Madam, madam! There’s a poisonous snake in the baby’s cot! The maid came dashing into the kitchen where my mother was preparing the noon meal. Just a little while before mother has given me the morning breast feed and coaxed me to sleep in the comfortable cot by the window in the bed room. Everyone in the house: my mother, cook woman, maid and the driver came rushing and found a deadly poisonous Rustle’s viper wound round the top
of one of the panels in the cot and the 3-month old baby sleeping cozily oblivious of the impending danger. Poisonous snakes were common at Gannoruwa, Peradeniya, Sri Lanka and particularly so in the rubber plantations, bordering which my father’s rural dispensary was situated where he worked as the Medical Officer in charge. He was attending to his patients ignorant of all the commotion that is going on in his quarters next door.
My mother has taken control of the situation and advised everyone to be silent and cautious, lest the serpent could get excited and attack the baby. She has brought a small stool and instructed the maid to crawl towards the cot and carefully hold it close to the head of the serpent. The driver was asked to go and wait outside near the window. The maid though nervous, has braved herself and very slowly crawled towards the cot and held the stool alongside the panel where the viper has twined itself. It may have perhaps taken a few minutes which everyone would have felt as hours. Little by little the serpent has started moving towards the stool and wound itself on to it. When it was a little more than halfway on the stool, mother has shouted “throw!†and the maid threw the stool with the viper out of the window. The driver had no hesitation in killing it instantly by landing a blow with the crowbar he had in readiness.
This story was narrated to me by my mother when I was a child and it has left an everlasting profound impact on me. It has given me a lot of self confidence as possessing the proverbial ‘nine lives’ of a cat, made my personality very strong and helped me to face numerous challenges in my life.
This is all I can remember of my infanthood although we have lived in Peradeniya until I was three years old. Our family of three brothers and one sister has been living in Peradeniya from the late 1930’s.Born in 1940 I was the youngest in the family. Prior to his placement in Peradeniya my father has been working as a Medical Officer in Matale and Wattegama. In 1943 my father was transferred to Kelaniya as a ‘punishment’. Those days with the 2nd World War in full swing and Colombo coming under regular bombing raids by the Japanese, being transferred to Kelaniya is comparable to one been sent to a LTTE held area in Sri Lanka today. As a child I have heard him tell his friends why he was given a punishment transfer. Being a Medical Officer one of his duties has been to make monthly visits to the estates and submit reports on the health care services available for estate staff including laborers. He has been appalled by the living conditions in the line rooms of the laborers which were like cattle sheds. I could still remember him recalling an unbelievable incident where he had to assist in the emergency birth of a child being watched by other children in the family as the dwelling had only one room. What has made him furious was that substantial amounts of funds are allocated in the estate accounting for the welfare of workers including health services, but in actual fact the superintendents and managers were spending these moneys themselves in clubs and other recreational activities. As a duty conscious government officer he has truthfully tried to expose these corrupt practices, but the decision of the colonial masters was to mete out punishment to the complainant and protect the culprits. This is how the British Raj practiced human rights at that time. Ironically today they have taken the role of human rights watchdogs particularly against developing countries aided and abetted by gullible local NGO’s, some with political motives. As it was suicidal to move to Colombo at that time my father used some influence and obtained a premature retirement. He had to get himself condemned by a Medical Board to quit because health service had been declared as an essential service during the war. Thus we have moved out of Peradeniya when I was just three years. Hence I have no personal recollection of life in the hill country and what little I know have been picked up from the elder members of the family, particularly my mother.
Continued - Childhood Days
