Dudley Senanayake at the White House

 Dudley Senanayake at the White House

I was surprised to see this old photograph recently. Much has been made, quite rightly, of President Jayawardena’s state visit to the USA when Ronald Regan was President. The lavish banquet, the speeches, Frank Sinatra singing “My Way”. But Prime Minister Dudley Senanayake’s visit when Lyndon Baines Johnson (LBJ) was President has remained a mystery. So, I did some “research” on the Internet and found a load of information, and that also led to some personal reflections on my part.

One was the most powerful man in the world. The other, a three-time prime minister of a small country. Despite the power imbalance, the photograph shows that this was a friendly meeting, almost a one-to-one chat, although aides and secret service personnel would have been close at hand. Despite their marked differences – the scope of their power, family backgrounds, temperament, path to political leadership, legacy – they did share two characteristics in common: both were firm believers in democracy, and both were fluent speakers of English.

But what was Mr. Senanayake doing in the USA? He was on a private visit. Having suffered from a chronic stomach illness for many years, he was seeking treatment at the Walter Reed Hospital, where a Dr. Lattimore could treat him. Previously, during an election campaign in Ceylon, Dr. Lattimore had been a “quiet” member of Mr. Senanayake’s entourage, treating him almost daily. The doctors at Walter Reed concluded that the illness was not cancer, but a congenital condition aggravated by stress and anxiety.

The date of the meeting may have been 17 March 1966. One topic discussed was a request for enhanced aid to Ceylon. To Mr. Senanayake’s disappointment, the request was turned down. Ceylon’s nationalization of American oil companies (under the previous Prime Minister Mrs. Bandaranaike) still rankled.

Mr. Senanayake stopped over in London on the way back to Ceylon and was scheduled to meet the Queen for an audience, followed by lunch. But he was taken ill again, and botched treatment apparently by a Ceylonese physician caused him to blackout.  When the news spread, The Times newspaper of London had begun to draft his obituary!

Family Backgrounds and Path to Political Leadership

Dudley Senanayake came from an aristocratic lineage of landowners. The Senanayake’s were also active in the movement to gain independence from Britain. Dudley Senanayake attended the elite S. Thomas’ College in Ceylon, went onto Cambridge University in Britain and qualified as a barrister. His father, D.S. Senanayake, was a leading politician and had become Minister of Agriculture in Ceylon’s State Council.  Upon his return to Ceylon, Dudley Senanayake entered politics at his father’s urging, winning the Dedigama seat in the State Council in 1936. He won this seat continuously till 1970, seven elections in all.

Dudley Senanayake succeeded his father as the Minister of Agriculture in the State Council. In 1947, the elder Senanayake became the first Prime Minister of independent Ceylon. When he died unexpectedly in 1953, the son was appointed Prime Minister.

In stark contrast, LBJ was born in the rugged Hill country of Texas to a hard scrabble family. His father lost the family ranch, and humiliation and insecurity supposedly affected LBJ throughout his life. As a young man of 18, he worked on a road gang, using a pick and shovel, and driving a piece of heavy machinery pulled by two mules. It was backbreaking labor.

LBJ attended a local high school and, at his parents’ urging, entered Southwest Texas State Teachers College, qualifying as a high school teacher. His introduction to politics occurred in 1931 as an aide to a congressman from Texas. He entered the US House of Representatives in 1937 and served till 1949. He won a controversial victory to the Senate in 1948, being accused of voter fraud and ballot stuffing. He served till 1960, when he was elected vice-president under John F Kennedy. Upon Kennedy’s untimely death in 1963, LBJ was sworn in as President.

Thanks to a meticulously detailed four volume biography of LBJ by Robert Caro, which I have read in excerpts, LBJ’s life has been meticulously documented.   

Temperament

Dudley Senanayake has been described as kind and empathetic, simple and unassuming, intellectual and cultured, and a compassionate leader. What comes across is that he was not suited for the hurly burly of politics and was perhaps a reluctant politician. He was a cricketer, golfer, pipe smoker, and photographer, yet very much at ease with rural folk. He remained a lifelong bachelor.

