Home > Articles > A School Boy Remembers

Gurutalawa - The Early Days.

In those days temperatures at Gurutalawa were on an average five to 10 degrees lower than what it is now. The enviorons was sparsely populated and there were very few human settlements other than the traditional ones coming down from the past. Mornings often came to consciousness with the booming voice of Rev. Foster searching for the server on duty at the early Chapel service. We were housed quite adequately in four rooms of the main farm bungalow. There were about forty odd boys - Lower Fourth to Upper Sixth. Fr Foster was armed with a torch that he flashed around on sleeping faces and the small chapel altar bell which he rang uninhibitingly in our ears.

P.T. followed, done bare bodied in temperatures that were often in the lower forties Fahrenheit. A bath at the spout was electrifying. Breakfast was full of butter from the 'College' farm with the matron Mrs. Gunawardane's famous Guava Jelly savoured with hot bread crisp of crust, straight from the 'College' bakery.

The orchards, swept though the farm redolent with fruit, mostly mandarins, guavas, and peaches. These were tasted with delight both officially and unofficially. School was Fun; taken at a leisurely pace in two sessions as our most excellent masters held us reverted with their knowledge and their ardour. There was a morning break for a drink, hot cocoa in the colder months, on the house.

The Cricket pitch levelled into a broad rounded hill, sloped gently in the directions of Haputale at the one and only bowler's end. We had only a half matting which we would carry and lay ourselves. The soccer field, just across on the patna sloped the other way and was surfaced with tufts of the natural coarse grass, ultimately 'rolled' down by constant play, yet remained uneven and enigmatic. These fields were over the valley from the farm itself. Within the farm, one could play badminton, tennis, quoits, and table tennis. When it rained there were cross country runs.

After dinner Teachers and boys gathered together in one common room. Some played chess, others talked cricket or spun yarns with Rev. Foster. At another end stood Dr. Hayman's imposing glass book cases, where he himself was the attendant librarian. There the full gamut of English Literature was ergerly persued from the advance novels of Buchan, Haggard and Wren, though the serious detective fiction of Dorothy Sayers and Saki, to the great classics of Scott, Dickens and the Bronte sisters. Otherwise, there would be the engaging and sometimes hilarious meetings of the Literary Societies, and at least once a term, rehearsals for a performance of one act plays.

Room time was brief, before lights out. Then, cosily tucked in our beds under warm blankerts, we could here the chug chugging of the night mail steam engine in the distant rail track of the mountain passes that led to Ohiya. The sound filtered through falteringly as on a defective telephone line, through the hurl of the night winds as they, gathering, momentum, whistled and whined in the tall trees that walled the Farm's northern boundary.

Without a care in the world, sleep came easily.

P.S. Duleepkumar