CEYLONESE CHILDHOOD

The first chapter excerpt from Pride without Prejudice.

I may have been a child living in Ceylon, but it didn’t really feel like I was living there. Because from my earliest years, I had always known I was coming to Australia.

In Ceylon (which has been Sri Lanka since 1972), my mother drummed into me and my elder brothers, Errol and Sandy, that one day we would be living in Australia. The nation was so much on my mind as a child that I often tell people today that I was an Australian long before I set foot in the country!

There were huge advertisements in the newspapers, reading, “Australia: The Land of Milk and Honey” and “Australia Wants You!” Whether those ads were entirely true is open to question: to get to Australia, you had to pass the tests of the White Australia Policy. Australia wanted you, yes, but only if Australia was confident you would assimilate.

The knowledge that I would one day be living in Australia changed my whole childhood. Everything I did and said was based on what I saw as my future life in a land Down Under, which offered so many possibilities and opportunities for me.

Instead of continuing with my Sinhalese classes, which were compulsory for all students, I managed to get permission to do elocution classes instead. I wanted to learn ‘how to be’ in a way that would suit my new country. In this, I took my cues from Tazma, a wealthy auntie who I used to love being around. Unlike my mother, she held dinner parties and had a busy social scene happening at her house. I wanted to be elegant like her.

That’s because my home life wasn’t everything I’d have liked it to be. After moving to Australia, I would be crowned Miss Universe Australia,

head my own highly successful public relations firm for more than 30 years and be a hard-working and passionate City of Melbourne Councillor.

Not bad for a poor immigrant girl from Ceylon who grew up in a family of seven, sharing a two-bedroom rental house that was no

more than an annexe in a large building. I was the only girl among five children; I arrived after Errol and Sandy, and was followed by Durand and Dillon. My parents saw nothing special about me. In our culture in those days, sons were more important, more valued, than daughters.

However, the male doctor who delivered me did see something special when I was born Beverley de Zylva on 14 July, 1955.

“You have a beautiful baby girl,” he told my mother. “She will become a princess when she grows up.”

His words became my dream: I visualised a crown made out of crystals and diamantes that I’d wear, the shiny crown of a princess. That was probably the last thing my Catholic parents, Olga and Irving de Zylva, thought was possible for me. The fact my dream came true in a new and strange country shows how things do actually work out, despite so many obstacles which could have held me back.

***

My mother and father were Dutch Burghers, a minority race in Ceylon, where nearly 75 per cent of the population was Sinhalese. The Dutch ruled Ceylon from 1656 to 1796, but the Portuguese, who had previously colonised the island, withstood the invaders’ siege for nearly 60 years. Despite this, the Dutch propagated colonies of Dutch citizens dubbed ‘Burghers’.

In the first 30 years of Dutch rule, the Burgher population never exceeded 500 people. Mainly employed as civil servants in the Dutch East India Company, they were given liberal grants of land, with the right of free trade, and were the only people allowed to own and run shops. In 1907, the Dutch Burgher community founded the Dutch Burgher Union of Ceylon, which still exists today. When I was eight years old, there were approximately 46,000 Dutch Burghers, making up less than half a percent of the population.

Incidentally, around 10,000 Burghers emigrated to Australia from the 1950s to 1972. Burghers continue to make a huge impact in Sri Lanka even to this day, always punching above their weight. Chief Justice of Ceylon, Sir Richard Ottley, legally defined the Burghers in 1883. They have European surnames and you find them in all walks of life. Although many were forced to study in Sinhalese once the short-sighted government abolished the English streams in schools in the ‘70s, Burghers continued to speak English at home. The 2012 Census recorded some 37,000 Burghers living in Sri Lanka – less than one fifth of 1% of the population. Nonetheless, they remain prominent in the top ranks of many professions, including politics, entertainment (most Burgher families will have at least one musical instrument at home), sports, education, literature, the arts and journalism. They tend to get along well with all nationalities.

