Colombo, Here I Come!

In 1957, the country was called Ceylon. When I heard from my family that I was going to get married to this man from Ceylon, my first thought was, what do we know about him? His job, his degree, his salary, my family had investigated all that – as to the man himself, zilch. I had seen him once, when he came for the ‘seeing’. He was quiet, didn’t speak to me, and kept his head down. For us middle-class girls, there was only one way of getting out of affectionate incarceration in the family home – marriage. I had graduated three years ago, was not allowed to work, did not meet men. Many of us escaped through marriage. It was a lottery. My mother-in-law was the familiar mistress of my new home in Colombo; my father-in-law was quite ga-ga at the age of eighty-three, and they lived in this enormous half-empty, house in a posh part of Ceylon, near Colpetty. The bed-rooms were the size of throw-ball courts and the kitchen was ruled over by a young Tamil girl called Pakyam, who did not want me anywhere near her territory. My kind sister-in-law, Kamala, lived a five-minute walk away, and made a concerted effort to take me around, generally introduce me to the Colombo-7 posh set, to which she belonged. I wore whatever came to hand from my small suitcase. I washed my knee-length hair every morning as Malayalee girls did, put Cuticura powder on my face, and a red pottu on my forehead. Eye make-up was the ‘Mayyi’ made for me by my maternal grandmother, mixing clean soot off a new mud-pot in gingelly oil. On my first Saturday in Colombo, Kamala decided to take me to the Eighty club, where all the socialites met to compare clothes, jewellery and circulate gossip. When she came to pick me up, I was already dressed and waiting. White cotton sari and a green blouse. Kamala looked at me, up and down. 'Haven’t you got any silks?' she asked me. I opened my suitcase. She prodded and put everything back, except one of my three silk sarees. She didn’t look happy. I knew I had been found wanting. She came again the next Saturday (full marks for effort) and invited me to dinner at her best friend’s home. Kamala’s husband was an imposing man, and I looked forward to a whole evening in his company. We generally enjoyed talking politics, Indian and Ceylonese. He had occupied slots in the higher echelons of Ceylon Government and had interesting stories to tell. And an infectious laugh. He was also tall and handsome, which was a bonus. This time, Kamala insisted my blouse did not match my sari and fretted till she found one that got close. The next time she invited me, I begged off. This was all beyond me.