Gal Bangalawa -1971-Part 1

As you may recall from my blog posting in July 2009, I spent a year in 1971 with my parents at the famous Gal Bangalawa (Stone House) at Mahakande, Kandy. I was a small girl of only 4years at the time but I have many memories of the time we spent there. It was a carefree and happy period of my life. Overall most of the things I remember from that time are very pleasant. One unpleasant incident though that I still recall was when I fell down and hurt my knee on the gravel road leading back from a neighbor's house. I was wearing a red gingham dress and my knee was bleeding and I was crying.

I have put up a few pictures with this posting. Remember to double click on each picture to enlarge it.

Since we lived in the upstairs of this great big bungalow, my Father asked the University maintenance to add iron grills to all the windows for safety. I recall one day how our little black cat with the white nose, got stuck in the grills in the bedroom of my parents. Fortunately, my parents were able to get the cat freed. My Father was not keen on getting us a cat, as he thought that its fur might cause us allergies but after much pleadings he succumbed to our wishes.

The picture above shows me and my brother sitting on the steps of the front verandah of the bunglow.We are sitting with the two girls who were our household help. I am holding our black cat on my lap.

The picture above shows my brother on the verandah with a rattan basket full of vegetables.

For me and my brother who was three there were many things to explore in this house. The garden also was full of wonders. The immediate garden around the house had a lawn and on it there were certain weeds one of which had jagged leaves close to the ground and lavender flowers. I wish I knew what its name was. On the right side of the Bungalow, in the front garden I recall there was a little natural pond which was inhabited by tadpoles. Naturally, us kids found the tadpoles very fascinating and spent time observing them there and sometimes catching them in bottles when my cousins came to visit.

There were steps that led down from the garden onto the gravel road in front of the house which encircled a small hilly area of earth on which there were several anthills.We were told that cobra snakes inhabited the anthills where they probably went to eat the ants.

The pic below shows me  standing there on the steps leading to the gravel road as a 4 year old. That is my Father's old car which he sold soon after. I am standing on the steps next to my cousin who is taller than me.

Beyond the gravel road was the main flower garden of the house which was quite large. At the time, there were many different varieties of flowers growing there and the garden was well maintained by the caretaker, Martin who lived in the separate caretakers quarters located adjacent to the bungalow. Some of the flowers I recall are pink antignon, barberton daisys and a small tree with white flowers with pinkish centers. There was also a working water fountain at the center of the garden. Sadly, on my last visit to the Bunglow in July 2009 I found that the plants in the garden had long since disappeared and it was neglected and overgrown with weeds.

In the photo on the left you can see my brother and I

having a shower from the tap (water faucet) in the flower garden next to a bed of barberton daisys. I am squatting on the ground.Indoris is the boy standing there in the sarong. Indoris who hailed from my Aunt's village was with our househeld to help out for a short period.

I have other incidents that I recall at Mahakande Bungalow that hold a special place in my memory and about which I will be writing in the future. The subjects will be:

Visits from Relatives:

We had several visitors while we lived at Mahakande.

Vesak

Cod liver oil and Food memories

Journey from Kandy to a South Pacific Island

Just a few months before my tenth birthday, my younger brother, myself and my Mom left Sri Lanka to join our Dad who had taken up a new job at a university in the Fiji Islands.We left Sri Lanka in December soon after we got our school holidays.

This picture in my school uniform was takenin 1976, for my new passport, a few months before we left Sri Lanka. However, my brother and I were allowed to travel on our Mom's passport as accompanying children. So we ended up not needing our own passports.

We flew out of Colombo's Katunayake Airport on Suisse Air. I used to dream about what it was like to fly on an aeroplane and now I was actually flying, I was very excited. On the same flight were a family whose Dad had also taught at University of Peradeniya and who were now migrating to Australia.

During the flight people around us were speaking in English. Until that time, my brother and I didn't get a chance to speak English. Although my Mom did read English books to us out loud .
So while my brother and I could understand the language we were reticent to speak it. So I listened attentively to the people talking around me including kids. What struck me was how the native speakers around us on the flight pronounced the words differently to how Sri Lankans spoke it. One word in particular was the word 'Air' as in Suisse Air.

