Those bleak, cold Haileybury days

When at the age of 13 I started to attend Haileybury College, near Hertford, England, little did I realise the associations that this leading boarding school once had with the island of Ceylon. However, within days of arrival I acquired such knowledge, for new boys were compelled to learn by heart the little red book that contained the college's history. From it I gleaned that Haileybury was founded at the height of the empire to serve imperial aims by producing a stream of trained colonial administrators for the Indian subcontinent. 

Of course this fact did not have much significance for me at the time, in 1963, as Ceylon was not to enter my event horizon for another ten years. My knowledge of the island then was restricted to that gleaned from geography lessons. I could approximately mark Colombo, Kandy and Trincomalee on the mango-shaped outline of the island and roughly trace the central massif and tea-producing areas. But I had no real conception of Ceylon. 

In more recent years, when in my researches I came across certain Old Haileyburians who had served in the Ceylon Civil Service, long suppressed memories of those bleak school years welled up. Bleak because even as late as the early 1960s, English public schools were stranded in an Edwardian time warp. At Haileybury, like many such tradition-oriented schools, the regime was particularly stark and oblivious to prevailing social reality. 

New boys, for instance, were forced to fag for prefects for a year. Virtual serfdom was the lot of every fag, because he had to attend to every menial task of his teenage lord, such as make his bed, polish his shoes and starch his collars. If his duties were not carried out to perfection, the fag was tormented mercilessly. Prefects were permitted to carry canes and administer punishment almost at will, so fags lived in permanent fear. Some were beaten so regularly that the mental scars became more evident than the physical ones. No one complained, of course, for that would invite grim retribution. 

The start of the daily routine is what sticks most in my mind. At an ungodly hour we were awoken in the enormous 50-bed dormitory by a clamorous electric bell, appropriately situated at the new boys' end. Bleary-eyed, we stumbled into athletics kit for a daunting three-mile run, while all but the supervising prefect slept on. Afterwards came the obligatory cold shower, which in English mid-winter, with frost and sometimes snow outside, was an excruciating experience. 

Next came breakfast in the huge refectory. There was no rational canteen system, as one would expect with such a large number of pupils. Instead, new boys served at table. They had constantly to dash to the kitchens at one end of the refectory, pick up as many plates as possible, and return to their particular table. By the time they had finished serving the rapacious mob, those who had started eating first were demanding second helpings. In the end the servers often went hungry. 

Then it was back to one's common room or study to prepare for the day's lessons. But before lessons commenced, there was morning service to attend for all except the handful of Hindus and Muslims in the college. As I was a chorister during my entire time at Haileybury, I have particular remembrance of the large chapel. Housed in a choir stall above the magnificent organ, we looked down on the sardine-like crush below, gloating in our freedom from prefects and conformity. 

The granite-jawed Scottish headmaster was known as The Boot, because of his power to expel. This sobriquet, no doubt derived from the expression 'to be given the boot', was entirely appropriate for someone with a jackboot mentality. The Boot was a sadist with no redeeming qualities. Detested by one and all, he delighted in the use of the cane and was not satisfied until he had drawn blood. 

It was his indiscriminate employment of the cane that prompted me to leave Haileybury of my own volition - 'walking out' as I insisted on calling this seditious act. Today, I would have the right to put my grievance to the European Court of Human Rights. Back then using my feet was the only protest I could make. 

In 1968, the very year that I decamped from Haileybury, the late Lindsay Anderson directed the movie If, a savage indictment of the British public school system. Starring Malcolm McDowell, this allegorical story tells how the boys of a public school not unlike Haileybury mount an insurrection and take control. Needless to say, I felt an overwhelming empathy with the film. It remains a perfect evocation of the anarchistic tendencies that the system engendered in a good proportion of students. 

After seeing If I had just one aspiration - to infiltrate Haileybury and substitute the subversive reels of the film for those of one of the innocuous Saturday night movies shown in the school hall, such as Guns of Navarone or Ben Hur. It was not difficult to imagine the tremendous sense of satisfaction I would experience as the images of rebellion - of embattled masters and emboldened students - flickered on the screen. 

