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Tuesday, 8 January 2013

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Thrills, Spills and Holidays in the Hills

Tangy breezes wafting uphill and down dale, green tea bushes, tall trees, the fragrance of flowers in bloom, the innocence of childhood and the budding of youth are all fond memories which are close to my heart in the evening of my years.


Going up country by train, an unforgettable experience

I have holidayed in many countries, and even walked the green fields of England. But, the serenity of Sri Lanka’s hill country leaves me enthralled.

I remember that in my childhood, two to three families used to group and spend the first term holidays in rented houses.

This forged a strong family bond.

The first I holiday I spent in the hill country was in 1941 at the age of six, at Ohiya, then a small village with one boutique by the railway station and a tarred road stretching from there to the edge of the decline to Udaweriya Estate, a sprawling tea plantation.

However, the houses we rented were close to the railway station and were the quarters of the forest ranger Mr. Arumugam and his assistant Karthigesu.

During our one month stay there, they lived in rooms in their bungalows which had well built rock walls and roofs, which stand firm during times of high wind.

My father, who was the Membership Secretary of the Colombo YMCA, had made contact with them and had taken a group to stay there earlier.

Community prayers

The next year, in early April 1942, since the two earlier bungalows originally built for British officers, were fully occupied, Arumugam managed to get us a new building which was designed to house a boutique, at the Uduweriya end of Ohiya.

Auntie Connie, my guardian, and I were joined by Auntie Milda, Aunt Irene and their children, all older than I.

World War Two was on and I remember engaging in community prayers for the men we had left behind in Colombo as the Japanese planes bombed Colombo and the suburbs on April 1, their targets being the Royal Air Force aerodrome on the Colombo Race Course, the Ratmalana Air Base, the Colombo harbour, while a few bombs landed in paddy fields.

Of course, their main purpose was to destroy the British East Indies fleet, which was anchored at the sprawling Trincomalee harbour, which was a key port for the British Navy in South East Asia, headed by Lord Loius Mountbatton. On the morning of the 2nd, news broke in the hill country that the Japanese had raided Colombo, and the elders rushed to the Ohiya Railway Station and met passengers of the Night Mail train from Colombo to Badulla.

They returned wailing and with tears of shock and horror, fearing that the loved ones we had left behind – Uncles Hue, Percy, Wilfred and my father Lennie had been killed or seriously injured.

In fact, Uncle Hue had been riding a push cycle near the Bullers Road Junction at the time of the air raid, but no harm had come to him. The others were safe and sound, we later learnt. A bomb had exploded in a paddy field close to Uncle Wilfred’s at Mt. Lavinia and that was it.

That night, April 1st, 1942, we all gathered around the lamp in the Ohiya boutique and prayed for all those souls departed and injured. Later, we found that the passengers on that Night Mail had been grossly exaggerating and had let their imaginations run riot, as they briefed us on the situation in Colombo.

British planters

In 1943, the forest ranger Arumugam was transferred to Kandapola, the highest town in the country.


Tea estates add more splendour to up country

By then, we were close friends and he obtained for us a beautiful house on a small rise by the main road running from Nuwara Eliya to Ragala, about a mile from Kandapola town. The road ran along a rich green valley, with a picturesque trout stream, which meandered from the Nuwara Eliya approach to Kandapola, to the tip of the town, with Heatherset Estate on the right and the Park Estate on the left.

Heatherset Estate, is where the Tea Factory Hotel is now, and looks as if it is in fond embrace with Sri Lanka’s highest mountain Piduruthalagala, a beautiful sight.

The house was owned by Mr. Sivam, the Park Estate lorry driver, who continued to live in the line rooms while he also maintained a beautiful house at Colony No: 58, built of solid rock.

Two years ago, when my sister Gita and her two children Sharmini and Viveka paid my wife Leela and I a visit and treated us to a holiday in the hill country to mark our 50th wedding anniversary, we found this house had been as it had been earlier, and was now a two-room guesthouse run by a Mr. Wettasinghe.

The trout stream had been designed by the British planters in the shape of the British Isles.

We used to go round there and play cricket on the green sward.

One day, as the others left, I stepped onto the edge of the stream to fetch a tennis ball, and lo and behold, slipped into the stream and was being carried away, when one of my elder cousins Lucien de Alwis shouted, “Where is Geoffrey?”