Despite our Burgher status, our family didn’t enjoy much wealth or privilege. In 1961, when I was six, we were living in a small house when we were evicted from a rental lease that had just started. Someone had done a deal with my mother and an auntie so that our family could get the lease, but the lease didn’t last long. The owner decided we couldn’t be relied on to pay the rent, because my father was a drunk (which, unfortunately, he was). He sent four big, tough Sinhalese men to evict us and they tried to attack my father. I hid in the wardrobe for what must have been half an hour, maybe longer.

We all ended up on the footpath. And that’s where I thought we were going to live.

Ceylon had a temperate climate so that was what a lot of beggars did, many of them amputees. But instead, we found ourselves couch-surfing for several months. We got to stay at my mother’s uncle’s place. They had a rather big home, but they had several kids. Our family got one large room, in which there were a bed and some couches.

Mum’s uncle was really good to us, as was her brother who came to visit us and help us out. I’ve always made a point, as an auntie, to be generous and kind to my nieces and nephews, and I learned that from mum’s relatives. I also learnt then the importance of food – because it was so scarce! When I later went to school, I was known to share my food at lunchtimes, both because I wanted kids to taste my mum’s cooking and because I had learnt to share so well during this period of my life.

Mum was keen to find a proper home for our family, and luckily, she did, before the months of couch-surfing became years. She was always the explorer, finding out what our next steps ought to be – and this led her to a two-bedroom annexe on a larger dwelling in Pamankada, a district overcrowded with sub-standard housing. Our house was one of the few made of brick, and even had a tiled roof, but it was still dilapidated in sections and had seen better days. However, my mother was a scrupulously tidy person, and always made sure it was clean and liveable.

The whole experience helped develop an empathetic streak in me for people experiencing homelessness, and it led me to also have a deep understanding of how circumstances can change so dramatically for kids and families.

We experienced some economic hard times, but my mother made sure the family was well cared for and there was always a meal on the table.

Boiled rice was our staple, occasionally with lentils, which the locals called dhal, made as a curry and accompanied by finely-chopped green leaf salad or malung. I can still smell it! Sometimes, however, times were even tougher, and there was no money to buy extras such as meat, fish or vegetables. That’s when we ate plain fluffy rice with a touch of salt water to taste and grated coconut. Still, no one complained; we were grateful not to go hungry, as others did.

My father was a senior train driver for the Ceylon Government Railway. Train drivers were well respected in Ceylon, and many of them were Burghers who lived in designated railway housing areas like Mount Mary. My father was seldom home because of his extended shifts driving long distances on the upcountry line to Nanu Oya and Nuwara Eliya, and along the south coast to Matara. When he came home after being away for many days, he was irritable and sought solace in alcohol, usually an intoxicating spirit called arrack, which most Sri Lankan train drivers drank in those days. Distilled from coconut, arrack could be up to 50 per cent alcohol. And, while it wasn’t cheap, it was much cheaper than the whisky, brandy, gin and rum imported for the upper classes.

While in his inebriated stupor, he often became violent to us. When he returned from days of work, he would inevitably be drunk – and have very little or no money. Not just because he’d spent it on alcohol, but also because he’d given it away to people who he thought needed it more than him, or he’d been so drunk he was pick-pocketed. Arguments would

ensue with mum and, after they’d been together in bed, too often it ended up with him beating her. So, despite my father having a good job, we lived below the poverty line.

I knew he was hitting mum, but the boys were always playing outside and I think only my second eldest brother, Sandy, knew mum was being bashed. As a child, I didn’t understand why it was happening. Obviously, there were fights over money. Later, after my father died of a brain tumour when he was 53, I realised that would have been growing in him for a long time, probably affecting his moods and behaviour.

I know that when he was on his deathbed and mum was looking after him, he would suddenly throw plates of food without warning. But, when he and mum were younger, there were also fights because my mother had a jealous streak. My father was a very handsome man and, despite being a violent drunk, he was a charmer. That’s a heady mix – and a recipe for a volatile relationship, to say the least.

Sri Lankans love to dance in big halls with big bands. If a woman who had her eyes on dad came up to him and said, “Come on, Irving, let’s have a dance”, he would. When we got home that night, mum would be like a firebrand. She was possessive and would go to great lengths to show that my father was hers. And then the violence would start at home after a dance.

