Meeting a free spirit

She’s been riding a motor-bike up and down the Colombo-Kandy road, she’s played in a women’s football team in Kandy, she’s just finished teaching Maths to London A/Level students at S. Thomas’s College, Mount Lavinia, and she holds a degree in Aeronautical Engineering from the University of Bristol, England. She is Ruth Perera, aged 27, born and bred in England.

There’s nothing tomboyish or hoydenish about Ruth. She speaks naturally and directly with a slight but distinctive British accent (as may be expected), dresses simply, and has a winsome smile. To my disappointment, she didn’t ride in on her motor-bike and on my enquiring about it, said it had unexpectedly developed some electrical failure that had prompted her to leave it and take a bus instead.

I learned that her parents had both migrated to England, individually and separately, in the 1960s and it was there they had got to know each other and eventually married. Ruth’s father is a Chartered Engineer working for British Gas and her mother is a Chartered Accountant.

They live in a town with one of those quaint English names, Leighton Buzzard, in Bedfordshire, and have an older married daughter and a son. Ruth went to the local Comprehensive School, the Linslade Middle School and here she had one thrilling experience which she divulged only when I asked whether she had ever sung in a choir. She was going on 13 at the time – 1993 - and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s own company was presenting his now famous musical, “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat” on the London stage. The Company had looked round for school choirs to augment the singing and by great good fortune, the Linslade Middle School Choir of which Ruth was a member, was one of the two school choirs to be selected for this honour.

Ruth looks back on that experience as one of sheer delight. The choir went to London where they were put through their paces at rehearsals. Two dressing rooms had been set aside for the choristers who were given costumes that comprised white skirts or shorts (British schools are co-educational), with blouses or shirts in an assortment of colours. The London Palladium was the venue and at recollection of the rehearsals and the incredible experience of having appeared on that vast stage with a professional cast, Ruth’s eyes shine even now.

Ruth has been visiting Sri Lanka regularly with her parents from childhood. She likes coming here where she has quite a crowd of relatives on both sides of the family, including her maternal grandmother of 92 whose company she enjoys. I learned that while her dream had been to become an airline pilot, the chances had receded when she graduated 9 months after the 9/11 disaster in America.

“British Airways had a scholarship scheme for training pilots and I had my eye on that, but everything changed after 9/11 and those schemes were withdrawn.” So Ruth laid aside her dream, at least for the time being, and looked round for something else to do. A friend had drawn her attention to an advertisement on the university website, calling for applications for the post of a teacher in Maths & Physics for London A/Level students at the Kandy Branch of the Colombo International School. Ruth applied and got the job.

She came to Kandy in August 2002, staying with her delighted grandmother for the first year and then moving into a rented house with a fellow-teacher When the Old Trinitians Sports Club set up a women’s football team, Ruth had joined it with alacrity and says she had a good time playing football. In school, she had mainly played hockey and netball and in summer, basketball and badminton, with some tennis thrown in when the “awful English weather permitted.”

Her Dad coaches youngsters in badminton, Ruth said, and she must have acquired some skills from him, for Ruth helped to coach the Thomian juniors in this game. She commented that there seemed to be comparatively few clubs here for young people to join with a view to improving their game, whatever it was, whereas in England there are clubs in every locality, for all manner of sports and games.

I asked her whether her parents hadn’t been worried about her riding a motor-cycle on our roads and she said that at first they were, but became less so after they came on a visit and saw her ride. “All my mother told me after that, was, `Be careful!’. Ruth observed that she was very fortunate in having parents who didn’t lay down the law, but gave her guidelines and then let her make her own choices and decisions. When I asked her whether any customs or practices in Sri Lanka had struck her as strange, she immediately thought of just one and that, she said, was finding that young women, some of whom were older than she was, were required to be safely within the four walls of their homes before dark. “It really seemed strange to me, for in England my friend who lived further up the road, and I could get together to go out without thinking twice about it, whereas in Kandy, it was unthinkable to expect a woman friend to come out in the evening.”

I asked Ruth whether she did any ordinary women’s stuff like sewing or cooking. She told me she used to knit quite a bit back in England. “I can cook a little, but am not much good at rice and curry which, however, I like to eat!.” Was there anything she missed – and not just in the way of food – when she was here? “Not really, but I guess that when I’m in England there are certain aspects of Sri Lankan life that I miss, and when I am here there are some English things for which I long!”

Ruth was quite definite that growing up in England never made her feel an outsider, nor did she ever personally come across the colour bar or any form of racism. I couldn’t help wondering whether the A/Level Thomians Ruth instructed in Maths, hadn’t tried tricks with their young female teacher. She answered in the negative, saying that those students were focused on their studies as they wanted to pass their London A/Ls and enter universities abroad.

“I had no trouble with them, as I might well have had if I had undertaken to teach their counterparts in England. Kids in England are less appreciative, on the whole, of the value of education.” Ruth had bade farewell to STC when I met her and was preparing to fly back home to enter a college named Cranfield in her native Bedforshire to do a Master’s in Air Transport Management.

“Although it’s quite a small college, Cranfield is well known in England for its aeronautical courses and one of my lecturers in Bristol who is also a visiting lecturer at Cranfield, strongly encouraged me to seek admission there.” It looks as if Ruth’s eyes will turn skywards for a long time yet. Having met this free spirit who has such an engaging personality, I hope that she will always retain her zest for life.