Looking back, I am grateful that I opted out of the system before I became a part of it. Conditions at Haileybury and other such institutions did change rapidly after the social revolution of the late 1960s. The college has been co-educational for several decades or more, and fags belong to an increasingly remote past. Of greater importance is the fact that in a more enlightened society, corporal punishment is now taboo. 

It all started in 1806, when the East India Company took a lease on Hertford Castle and opened an institution for the training of its civil servants called the East India College. Hertford Castle soon proved to be unsuitable, so the nearby Haileybury estate was purchased to build a proper college. The architect William Wilkins produced a dignified Greek design, a two-storied square of buildings enclosing a grass quadrangle. When construction was completed in 1809, the East India College transferred to Haileybury and a new era began. 

Physically, not much has changed at Haileybury in the past 200 years, apart from the addition of buildings outside the quadrangle. The main feature still is the southern block, some 430 feet long, which is broken by three imposing Ionic porticos (see accompanying acquatint by Thomas Medland, 1810). 

In his book The Records of the East India College Haileybury & Other Institutions (London, 1976), Anthony Farrington details the East India Company's employment practices and how they led to the founding of specialised training establishments. The first civil servants were appointed to overseas posts as Factors and were empowered to act as agents in all business matters. Subordinate ranks appeared in the mid-seventeenth century, when the Company began to send out Apprentices and Writers to satisfy the increasing demand for clerks and copyists. 

During the second half of the eighteenth century a different type of recruit began to emerge. This was in response to the Company's new territorial and revenue responsibilities, which made its civil service a desirable and lucrative employment. In particular, it attracted the sons of the British professional and commercial classes. There was a sprinkling of aristocracy, too.

The altered situation in which the Company found itself in the latter part of the eighteenth century resulted in the need for a specialised institution such as Haileybury for the training of its administrative officers. A prime concern was to provide Haileybury students with a "particular acquaintance" of the languages and cultures of the countries in which they were to serve. Farrington's staff lists reveal that the Oriental Department of the College was as large as the European Department. There were professors - albeit mostly British - of Hindu Literature and the History of Asia, of the Arabic, Persian, Hindustani, Sanskrit, Bengali, Marathi and Telegu languages. Neither Sinhala nor Tamil was on offer. While it is not surprising that Sinhala remained a mystery to Haileybury students, Tamil is another matter. 

It appears that Haileybury students were a fractious lot even in the early nineteenth century. The College rules contained in the 1814 Directions for the Guidance of Students include prohibitions against playing cards, billiards or other games of chance. Bringing fire-arms or fire-works into the College was strictly forbidden. However, as if conceding this rule was likely to be broken, severe penalties were listed, especially for the discharging of fire-arms. Wine was proscribed, and the students were commanded to abstain from all immoral and irregular pursuits and to behave with the propriety and decorum of gentlemen. In a final attempt to discourage unruly conduct, the students were warned against 'concluding that everything is permitted which is not positively forbidden.'

That the students were often disorderly is evident from the College Papers listed by Farrington. For instance, a letter from Henry Wilkins, of Brunswick Square, London, dated October 18, 1815, complained of "the wanton attacks of the students on my truly unfortunate property situated in Haileybury." In May 1817 there were Notes on students disciplined "in consequence of the recent disturbances." Similar Notes contain details of other incidents, disciplinary measures, and reasons for expulsions. 

The demise of the East India College at Haileybury became inevitable with the growth of mid-nineteenth century opposition to the anachronism of patronage as a means of filling government posts. Farrington explains:

"Reform movements in the universities and the public schools had gradually diminished Haileybury's unique position as an administrative training centre; the new educational theorists, especially Macauley, demanded competitive examinations, which in effect meant opening government service to the new breed of university graduate. Sir Charles Wood's 1853 Government of India Act abolished civil patronage and substituted competitive examination for entrance to Haileybury. It also introduced the power to examine candidates for direct appointment without attendance at Haileybury." 