The same battles followed us when we later moved to Australia. There was a gorgeous redhead called Edith next-door to us when we lived in St Kilda. My father would go down to the courtyard and have a beer with her to, in his words, connect with “the life and the people”. He would come back and mum would be jealous and there would be blue murder. I could never see anything wrong with it, but mum used to get jealous. That was no excuse for his violence, but it didn’t help the situation. I’ve worked hard in my life to avoid letting jealousy control my actions.

My father also beat his children, and I think my eldest brother, Errol, suffered the most. I probably copped the least of his violence. I kind of looked like dad a bit, so I think he associated me with his family more than he did my brothers, there was more of a familial bond. He would shake me and, once, he lifted me off the ground by my ponytail; he thought I was responsible for Sandy falling over and cutting himself.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” he shouted, but I couldn’t say “Because at that same time you were busy bashing mum!”

This violence continued throughout our family life. I remember wanting to run away from home when I was about 16, but I couldn’t go through with it. Mum was always saying she was going to run away, but she never did. Still, it was destabilising for me to keep hearing her say it.

Especially when we were in Ceylon, a man beating a woman didn’t have that much of an impact on me in a purely social sense. Women were relegated anyway, we lived in a male-dominated household, and I think I grew up thinking this was natural, the way things were. But I also knew that my aunt and uncle – my mother’s older sister and brother – didn’t have physical violence happening in their households. I spent time with my auntie, and it didn’t happen there. Going on holidays to her place was like a gift from God; I couldn’t wait, it was a different way of life.

I know family violence’s ramifications on my life have been deep and hurt me very much. I can feel diminished in certain settings and it has made me feisty around volatile situations. I can be misconstrued as having tantrums, and I think family violence also creates in a person a deep sense of how unjust life can be. Clearly, my mental health suffered as a child and that has continued through the rest of my life.

I have seen a psychologist for a long time, but I stop when I feel on top of the world. Then suddenly something will come crashing down on me and I regress. But I have always believed in having that professional expertise to help me pause and have that chat to get stabilised. It’s very

hard to talk openly about it and even now to write about it. But I know it’s vital to seek professional advice for mental health issues.

I don’t subscribe to Buddhism, but I do subscribe to the principle of detachment. Not being too attached to anything, and not even anyone. So, in a way, I learnt to see everything as dispensable. I think that’s why later in life I started my own business; I didn’t want to be dispensable.

And that’s probably where my controlling behaviours started as well; I needed to know, I needed surety.

I’m so glad that in my life, in my step-parenting, I have been able to be a positive influence. And I think seeing my aunties and uncles model a different way of life really helped me.

***

As well as physical abuse, my father would also pick on everyone’s minor errors and omissions and give us a tongue lashing. I remember my brother Sandy copping it after my father found he’d shown more than a passing interest in our Sinhalese neighbour’s daughter.

“We are Burghers and we must not mingle with other races in affairs of the heart!” he growled. “Besides, you are only 14 years old and shouldn’t be thinking of girlfriends. When you are old enough, you should be seeing Burgher girls because you will be marrying one of your own kind. Not a Sinhalese, Tamil or a woman from any other race.”

When Sandy started protesting, my father drowned him out with a guttural, “Shut up!” Sandy knew what would happen if he didn’t, so he promptly obeyed.

All this violence came, however, from a man I found several times engrossed in Sandy’s cowboy comics. He seemed just a simple child in those moments, and not someone who could be so violent to us all. And certainly not someone who, as he claimed one day, could kill someone.

***

My father came home one Saturday morning after working a shift to Kandy. He was preoccupied and distant when he walked in, throwing his Gladstone bag on the dining table. We children kept our distance, as usual, while our mother spoke to him, trying to calm him. He ignored my mother’s entreaties, sank into the sofa and didn’t speak for a few minutes. Then his words hit us like a thunderbolt.

“I killed a man yesterday,” he muttered.

Our mother gasped and shooed us away to our bedrooms. My father a murderer? I thought as Sandy dragged me away. And, although

we were in our bedrooms, we trained our ears to gather bits of our parents’ conversation.