They soon found me in distress, rescued me, a shivering, frightened eight year old and carried me to our holiday home across the road.

There, I had my first taste of brandy, which helped me revive considerably, and no great harm was done.

Beautiful botanical gardens

We used to walk regularly from Kandapola to Nuwara Eliya, spending the day walking around the town and having picnic lunches on the beautiful botanical gardens.

My father, who had a motorcycle, a 3.5 hp BSA, often rode up on weekends from Colombo, placed me on the petrol tank holding the handle bars and taking me on long rides, mainly to Nuwara Eliya and Ragala to buy provisions. This reminds me that a couple of years later, we spent a holiday at the same resort.

Arumugam, a very generous soul, was very popular, used a Cobra head shaped walking stick, very much like a swagger stick, wore a long overcoat, always black shorts, a short sleeved shirt and a big patch on his head, which he boasted had been stung by a cobra.

But the snake sting had had no detrimental impact on him.

He lived deep in the forest and walked three to four miles to his home, which he shared with his family, goats and poultry. One day, Arumugam, who was on very friendly terms, in fact buddies, with the crews of the narrow gauged goods trains chugging along from Nanu Oya to Ragala, invited Lucien, who was about 14 at the time, and I to join him on a trip to Ragala.

We spent the day there, had a sumptuous lunch, were accommodated in the guards’ van, where we discovered two gunny bags full of bottles. As night fell, we were making the steep climb to Kandapola through Brookside, when the train ground to a halt.

The engine driver, a huge hulk of a man, whose pet name was Baby, entered the guards’ van and drank deep of Bacchus in the form of arrack. From them on, every hundred yards or so as the engine chugged its way up, Baby came in, and together with the guards, guzzled more arrack.

They offered my cousin a drink, and tried to force but he managed to pour down the liquid to his shirt, although he pretended to drink.

Bitter experience

By the time we reached Kandapola Station, the engine drive was dead drunk and his assistant had taken over.

Now, it was about 8.30 at night, and as Arumugam had the train stopped for us to get down, my relatives were outside by the railway line, which ran alongside the road.

Arumugam was now playing the role of guard, and in his inebriated state, was waving the green lantern for the train to proceed.

He evidently felt he was more athletic than he was in his doggy state, and tried to jump into the moving guards’ van, when he lost his footing and took a tumble.

The assistant engine driver immediately stopped the locomotive, and Arumugam was carried into the guards’ van, after the wound on his bald pate was treated by my aunts.

At the age of 15, Baa Weerasinghe, my best friend who passed on a few years ago in Australia, Ralph Fernando, Hardy Dean and I spent two weeks at Colony No: 58 and it cost us only Rs. 45 each. The next year, we spent a week with the superintendent of an estate on the Haputale Pass turnoff to Koslanda.

It was here that I had a bitter experience by eating Thalagoya flesh, which our host said, not only very nutritious but also added to our brain power. I had a gripe which lasted two days, which I still remember.

Long years later, I had a powerful steed with an inclined engine, a Sparta, manufactured in Holland, equipped a powerful Victoria engine and often rode into the hills on weekends.

A gallon of petrol at the time was only Rs. 2.50, and 2.5 gallons would suffice for the entire journey.

My classmate Terrance Asiriwatham and I were climbing the Radella shortcut from Lindula to Nanu Oya when we saw a youth wobbling towards us on a bicycle. As we came alongside he fell onto us and I was sprawled on the ground on one side, and Terrance on the other, while the cycle rider was under his bike.

I then had Terrance move onto the pillion seat and took over the riding. We went and paid a visit to Sivam on the Park Estate.

The next year, we made a similar trip to the hills, but ran short of petrol and managed to somehow get to Agrapathana at night, where we met a planter friend and shared many a beer with him and had out tank filled, before we set out for Colombo around one O’ clock in the morning.

There was thick fog, and I was following the white ‘milestones’, when suddenly I found there was a void in front. I changed my gears down in a hurry, braked and managed to halt just before we were hurtling down a precipice.

It was about three O’ clock in the morning when we approached Yatiyantota, a tyre burst and ran into metal on the road, as repairs were on. We wheeled the bike six miles into Yatiyantota town and slept on the doorsteps of the bicycle repair shop. When we awoke, we found a curious crowd round us. After having repaired the tyre, we made it to Colombo.

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