by Tissa Devendra
Are you Buddhists?" asked the old lady who had advertised her house in Nuwara Eliya for rent. 'Yes' we admitted with some nervousness as her hall bristled with many objects and pictures proclaiming her Christian piety. "Then you'll be very happy with the curtains" she said. We were so overjoyed by her acceptance as tenants that we did not try to work out what she meant.

House-hunting
We were newly married and looking for a place in Nuwara Eliya to set up house. Chasing a classified Ad we located Mrs. Bimgoda down a gloomy pathway lined with uncut grass, untrimmed shrubs, shadowed by dark old trees - an unlikely cul-de-sac off up-market Ward Place. The house was old, sprawling and decrepit. An old car under the porch was being repaired by a blue-eyed man in greasy clothes who gestured us in with a wave of his oil-stained hand. Mrs. Bimgoda emerged from the inner darkness and invited us into her dimly lit parlour.

She was a tall and elegant lady in Kandyan saree. Her carefully groomed hair was all white but her face yet bore the remains of youthful beauty. The parlour walls, side tables and what-nots were crowded with formal old group photographs in elaborate frames.

On an easel there stood her wedding picture, every inch the radiant Kandyan bride, with her groom pauchy in Nilame's garb and a luxuriant moustache. We soon learnt that Mr. Bimgoda had passed away many years ago. In his heyday he had been a Rate Mahatmaya (RM) who helds way in the Kandyan Provinces.

The group photographs commemorated official farewells to the Bimgodas flanked by a cohort of Village Headmen in Bandoliers; or to white topeed British Government Agents and their memsahibs, flanked by R. M. Bimgoda and his peers in Kandyan garb, all sporting bushy moustaches and/or flourishing sideburns.

Mrs. Bimgoda was every inch the lady in our business palaver. The deal was briskly concluded on the usual N'Eliya terms. During "The Season" we were to move into the little annexe leaving the main house free for holiday makers from Colombo who paid handsomely for this toe-hold in the hills. As our new landlady accompanied us to the verandah she gestured towards the pathetic piles of old clothes and shyly said "You may find these useful. It does get chilly up there!" We mumbled our regrets and made a quick getaway.

No. 3 Buttercup Drive
Driving into N'Eliya my wife was enthralled by the green sward of the golf links, the soughing of the wind in the fir trees, the scent of pine resin and the quaint houses with gables and bay-windows. What a place to start a new life! Her enthusiasm rapidly petered out when we came to No. 3 Buttercup Drive whose tenants we had become.

It was a long narrow house with a red 'takaran' roof. No paint brush had touched its walls for many years. No holly hocks, lilies, roses or buttercups brightened the garden. Instead leeks, carrots and radishes sprouted from the black soil of carefully tended beds. Far down the garden stood a shabby little hut of planks with its fragile roof weighted with rocks and tyres against the howling winds of monsoon months.

A squat and weather-beaten old lady emerged from its low doorway, bundled in several layers of moth eaten woollen garments, a muffler tightly wound round her ears. She was the caretaker. She squinted at our letter of authority laboriously scrawled by Mrs. Bimgoda and satisfied herself of our bona-fides. A key was extracted from the inner recesses of her garments and she ushered us into our new home.

My wife stepped across the threshold with a longing backward look at the gnarled old peach tree laden with fruit that stood at our doorstep. Alas! It was forbidden fruit in terms of our tenancy.

The Buddhist curtains
Our house was no pseudo-Tudor cottage with mullioned windows and a fire place for pine logs. It was instead, a purpose built dormitory. A central corridor, with bed rooms on either side, led from living room to dining room. Every door and window had curtains, all sagging sadly from old twine strung from nail to nail.

One look at the curtains and we understood the significance of Mrs. Bimgoda's question about our religion. They were printed all over with pictures of a Japanese Buddha! Buddhas galore - printed right side up, upside down and any old way, interspersed with parasols, Fujiyama and cherry blossoms! Obviously produced by Japanese in the immediate post-war years for sale to Buddhist in South and South East Asia - whose consumer 'tastes' had never been properly researched.

We were horror - struck by Mrs. Bimgoda's unwitting sacrilege and rapidly took down all her valued curtains, storing them for re-hanging when holiday makers took over from us. The doors and windows where our 'Buddhist curtains' once hung were now draped with an unmatching medley of hangings extracted post-haste from parental homes.

