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| Plantation
gentry Though the author himself was not a planter in the classical sense, he knows his tea, even though he doesn't drink the stuff socially despite professionally starting off as a tea taster at George Steuarts. That revelation apart, of a tea taster not being a tea drinker, the book is not at all bizarre, and is well written, even though life in large Agency Houses may not exactly be inspiring stuff in brave post Land Reform Sri Lanka. That's not to be sarcastic -- but to point out that the author definitely spent his best years at George Stuarts, and does not think well of the changes that were brought in by a rampaging (in his mind) leftist Sirima Bandaranaike government. This is why he leaves for Australia, and writes about his 20 plus year span at George Steuarts with unabashed nostalgia. But it is a take on life in Sri Lanka between independence and the unveiling of the first Republican constitution that will never be replicated. The hail-fellow-well-met prose suits the sub-culture and the period described, and it is with conviction that the author writes, "the Sinhalese and Tamils are fairly gentle races, who are largely not given to direct confrontation, so I know they often found it difficult to cope with British bosses who could be overbearing or downright bullying.'' There is no sign however that the author finds it difficult to cope with overbearing British bosses. It seems he revelled in their company, and was sad to see a lot of them go. Talking about going, the author decides that he wants to migrate to Australia with the advent of the new government, and the arrival of the likes of Doric de Souza and Colvin R. de Silva, people whom the author liked even though they were of a different political persuasion. Not that the author had any politics, but he makes it clear where his sympathies lie. He asks himself why Europeans such as Mark Boshtock did not leave, and he being a Sinhalese did, and says "self interest not patriotism'' was his own motive. But sometimes, there is a discernible tinge of what sounds like regret, even though it is not disclosed. He says "when Chandrika dissolved parliament even as I write this in Australia" it gives him (the author) reconfirmation that he took the correct decision to migrate. This writer who observed things from Colombo cannot remember any rioting when Chandrika dissolved parliament, and even if there was, it was some negligible trouble which didn't last long enough to register in the memory. Now there is a new government as a result of that dissolution, the kind of government that Tony Peiris would have liked even though some others may have reservations about it. But ‘George Steuart & Co Ltd, - A Personal Odyssey’ is a classic retelling of an era that those most intimately involved with it did not want to let go, and reluctantly did when they had to. The author moved closer to power, besides all that. He dined with Doric De Souza as well as Dudly Senanayake, and he is embarrassed that a European planter boss over-ate in a manner that did not befit the occasion when they dined with Dudley. When his father-in-law dies, there was this amusing bit of theatre about the pall bearers. Sir Oliver Goonetilleke being the unctuous politician, says he cannot be a pall bearer unless the Prime Minister S. W. R. D who is also present is asked to be one too. But the author's brother-in-law says the deceased had hated the PM, and that he would on no account have the PM be a pall bearer as his father would lie uneasy in the grave! There is also the little interesting cameo here and there of Ranjan Wijeratne whose political ambitions are very clear even at the time he was no more than a top notch planter. All things in all, it is the story of the plantation elite who were in a symbiotic survival relationship with the political elite of the day. How it all came to grief is a story well told through the prism of one man's personal odyssey. |
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