Plus

She’s seen the world and rubbed shoulders with the rich and famous. But when fortunes changed, she even worked in a launderette in London. Now, aged 88, Iranganie Fernando still has lots more plans, she tells Tara Coomaraswamy

She was born in a 32-room mansion – but now lives in a one-room flat. She was twice presented to the Queen – yet had to work in a launderette to make ends meet.

She has survived many reversals of fortune to become probably Sri Lanka’s most travelled 88-year-old, and she is still (touch wood) going strong.

Iranganee Fernando or “Ira” a remarkable woman whose life is a tale of “true grit” – of amazing resilience, initiative and determination, has lived in the UK since 1968.

Ira was born in 1917, into the well-known Dias family of Panadura. Her paternal great-grandfather was Ponnahannahandige Harmanis Dias, a wealthy landowner and philanthropist, who built Rankot Vihare. Her maternal great-grandfather was Lindamulage Charles P. de Silva, who was equally well known and wealthy. At one time, Ira owned a rubber estate, a coconut estate, two houses in Nuwara Eliya and one in a fashionable part of Colombo, with a chapel, a grand staircase and a lift.

First time in England

She first came to England with her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Lambert Dias, at the age of 19, for the Coronation of George VI. She was presented to the King and Queen with her parents. They stayed at Kensington Palace Mansions – a very fashionable address.

Being from a fabulously wealthy and well-connected family, the people she mingled with on that trip were drawn from the highest echelons of society. On the boat going to England, they travelled with Sir Vytilingam Duraisamy and Sir Baron Jayatilleke, the Speaker and Leader of the State Council, respectively. The latter used to stroll around the deck with her. She also chatted to (Sir) Robert Menzies, shortly to become Australian Prime Minister: “You know me, child, I talk to everyone!”

A photograph from 1937 shows a bright-eyed, bubbly Ira. It is obvious that even then she was full of enthusiasm for life, bursting with the desire to see and experience everything. Sir Baron Jayatilleke took her to see the House of Commons and L.M.de Silva, then a Privy Councillor, to see the Old Bailey. Ira was a keen tennis player- one of the first women to be allowed to join the all-male Panadura Tennis Club – and when in London, she persuaded a cousin to take her to Wimbledon; they sat in the best seats. Years later, she remembers having to stand to watch the famous five-hour Connors-McEnroe final.

Carl Cooke, then Secretary to Ceylon’s Trade Commissioner, was a good friend. Her parents, who were quite liberal for their time, allowed her to go dancing with him at the famous Empire Ballroom in Leicester Square – the “in” place to go those days. “The Night is Young….” she hums, remembering “I was quite a popular girl. I even had a boat named after me!” Carl Cooke became the first Asian to cross the English Channel in a 16 ft. canoe named “Iranganee” after her.

In 1948, she married Maxie Fernando. “We were made for each other,” she says, wistfully. “He was such a lovely man. A real gentleman. We got on so well together.” Their only son, Michael, was just 14 when Maxie died of a heart attack, on the eve of their planned trip to take Michael to boarding school in England. Ira was determined to give her son the education that she and her husband had decided on. And so she did - but in the process, she had to strip herself bare of all her wealth and face hardships she could not even remotely have imagined in her former, privileged life.

England in 1967 turned out to be very different for Ira from her first glittering, star-studded encounter with it. She took her son to Radcliffe College and paid the entrance fee with the small amount left in the account her mother had opened for her in 1937. Then she tried to rent rooms in a bed-and-breakfast in Leicester so as to be near her son.

The first landlady who took her in, asked her to leave after just one day, because the neighbours said that they did not want “coloured” people on their street. After she had been turned out of three such places, Ira got a room in a convent, on condition she helped care for the elderly inmates of the hospice. The first time Ira had to empty a bedpan, she threw up. She tried hard, but found she could not stomach the kind of tasks she was asked to do. The nuns offered her the gardener’s cottage, if she would work in the laundry. This was not exactly luxury accommodation, but it meant she could have her son to stay during his holidays.

After a year of this, she got a small job with British Telecom in London. The erstwhile chauffeur-driven Ira, struggled up to London by bus with her luggage, losing her purse on the journey, and managed somehow to settle into a dingy little one-room flat in Swiss Cottage. Soon she bought a small flat and paid the mortgage by doing two jobs. She remembers washing plates in a restaurant until 2 a.m. This carried on for many years: it was a long hard slog, but she achieved her objective of educating her son, and seeing him settled.
What happened to all her parents’ friends and wealthy connections? “I didn’t want to bother friends or relatives – I had my pride.” She gradually sold her property at home and had some of the money sent out over time, because of the currency restrictions. When she turned sixty, she began to receive a small state pension. Her life was simple in the extreme: no indulgences - other than travel. This was – and still is - her passion. She denied herself the extras that others might take for granted, in order to see the world.

Seeing the world

On one of her earliest and most ambitious trips, she joined a group of 52 to travel on the famous Orient Express from Paris to Istanbul. They took a boat across the Bosphorus, and a coach overland through Turkey to Iran and Afghanistan. The coach could not drive across the international borders, so passengers had to disembark, carry their luggage across a no-man’s land, then get on another coach on the other side. Ira crowded into an ancient Dodge with 10 others to make her precarious way through the treacherous Khyber Pass into Pakistan. In India, she took a train by herself to Agra to see the Taj Mahal, then a train – still on her own - right across India to Madras. She finally flew to Sri Lanka after a journey of 32 days.

How did she get leave from work to make the trip, I asked. “By persuading my doctor to sign a medical certificate saying that I was suffering from depression and needed three months’ leave!” she replied.