As the months went by we adjusted to our new life in N'Eliya. The house in Buttercup Drive turned out to be quite cosy in spite of its shabby exterior and tatty furniture. The tough - seeming caretaker was a sweet old thing who took my wife under her wing. She commandeered the kitchen and proved herself a superb cook although encumbered by a snotty little grandson clinging to her knees, cocooned in layers of grimy sweaters reminiscent of the street urchins of Dickensian London.

On our occasional forays to Colombo we always paid a courtesy call on Mrs. Bimgoda. Every time we visited her the same mechanic was around puttering with yet another old car. We presumed him to be a lodger in outer room and never gave him much thought.

The arrival of John Smith
Came 'The Season'. We hurriedly removed our own hangings and restrung the 'Buddhist curtains' just as they had always been. Our temporary residence was little annexe. We adjusted to the loud cheeriness and high jinks of the holiday-makers in the main house and took stock of our new 'home' .We were fascinated.

It was a microcosm of a bygone era, cramped with quaintly carved furniture upholstered in now-tattered velvet and numerous framed photographs documenting the life and times of the Bimgodas. These were informal and far different from the formal group photographs exhibited in Mrs. Bimgoda's drawingroom in Ward Place. We were both interested and intrigued trying to work out who was who - and never quite succeeded.

Mrs. Bimgoda had been a stunningly beautiful bride in her wedding portrait. R. M. Bimgoda had been quite a bit older than her, paunchy and stolid but looking as leased as Punch to have married such a beauty. They had been photographed at the Nuwara Eliya races, the Flower Show, Hakagala Gardens and at the Governor's reception at Queen's Cottage. A fascinating window into colonial Ceylon.

There were also a few much older pictures which made us doubt Mrs. Bimgoda's Kandyan origins. One was of a solemn little baby girl seated on the lap of her mother who was dressed in a long dress with puffed sleeves with the father standing behind in a sherwani buttoned all the way. Another was of this girl, now older, in her confirmation dress on the steps of St. Lucia's Cathedral, Kotahena. Could this be of our landlady in her childhood? Who had she been?

But what really puzzled us were the host of pictures of the Bimgodas with a distinctly European looking baby boy whose steady progress had been lovingly preserved in these photographs. In the earliest photograph a tubby little boy, about one year old, uneasily clutched the hands of the two Bimgodas. Behind them we could discern, partly obscured, the building and signboard of a well-known orphanage for 'Eurasian' babies, poor little unwanted children of white planters who had fathered them on 'native' women.

It was obvious that the childless Bimgodas had formally adopted one of these bonny blue eyed babies. His growing up was faithfully recorded - playing with dogs and servant boy; first day at school in cap, boots and satchel; in Boy Scout uniform and finally in the rugger team of a famous school in Kandy. At last we found his name - on a class prize certificate for 'Handicraft'. It was John Smith.

Clearly the Bim-godas in colonial Ceylon had been bucked no end to adopt a blue eyed 'European' boy. So we thought at the time. I wondered where he now was. My wife, claimed to see a faint resemblance between the teenage rugger player and the blue eyed mechanic always puttering around cars in Mrs. Bimgoda's garden. I pooh-poohed her as I could not believe that such a lovingly nurtured boy could sink that far.

Historical research
My parents joined the holiday trek up country to stay with us, incidentally checking out the domestic competence of their new daughter-in-law. They were fascinated by our cramped little annexe awash with mementoes of the Bimgodas. As a scholar of bygone ages father scrutinised the photographs to identify the various notables from their locales and the buildings in the background. Mother was taken up with observing the dated women's fashions pictured, of the good ladies of R.M's, Disawas and Mudaliyars as well of Colonial memsahibs, wives of Govt. Agents, Police Superintendents and the like.

After the mandatory evening stroll along pine scented walks and a slap-up dinner we sat around huddled in Mrs. Bimgoda's cosily padded armchairs comfortably chatting away. As she examined the photographs mother gave a delighted shriek of recognition. 'Daddy, isn't this the famous ivy Rodrigo?' We looked over her shoulder at a studio portrait of a young and stunningly beautiful Mrs. Bimgoda, not in Kandyan saree but in a long and elegant frock. After a careful scrutiny father agreed with the identification. "It's Ivy all right, around the time of her great escapade."

