Travels for university programmes 18

This describes the recruitment of new staff, which I was generally satisfied with for I got both Paru and Dinali for the department and some good instructors for the Unit. But I was horrified by the racism which was displayed, overtly just by one instructor, but not argued against by the rest except for the utterly decent Oranee. Paru of course was all right, since she was in the Department, but I wondered about the elderly Tamil gentleman we had recruited as an instructor. Fortunately Oranee took him for the medical faculty, where she built up an excellent team, of which he proved a useful member.

The pictures are of four wonderful teachers I recruited to USJP, Paru and Dinali and Lalith Ananda and Sarath Ananda from Pasdunrata, but also the one I could not have, Madhubhashini Dissanayake as she was then, though later Paru was able to get her, and she had done yeoman service there.

New staff

At USJP the next day I discussed with Chitra the proposal to set up an English Department as had been envisaged from the time I was recruited, and worked more on the Management time-tables, and the number of staff to be dedicated to that Faculty. That evening there was yet another Liberal meeting. Then on the next two days we had interviews, first for instructors, and then for lecturers. I was glad that Paru and Dinali Fernando were selected for the department, and two protégés from Pasdunrata whom David had sent me for the ASSET course I ran at the Council for instructor positions, Lalith Ananda and Sarath Ananda.

They were soon amongst the staff most loved by the students, but the ladies of the Unit were furious, denigrating the language skills of the two boys, and attacking Paru as a Tamil, with the most vociferous of the senior instructors calling her a Tiger. Dorakumbura had wanted to appoint her to head the ELTU but after the harpies had reduced her to tears she refused to have anything more to do with them, and stuck firmly with the department.

Sadly Dorakumbura was determined to take onto the staff the daughter of a friend, and refused to have Madhubhashini or another bright girl who also had a degree from India. There was much mocking of Indian degrees, which I could argue about, but then the establishment declared that three year degrees were not acceptable, and to specialize in English you have to have studied it for four years. There was no arguing against this, which the university system in Sri Lanka thinks is a sacrosanct principle, even though everyone knows that degrees in the British system take only three years.

An English friend of mine, John Harrison, had arrived that day, but I had to neglect him over the next few days although there was much social activity in the evenings, my grandmother’s birthday party at my sister’s on the next evening, December 19^th, and dinner at David Woolger’s the next day. On the first of these, Saturday, I worked at Nirmali’s and the next day I had lots of friends for lunch. But then on Monday the 21^st I went with John to Bangkok for a wonderful holiday there and in Cambodia, getting back to Colombo only on January 4^th.