Born in 1905, I spent the first decade of my life in a village in the arid peninsular of Jaffna in northern Ceylon (now known as Sri Lanka).
The widow Nagamuthu married widower Sivasambar in the village of Sandilipay North Jaffna, Ceylon. As a product of this union, I leapt into the world on 20th October, 1905, wide-eyed in a mud walled, windowless, thatched hut, on a mat stretched out on the hard earth floor. I had no birth certificate.
Into the dangerous world I leapt;
Helpless naked, piping loud.
Like a fiend hid in a cloud.
Struggling in my father’s hands,
Striving against my swaddling bands;
Bound and weary I thought it best,
To sulk upon my mother’s breast."
My gentle, illiterate mother raised me in dirt-poor circumstances. Her first husband left her a widow, while her second husband who was my father, abandoned her before I was born. I grew up in a household consisting of my mother, her alcoholic brother (Uncle Shanmugam) and her spiteful and cold mother, Thangamma (my grandmother). A low, windowless, thatched, mud-walled hut with a single mud floored room, was home for Mother and me. This hut stood in a small compound. The compound contained another shed, which was home to my grandmother and her second son, Shanmugam. We rarely had guests. The few who did drop in were elderly people who were terrible gossips who came to visit my grandmother. They sat around her on low wooden stools on the sandy area in front of her hut. Together, they chewed betel and areca nut with a touch of lime and occasionally spurted out red saliva over which they swiped sand with their feet.
How Mother supported herself and me
Mother worked hard to eke out a living for us. She owned two small farms, one of which gave us rice, and the other, vegetables, fruits and yam. She also had a small palmyra estate and a farm that produced corn, grain and sesame seeds that yielded oil. This produce gave my mother an income. She also owned the plot of land where we lived. She had two cows. Mother spent most of the day feeding, grazing and milking her cows and checking on her brother Shanmugam at her two little farms. Shanmugam was likely to get drunk and beat up the workers on the farm.
A hut like this was home.
Mother tended her cows, just like this woman, but she would have dressed differently.
In 2017, great grandson William acquainted himself of the type of well that provided water for Ambi and his mother.
Memories of my very early years
I slept bare bodied beside my mother on a mat spread on the earth floor of our hut. The floor space included a rudimentary fireplace made of three rocks, and on top of it there were several pots and pans and a steel travelling trunk. Sometimes our sleeping place was on the earth platform at the entrance to the hut. That was the most contented time of my existence for I genuinely felt my mother’s love and care. While Mother was at work, a young girl who was a neighbour was my baby sitter, while my grandmother kept a scowling watch over me. She spoke to me only to give me orders or to scold me.
My family were strict vegetarians, and Mother wanted me to be a vegetarian like herself. However, I had no appetite for vegetarian meals. My baby sitter sometimes indulged me with forbidden fish, which she brought from her house.
My memory of those days is of never-ending tension and strife in the house. Quarrels about money were a constant feature. My grandmother and Uncle Shanmugam wanted my mother to give to her brother, the land that she received as dowry at her marriage.
Childhood: practical education in irrigation and planting
I grew up in benign neglect. Mother was at work for most of the day. Accompanying Uncle Shanmugam to the farm, I learnt the basics of rural farming by observation. I admired Uncle who, with the help of two teenage boys or adult Nalavas, irrigated the vegetable and fruit farm, from a deep well. The lever for drawing up water from the well was a very long trunk of a tree pivoting on a cross bar supported by pylons about 20-feet high. A rope attached to the top end of the lever held a large closely woven basket at the lower end. The two men ran adroitly from end-to-end of the lever making the lever dip and send the basket down into the well, then draw it up full of water. Uncle managed the rope attached to the basket and tilted it at the right time to pour the water into a hole in the ground from where the water ran along a channel that branched off into numerous sub-channels to reach the plants. The men on the lever were adroit and fast and kept the flow of water continuous. Another guy with a changkol diverted the water from channel to channel by opening one and damming the other. In my earliest visits, my most memorable moments were wading in the main channel until my uncle shouted at me. I had fun catching butterflies and dragonflies, running after mice, looking at buds gradually turn into flowers and the flowers into pods, beans, or gourds and picking long beans, lady fingers, snake-gourds, chilies and watermelons. I was learning more at the farm than at school.