Burning with curiosity we clamoured for an explanation. We just could not imagine our decorous and dignified landlady being involved in an adventure of any sort. But we soon learnt that things are never what an adventure of any sort. But we soon learnt that things are never what they seem. After some gentle persuasion mother told the story of what had been dabbed the 'scandal of the Century' in colonial Ceylon.

The scandal
Ivy Alles had been the beautiful daughter of a prosperous liquor wholesaler in Kotahena. Her sumptuous wedding at St. Lucia's Cathedral to the eminent physician Dr. Tony Rodrigo filled many columns of the 'Morning Leader'. Soon after his marriage Dr. Rodrigo received the accolade of being appointed Physician-in Attendance to HE the Governor of Ceylon.

The Rodrigos were honoured by an invitation to the Governor's levee at Queen's house to honour the King's Birthday. The 'creme de la creme' of colonial society was there in full panoply puffed with loyal pride. This crowd of 'native gently' was unobtrusively managed by a handful of British ADC's - Public School youths of good pedigree and impeccable manners.

Tallest and most handsome of this cohort was Roland Smythe. As his blue eyes met Ivy Rodrigo's black eyes across the crowded lawn there flared the lightning of true passion. They stood next to each other, entranced and almost speechless, while voices chattered and cutlery clattered around them. Their fates was sealed.

Assignations were far from easy in staid Colombo. 'Society' was a tight little circle. They could not meet in either of Colombo's two hotels or sole Tea Room (as cafes were then called). However, the lovers did manage to meet, though nobody yet knows how. But an inter-racial romance, adulterous to boot, just could not be concealed for long. Sly observations led to whispers, whispers led inevitably to the national pastime of anonymous petitions to the Governor and the betrayed husband.

The Governor acted first and fast. Roland Smythe was held Incommunicado in Queen's House until he was bundled into the next P & O liner to Britain, his career in tatters. Ivy fled her sullied marital home back to her parents. Unable to face the stigma of her conduct the Alles family quietly packed her off, with a generous endowment, to an up country convent where she could ponder her folly.

Poor cuckolded Dr. Rodrigo had his marriage annulled, at great cost and took up a post in the Colonial Medical service in Malaya. Nothing more was heard of Ivy.

The transformation of Ivy
Four keen and curious minds had no difficulty in piecing together the rest of the story by intelligent conjecture and photographic evidence. Ivy had given birth to a blue-eyed boy in some obscure hospital. The infant boy had then been presented to the well-known orphanage for Eurasian children. The coming together of RM Bimgoda and Ivy can only be conjectured. Bimgoda, the rural laird would have been in N'Eliya to report to his European Asst. Govt. Agent.

Rambling alone amidst pine-shaded walks he would have been struck by the pale beauty of Ivy with her down cast eyes. When he shyly spoke, her eyes lit up at the prospect of an honourable escape from the convent walls - and more. A quite wedding in a little up-country chapel attended only by his rural kinsfolk kept them out of society's limelight.

An year or two passed. No little Bimgodas were produced to cheer the RM's heart. Ivy then unobtrusively guided his footsteps towards the Eurasian orphan's home. There she singled out little blue-eyed "John Smith" to be their adopted son. An extraordinarily adroit move by Ivy to reclaim her son by Roland Smythe. Old Bimgoda, ruling his hills and wilds, seems to have been supremely unaware of the tragic love story whose unwitting dupe he had become.

Farewell to the hills
Not long after, the transfer list moved us from the misty hills of Nuwara Eliya to the vast reservoirs and sacred sites of Anuradhapura. We left our house of Buddhist curtains with a bit of nostalgia and a tantalising tale to tell. But we looked forward to the spacious official bungalow we were scheduled to occupy. Blue eyed Smith was yet meddling with a broken down car when we paid our farewell to Mrs. Bimgoda - whom we now looked upon with awe befitting Helen of troy!

The truth
A few weeks ago newspapers carried the following obituary notice "The death is announced of Mrs. Ivy Bimgoda, relict of Rate Mahattaya Bimgoda; mother of John Smith.... ... ..." The truth, acknowledged ... ... ... at last.