“But why, how, Irving?” my mother asked animatedly. “Why did you do such a thing?”

“He jumped in front of my bloody train just after I’d negotiated the difficult Kaduganawa climb.”

Our mother sighed with relief. “So, it was an accident . . . you didn’t physically kill the man?”

“No, I am not a murderer, but I still killed him. The damn fool thought he could make it across the tracks before my train reached him,” he said, sounding somewhat relieved. “It was a long train. I simply didn’t have enough time to stop it.”

My father muttered that the man had been a modaya, which is Sinhalese for “fool”. Then he went on to spill the gory details.

“He was decapitated – the head severed from the neck and one of his arms must have flung into the dense growth lining the track. I told Piyadasa, my fireman, to take the dead man’s head down to the nearby

village to try and have it identified. The fool picked up the bloodied head by the hair and walked straight to the small village, swinging it as if he was carrying a shopping bag! When the ignorant villagers saw him with the dead man’s head, they screamed and fled as if they’d seen a ghost.”

I shuddered as I heard all this; it was so vivid that it felt as if it were happening in my bedroom. I opened my door just a little and chanced a peek at my parents.

“I need a bloody drink,” my father said, and he reached for his arrack. “That was my first accident in 25 years, and it happened to be an idiot who didn’t seem to give a damn about his life,” he said, gulping the drink and pouring another. My mother shrugged her shoulders in disgust at his drinking and went about her daily chores.

I can’t help thinking how much that incident must have affected my father, what it did to his soul.

***

With an often absent, distant, intoxicated and abusive father – and brothers into cricket, rugby and cycling – I felt isolated, a girl not welcome in a boys’ domain and their rough sports. So I decided to turn my isolation into taking on a protective role; I would watch over my brothers and make sure they didn’t fall over. I developed a strong sense of responsibility for my family, a kind of maternal instinct.

My elder brothers, Errol and Sandy, were doing exceptionally well at St Peter’s College. Errol was showing his athletic prowess, excelling in sprints and long jump, while Sandy carried the family’s honour with his academic brilliance. We made many trips to St Peter’s College to attend Sandy’s award ceremonies, applauding him as he walked up onto the stage to claim prize after prize. It got so that I was able to sing his college anthem off by heart!

Mum made sure Errol had the best serves of food at mealtimes, so that he would be in peak condition for his athletic events. Occasionally, there was a total of two soft-boiled eggs for us children for breakfast, and Errol had one of them. Even then, I was only allowed the white while the boys shared the yolk.

While my brothers were favoured, as I grew they took a greater interest in me. Where once I had seen myself as their protector, they started to become protective of me. My safety became their top priority; I was never allowed to leave the house and go to the shops alone – one of my brothers would always accompany me. As a result, I seldom mixed with the Sinhalese people and actually didn’t speak any Sinhalese. So, when I started school, I was in for a shock when I saw how some people reacted to me.

***

When I turned five, my parents sent me to the strict but popular St Lawrence’s Girls’ Catholic school in Wellawatte. The school, which

used to be co-ed, became girls-only in the ‘60s. It was wedged between a collection of shops lining the main highway, Galle Road. Wellawatte had a high population of Tamil people, and Tamils and Muslims owned nearly all the shops.

My mother took great pride in dressing me in good clothes. My white school uniforms were neatly ironed and I enjoyed the attention that people paid me. I usually travelled to school with my brothers because St Peter’s College was only a mile up the main road from my school. But one day my brothers left early for school and I had to take the bus alone.

Most Sinhalese, Tamils and Muslims had darker complexions and, while I was waiting for the bus to arrive, I noticed a man with a dark complexion staring at me. He was muttering under his breath in Sinhalese and the only word I understood was suddhi, a mildly derogatory term for women with the light skin tone I had. I ignored

him, but for some reason he continued to swear at me. Then he walked past and suddenly spat something utterly vile at me. He must have been chewing a betel nut, a common sight in the country, because his spit splattered my clean white uniform into an ugly red. Moments later, his bus arrived and he boarded it. I was in tears because my beautiful uniform was ruined. To make it worse, this unknown man even gave me a mocking grin as he swung up onto the footboard of the crowded vehicle and made more rude signs at me.