LBJ’s cruel streak and lust for power stand in sharp contrast to Mr. Senanayake’s personality.  A reviewer of the third volume of Caro’s described LBJ as “corrupt, cruel, callous, crude, a vicious user of women, a bully of men and a shameless thief of elections”.

Especially as he rose in politics, LBJ is said to have charmed, bullied, and cajoled fellow politicians. As Senate majority leader, he was well known for “The Treatment” - his aggressive, personal style of persuasion, used to bend politicians to his will. Fully using his 6’4” height and booming voice, LBJ would “move in close, his face a scant millimeter from his target, his eyes widening and narrowing, his eyebrows rising and falling. … The Treatment was an almost hypnotic experience and rendered the target stunned and helpless”. I have seen a few photos of LBJ rendering The Treatment, and it is remarkable how amiable he appears at the White House meeting with Mr. Senanayake.

Legacy

Dudley Senanayake is “respected for his simplicity, democratic toleration, and democratic toleration.” He continued his father’s legacy in agriculture. I recall his tenure as Prime Minster from 1965-70 as a peaceful and quietly prosperous period, when the minority ethnic and religious communities were treated well. Mr. Senanayake was hounded by leftist trade unions, but he served out his five-year term.

As far as I am aware, two schools, a Central College in the electorate he represented, and another school in Colombo, are named after Dudley Senanayake. Lasting memorials well deserved.

As President, LBJ more than redeemed himself with his domestic policies - the war on poverty, creation of Medicare and Medicaid, federally insured student loans, and enlightened immigration policies. Perhaps his crowning achievements were the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, which he forced through Congress amidst much opposition. But the disastrous Vietnam War was his undoing, and he withdrew from the Presidential race in 1968.

I saw Dudley Senanayake twice. In 1964, a bye election was conducted for the Nikaweretiya seat, and he, out of power by then, came to campaign for the United National Party (UNP) candidate. My father was managing a coconut estate in the area, and we stood by the road watching Mr. Senanayake being escorted to a meeting, dressed casually and walking behind supporters shouting “Jayawewa”. He seemed amused. My father doffed his hat and Mr. Senanayake acknowledged with a smile and a small wave.

The second time was at Badulla, in 1973. I was teaching there, and Mr. Senanayake addressed a political meeting. He was again out of power by then. He spoke in the pouring rain to the massive crowd that had turned up.  Mr. Senanayake passed away in Colombo a few days later from a heart attack.

As for LBJ, I was enrolled at The University of Texas at Austin in the late 1980s, and although he had passed away in 1973, LBJ was still a huge presence in Texas. His Presidential Library and Museum are located on the university campus, and I recall seeing a replica of his Oval Office and the Presidential limousine he used displayed at the museum. I have visited LBJ’s birthplace, home, ranch, and grave, which are in a National Historical Park not far from Austin. Colorful and outrageous stories about LBJ were rife, both in print and as word of mouth. His wife, Lady Bird Johnson, was still alive at that time.

Basil Fonseka

 

Basil Fonseka was my godfather.

My grandfather was the manager of Mawatte Estate, a large coconut plantation, in the 1930s and early 40s. One of the main products of the estate was copra, which had to be sent to Colombo for export. For this purpose, the estate owned two barges, which traveled along the Hamilton Canal, which flowed not far from the estate. 

The "captain" in charge of these barges, known in Sinhala as "thandale", was a Fonseka. Basil was his son and thus became good friends with the Braine children. He was in and out of "The Meet", their home at nearby Boralessa.

This is what my father "Teddy" Braine wrote:

"The British navy called for applicants to open a Fleet Air Arm Unit to work in co-ordination with the Royal Navy. I thought this was a good opportunity to achieve my ambition of flying and having obtained Daddy’s permission went along with a few classmates for an interview at Maharagama. Only Basil Fonseka was selected as he was over 20 years in age. ... The camp buildings at Maharagama were subsequently used as the teachers training college."

