Lewis — a courageous man

This story is about the life of Lewis, my maternal grandfather.

The story is woven around the time, long before I came into Lewis’s life as his first grandchild. My memories of Lewis as a grandfather are chronicled here: Lewis and Denzil

Early life

The year was 1890. Lewis was born to Don Cornelius Jayawardane and Dona Christina Nanayakkara, devout Catholics in the village of Eldeniya, some sixteen kilometres from Colombo in colonial Ceylon. Lewis was Cornelius’s firstborn and the eldest child. Cornelius and Christina had seven other children after Lewis. Two of Lewis’s younger siblings died in infancy, and one died before reaching five years, traumatic experiences for a young Lewis who had seen three of his younger siblings perish before turning sixteen. Lewis grew up with the survivors, two younger brothers and two younger sisters. The scarring trials of repeatedly losing his younger siblings may have influenced Lewis in leadership.

The early adversity and pain turned him to be aspirational and resilient.

Ambition

Lewis set out to free himself from his origins. He was bold to create a fabulous development path. His father, Cornelius, was a farmer. Back in the day, it was expected Lewis, being the eldest child and a male at that, would take up farming and manage the properties his father owned. Instead, Lewis pursued studies and academia. Initially, he studied in the local language, Sinhala.

Not satisfied with his good fluency in Sinhala literature, he moved on to study English, the language of the elite and colonial masters in Ceylon. He attended evening classes, walking vast distances to meet his English educators. He then enrolled in a training school for professional teachers at the Royal College in Colombo. Back then, it was an elite establishment, where there had been only a handful of twenty students from the island country. His teachers were Englishmen. This was in 1915, when Lewis was twenty-five years old. In historical terms, the world was going through its first World War at this time.

On the left is a notebook that belonged to Lewis from his training school days. On the right is Lewis’s journal (in which I, as a youngster, had made a notation on its front page, some forty years later).

Soon after his graduation, Lewis started teaching. Qualified teachers were rare in the 1920s and were in short supply in colonial Ceylon.

Lewis kept excellent records of his learnings. He cherished a huge ooks, magazines and journals, which he meticulously maintained. (Forty years later, I was fortunate to be influenced by his yearnings for knowledge and books. I was mesmerised by his book collection, which is a story on its own.)

Taken from Lewis’s handwritten journal. The second language is the ethnic language Sinhala.

While Lewis embarked to challenge himself and sought out a sea change, his two younger brothers and one sister did not pursue education and instead picked farming with their father, following the traditional path. Lewis educated one of his sisters, who became a teacher herself.

Lewis’s father and grandfather had allowed many of their ancestral properties and farmlands to be occupied by squatters. Lewis, with his academic background and superior knowledge of legal and civil affairs, took legal action against these illegal dwellers. Pursuing legal was a protracted activity that took much of Lewis’s energy, financial resources and time over a considerable period. He won all of the court cases and repossessed the ancestral properties. He distributed those properties with his siblings, keeping some for himself.

Married at thirty-five

Lewis married at thirty-five. His bride, my maternal grandmother, Dona Euphracia Hamine, was the youngest daughter of an established family from an adjoining village in Mabima, some ten kilometres away. At twenty years, Euphracia was fifteen years younger than Lewis. They married in 1925. Back in the day, with short life expectations, Lewis was a mature man at the time of his marriage, considered old to be a groom.

Manchanayake Jayawardane Mudalige Don Lewis Jayawardane married Hendalage Dona Euphracia Hamine (my maternal grandmother). Lewis was thirty-five years old, while Euphracia was twenty-one years old at the time of marriage on the 12th of August 1925. Euphracia's father is recorded as Hendalage Don John Isaac. Isaac was deceased at the time of his daughter Euphracia's marriage. Isaac’s occupation has been recorded as a Cultivator in the marriage certificate. The marriage was held at St. Joachim’s Roman Catholic church at Mabima. The celebrant of the service is recorded as Rev L. M. V. Thomas of O.M.J order.