I dashed home in fear, messed up and feeling terrible that, just because I had a different skin colour, I could be treated so horribly.

It was definitely better to walk to school with my brothers because, when I was a few years older, I had another bad experience riding the bus to school.

I always had a fear of Buddhist priests. It could have been a kind of religious bias because it was the ‘60s; religious tolerance wasn’t a very well understood concept, and I went to a Catholic school. It could also have simply been because they were older men and, due to what was happening at home with my father, I was developing something of a fear of men.

The Buddhist priests in their saffron robes rode the bus with everyone else – and I mean everyone else! This was more than 60 years ago and the buses were completely chock-a-block. This day, I was standing and was thrown around a bit as the speeding bus swerved and a Buddhist priest, about 35 years old, caught hold of my waist and put me on his lap. At first, I felt safe because someone was hanging onto me, though I began to feel more uncomfortable and, when I got home that night, I told mum I was a bit scared on the bus because it was very jerky and swirly. I told her a Buddhist priest helped me, but it was very uncomfortable because he had his walking stick underneath me. The priests used to carry staffs, so I suppose that was why I presumed that what I’d felt was his staff. Mum just brushed me off, as mum always did, and that was the end of it. But I knew something wasn’t right.

From that day, unfortunately, if I see a Buddhist priest coming, I walk the other way – and I can’t look at the saffron colour. And I wonder about the experience from that priest’s perspective. He would have known I was Catholic; I had my tie on and was dressed in white. Was it a special thrill for him, a Catholic girl on his lap? Or was it something he could do without fear because of the respect the robe gave him?

What this harrowing experience did was help me develop a very handy ‘antenna’ to keep me safe from those who could harm me, sexually or otherwise. I was always aware of men looking at me as a child and teenager, and I kept an emotional distance; I found a way to detour in my mind. I became very good at that. I had no other experiences like the one with the priest, so I think that antenna was a very good thing to develop when I did.

***

While my lighter skin tone sometimes meant I was attacked or hassled on the streets, it was fortunately very different at school. Mother Eleanor, the Principal, made me and my friend Romany Jansen her favourites – she was always calling upon us to do special tasks.

She also regarded us as two of the smartest kids in the school.

I excelled in maths, English and elocution, and I was also good at netball and dancing. I finished my classwork quickly, then asked around if anyone needed help. Sometimes, I would hold my work up for those behind me to copy because I wanted everyone in the class to do as well as I did!

If you surveyed 40 of us today from that class, everyone would say we didn’t have much money. But I know our family’s circumstances were very different due to the family violence we regularly endured, in a male- dominated household where poor mum was constantly striving to put food on the table.

Reflecting on my mother’s life, I marvel at her endurance. When she was 13, mum was almost on her deathbed with rheumatic fever. Having survived that, she enlisted in the Navy at 15. She never had it easy before

marrying Irving when she was 21. And from then on, she was forever working hard as a wife and mother. She was 31 when she gave birth to her fifth child.

Perhaps I was inspired by her example, I always worked hard at school. I was a terrific reader of Ceylon’s mother tongue, Sinhalese, but I preferred to do elocution and, because I was one of Mother Eleanor’s favourites, I didn’t have to pay much attention to studying or speaking

Sinhalese. During elocution class, I was called up to show others the finer points of enunciation and presentation. Many of my classmates marvelled at my memory and how good I was at remembering detail. It’s a skill I feel I’ve retained to this day.

I helped several girls who had difficulty learning English. To my good friend Marina Fredricks, I said, “Don’t worry, I will look after you.” I had this inner resolve, a feeling I could withstand things for her and help her overcome whatever opposition she faced. Tenacity and resilience were building in me, making me seem fearless.

And I had to be – when puberty came along.

I recently helped Marina with the courage she needed when she cared for her husband (also a good friend) as the debilitating Lewy Bodies disease took him away from us and into God’s arms.