Prabir: Our Mother

Our mother was born in Colombo. Her own mother was born Elizabeth Muttiah in Pandatherripu in the north of the island. And her grandfather Muttiah retired as Head Clerk in Anuradhapura Government Kacheri. My mother's grandmother (Anna Annamma Muttiah nee' Seenivasagam) taught Tamil at Ladies College Colombo, where my mother went to school. The old lady was also the Aachi (grandmother) of the Radio Ceylon Tamil Children's Programme. Though my mother was called Olive by all her relations and most of her friends, she decided to switch the order of her names in school because there was another Olive in her class and so she became Gregoryne Olivemalar instead of O.G. Philips.

At around the age of 12 my mother was balancing (possibly on a desk) and fell off and broke her elbow. She took up Elocution at Wendy Whatmore's School of Spoken English after school hours and won a prize in a competition run by Young Men's Buddhist association. She got a prize- a copy of Edwin Arnold's "Light of Asia". Ladies College was upset and she got told off for taking part and reciting a Buddhist piece. After completing school my mother joined Eileen Hemple (Aunty Lilo to us) at the Wendy Whatmore School and they became Vice Principals there.

My mother also travelled to Catholic schools in the Kandy Hills and taught Elocution there. She had a driving licence herself, but also had an accompanying driver. My grandfather (mother's father Joseph Anthony Philips) was born Catholic, but got excommunicated automatically in those days for marrying a Protestant. This was solved when his wife and daughters become Catholic (when my mother was a teenager), due to encouragement from an aunt who had converted in Bombay. Curiously, Aunty Mummy's (since she was my mother's aunt and her cousin's mother) husband was Methodist and I think her son remained Anglican!

My mother was involved with Young Christian Workers movement at the time. Later she went to England and started training as a nurse. To support her expenses she did a part time job behind the counter at a pub. Some Indian students who met her there called her to weekend parties. At one of these (some time after completing first year) she heard a recent Joan Baez song being played and asked whose record it was. It turned out that a specsy dental surgeon with prominent front teeth owned all the records being played. she struck up a conversation with him and found at that his name was Jayanta which sounded very Sinhalese. 6 months later they got married and moved to Birmingham, where my father had his pracice.

My mother was also an avid Girl Guider and started a Bulbul Pack when teaching at at Carmel School (Deshapriya Park, Kolkata) many years later.