Seated next to us on the flight was a young Sri Lankan lady who had a bad cold, however she had forgotten her handkerchief. So my Mom gave her some blue pin striped scrap material from a sailor dress that she had been sewing for me. This young woman was on her way to Melbourne to join her husband there.

On that flight from Colombo to Singapore they served us lobster for lunch which was quite a treat.I don't think you can get that kind of food in economy class any more. Since we were kids travelling, they gave my brother and I both coloring books and crayons as well as a book with scenery onto which you could transfer pictures of figures etc. The picture transfers could be rub bed off onto the scenes in the book.They also gave us little bars of Swiss chocolates and postcards.

At that time they were building a new terminal at the Singapore Aiport, so we were transported from the plane to the terminal by bus. While we were on the bus they made an announcement saying that someone had left their bag on the plane and even mentioned the passenger's name. It turned out later that it was one of our carry on bags. However, at the time my Mom did not pay any attention since the name they announced was her maiden name.Once we were in the terminal we discovered the bag was missing and contacted the airport staff. Then my Mom was given a pictorial list of bags and told to select our bag from it. To my amazement there was a bag that looked exactly like our missing bag. Since we correctly identified the missing bag they gave it back to us.

The next leg of our journey was a flight on CP Air (Canadian Pacific Air) from Singapore to Sydney, Australia. I remember they served us breakfast before we landed. I vaguely seem to recall marmalade and some sort of bread. After a short stopover we boarded our flight to Fiji which if I remember correctly was on Air Pacific and landed at Nadi, Fiji. From Nadi we had to take an internal flight of about 45 minutes duration, on a smaller Air Pacific plane to Suva. Suva was our final destination and is the the capital city of Fiji. At Nadi Airport we passed by a little snack shop. I remember they had cheese sandwiches and a spinning orange juice machine with an orange fixed at the top. This was a novelty to me coming from mid 70's Sri Lanka.

On board that flight my Mom was sitting next to a Tongan man wearing a mat with frizzy hair. Tonga was a smaller island nation neighboring Fiji and the national costume for men was a sulu (which was similar to a skirt) over which a woven pandanus mat was worn. The sulu was also the national costume in Fiji and was worn all over the South Pacific.

During the flight, my Mom had seen smoke rising from the ground and she was kind of concerned. She asked the Tongan man if they were from live volcanoes. To her relief he said, "No there are no volcanoes in Fiji". I seem to recall that the airhostesses had red hibiscus flowers stuck behind their ears. Maybe I'm confusing it with the Air Pacific brochures at the time which all had them with hibiscuses behind their ears. The flight was short so no meal was served, instead the air hostesses came around with baskets of wrapped sweets.

Gal Bangalawa (Stone Bungalow) at Mahakande

The beautiful bungalow in the picture is the Gal Bungalawa (Stone Bungalow) where I lived as a four year old in 1971 with my parents and brother. It was part of the University of Peradeniya Academic Quarters and is located at Mahakande, Sri Lanka. This two storeyed Bungalow had at one time been a tea Planter's Bungalow. The exterior walls of which are studded with stone hence the name Gal Bangalawa (Stone Bungalow). It stands nestled at the foot of the Hantane mountains and at the time we lived there we had no idea of its history but we recently learnt that it had been built around 1939 by a Tea planter named Colonel Thomas Yates Wright. His wife had been the architect of the design of this beautiful historical building. I am sure it must have cost a fortune to build.

Colonel Yates had published a book called "Ceylon in my time 1889-1949" in 1951 and he makes reference to this house in his book.












Below is a picture from the book-Queen Elizabeth II-opening the Univ. of Peradeniya in 1954




















The bungalow stands on a small hill and below the bungalow is a roundabout with a road which encircles the round about.


There were frangipani trees on either side of the steps that led up to the house from the roadway. Below the road was a large garden with beautiful flowering shrubs and a fountain. Off to one side of the road were huge shade bearing trees some of which were madatiya(which was a tree that used to shed red madatiya seeds). Under these trees was a headstone which was the memorial to one of the beloved dogs of Colonel and Mrs. Wright. At that time I had no idea that it belonged to a dog, I used to imagine that it belonged to a dead person and used to wonder who it might have been.