That's why Basil Fonseka is wearing a uniform, that of the Fleet Air Arm.

Basil uncle, as we called him, was in and out of our home. Later, he joined the Public Works Department (PWD) as an overseer, a lucrative job, got married, and fathered a number of children. Towards the end of his life, he faced financial difficulties.

The photo was given to my sister, who lives in Negombo, by Basil uncle's niece, who is my age.

Mike Boyd-Moss and the Passing of an Era

 

@ History of Ceylon Tea

 

The following obituary appeared in a Sri Lankan newspaper some years ago and it brought back many memories.

BOYD MOSS M.R.P. MIKE Late Manager of Telbedde Estate, Badulla. Husband of Shelagh, father of Nicolla and Robin, father-in-law of Giovanni and Debs, grandfather of Paola Jemma James Chiri and Georgina, brother of Tony and John, passed away in Nairobi 16th October. Funeral 21st October P.O Box 14483, Nairobi, Kenya 00800. Service of Remembrance in Sri Lanka Saturday 24th October 6 p.m. Church of the Good Shepherd Jawatte Road, Thimbirigasyaya, Colombo 5.

After graduating from teachers college, my first job as an English teacher in 1972 was at Kandegolla Maha Vidyalaya, an overnight train journey from Colombo, in the remote hill country. The school was a 2 km. uphill trudge from the nearest bus stop. The villagers were subsistence farmers. Due to poverty, many students came to school on empty stomachs. I was young and didn't mind the hardship.

The area was dominated by Telbedde Estate, managed by Mike Boyd-Moss. He was, indisputably, the local monarch, but a benevolent "suddha" that people respected and were in awe of. I met him only once, when I organized the school's first ever sports meet and sought his help for the cross-country race, which would be run partly through Telbedde Estate. I needed his permission as well as a support vehicle to follow the runners and pick up stragglers. Lacking even a bicycle, I walked all the way to his office to meet him, enjoying the early morning walk through the greenery, inhaling the aroma of pine and eucalyptus along the way. To reach his office, I remember climbing a steep flight of steps. He gracefully agreed, and, during the race, a van from the estate followed the runners.

I invited him to be one of the chief guests at the sports meet, but he declined, perhaps because the other chief guest was the local MP, a prominent member of the Sirimavo Bandaranaike government, which was in the process of nationalizing plantations. But he donated a trophy to be awarded to the winner of the cross- country race.

Mike, and other British planters like him, were clearly on their way out of Sri Lanka. The Prime Minister Mrs. Bandaranaike, who led a left-wing coalition government, had misguidedly nationalized tea plantations, and the era of large plantations owned by companies such as Brooke Bonds and Liptons were coming to an end. British planters were leaving Sri Lanka, mostly for East Africa where their expertise was welcome. More about that later.

I previously published a version of this article on my blogsite. An anonymous commentator, who had worked with Mike Boyd-Moss as a divisional superintendent on the Westmoreland and Kendegolla Divisions of Telbedde Estate, wrote the following as a comment: “I consider myself most fortunate to have worked for a gentleman of the highest order and above all an Agriculturist of top quality. Over this period of time (1965-1976), 350 acres of VP tea was opened up. Telbedde in 1975 was one of the highest yielding estates in Uva, close to 2000 pounds per acre. The happiest days of my life were spent at Telbedde working with Mike as my manager.”

The planters worked hard, played hard, and partied hard, too. Life on the estates was lonely, with children away at schools in Britain. They mostly played rough and tumble rugby and their clubs such as Uva, Dickoya, and Dimbula that seem to be only a faint memory now. Many of these planters had been in Sri Lanka for generations. (My own great-great grandfather, great grandfather, grandfather, and father were also tea or coconut planters.) According to a short piece in The Island newspaper, Mike's brother John had been a planter at Downside Estate near Welimada. Another brother Tony was a planter at Luckyland Estate in Uda Pussellwa. Their parents and are probably buried in Bandarawela.

