There could not have been a greater contrast than that between our former home, fronting the pavement on Kandy’s Cross Street and the spacious rambling house in a vast garden that was to be our home in Tiriwanaketiya for the next few years. Father was now Principal of Sivali Vidyalaya in Ratnapura located two miles away from our home.
This created a logistical problem for Father and the four of us schoolchildren to travel to school in time. Our belated purchase of a car was four years later just before we left Sivali. The solution arrived at was a bespoke “thirikkalay” – a bull-powered buggy cart quite common for family transport in that car-rare era.
Till familiarity bred speed, the morning pre-school prep seemed a strange Stone-Age ritual to us former town-dwellers – but to Father, a nostalgic return to his village boyhood. Drawing water from the well, finger-brushing our teeth with powdered charcoal (imported toothpaste had disappeared from shops in WW II austerity) and a hike to the outside toilet way down in the garden. At last we tagged along behind Father, hopping over ‘kadullas’, a flimsy bridge across the ‘Ehelapola canal’ and across the toy-like KV rail tracks to the main road where Sirisena, our transport agent, had his home, his ‘thirikkalays’ and cart-bulls.
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We watched with interest as he wrestled one of his stable to be harnessed. We got to know their characteristics well. The large humped bull was steady but slow, not the best choice if we were late, The most reluctant to be harnessed was ‘Kape-payaa’ mottled in white and brown but he was fast. But the fastest was a slim little Sinhala bull who seemed too slight for the yoke but ran like the wind.
A steady pace was maintained when Father travelled. But it was a different story when he was absent and Sirisena’s brother Gilbert, playing truant from St. Luke’s College, took the reins and, encouraged by us, embarked on a mad roller-coaster ride racing every other school buggy that challenged us. One of his tricks was to hold a stick to the racing wheel. The earsplitting rattle this made drove the bull wild and made it gallop faster. But they loved their bulls and never bit their tails or kicked them in their you-know-whats to make them gallop faster. Their rivals resorted to these devilish tricks and the knotted tails of their bulls bore silent witness to their carters’ viciousness.
The leg-room in a ‘thirikkalay’ was cramped. No way could it contain my gangling limbs and I had to sit backing the other passengers with my legs dangling out. Thanks to this perch I acquired some degree of expertise in identifying cars, lorries and army trucks from their radiator grills as they roared up to our ‘thirikkalay’ before overtaking it with an amused toot or blast of horn. This was an age when distinctiveness and individuality were sought after – unlike the dreary sameness affecting today’s car design.
These were years when WW II was in full swing – but not in peaceful Ratnapura which, unlike Kandy, had no strategic importance whatsoever. All we saw of it was the long lines of military trucks that occasionally swept along (from where to where we wondered) while our ‘thirikkalays’ were brusquely ordered to the sides of the road by burly red-capped British Military Police. The town’s ‘Irida Pola’ became a collateral beneficiary of surplus military items of miscellaneous varieties. Yards of brilliant yellow ‘parachute silk’ (as we called nylon) were soon converted into shirts by the town toughies. There were also sheepskin-lined pilot’s jerkins, flying boots and sturdy haversacks. Then exotic foodstuffs from NAAFI stores were there aplenty – mega sized tins of corned beef, baked beans, bricks of cheese and whopping slabs of cooking chocolate. What a treasure trove!
Riverside (ganga-addara) Sivali Vidyalaya perched on the banks of the Kalu Ganga was a far cry from the Edwardian elegance of Dharmaraja’s Billimoria Building in Kandy’s Palace Square. It was a grey block-like two-storeyed structure with a humbler attachment on one side. It perched on a narrow strip of land between the river and the town’s playing field. To add to its indignity a narrow PWD road ran alongside its frontage. Fortunately, cars rarely used this road and there were no accidents. A unique feature, to us from the hills, were two large canoes tethered to the back of the building – as lifeboats to evacuate anybody trapped in the school by a sudden flood.
Most days there was no room for me in the morning ‘thirikkalay’ ride to school and I had the pleasure of stretching my legs in a railway compartment. Little Tiriwanaketiya qualified for its own Railway Station. A short walk from home it was a ‘classic’ station. A two-storeyed building faced a neatly swept platform of brilliant gleaming ‘tiriwana gal’ and a trellised stairway, wreathed in honeysuckle and morning glory, led up to the Station Master’s home.
Having bought the ten-cent Third Class ticket to town I settled down on a bench to read till the train chugged in, hopefully on time and not held up by (the standard excuse) wet rubber leaves which impeded traction. A few of my friends had already boarded the train from Dela and Opanake and we chattered away while the train chugged along past the green paddy fields, serried ranks of rubber trees and alongside the main road at Batugedera – once in a while overtaking our ‘thirikkalay’.
Waiting on the platform I had observed a few smart schoolgirls in the Second Class carriage. A bright idea dawned upon me and, in a spirit of bold adventure, I bought myself a Second Class ticket for fifteen cents and boarded the girl-rich carriage. I might as well have been the Invisible Man as far as these misses were concerned as they took no notice at all of me. Next day I was back with my friends in Third Class – with all illusions of sophisticated dalliance down the drain.
A few years later the time came to bid farewell to the lovely overgrown, tree-laden garden, burbling stream, gushing ‘peella’ and the unhurried country life of Tiriwanaketiya and start a new life in the bustle of Colombo where the clatter of ‘thirikkalay ‘ wheels and galloping bulls was lost for ever in the honk of car horns and the clang of tramcar bells. |
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