Was it Hunger Management at Gurutalawa?

The most prestigious boarding school in the country, S Thomas' College Gurutalawa is located in the pristine hill country beyond Haputale towards Welimada; a paradise that is both pleasing to the body and mind.

Being a boarding school, the greatest task was to feed the children three meals a day. Starting during wartime when food was scarce it would not have been an easy task for the matron to provide for. This school was a wartime contingency, to relocate the school at Mt Lavinia.

Early records show that it was Mrs Thelma Goonawardane, who was the first food Matron. She was succeeded by Mrs Altendorff who later was running her own boarding house to cater for the overflow from the school boarding. She had her adobe away from the Nine Acre block on the road to Boralanda. Later Mrs. Jayawickrame, the lady who raised us all away from home, took charge. A widow whose two sons were also boarders in the same school and was the last food matron of the school serving from 1960 - 1974.

She was a special lady in school, for her two sons, Eshan and Dasarath, with her four nephews, Eksath, Laknath, Niranjan, and Ravindra Jayawickrame brothers, and S A Perera (SAPA) were also boarders in the school in the 1960 era. Therefore, the school was more like home for her and acted as a mother to all the 350 boys in the boarding. Her accommodation was located in the kitchen area, and she would be up by 5:00 AM and retire for the day after 10:00 PM.

Taking care of the children in Gurutalawa was not a simple undertaking given the political environment in the country during the 50-60 period. The communal unrest that occurred in 1958, as well as elections based on rice rationing, etc. saw the country in an unstable state with respect to food security.   

Every boy who entered the boarding school was required to transfer his rice ration coupons to the school cooperative store. The number of boys in the school enabled the school to have a dedicated school cooperative store and all our rice ration books were registered to this store. There Mrs Jayawickrama was at an advantage in sourcing the staple diet the rice as it came directly to the school from the Multi-Purpose Coop Stores in Welimada.

If Gurutalawa was successful in feeding its students; which was for sure. Then the strategy adopted was “ Hunger Management”, says my friend the late C S Ching.  My friend Dulip de Silva elaborated on this statement to the fact that Ching would say that he was always hungry and never felt full and content after a meal but would only get him out of hunger until the next meal. The portions at Guru then were designed so.

Looking back, you can see that this was partially true. No food was left on our plates, which sometimes looked almost washed and polished. This way there was negligible food squander; however, we would stroll into the following dinner hungry as ever… it was a case of “Hunger Management”  that one could say today.

How did Mrs Jayawickrame manage this herculean task? She was ably supported by an army of cooks and food servers who knew their tasks and understood the temperament of every student.  There was the large cast iron hearth that continued to heat 24/7; fed by two hands that transported coal in deep buckets from its storage. Firewood was also provided when the stock of coal ran out. There was a large kettle on the hearth that provided hot water at any given time and the vessel had its overflow pipe high up over the kitchen roof puffing steam continuously. The servers headed by Manis Appu knew exactly how much to be served to go around with 350 portions. He was an expert in his task and used to say you give me one curried chicken and he would still serve it in 350 portions.

There was a meal plan for the week and sometimes changed for specialities during the month. Sourcing commodities was from Welimada for dry rations and beef which was a principal component in the diet. For this, she would go in the school van with Simon weekly. There would be beef sufficient for the week in the deep freezer while much of the vegetables and the greens would come from the agricultural plots worked out by students and Mr Kularatne assisted by the farm hands. Eggs and milk were fresh from the farm while butter made on the farm was supplemented with a stock of Australian Globe butter that came by train from Colombo every month.  

Breakfast was always five slices of bread that was baked at college initially and was later supplemented by a baker in Boralanda. I can vouch that that was the best bread that I remember having had all these years. There was an inch cube of butter and “pol sambal” served quite lavishly with a soft fried egg sunny side up or both sides fried hard to the choice of the boy. This was chased down with a cup of milk tea. This breakfast was changed twice a week for jam and butter. Again, the jam was homemade with fruits from the orchard but later when the orchard could not cope she did the melon jams with Pumpkin and Ash Gourd (Winter Melon) bought at the Welimada fair. The marmalade she turned out was the best and never had any other taste that good today.

Lunch was always a portion of rice that would just fill us up to the food pipe nothing more. It would consist of two veggies and a beef curry accompanied by a small banana… if they were ripening more quickly than intended. Looking back, we may have got about 250 grams of beef per week and this works out to about 90 kilos of beef per week. That’s a reasonable quantity; prompting that one may have consumed an ox during our five-year stay.

Dinner was again the five slices of bread with a peppery beef stew with carrots and leeks and corn starch in it for thickening. Again, the liquid was just sufficient to blot the five slices of bread for easy gulping. This was followed with sliced ripe banana in a cream custard, blancmange pudding, or a piece of bread pudding with custard.

The monotony in the dinner menu did change monthly either with a feed of “Godhamba” rottie with beef and pol sambal or yeast rottie an equivalent to the Paratha.

But generally, we were quite full before dinner as we usually had a feed of string hoppers or ‘Godhamba’ rottie in the coop store when we pooled our pocket money after sports in the evening just before going to the nightly prep in the classrooms. Therefore, we slept tight in the night with a full stomach.

The extra serving was a thing that never came in as we always queued up for our meals to be served with the portions and when the last person was served a timeline of ten minutes was allowed before the head cop would rind the dinner gong indicating that the meal time was over. We would stand and be silent when the head cop would recite “For what we have had may the Lord's name be praised” … I now feel how unfair it was; for it was  Mrs Jayawickrama who provided for us.  

But I must mention that she too had very hard times when she had to improvise for at times. I remember when the red peppers had an import restriction and the commodity went to hiding in the black market she had to churn the pol sambal with roasted curry powder and that was not palatable at all. There were such tough times that she had to manage the wrath of the staff and the boys as well. Well, we all had to tolerate it until things normalized.

Her routine did change at times during the weekend when around 50 boys would be leaving early morning on hikes in the vicinity. Horton pains, Gonagala Hill climbing,  STPS at Bandarawela, movies in Diyatalawa, etc. For them, she would pack a lunch of half a loaf of bread a hard-boiled egg, and a can of mackerel fish for five boys. This would be based on an exact verbatim done granting permission for the hike by Mr Chapman the Housemaster handed to her and the duty master the previous day. 

This unique era of the food matron came to an end with the school changing in 1974. Mrs. Jayawickrame also retired when her two sons and nephews passed out from college. She was from Moratuwa and I guess she went over to her family in Moratuwa. Amal Perera her other nephew who was a year senior to me did reveal last when I met him at the 2023 Dec reunion that she passed away peacefully a few years back. Eshan my classroom friend and swimming companion later joined Royal College and entered Keleniya University and is currently living in Australia. Dasarath is away in the States.

It was Mano Gnanaraj my first Hayman Dorm Prefect in 1967 who once said during a meetup, “We buggers from Gurutalawa are a healthy lot at our age” and the reason he feels is the climate that we grew up in and, the amount of coconut sambal that we took in daily is doing good to our hearts.  

Googling; Is fresh coconut good for the heart? The bottom line says: that coconut meat is the white flesh of coconuts and is edible fresh or dried. Rich in fibre and Medium Chain Triglycerides (MCT), it may offer benefits, including improved heart health, weight loss, and digestion. Yet, it's high in calories and saturated fat, so you should eat it in moderation.

Thanks to STCG and those like Mrs Jayawickrame who took good care of us we are still “fit as fiddles” even in these late ages.

 

UdithaWijesena