Selwood:
A triumph of design
Selwood Nuwara Eliya and the Story of an English
Cottage
Author: Sinharaja Tammita-Delgoda
Design: Nelum Harasgama Nadaraja
Photography: Devaka Seneviratne
Publisher: Veritas
Price: Rs. 1,000
Review: Tissa JAYATILAKA
BEAUTY: Selwood the book is as splendid and as rare a product
as Selwood the cottage in Nuwara Eliya seems to be judging by its author
Dr. Sinharaja Tammita-Delgoda's fine account of the latter. Selwood
Nuwara Eliya and the Story of an English Cottage to give the book its
full title, is a triumph of design.
Here is a superb publication in which the designer, photographer,
writer and publisher have come delightfully together to produce a book
of beauty. It is a product of exquisite taste that is bound to please
the aesthetic sense of any sensitive human being.
The designer of the book, Nelum Harasgama Nadaraja, is one of those
uncommon souls in our midst whose style is the more striking because it
is so delightfully unostentatious.
As in most of her paintings so in her design of Selwood, there is a
beautiful artistic sparseness. This avoidance of over-elaboration and
Nadaraja's delicately evocative touch contribute handsomely to the charm
of the finished product.
Predecessors
Devaka Seneviratne's photography is excellent and does his
illustrious seniors and predecessors at Studio Times proud. Also
included in the book are a few photographs by Anu Weerasooriya and
Christopher Silva of Studio Times.
The photography contributes immeasurably to the overall superior
quality of Selwood. This publication marks the first public attempt at
writing by Tammita-Delgoda after his monumental and memorable book on
the life and art of Stanley Kirinde, arguably Sri Lanka's foremost
living painter, that came out in August 2005.
In Selwood he has succeeded in sustaining his well-earned reputation
as a scholar and writer of distinction. Veritas, the publishers of the
book, deserve praise for having the imagination and daring to invest
money in a project of this nature.
Labour of love
Of course the less idealistic amongst us will probably scoff at the
labour of love of the above-mentioned individuals and may even note that
this lot is as mad and as impractical as most people of good and refined
taste usually are! To those of us, however, who fret about the future of
our country, enterprise of this kind offers much reassurance.
All does not yet seem lost despite the fact that we live in times
when commerce has settled (literally) on every tree and a vulgar and
hideous consumerism has our once gracious island home by the throat - a
vulgarity and hideousness made the worse by rampant corruption,
unbridled violence and political skulduggery.
That in the midst of our near-total collapse as a nation-state of any
substance, we have sensitive spirits amongst us willing to spend their
creative energies and limited funds on bookmaking of the kind we find in
Selwood, provides us with the desperately needed hop for future years.
We will perhaps muddle through the present sordid mess we are in and,
in the not too distant future, effect a moral regeneration based on our
national ethos of which excessive and mindless materialism has never
been a part.
Selwood is the story of the cottage that Hannah Hoodright, an English
woman, built in the early years of the 20th century at the foot of
Pidurutalagala, Sri Lanka's highest peak. It was a cottage that was
designed to remind her of home.
Set in the midst of an English garden it is situated in Nuwara Eliya,
a provincial town that '...has a mournful air of a British seaside town,
forgotten, faded and rather drab'. By the time Selwood was built, Nuwara
Eliya had been the hill capital of British Ceylon for nearly eight
years'.
The author has placed the history of Selwood cheek by jowl with a
potted history of Nuwara Eliya. We shall return to the evolution and
decline of this provincial town later in this essay.
Upon Hannah Hoodright's death in 1924, and her husband's a few years
later, another English woman, Henrietta Brian Saunders Clark, acquired
Selwood. The latter's husband Robert Clark, we gather, is responsible
for the carved wooden mantelpiece which now adorns the dining room.
One of Henrietta Clark's lasting contributions to Selwood is the care
she took of its beautiful garden. As a lover of birds 'she designed her
garden especially for the birds' and it has been kept partially wild
since then.
Love for birds
Her love for birds was such that she extracted a promise from any
prospective buyer of the cottage 'to put out half a coconut every day
for them'.
Thanks to Henrietta Clark's love of nature and the sincerity of the
subsequent possessors of the cottage who kept the faith, the garden at
Selwood remains 'a favourite haunt of migrating birds to this day'.
Enclosed by greenery, it is still a world unto itself, an enchanted
little wood. In summer (sic) it is a riot of colour, full of begonias,
nasturtiums, geraniums, yellow lantanas and fuschias. There is still a
particular softness about a Nuwara Eliya morning.
In this part of the world the sun takes far longer to climb into the
sky. It rises slowly out of the mist, gently bringing the dull and
sombre shades to life. When the sun is shining you feel that the garden
is a place that you never want to leave.
The trees crowd in upon you swaying in the highland air, their
shadows dance upon the lawn. Sometimes it seems enough to sit and watch.