The death knell came only several years later, in 1855, when university pressure convinced Wood that Haileybury no longer had any role to play. Admissions therefore ceased in 1856 and the college closed in 1858. The buildings were auctioned in 1861 and were subsequently reopened as a conventional public school - the Haileybury I knew in the immediate afterglow of its centenary. 

Stroke-buster

By Kumudini Hettiarachchi

"We were the pioneers to use the name 'brain attack' in 1997 when we started giving intravenous clot-busting injections to selected patients who have suffered an acute ischaemic stroke. The 'golden window' or the first three hours after a stroke is the most critical period when medication should be started to minimise the effects of the stroke," says Dr. (Mrs.) Gunawardane,38, who with Dr. (Ms.) M. Lamonte jointly heads the Brain Attack Team of the University of Maryland Medical Center.

"We were also the pioneers to start the Telemedicine Project for ischaemic stroke victims, where advanced audio-visual equipment is used to provide tertiary level treatment. This was also a first for America."

Explaining this 'remote control' method of treatment covering Maryland, Pennsylvania, Delaware, West Virginia and Virginia, Dr. Gunawardane said, "The moment a patient gets identified as a stroke victim, a community hospital which has the telemedicine equipment would immediately get in touch with our Medical Center and the Brain Attack Team would get paged. Then using the real-time audio-visual connection, the brain team would be able to examine the patient through the video cameras and give instructions to the doctor who is physically seeing the patient. We are trying to get funding to install this very expensive equipment in most rural hospitals in these areas."

"We could ask the doctor to give the brain team a close-up view of the patient's eye etc," she said to show how advanced the technology is.

Depending on the condition of the patient, he or she would be transferred to the Center either by express ambulance service or helicopter, with the doctors at the Center monitoring the patient even while on route.

"Before administering the clot-busting injections called tPA (tissue Plasminogen Activator), the patient has to be screened carefully by a stroke team, as there is a 6.4% risk of cerebral haemorrhage. But the success rate is marvellous. After two hours of infusion of tPA there is a significant improvement in 30% of the patients and after 24 hours of infusion in 48%," she said. 

To Dr. Ruwani, who won the Award of Excellence given by her university for prevention of strokes among post-menopausal women, after acting as a catalyst to get them to form a group and making them aware of their high-risk status, neurology is a rewarding speciality, with dramatic results. "It's amazing. It's like a miracle." (Before 55, 19% more men are at risk of getting a stroke. But after 55, women are at equal risk and with each decade of getting older the incidence of stroke doubles.) 

And how does she plan to help her motherland?

"Mainly through the transfer of information," Dr. Gunawardane says. "I've already given a lecture at the Ceylon College of Physicians and been invited to come every year. I would be sending the doctors here the newest data that we collect and also the findings of research that I'm involved in back in America. I would also provide advice on how to formulate a multi-disciplinary team, including neurologists, physiotherapists, occupational therapists and neuro-radiologists, which is essential for the effective treatment of stroke victims." They should also be made aware about the 'golden window', the first three hours after a stroke when immediate treatment would make recovery so much easier, she adds. 

More strength to people's power

It is a chicken and egg situation, said one Sri Lankan at a gathering of some expatriates the other night. With that single phrase, dispensed with such academic hauteur, he not only encapsulated this developing socio-political drama between the former colonial power and the colonised, but reduced to silence some others with sociological-and perhaps anthropological- pretensions.

Among the many present were the owner of a grocery store, a bookie (but not betting on Sri Lankan cricket seeing what it is like just now), a doctor, a petrol shed owner, a lawyer, a perpetual student (who has been trying to overcome hurdles such as examinations for nearly two decades) and a couple of self- proclaimed journalists.

Since no Sri Lankan gathering is ever complete without politics being thrown into the ring, it was inevitable that sooner or later the subject should enter the realm of discussion. The intensity of the discussion usually increases in the same proportion to the amount of alcohol consumed and so it did not take long before the reported behaviour of some British ministers broke the ice, as it were, of political debate.

The first victim was Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Mandelson who apparently had spoken to some Home Office minister or other inquiring about an application for British citizenship by an Indian tycoon named Srichand Hinduja. He is one of the Hinduja brothers who have been very much in the news here and in India.