Later, I learnt to divert the water on my own. That was my first lesson in farming. The second was digging small holes in the ground and putting in young plants. I would have to wait until I was much older to run on the lever to do the actual irrigation.
One nightfall, I was forgotten and left behind by my uncle who had gone away to drink toddy. I was almost scared out of my wits! I groped my way back home in pitch darkness scratched, bruised and shaken to see my uncle lying in his own vomit attended to by my grandmother and mother.
Most children of my age lived with their parents in towns and cities and as such, there were few living nearby. I was extremely lonely. Without toys, picture books or even a ball I would lie under the hood of the bullock cart parked in the shed and brood over why my father abandoned us, why my mother had to work all day and why there were constant quarrels at home.
Old well where a person walks on the wooden pole to draw water.
My birth family.
Ambiavagar’s Birth Family
I knew little about my parents. My mother, Nagamuthu, had two brothers, Sinappoo and Shanmugam. Her first marriage was to Velauthar and she had two sons by him. Both of them as well as Sinappoo migrated to Malaya before I was born. Thus, my mother and I were left in a dysfunctional, strife-ridden household.
My birth father was Sivasambar, but no one mentioned this to me. It was only as I grew older that I began to understand that other children had fathers. Initially, I assumed that my father was dead, but later came to believe that because my mother was uneducated and my father had migrated to Nallur. I was ashamed of him. For many years, this troubled me deeply.
Early education in a Tamil-language school (aged 5 – 8)
I attended the village Tamil school from the age of five to eight. The school was a large shed, devoid of furniture, with pupils ranging from ages five to eleven or twelve and we had only one single teacher. Attired in thin loincloth over a customary samil underwear of a strip of cloth looped from front to back on a string around the waist, I walked to school with a few boys and girls. Boys from affluent homes wore smooth silver chains instead of a string and in addition to the loincloth wore singlets. I had a crude introduction to literacy. Squatting in front of the sand spread before me, I had as a teacher, one of the oldest boys making me repeat a few times after him the first line of the Tamil alphabet he wrote in the sand. Following his demonstration of how to write the first two or three letters, I tried and failed. Telling me to fold all the fingers of my right hand except the index finger, he directed me to imitate his writing of the first letter. After I had made a few vain efforts, he became angry and taking my right hand, rubbed my index finger so hard in the sand that I screamed. The teacher came over and squatting beside me took my hand in his, and guided my index finger several times to form the first letter in the sand and made me repeat it on my own. Then he asked the boy assigned to teach me to follow his example with the next letter. After that, it was smooth going. When I progressed to reading my first book and started doing simple addition and subtraction, the teacher himself often taught me.
At some stage, I, in turn, taught a beginner. Despite my disinterest in learning, I did get some grounding in reading, writing and sums at the village school. Somehow, I paid attention, obeyed instructions and became good at spelling. I used to play with one of the few boys who lived nearby. He was older and attended the bilingual school. His educated mother tutored him. She pitted me against him at spelling and scolded him for not being able to beat me. My self-esteem rose, but the boy’s friendly feeling towards me sank. I had lost a playmate but the indirect praise stuck in my psyche shaking off feelings of inadequacy when, later on, my stepbrother took me on to teach English and told me repeatedly that I was an idiot and applied various means of corporal punishment to cure my stupidity.
