. . . the more they remain the same, so the adage goes. That may be true of society at the levels of control, whether such control is legitimate or not. This little book of recollections of times past refers to a value system not altogether benign and a way of life not free of blemish. Nevertheless it radiates an innocence that those who have come to run the affairs of our country over the past quarter century have contrived to damage, near-enough to destroy. What change there has been at that level has been progressively, ha ha, for the worse. Corruption & Treason are now conjoined with Democracy among the big capital letter words; that symbiotic alliance has made mere incompetence seem innocent.

No more a simpleton than the people he writes about, Reggie Seimon’s memoir includes a couple of thumbnail sketches of the bheeshanaya. The term covered acts of mindless violence by "the JVP" (that, coincidentally, eliminated some of President Premadasakey opponents within the UNP as well as a few persons who were seen to be a threat to the ambitions of politicians of the SLFP). More significantly it referred to the extensive butchery of young people in the villages carried out by agents of the state. That bheeshanaya is no way behind us and continues to target the same segment of our people. We are confronted instead with the spectacle of old shot-guns confiscated from farmers and landowners (who typically used them to protect their crops and to hunt small game) crushed by bulldozers in broad daylight. Naturally the media had been invited to witness this proof of how willing and able the government is in taking decisive action to Protect Law and Order. On the other hand, the capacity of the armed forces to deal with the savagery of the LTTE continues to be undermined by the self-same state. The people in Seimon’s book however could not have comprehended "political assassinations", or that terrorists could become valued mercenaries and given more security by the state than is offered to the Prime Minister.

We might note, however, since Seimon’s subject refers to the mores of a more or less Roman Catholic community, that such deals represent a cynicism most "damnable", a word that might be understood by clerics and their sheep in high places. They are persons whose task was to look to look to the common weal.

Seimon’s vignettes of a particular segment of our society should be treasured--not simply as a launch-pad for nostalgia but as a vivid portrayal of what human society signifies. Newspapers, radio and television do, off and on, try to keep in touch, but most often their efforts degenerate into "human interest stories", a.k.a. "pure gossip" as impure as it can get.

Seimon illuminates the processes of "government" obliquely as they were seen fifty years ago, as in "The Office Train" ("A talk on hygiene, now glorified as a Workshop on Community Medicine at Primary Health Care Level"). So also in "Advanced Methods of Communication", a system of signals from somewhere near the crown of coconut trees without the aid of a mobile phone.

If I place him right, Reggie Seimon is a distinguished eye-surgeon. There was a student by that name who moved from the Paiyagala area to De Mazenod College, Kandana, a kaduru ball’s throw from our place in Hapugoda. There is no mention of that particular scene in this book but it was one common to communities along the western seacoast from Beruwela to Wennappuwa. "Stone-cutting", e.g., was as common in the school boarding in Kandana as it was in a cycle-smith’s shop in Paiyagala. The parish priests and nuns were as cute in shepherding children (usually via their mothers) into fears that were held to require ‘absolution’, fears that are the necessary precursor and product of an enforced subservience designed to serve objectives more temporal than spiritual. In the maha vanniya and elsewhere in the dry zone, millennia-old beliefs in ruk devathavo and others, their provenance, their particular powers to counter / allay human anxieties, to punish enemies or provide restitution (the recovery of stolen articles, the bringing of a straying spouse back to base and so on), yet exist. Human societies all around this globe turn to such phenomena for relief from the multi-dimensional oppression they are subjected to. Seimon’s accounts of his ‘First Communion’, of the churches he passed on his way to school in the bullock cart, of the ‘auction’ of a sibling, are indeed innocent and refreshingly so. So are his accounts of the efforts, in their initial stages, of parish priests and their superiors, to invest each place of worship with the kind of distinction that is an instrument typically employed in strengthening folk beliefs. As, indeed, are his sketches of the cynical response, quite common, of common believers of whatever ‘faith’, to its professional peddlers.

If the ‘Days gone by’ seem to be overloaded with drunks or to give excessive space to the consumption of toddy and arrack in Paiyagala, such recollections are indeed matter for nostalgia. The "black arrack" he mentions, at Rs. 6/- a bottle when I first encountered it, was far superior to any of the poisonous liquors that are now being pushed through the market by big businessmen, many of whom drink single malt whiskey--most other varieties of ‘Scotch’ being poisonous too. The distinctive sign, raa bomu, the most ubiquitous ‘bill-board’ in those days, is rarely seen now.

Kandana was much like Paiyagala in most respects, including the one just mentioned. Some of the coconut lands of our extended family were leased out for tapping; whenever my father visited, a cousin delivered thani-male-raa to him at the foot of the tree. A couple of my cousins, on retiring from the public service, took over the Kandana tavern. They were determined to give their customers (labourers and mid-level public servants and mercantile employees) a fair deal, meaning the right measure and undoctored. They remained intent on that responsibility throughout ‘open’ time, did the accounts, and once the tavern closed, unwound,--and weaved their way back home to Mattumagala on their bicycles. The following year, they couldn’t match the competition: much too much had been at stake for the professional rentiers from Paiyagala to Wennappuwa.

Needless to add, ‘Church Feasts’ were marked by lots of toddy and arrack, punctuated by a few knifings, enlivened by incipient romances. Very lively do’s they were.

Among several high points in this book are accounts of the undeclared war between paternal grandmother and mother, of the uses of the sea-beach vis a vis the corrective technology recommended by the Health department, of ceremonies associated with a girl’s "growing up", of a village marriage proposal. All very true.

A village girl protests at her father’s decision to derail her further education: he had seen that his wife required the senior daughter’s help to raise her siblings. That kind of thing happens all the time, but this girl registers her protest at the initial stage of ‘the proposal’, in full face of her examiners from the groom’s side. The conversation goes: "Did you do well in the SSC examination?" This question was asked in English to check my sister’s ability to converse (in that language). "Didn’t the marriage broker tell you that I got distinctions in three subjects?" pertly replied my sister. "Then why didn’t you try University entrance?" "I believe you should ask my father why he pulled me out of school to help my mother in the kitchen". . . . girl has an acid tongue" was whispered around.

This was long before ‘academics’, half baked or scalded in the west, in any case ‘done over’, took ‘gender studies’ to be as good a route as, say, bashing the natives, to a comfortable life for themselves.