrishna Institute have seen change and growth and expansion - new sites, new faces, new dimensions. Between the Shorthand and Typewriting Institute pioneered by Violet, Lawrie and their sister of number 9, San Sebastian Hill to the Polytechnic of number 30, Galle Road, Wellawatte, has been a long way in time and perseverance - and history.

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