100th birth anniversary today:

Susan George Pulimood

HONOUR: Years have sped by - in retrospect one can say - this was she - Susan George Pulimood - veteran educationist, strict disciplinarian, stern moralist, a person both humane and compassionate.

She was a botany teacher of excellence, co-author of “the Text Book of Botany.” She was a terror to the slack student - she was all of this, but beyond this was her vision to see Visakha Vidyalaya as a leading girls’ school in Sri Lanka, at the forefront of all imaginable disciplines - mathematics, biological sciences, arts, commerce and aesthetic studies.

Although Visakha had a good reputation for studies in the arts field, she woefully lacked science.

Mrs. Pulimood whose roots lay in Kerala, a Syrian Christian by religious persuasion took this fledgling Buddhist Girls’ school under her wing, and very slowly at first, and then with astonishing rapidity constructed the Science stream - complete with laboratories, equipment and most important, a dedicated staff.

The first science teachers were from India, recruited by the indefatigable Mrs. Pulimood herself: I recall Miss Grace Kurien (later Mrs. George) who taught zoology, Miss Abraham and Miss Gnanam, the physics teachers, Miss Bano who taught chemistry and home science and Mrs. Korathu who taught home science.

Few science graduates in Sri Lanka gravitated to science teaching. Dodwell Rodrigo, Jayasekera, Devadason, Kumaraswamy and Samuel served on the staff at Visakha Vidyalaya.

Later, past pupils from Visakha took over the teaching and the administration of the science section. The early years of science teaching were fraught with problems and practical classes in physics and chemistry were conducted at Royal College until the laboratories were ready.

It is a tribute to Mrs. Pulimood that a large proportion of the present doctors, engineers and arts graduates had their education at Visakha.

Mrs. Pulimood dealt sternly with miscreants who slid down hostel banisters, harassed the hapless matron, climbed mango trees and ate the fruit “before it emerged from the flower.” She called them rapscallions and in a bad mood “children of uneducated parents,” but her sense of humour robbed the words of their sting.

Once she called a colleague “a bad brick” and the diminutive recipient of this appellation did not hear the end of it. Mrs. Pulimood was a well loved Principal - she is remembered with awe and gratitude by all her past pupils.