In the distance the bus roars away, a reminder of the world outside this
wall of green.
Devaka Seneviratne's photographs on pages 4, 28-29, 34-35 and 55 of
Selwood offer the reader a glimpse of this slice of nature.
It was in 1938 that Selwood passed into Ceylonese hands when Leonard
Peiris, a barrister by profession, the son of Sir James Peiris, 'lawyer,
nationalist, social reformer and one of the foremost citizens of
colonial Ceylon', purchased it as a gift for his wife to celebrate their
copper wedding anniversary.
And so Selwood became the property of yet another woman, Isabel
Marjorie Geraldine Peiris, the granddaughter of Charles Henry de Soysa
(1836-1890) 'renowned as much for his philanthropy as for his fabled
wealth'.
It is estimated that de Soysa gave almost half a million sterling to
charity during the course of his life (according to The Graphic, 25
October, 1890, quoted in R. K. de Silva's 19th Century Newspaper
Engravings of Ceylon - Sri Lanka, London, 1998).
With the house, the new occupants of Selwood had inherited much from
its English predecessors and by far the most significant of this
'inheritance' was Ratnam, 'the Indian cook and major domo' who had first
come to Selwood as a young boy during the time of the Hoodrights.
Interesting character
There is a fine cameo description of this interesting character who
comes across as a person more Selwood than most of its possessors!
Isabel Peiris handed down Selwood to its present possessor, her daughter
Chloe de Soysa. Selwood and times spent together there had been a
special part of their life together for her and her late husband Cecil
de Soysa.
Despite some of the unfortunate but perhaps inevitable changes for
the worse that have occurred since the de Soysas came by Selwood, it
remains in one piece today, 'a world unto itself, shrouded in fog and
rain', thanks to the unrelenting efforts of Chloe de Soysa.
While Selwood has managed to survive in solitary splendour, time and
'progress' appear not to have left Nuwara Eliya alone.
Situated six thousand feet above sea level, protected by wild forests
and home to the island's highest mountains, Nuwara Eliya had been for
centuries, according to James Emerson Tennent, 'the secret refuge of the
Sinhala Kings', John Davy, a British army doctor and his party of
explorers, it is believed, stumbled upon Nuwara Eliya when they set out
to explore the highlands beyond Kandy in 1819.
Davy has opined that it was once 'the dominion entirely of wild
animals: and in an especial manner of the elephant, of whom we saw
innumerable traces', Sir Edward Barnes, the British Governor of Ceylon
from 1824-1831, is credited with having started the development of
Nuwara Eliya as a health resort and hill station. It is he who also
encouraged the plantation of coffee and the commercialisation of the
place.
By the time Tennent became colonial secretary of Ceylon (1845-1850)
Nuwara Eliya had suffered massive deforestation - an awful consequence
of the planting of coffee.
As the years went by, the colonists built amongst the hills a new
life for themselves replete with a church, club, racecourse and other
familiar landmarks of the colonial English.
They managed to create a 'little piece of England' just seven degrees
north of the equator, 'a town of stone and timbered buildings with
gabled roofs and bow and dormer windows'.
The once vast tracts of dense, dark forests which John Davey had
spoken of disappeared forever, 'to be replaced by commercial cash crops,
first coffee, then tea and now vegetables'.
A devastation well captured by the poem New Clearing reprinted in
Selwood. Interestingly it is a devastation and a plunder that the
grandfather of the author of Selwood, the late R. B. Tammita, highlights
and analyse incisively in his sadly neglected novel about colonial
Ceylon, The House is to Let.
Outcome of vagaries
The unhappy outcome of vagaries - both colonial and post-independent
- suffered by Nuwara Eliya is plain to see today. The bleakness and the
environmental degradation of the place are stark reminders of damage
inflicted by unplanned and unsustainable growth in the name of a
spurious development.
The slopes above Selwood are no longer thickly forested and the
jungle is nowhere near its back door as it used to be. The leopard who
used to come down to empty the dustbins of Selwood, and attempt more
besides, is not a visitor anymore.
Today the slopes of Mount Pedro are full of houses. Although there
are strict laws prohibiting construction above 6,000 feet, every year
the line of buildings creeps further up the mountains.
Happily Selwood has managed to weather these storms of change and
'progress'. To those less sensitive souls who people our society, our
distress at the damage done to places like Selwood may seem an anxious
defence of an irrelevance. They perhaps view Selwood as a social
anachronism, a relic of a vanished or vanishing elitism.
Such as attitude though understandable to an extent is not
acceptable. There will always be a place for the right kind of elitism
in inclusive human society, a need for refined taste, uncommon style and
gracious living some of the features of it.
Natural environment
Selwood deserves a fate far better than being taken over and made a
lodging place for government clerical hands as happened to it a few
decades ago. Nuwara Eliya and its re-forested natural environment must
be protected and safeguarded for the well-being of future generations.