The village classroom survived, and Ambi’s daughter and family visited it in 2017
Introduction to education in English (ages 9-10)
At age nine, my uncle enrolled me in a bilingual school (Tamil and English) at Kantharodai. I was an undernourished lad who had to walk more than two miles to school. The road to school was tarred and far too hot and sticky for bare feet. I did not know the short cut to school through the palmyra estates. Therefore, I accompanied other boys. They, however, would not go home directly but wandered around having fun, thereby making my journey home even longer. I found the food in the school canteen too different from the food with which I was familiar. Often I skipped my lunch. On returning home in the hot afternoon sun, I would vomit bile and reach home feeling dizzy.
The school placed me in an age-appropriate class in Year 3. However, I knew no English, whereas my classmates had three years of education in English. I felt like I was a misfit and was frequently punished physically for being stupid. One day, I ran out of the classroom and showed the Principal the blue swelling on my palm. He spoke to my teacher who ignored me totally after that and I learnt almost nothing. After six months, the sum total of my knowledge of English was some monosyllabic words. I found it impossible to read the prescribed books. I had not settled down to learn anything and had no incentive to study.
Lessons of life
Although I learnt little in school, I recall several experiences that provided valuable lessons in life. My mother told me not to play truant, walk in the muddy rice fields near the school or attempt to learn swimming in a nearby pond. One day, responding to a challenge from an older boy I walked across a bare muddy area of the rice field, and began to sink in the mud. My companions laughed at my predicament. I sank down to my waist. I was too proud to cry but I was terribly scared and angry. I asked for help but it was only after my feet touched firm ground did they hold out a stick to me. I was furious and charged at the boy who had challenged me. The others intervened and explained that it was only a joke. They were sure I would not sink to my death; they had played the same prank on others who were ignorant of the quicksand-like mud.
On another occasion, my companions suggested we go to the nearby lake to bathe and tidy ourselves. I agreed, telling myself that I would keep to the shallow part. All the others were some distance away from me where the water was only waist deep. I waded towards them only to sink into very deep water. I did not know that there was a well-like depth for swimmers. One of the boys swam towards me and pulled me out of danger. This was another of their pranks to have fun and at the same time make newcomers aware of dangers. These and other lessons from real-life experiences sank deeper into my mind than lessons from teachers.
Two childhood traumatic incidents that overshadowed my life
Two traumatic experiences overshadow my recollections of my first decade and coloured my life for many years to come. I grew up assuming that my father was dead, and no one told me otherwise. At age six, without any forewarning, Uncle Shanmugam took me to visit a stranger, placed me in his arms, and told me he was my father. I saw that he had a wife and other children in his house. Fearing he was giving me away to a stranger, I screamed and kicked in wild rage and shock. I rejected him violently and my uncle took me home. I did not see this man (my father) again, but spent long hours wondering why he abandoned my mother and me. I was deeply ashamed of him, and later changed my surname to that of my mother’s deceased first husband.
When I was six, my cousin Thuraiappah who was 10 years my senior, briefly came to live with us. I found it easy to communicate with him and talk about what was troubling me. According to him, my grandmother arranged the marriage of my parents between the widow and the widower. He felt that my father probably agreed because he hoped to acquire my mother’s properties. However, after I was born, he was soon disappointed because my mother rightfully refused to transfer her properties to him and did not want to accompany him to Nallur where he could earn a living through trade. Thus, my father left us. Although in later years this explanation appeared plausible to me, it did nothing to remove my feeling of shame and anger against him. As a schoolchild I changed my surname to Velauthar (who was my mother’s late first husband) and dropped the name Sivasambar. As a schoolchild, and later as a young man I did not want to explain to anyone why my father did not live with mother and me. As it turned out no one ever asked after my father.
The other episode was worse – my mother attempted suicide. When I was about 10 years old, I was awakened in the middle of the night to yet another shouting match between my mother, uncle and grandmother. Suddenly, my mother ran out of the house, and, ignoring the pleading of neighbours, flung herself into the well. A schoolteacher from across the road rushed in to rescue her and my uncle tried to prevent him. The neighbours managed to rescue her and carried her home. They laid her down beside me and told me to cuddle up to her, while they tried to warm and comfort her. Because of the episode, she fell ill with pneumonia, and never fully regained her health. My grand-aunt came and looked after her, but even after she was fit to move around she coughed a great deal. No one seems to have suspected that after recovering from pneumonia she contracted tuberculosis (TB).