Our family was given the upper right wing of the bungalow(on the above picture that would be on the left side). And it's the upper bay-wing shown in the picture below (left).
The upper left wing (pictured below) was occupied by another family who became our close friends.

Pictured also is the green bathroom of the upper left wing.




















The bottom floor was also divided into two separate wings and one family lived in each of those wings as well. The ground floor had a big verandah onto which all the ground floor rooms opened up.

This house made a huge impression on me even though I was just four years old at the time.The house was undoubtedly beautiful, had a lot of character and atmosphere.I still remember the musty smell in the house and how the ceilings often used to leak when it rained. There were also a lot of mouse droppings in corners and we had no choice but to set traps for the mice when we first arrived. At night if we left the windows open, small bats used to fly into the house.

Each wing had bay windows on the front of the house and there was a big bay window in the center frontage of the upper floor of the house. The bay windows all had roofs above them. The glass on the windows had iron grids on them to simulate leaded glass windows.

All the rooms on the upper floor had a fireplace, which we never actually used. I'm not sure if the original owners actually lit fires in those fireplaces. Each wing had one or two bathrooms each with tiled walls and floors. Below pictured is our bathroom on the upper right wing.

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On the top floor the kitchen was located at the back of the house and had windows all around. On the floor of the kitchen was a wooden trap door which closed off the staircase which led down from the kitchen to the ground floor. The picture below shows the bedroom in which my brother and I used to sleep. The open doorway shows the kitchen. Our bedroom room was a small room and did not have any windows, but did have two doors on either side instead. At night our parents used to switch on a green night light for us so we wouldn't be afraid of the dark.

The bay windows in the middle of the upper floor had window seats all around. The floors of the house were beautiful too since they were all made of polished wood planks.

The entrance hallway of the house had a fireplace and the floor was wood parquet.From this hallway began a wooden staircase that led up from the ground floor to a landing and then the staircase continued to the upper floor from that landing. The walls against which the staircase stood were lined with wood panels.

On the left is a picture of the stairwell on the upper floor which opens out onto the living room.

Below (left) is the green latticed walkway which leads from the house to the garages.

Below (right) is a picture of the wood panelled study which is located on the ground floor- front right wing of the house.

Below is a picture of the garages of the house.


The Mahakande Bungalow was a magical place to live in for a child and I think my brother and I were very lucky that we had the chance to live there. I have more wonderful memories of it that I will leave to write about for another day.

My childhood Fashion Dolls and Dollhouse Furniture

My interest in dollhouses continued onward from the age of seven. Just before I turned ten, my Dad got a job in the Pacific region as an academic in a university there. So my younger Brother, my Mom and I also joined my Dad in the Pacific. I missed Sri Lanka I felt sad to leave my friends and my familiar life there. The journey from Sri Lanka to the Pacific was a long one and that's a story I will write on another day.

When I reached this new country there were toys galore that we didn't have in Sri Lanka, not to mention groceries and other items. The main department store in the City center was called Morris Hedstrom and they had a toy department. Of course I was delighted to spend time there. They had various dollhouse furniture sets made of plastic that I bought from the toy department. These included a blue and white bathroom set and a pink floral bedroom set. These furniture sets seemed to be smaller than 12inch scale in size. I also bought a doll called Daisy by Mary Quant. She had curly blonde hair but she was smaller than playscale but bigger than a 12inch scale doll. Each time we visited the toy department I bought a new set of clothes for Daisy.

During that same year my Dad's boss the Professor who was Italian American moved in to the house next door with his wife who was also a Professor along with their son and daughter. I think we got hold of the Sears Catalogue through them. So from then on we used to get our own bi annual catalogs and I was especially interested in the toy catalogues. They had so many wonderful dollhouses, dollhouse furniture and dolls. I used to dream about owning some of the things in the catalogue. I did end up ordering a Ken doll, a Skipper doll (when you turned her arm she grew taller and acquired a bosom) and a playscale baby doll complete with a set of clothes, crib, bottle and high chair. I saw dollhouses and dollhouse furniture, pools and cars for fashion dolls in the Sears Catalogue but even then I was rather restrained in my spending habits and I think that's the reason I never persuaded my parents to order those items for me. So I used to just dream about owning those things but never did get them.