According to the article in The Island, Mike’s management on Telbedde had been legendary. Apart from his expertise in planting, he had sound engineering and management skills, too. He had been equally fluent in Sinhala and Tamil and apparently spoke Sinhala without an accent. The newspaper called him an "elite band of Britisher" who loved Sri Lanka and contributed much to our economy and way of life with their enlightened management of the vast estates that were their domain.

The obituary gives his last address as Nairobi, where he probably resided after his retirement from planting in Rwanda. With the expertise gained in Sri Lanka, these planters gave a fillip to East African teas, which sometimes outperformed Sri Lankan teas in the world market. In place of British planters, Mrs. Bandaranaike's government appointed its stooges, including gramasevakas, bus drivers and bus conductors to manage these plantations. I saw firsthand the consequences of the devastation caused by these appointees. When I visited my friend Brian Howie at Kataboola Estate in Nawalapitiya, he showed me where the previous "assistant manager" had done the cooking. It was in the living room, on a makeshift village hearth, with three large stones for support with firewood underneath. The previous occupant obviously didn't know how to use kitchen appliances. The whole bungalow was covered in soot. The furniture, carpets, and everything that could be moved had been carried off.

Mike’s son Robin, born in Ceylon, is a Cambridge Blue in cricket and later played county cricket in England.

The British planters had their clubs and their churches. Driving through the hill country even today, we come across tiny churches nestling in the hills, seemingly in the middle of nowhere. Now, the congregations probably consist of Christian Tamil staff of the surrounding tea estates.

Indeed, the passing of Mike Boyd-Moss was the passing of an era.

From Moonshine to Whiskey and Beer

From Moonshine to Whiskey and Beer

I moved to Boralessa, my ancestral village, in 1977. Many villagers – who made a living as masons, carpenters, workers in tile factories and brick kilns – supplemented their income by brewing pot arrack. The main ingredient, coconut toddy, was readily available and so was the demand.  Pot arrack was a cottage industry: the males did the brewing and the women sold it from home.

Some of my immediate neighbors were brewers, the small time mudalali across the road being the main supplier for the area. In the evenings, a steady clientele of regulars could be seen going into his house. As the evening drew on, drunks, mainly middle aged men, would be staggering down the road, some singing bawdy songs and others picking quarrels with anyone around, using the foulest language.

Cleary, the making and selling of pot arrack was illegal. So, why didn’t the police crackdown? The MP for the area, who also happened to be a cabinet minister, had requested the police to go easy on the pot arrack dealers. Those who indulged in the business were not well off and it provided an essential supplementary income to “feed their families”, never mind the damage done to the consumers’ health and family harmony. Anyhow, not to be put off, the police also went around to the dealers every month collecting their cut!

Distribution

When the supply exceeded local demand, the brewers found a ready market in nearby Negombo and further afield in Colombo and the suburbs. Transport was through two modes, train and car. In those days, I was teaching at Kelaniya University and took the “office train” to work. Boralessa has a tiny railway station, manned by an agent (not a station master), with no security whatsoever. Men with four-gallon plastic containers filled with pot arrack would be hiding in the bushes around the station, and, as the train was pulling off, make a mad dash and scramble on to the train. The containers would be quickly hidden in the toilets or under seats. Although this was a daily spectacle witnessed by hundreds of passengers, not once did I see a raid by railway security, the police, or excise officers.

Transport by car was more spectacular. The chosen model was the sleek Austin Cambridge A50, vintage 1950s, perhaps the fastest and most maneuverable car in those days of tight import restrictions. Cars loaded with pot arrack would set off for Colombo, both day and night. The natural boundary between the north western province, where Boralessa is located, and the western province, where Colombo is, happens to be the Ma Oya river, crossed by the legendary Kochchikade bridge. 

Once the cars carrying pot arrack crossed the bridge, they were under a new jurisdiction and at the mercy of the police. Avoiding the main road on which a number of police stations were located, the drivers took circuitous back roads, but the police did their best to stop the cars. So it was a cat and mouse game - roadblocks, checkpoints, ambushes, gunfire, and high speed chases, the stuff of thriller movies. One of these drivers, I’ll call him Primus, recently told me of being fired on when he sped past the police. He is still alive to tell the tale, about 90 now.