Ira continued to travel, despite her advancing years. This serial globetrotter has passport entries which would make the most enthusiastic traveller green with envy. In fact, she once went “round the world” – not in 90 days but in 9 ½ months, visiting 10 countries and staying with 20 friends. She has been to most of the places on the most ardent tourist’s wish list: the Great Wall of China, the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square (missing by a few days the tragic events of 1989), the Taj Mahal, the Pyramids, the Valley of Kings (in a wheelchair), Niagara Falls (four times) and Victoria Falls. She has cruised down the Zambesi (“lots of hippos!”), met Pope John Paul II at the Vatican, been on the Bullet Train in Japan (though she found it too slow for her), danced on the beach at Waikiki, seen the Oberammergau Festival in Austria, heard the Vienna Boys’ Choir, been to Disney World, and many many more….

Flying high on 80th b’day

For her 75th birthday she went on a cruise on the QE2 and went dancing every night. For her 80th birthday she flew on the Concorde, had her photograph taken in the cockpit with the captain, and persuaded the air hostess to give her champagne. The same year, she gave a reading in the chapel in Bethlehem built on the spot where Jesus Christ is said to have been born. For her 85th birthday, she sailed on the SS King Harald from Norway to see the midnight sun.

Which are the ones that got away? She thinks that she may now be too old to go to Argentina to see the Iguazu Falls, and also regrets not having gone white water rafting! Another unfulfilled ambition is to step inside No.10 Downing Street.

What is so amazing about Ira’s travels around the world is that she has defied age, gender, financial and physical difficulties. She has had two cataract operations and recently lost most of the vision in one eye. She is now amply proportioned and walks with a stick, due to arthritis, and a bad knee caused by falling from a bus.

Even this incident produced a typical Ira reaction. The bus started without warning, and she was dragged half-on, half-off it along Oxford Street until she couldn’t hold on any longer and fell in the street. When the terrified bus driver came running up and asked: “Shall I call an ambulance?” Ira replied: “No, call an undertaker!”

Ira has got around the world, done things and seen places, simply through her boundless drive to live life to the full. Age means nothing to her. Things happen for her not only because of her indomitable will and resourcefulness but also because of her sense of humour and infectious enthusiasm. She is most definitely “a character”.

On her trip to Washington in 1980, she met an American gentleman who was taken by her colourful saree and exotic appearance. She mentioned that she was keen to see the White House; he asked jokingly if she was the “Queen of Sri Lanka”. She retorted, “No, but I’m the Duchess of Colombo!” He arranged for her to be taken on a special tour of the White House the next day.

In 1995, she learned about the spectacular “Singing Christmas Trees” in Orlando, Florida. She did not have the exact address, but addressed a letter simply to The Pastor, Baptist Church, Orlando, USA,” asking for details. Within days she had a reply, inviting her to come, promising that the Baptist Church would take care of her. All that stood in the way was money – but Providence was at hand. Her niece, Iromie Dias, told her that a small fixed deposit of Rs. 6,000 which she had created for her aunt years ago as a gift, was now worth Rs. 48,000 enough to pay her fare to Florida. Ira wrote back to the Baptist Church, saying “I’m coming!”

Life in a ‘palace’

They met her at the airport, drove her in a huge limousine to a mansion in a millionaire’s row in Orlando, where she slept in a four-poster bed so big that it required steps to climb into it. She called her son in England excitedly: “Baby, I’m in a palace!” The next day, before the performance, the pastor led her onto the stage in front of the assembled congregation and introduced her as the lady who had come all the way from Sri Lanka to see the Singing Christmas Trees (twin 45-foot structures with 204 choristers each, arranged in tiers). Ira made a short speech, telling them how she came to be there. She told them how she went to England with £50 all those years ago, and how God had helped her to survive. She even told them how, on the way over, to get the cheapest possible fare, she had had to change planes several times. In Boston, while she was sitting waiting for her connection, an airline official rushed over and gave her complicated directions to get across town for her connecting flight. The exhausted 78- year-old had replied: “I’m not a bloody travel agent, I’m just a bloody old lady!” She got a standing ovation from the audience of 9000 people, and stood there with tears pouring down her face.

Her glamorous American hostess in Orlando wrote to her afterwards saying it had been a treat to meet her. And this is the reaction of everyone who comes across this endearing and engaging lady. An employer called her “Cherry Blossom”; her butcher calls her “Flower”. She was once kissed on both cheeks by a policeman outside Buckingham Palace, because she was “as cuddly as two blankets in winter”! Ian Botham kissed her at a publicity event in Selfridges. She has the knack of attracting people to her. Prince Charles and Princess Diana once came to her Keep Fit class in Brixton. Prince Charles stopped for a long chat with the 70-year-old Ira, dressed in her purple stretch pants and confided to her jokingly that he “could not cope” with his grandmother, the “Queen Mum,” then 87.

Still batting on

To be in the company of this effervescent lady is to be rejuvenated. She has more “get up and go” than people 30 or 40 years her junior. She has recently mastered email and the internet and is taking a computer course. She goes swimming every week. She invites friends to eat mouth-watering lamprais she makes herself. And she has not given up travelling: this year she is planning a cruise to New York on the Queen Mary II.

Alert, organised and totally on the ball, Ira is a truly humbling example to us all of how to “grow young gracefully”. She has maintained a sense of humour in the worst of times and preserved her dignity and self respect no matter what life has thrown at her. She is punctilious about returning favours and paying her way: she is a net giver, not a taker. Her credo: “Don’t feel sorry for yourself – do something for others, do something for yourself and pray to God; He’s a little bit slow but He comes through in the end!”