Sinhala Avurudu (Sri Lankan New year) in Sri Lanka

When I was a child, every Sinhala Avurudu (which fell during mid April) our whole family used to visit my Dad's ancestral home in Udubadana where my paternal grandparents lived. My Mom used to supervise the preparation of traditional sweetmeats for the Sinhala Avurudu which was the traditional new year period.One of her specialities was undu walalu (these were deep fried rings made out of ground undu gram) after frying and draining they were placed in a pot of kitul treacle to absorb the sweet treacle. The preparation was from scratch so the undu gram seeds had to be soaked overnight and ground into a paste and they were fermented by the time the batter was made incorporating rice flour. The thick batter was squeezed out into a pan of hot oil through a button hole which had been sewn into the middle of a tea cloth.

My mom's other speciality were little cakes which were baked in small tins with frilly edges. In the bakeries they were sold as 'ispongee cakes' but the variety that my mother made at home were far superior in taste. So my mom had a huge batch of undu walalu and ispongee cake made to take to our grandparents home each Avurudu Season.

Since we lived in Peradeniya (close to Kandy) and our grandparents lived in Udubadana further up in the mountains about 50 miles away we started our journey in the morning and reached Udubadana about 3hours later around noontime. The journey was all uphill through the hill country of Sri Lanka which was mostly full of tea plantations with some areas populated by pinus forests. Our Dad used to recall his childhood stories of his experiences growing up as we continued on our long journey in my Dad's light blue fiat car with a hood rack attached. Onetime my younger brother got motion sickness as my Dad negotiated the numerous elbow bends. So we used to always carry cream crackers on these journeys to conteract any motion sickness.

Sometimes there were little kids (possibly from the tea estates or farms) that used to run up from one bend to the next crying 'Nona , nona' begging for food or money. So we used to stop and give them some food or money. There were also kids along the wayside who used to sell the beautiful wildflowers that thrived in the cooler climes of the mountains.

My brother and I quickly learnt the names of the waterfalls and mountain passes that we encountered along the way, Ramboda Falls, Ramboda Pass.

My ninth Birthday party also in Sri Lanka

My ninth birthday party was a grand affair, at least in my eyes. We invited some of my Grade 3 classmates from the Kandy Convent and other girls that were my playmates. At the time we lived in a 'B' Bungalow at the Peradeniya University Campus. It was quite a spacious bungalow style house with a huge garden as well. There was a round about in the front garden of the house with a round hedge in the middle of a patch of grass. A little tar sealed road encircled the mini roundabout. There were several varieties of cypress and pine trees that the previous occupants had planted in the front yard along the hedges. This bungalow was right next to the banks of the Mahaweli River and sometimes snakes used to crawl up the outside drains perhaps from the bamboo groves next to the river?

Our 3 older cousins (children of our oldest Uncle) came to help with the preparations for the birthday party. They helped make the numerous short eats ( Sri Lankan savories) for the party. We ordered two sets of bread loaves of from the bakery one was colored light blue and the other light pink. This was for the sandwiches. The sandwiches were well buttered and the fillings included boiled beetroot ,egg salad, and a spread made with canned fish. After the sandwiches were assembled the crusts were trimmed off and each sandwich was cut into four little triangles.

Also on the menu were fish and polos (young jackfruit) cutlets (deep fried balls coated with breadcrumbs. Other items were fish rolls (deep fried fish filled pancakes coated with breadrumbs) and fish patties( similar to samosa).

My Mom had been following some cake decorating classes on the weekends and for my birthday she made me a grand piano cake. She did not have the special tins for the cake so she had to bake two rectangular cakes and cut the shape of the piano with a paper template. The legs of the piano were made out of wood. As I recall we could not find any black food coloring so the key board had to be drawn by hand. The icing on the piano was either a light green or light blue and my mother decorated the piano with roses made out of icing. The cake was a butter cake and the icing on top was also butter icing as was in vogue at the time. That was my most favorite birthday cake, it's too bad that my Dad did not have the camera loaded at the time to take pictures.

I had a thoroughly enjoyable birthday with my friends and family and received many presents. I seem to recall that most of the presents were either dress materials and story books with beautiful pictures, so I had many dresses sewn in the following months. One of the materials was a cotton print of red hearts on a white background and this was made into an a line dress with little cape sleeves.