Dankotuwa, a nearby town that was surrounded by large coconut plantations (providing coconut toddy, the essential ingredient for pot arrack), also supplied the brew to the Colombo area. The best of the liquor, on par or even better than the legitimate variety, whether from Boralessa or Dankotuwa, was known as “Dankotuwa Special”. Many local musicians in those days were heavy drinkers, and a top musician told me not long ago that whenever he managed to get a bottle of the coveted “Dankotuwa Special”, he would get together with another well-known musician to enjoy the treat.

From pot arrack to kasippu

In the 1980s, due to various reasons, the supply of coconut toddy declined, but the demand for illicit liquor prevailed. Ever creative, villagers found a new way to continue with production. Instead of toddy, they began to use sugar dissolved in water, with generous doses of added yeast, to produce alcohol. This was kasippu.

The 1980s were a turning point for Boralessa because large number of villagers began to travel to Italy, both illegally and legally, in search of work. Because the “Italians” had brought more prosperity to the villagers, the local MP, took a hands-off approach to the illicit trade; the police were given a free rein and could arrest and prosecute illegal brewers.

In the manufacture of kasippu, the fermentation process would take place in large, rusty barrels over a few days, and the barrels had to be hidden from the police. The village had enough hiding places – coconut groves, a weed-choked irrigation tank, long abandoned paddy fields, culverts, thickly wooded area - for the purpose. The bottom of my property has a pond surrounded by overgrown shrubs, and one day I found two barrels there. After I spoke with the prime suspect, the barrels disappeared.

Not all barrels were properly sealed, so passing lizards, rats, snakes and other creepy crawlies would fall in. To improve the “kick”, ammonia fertilizer, rusty barbed wire, and anything handy was added. Kasippu, unlike pot arrack, is very much a poison brew.

A grocery store not far from my house probably sold tons of sugar every week. This could be estimated from the lorry loads of sugar that were unloaded there. It also showed how much illicit liquor was brewed in the village.

The Italian sojourn brought prosperity and some villagers developed a taste for whiskey. The dealer across the road, who had given up his illicit trade because he now had two sons in Italy, once boasted to me that he now drank only “whishkey”.

Effects on the Lifestyle

A large number of villagers, both young and the elderly, consumed kasippu. I now realize that many, who worked as masons and carpenters, were alcoholics and this caused problems well beyond the immediate households.

Sundays were reserved for heavy drinking, which meant that, being severely hungover, nobody turned up for work on Mondays. A head carpenter I knew, who built roofs (backbreaking work under a blazing sun), who had a small team of assistants, dreaded Tuesdays because getting his men to turn-up for work took all morning. First, Anthony would call them, and they dutifully promised to turn-up at the worksite. But, often, they didn’t. Then, Anthony would have to go around to their homes in a hired tuk, pleading and coaxing the men to join him. This was repeated weekly and the Anthony was fed up, till the pandemic hit and put an end to house construction. 

Kasippu also affected family harmony because the men were habitually drunk, broke, and in poor health, leaving the womenfolk to keep the home fires burning. Domestic abuse was common. I know of broken homes where the women had fled, unable to bear their misery.

Beer

About ten years ago, a liquor store opened in Boralessa. Hard liquor was too expensive for most locals but beer sales exceeded expectations. The consumers were mainly young men, who had not developed a taste for the hard stuff. Perhaps, they had also seen the scourge that kasippu caused, even within their families, and spurned the stuff. Most evenings, they would converge on the beer shop and hang out for hours, even sitting on the railway tracks.

Boralessa had come a long way from the days of pot arrack. People still drank, some copiusly, but I no longer see anyone staggering down the quiet Kiragara Road that runs along my property, singing bawdy songs. Most of the heavy drinkers have passed away, and the younger generations, bolstered by cash infusions from abroad, have become “respectable”. But I do miss the old Boralessa, where moonshine was king and daredevil drivers played cat and mouse games with the police.