These incidents left me with a deep-seated feeling of insecurity. Often, right up to recent years, I had a recurring nightmare from which I would awake sweating and trembling. I dreamt that savages captured and tied me upside down to two areca nut palms bent towards each other. I would awaken with a scream just before the palms were released to tear me into two. That nightmare characterised several experiences of survival in my life right up to now.
Uncle Sinnapoo finds a bride
The one bright experience in that period was the wedding of my Uncle Sinappoo, who was Mother’s other brother. He returned from Malaya to find a bride and I was thrilled by the thought of future wedding festivities. His fun-loving nature introduced me to new experiences. He brought biscuits and sweets for me and showered me with affection – even more than my mother. My uncle finally found a bride without any dowry. The wedding ceremony itself was dull except for a fight in the lane. A few guests fought over who released the draught bullocks that had wandered away. The climax of the wedding was grand and exciting, with the bride and groom going off in a horse drawn carriage. This gave me a new experience. My uncle took me a few times to Palai, to visit his in-laws, and thrilled me with his hell-for-leather driving in his racing cart along bumpy lanes. On one visit, I fell asleep. The bridegroom forgot about me and thought I had gone back home with the bride. Later, someone asked who I was and arranged to send me home.
A new influence enters my life: my half-brother Kumarasingam
When I was 11 years old, my half-brother Kumarasingam returned from Malaya to find a bride. During the visit, he realised my mother was very ill and unable to cope with life. He decided to take her back when he returned to Malaya, and consequently had to take me too, against both his desires and mine. He installed himself as my mentor and guardian and used brutal methods to “bring me up to speed” to be able to cope with school in Malaya. He was a stern man, given to bouts of violence, had only a limited education, and had no idea of how to teach.
He obtained a Standard 3 reader and cut a stick from the hedge. He opened the book at the first page and asked me to read. I looked for monosyllabic words and read them. He snatched away the book, read some sentences and asked me to read. I stumbled and mumbled. He picked up the stick. Giving me a few whacks, he read the sentences to me and told me to read. I was already trembling with fear and could not read at all. He stood up in a fury, kicked and sent me sprawling. My mother rushed in and told him not to beat me. He pushed me out of the room and told her that he could not take me to Malaya for an English education.
A few days later, noticing how ill my mother was, he realised she would be unable to work and support me. He knew she would refuse to leave me behind and go to Malaya with him. He started to teach me again but could not control his frustration and anger at my poor response. The beating and kicking resumed. My mother feeling helpless, would go away from the house and return later. He had no idea that it was useless expecting me to master the third reader when I had not learnt the first two. He resorted to worse means of punishing me. Torrential rain caused streams of black ants, looking for shelter, to come with majestic nonchalance across the floor of his room to an under-ground shelter at the base of the further wall. My brother made me stand on one of the columns. The ants asserted their imperial right to their road, with weapons against which even elephants, lions and tigers are helpless! I could not run away, his menacing strong hands held me down. I pulled up my legs but he pushed my bottom down to the floor where their sting was most unbearable. My shouts for help brought no one. My mother was not at home.
When my brother reached agreement on a dowry and a suitable bride, the wedding day arrived. As the only brother of his who was available, I became his best man. I received a gold ring for pouring water over his feet! I never cared for the ring and do not know what happened to it.
In retrospect, I learnt little at school in Jaffna. My education was more about life as a rural youngster, and I derived this by associating with boys who played truant. My mother viewed these episodes with gentle amusement and resignation, and knew nothing about the deficiencies in my formal education. I guess, I was lucky that my elder half-brother was the guardian who assumed the responsibility for me. Otherwise, I would have been thrown upon the world as a beggar, or thrust upon my alcoholic Uncle Shanmugam.