by Cecil V. Wikramanayake

I was just five years old, and my younger brother Ian was still an infant in his mother’s arms, when Dad who worked in the Civil Hospital, Badulla, was transferred to his home town, Galle.

We first lived in a little house in Mahamodera, by the sea, and the only memories that still remain clear are the evenings spent on the beach, playing with other children and listening to tales of far off lands, narrated to us kids by Uncle Eddie.

Edward Sumanasekera was my paternal grandmother’s elder brother who, as a young man had ‘run away to sea’ and as a merchant seaman had travelled round the world. His stories of Shanghai, of the quicksands on the river Hoogley, and of fishes that flew were eagerly lapped up by the several children who gathered around him when he made his appearance on the beach of an evening.

From Mahamodera, we moved into the Galle Fort to an enormous house in Lighthouse Street. The house was once a hotel in the days when ships called at Galle. Its rooms upstairs were numerous and its hall enormous. So big that Dad often played host to those holding meetings there, like the newly formed Suriya-mal campaign.

Frequent visitors were Bevis Bawa, a close friend of Uncle Guy, Wijayananda Dahanayake, a teacher, Jimmy de Livera, an Excise Inspector, Edgar Ephraums a businessman - the father of the lovely Sylvia who a few years later became the pulse of my heart when we studied together at Richmond College.

There were also the Abeywickramas and the Amarasuriyas, Rick Abeywardena, who we called "Lower Bar Uncle Eric" to distinguish him from Dad’s elder brother Eric. Around the time of the Suriya Mal Campaign, another visitor was Dicky Jayewardene, who had just returned from England.

About the time of the Suriya Mal campaign, Dad and his younger brother Ivon Mark, started a shop in Galle town called "Swadeshi stores". It stocked only "Lanka made goods" like Fonseka’s buttons, made of coconut wood. I still have in my possession a shoe brush made circa 1930, which was on sale at this shop for just fifty cents. I still use it to polish my shoes.

At about this time, I remember, almost everything was imported from England and other European countries. There were cake, like Canterbury cake, fruit cake and so on which came in tins.

The Canterbury cake, we called "Canta-bari" cake, but gobbled it up with alacrity. Toffees and other sweets too came in tins, or little buckets with a tin lid. A box of matches, ‘3 diamonds’, ‘3 globes’ and such brands, which came from Sweden, were only three cents a box. There were also ‘Lucifers’ — matches which came in cardboard packets. You could strike them against anything like the sole of your shoe, and they would light.

But in the nineteen thirties, patriotism was at a low ebb, and the "Swadeshi stores" was closed down within one year. The British had countered this by sticking labels on all its products. The label carried the Union Jack with the words "Buy British". And so the Swadeshi Stores went bankrupt.

It was during this time that Dad bought a Standard two-seater car, with a ‘dickey’, for just two hundred rupees. It bore the registration number D 721, and eventually Dad raffled it at a rupee a ticket , when, in 1932 he was transferred from Galle to Colombo. The winner was a little baby by the name Asoka Siriwardena, of "The Castle", Buthgamuwa, who in later life became Deputy Director of Agriculture.

This car was a strange one, with the hand-brake placed outside, on the footboard. On the steering wheel were two levers which controlled the starting — an advance-retard lever, and an accelerator lever. To start it, you had to adjust these two levers. Then go round to the front of the car and crank it up. It often back-fired with disastrous results to one’s right hand.

To give you an indication of the cost of living at that time, I must tell you that one day, Dad came home, when we were living at Osanagoda road, with a huge seer fish, about five feet long, tied on to the outside of the standard two-seater. He had bought it on the beach as he was coming home. He had paid just two rupees for the entire fish! Mother gave slices of seer to her neighbours and we all enjoyed fried seer, cooked seer, and Dad had his favourite curry of "Thora-olu".

It was while we were in Galle that I began school, first at the Sacred Heart Convent, Galle, under Rev. Sister Cuthbert, who used to give us Bulls-eye sweets at the end of each lesson — to those who had a Good or a Very Good written on their book.

It was at Sacred Heart that I had my introduction to the stage, starring in a little item called "Ten Little Sailor Boys". I was the tenth little sailor boy "living all alone, he got married and then there were none" My ‘bride’ was a sweet little girl, Denia Jansen, who had lost her front teeth and had three elder brothers Hantley, Royle and Barney. She also had a younger sister Leona who later married my schoolmate and colleague in journalism, Markie Gerreyn, and a younger brother Thorald, with whom, in later years at St. Benedict’s College, I used to box.

But the convent would not have boys who had passed the Upper Kindergarten, and from the convent I was admitted to Richmond College, Galle. Dad had meanwhile moved to a house we used to call "Appuhamy’s house" at the foot of Richmond College, and beside the railway line. That was the house where my sister Rita Hyacinth, who later married Jaya Pathirana, was born.

She was not the first Wikramanayake girl in two generations. Uncle Eric, - who was so disappointed when Ian, in 1929 turned out to be another boy, returned to Colombo from Badulla and sent Dad a postcard which tersely said "Family traditions can never be broken, Eric". But he broke the tradition himself by producing Erica Bird, who grew up and married a civil servant name of Upali Gooneratne. So my sister had to be the second Wikramanayake girl in two generations.