It should not be made a centre of excellence for potato cultivation
or turned into a gigantic vegetable plot.
For after all is said and done, raping Nuwara Eliya or destroying
homes like Selwood does not put food in the mouth of the poor or provide
employment for the unemployed or liberate the oppressed as the
demagogues and place-seekers amongst us would have us believe.
There are a few precious places in our island home and in the world
outside that should be permitted to be worlds unto themselves untouched
by human greed or vulgar envy.
To not do so is to inflict irreparable harm on the world we live in.
Like the occupants of Selwood and the lovers of the flora and fauna of
Nuwara Eliya and elsewhere, we are but impermanent custodians of our
dwelling places and their surroundings.
It is not yet too late to drink deep of this truism and seek to
reflect the wisdom inherent in it in all our transactions with nature if
we are to leave behind more than mere 'stony rubbish' to those that are
to come after us.
Lee Kuan Yew's lessons from Singapore
Ruwini JAYAWARDANA
BOOK LAUNCH: The Sinhala translation of Lee Kuan Yew's "The
Singapore Story" was launched recently at the Bandaranaike Centre for
International Studies.
Translated by Ranjith Gunaratna, a senior Sri Lankan Foreign Service
officer, presently working as Director General of East Asia and Pacific
Division of the Foreign Affairs, the Sinhala version is named "Singapooru
Kathawa".
Gunaratna had served in the Sri Lankan Foreign Service in 1992 and
his work had taken him to countries like Japan, Lebanon, Kuwait, Oman,
and Singapore.
This opportunity exposed him to different cultures and thus made way
for him to read a variety of books in relation to these countries. Thus,
in order to learn about the Singaporean society and its leadership, he
turned to Lee Kuan's "The Singapore Story".
"When I read the book, I found that there are a lot of things we can
learn from Lee Kuan. He introduced a new political culture to Asia as
well as the world. We must take these qualities as examples," says
Gunaratna.
"Lee Kuan is a strong leader. He had a vision on how he could develop
and manage the country as well as how he could maintain the racial
harmony of the country. These things are relevant to contemporary Sri
Lanka."
Independence
Though "The Singapore Story" is known as an autobiography of the
first Prim Minister of Singapore, it can also be called the story of
Singapore. The reason behind this is that the book relates the events
that led to Singapore's independence and shaped its history.
Yew recollects memories regarding his childhood, the life spent under
the colonial rule, the life in England, the struggle to gain
independence, his dream to bring the nation together and to merge with
Malaysia, and his awakening to the fact that Singapore should stand on
its own right, without any alliance.
This book reveals the strategies and approaches adopted by Lee Kuan
in resolving these problems.
The book shows that a government needs to be constant in its efforts,
honest, efficient, and effective to achieve growth, stability, and
prosperity. Singapore was transformed within a short period to a
developed country. They have few resources.
For example, they have to rely on Malaysia for such basic needs as
water. However, they were able to become one of the richest countries in
Asia, despite these difficulties," Gunaratna points out.
His previous works include two books referring to the life of a
Junior High School Student in Japan and the Life of an Elementary School
Pupil in Japan. His first Sinhala short story book, titled "Sakura" was
published in 1999.
He has also written an English short story book named "Dreams" which
was published in 2003. He also has a CD, "Parami" to his name, which
also includes lyrics and melodies composed by him.
Terrorism
In future Gunaratna hopes to translate the second part of "The
Singapore Story" which is called "From Third World To First World".
He also hopes to write a Sinhala book concerning terrorism.
In his foreword to "The Singapore Story", Henry A. Kissinger states
that "in the case of Lee Kuan Yew, the father of Singapore's emergence
as a national State, the ancient argument whether circumstance or
personality shapes events is settled in favour of the latter.
Every great achievement is a dream before it becomes a reality, and
his vision was of a State that would not simply survive but prevail by
excelling."
Concerning the Sinhalese edition of "The Singapore Story", Lee Kuan
Yew himself has stated that his aim is to remind younger Singaporeans
that they require strenuous efforts to change antagonistic mindsets that
divide the people into different races, religions, and languages, and
reduce contests between employers and unions.
"The Sinhalese edition will describe to Sri Lankans how Singapore
avoided some of the unnecessary miseries that we could have inflicted
upon ourselves, especially if political leaders appeal to the pulls of
race, language, culture, and religion to win votes," comments Lee Yew.
"Once emotions and passions take over, reason and commonsense goes
out of the window. This was the key lesson Singaporeans of my generation
learned."
If someone reads Lee Kuan, they will be able to understand how a
person can achieve his aim in life. Though he was not a person of noble
birth or wealth, Lee Kuan managed to become the Prime Minister of
Singapore and make the country one of the richest in the world.
Therefore, if you want to learn how to chase a goal, you can learn a lot
from Lee Kuan.
Ranjith acknowledges the assistance rendered by Primus Cheng,
Chairman of Prima Limited Singapore in publishing the book. |