Apart from the fact that ministers should not be dabbling in these matters, especially after the same individual had his application for British citizenship turned down earlier, the real nettle was that Srichand Hinduja and another brother had agreed to donate three million pounds to save the cash-strapped Millennium Dome, which alas is now to be sold to a Labour Party supporter who is also alleged to have made a donation to party funds or something like that. These things get terribly complicated. The trouble was that Mandelson was the minister in charge of the Dome at the time, so it all could appear rather dubious not only to his political opponents but to those who believe that politicians need a good moral cleansing, if not physical.

To make matters worse Srichand and Gopichand Hinduja were granted bail over a week ago by an Indian court investigating corruption charges but were told not to leave India.

While Peter Mandelson has said that at no time did he endorse or support the application for citizenship, he has been in trouble before and has had to resign as a minister. That was for obtaining a housing loan through a Treasury colleague or some such little thing, by Sri Lankan political standards.

According to media reports here, four days after Srichand Hinduja got his British passport, he hosted a reception in London in honour of the British legal system, to which Mandelson was invited.

Now Peter Mandelson has gone and resigned, all in less than a week of the news breaking. That, of course, is not what our own ministers would have expected him to do. I mean you don't go around throwing in the towel everytime you are found with your fingers in the jam jar, so to speak. That is not all. Another minister, Keith Vaz, in charge of European affairs, was named in some media reports a month or so ago of doing a sort of Mandelson-trying to help get some Indian workers down to the UK to help construct a Hindu temple.

Nothing wrong, of course, again by Sri Lankan political standards. Those poor Indian workers apparently had their visa applications rejected earlier by British immigration authorities. 

And there was an all mighty row in the media with everybody but the Indian High Commission joining in. If you think that is the end of ministerial high jinks, the latest to hit the media front pages is Michael Meacher, the environmental minister who owns nine and possibly 12 homes, along with his wife.

The public would have been spared all the gory details of Labour Party shenanigans had Mr Meacher learned to keep his mouth firmly closed. But being a politician that would have been asking too much of him.

So the media reminded what he even said 20 years ago. This leftwing minister, had at the time, condemned posh homes as "status symbols". As the doctor in the Sri Lankan gathering reminded, if that happened in Colombo, the politician would have said it was so long ago and surely he had a right to change his mind.

Quite so, said the grocery shop owner. After all, the Sri Lanka cabinet-he had lost count of how many were in it- has ministers who have changed their minds and not just once or twice, but several times.

Moreover what are nine or ten houses, when we have had politicians who have not only built castles in the air but suddenly came to own homes and guest houses. Not to mention dilapidated buses and vans imported from Japan or Korea plying the roads as a service to the travelling public.

It is typical of the Sri Lankan culture, said one of the so-called journalists who up to now had shown greater interest in consuming than contributing. Instead of giving eternal thanks to these politicians who are buying these vehicles out of their hard earned money and providing transport to a hapless public, they are being accused of bribery, corruption and other evils.

This reminded the second so-called journalist that while in the UK ministers resign, their activities are exposed and they are called upon to respond to the allegations on television, no Sri Lankan minister or deputy minister (even when they are so very numerous) has been asked to resign by a judicial body or by the head of government.

Well, said the lawyer, the political culture is different. Here there is respect for public opinion, respect for the rule of law even though some might stray from the straight and narrow, and even ministers cannot behave as though they had descended from heaven. Here the media will pursue and expose wrongdoing. 

If the media tries to do that in Sri Lanka the least that would happen is to have criminal defamation charges slapped on them.

How then, asked the bookie, can one get rid of corrupt and repressive governments? If elections are rigged, if judicial independence is in danger and thuggery and intimidation are resorted to, what is the answer?

Having maintained a deafening and deferential silence until then I felt obliged to chip in. People's power, I said. Ask the Filipinos. They, like the Sri Lankans, are a fun-loving people ever ready for a good time. But when it comes to dealing with corrupt leaders, they are learning very quickly. They did so again this month. More importantly those mandated with safeguarding security and maintaining law and order decided to do their job. The people had spoken and they listened to the people.

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