It took four years since Lewis’s and Euphracia's marriage for their firstborn, John Francis, to be born in 1929. Society's expectation was that soon after marriage, offspring were produced. The delay in producing a child caused all kinds of trouble for the couple; there was a rumour that Lewis’s wife was barren. It was a public shame for the couple. It was considered a woman’s sole fault if a couple was childless. Lewis and Euphracia were pleased to have their first child after four years. But sadly, their happiness was short-lived with the death of the child after six months.

Lewis and Euphracia in happier times

Their next child, John Christie, a son, was born two years later in 1931, followed by my mother, Mary Susan and my aunty, Mary Catherine, in 1934 and 1939, respectively.

Lewis, the mentor and leader

Lewis was a diligent teacher and quickly built a good reputation as a high performer in the education circles in the north of Colombo. By the late 1930s, Lewis became a school headmaster and a principal, a dignified profession in the Ceylonese society run by the British rulers.

There were many teachers that Lewis mentored, many of them from their school days until they became fellow teachers in the same school. They were called “Golaya”, a dear term expressed in Sinhala, which meant disciple. In this photo, only Don Lewis, the third seat from the right, was wearing a suit while the others wore sarongs and jackets. Back then, one wore pants only when one could speak English fluently.

This is a photo of Lewis, in the middle with a black jacket and white long pants in the 1930s. Seated next to him is a state official, Junius Richard Jayawardane, who later became the president of Sri Lanka.. On the opposite side of Lewis was his wife Euphracia efore she became ill. Mary Catherine, their youngest daughter was seated on the ground between both of them.

While raising three children with Euphracia, Lewis built two homes and a few shopfronts on their properties.

A recent photo of the home Lewis built and raised his children

Anna Ranasinghe, Euphracia’s mother, lived with Lewis, Euphracia and their three children. In her old age, Anna became sick. Euphracia, being the youngest of her siblings, took up the responsibility of caring for her bedridden mother. It was tough work for Euphracia, running a large house, three children under ten and looking after a busy husband. It took a big toll on her.

Lewis and his wife’s family photo in 1940. From left are Christie, Lewis’s only son; Anna Ranasinghe, Lewis’s mother-in-law and Euphracia’s mother; Lewis himself, Susan, my mother, Catherine, Lewis’s youngest daughter and Lewis’s wife. Euphracia.

After an extended period of caring, Anna died in their home. Back in the day, funerals were held at family homes. Euphracia was tasked to wash her own mother’s body. All of these traumatic responsibilities had become too much for Euphracia. She had been tired for months, solely responsible for her bedridden mother’s care. Incessant demands made her physically and mentally vulnerable, a tough period in Euphracia’s life.

Trials begin & resilience emerges.

Euphracia’s behaviour started to change following the funereal. She acted strangely and had a mental breakdown. Back then, medical diagnostic assistance for this type of sickness did not exist in Ceylon. Utter despair descended on Lewis and his three young children.

This tragic situation deeply distressed the three children. My uncle Christie, my mother’s elder brother, was ten years old, my mother was six, and her younger sister Catherine was two years old, critical ages for young children.

Lewis tried to cure his wife with all available means. He spent much of his savings on finding a treatment for Euphracia. She was taken to many doctors, both western and local. Various remedies were tried. Meanwhile, hell reigned in their house with Euphracia, uncontrollable and unrestrained. She became violent towards Lewis and was also verbally abusive. Euphracia started hating her daughter, Susan, my mother. She was abusive to my mother both physically and verbally. My innocent mother took the biggest brunt of her mother’s anger towards her children from a young age.

There was a belief that someone jealous of Lewis’s success had made a charm with a witch doctor to make his wife sick. In ancient society in Ceylon, people believed in witchcraft. Many in Lewis’s family circles believed this myth.

None of the treatments had any effect on Euphracia. Her condition did not improve. Lewis had no choice but reluctantly to send his wife away to the only mental asylum in Ceylon, Angoda.

Lewis was now a single parent with three kids under ten. His eldest, Christie, was sent to a boarding school, St. Benedict’s College in Colombo. My mother and her sister were cared for by Lewis’s relatives. Anna, Lewis’s younger sister, was single and lived with them during these turbulent times helping in the household.

Jeremias, twelve and Mary, five, Lewis’s orphaned nephew and niece, also lived with them. Lewis provided shelter for them after their father, Lewis’s youngest brother, perished at twenty-seven from a drunken episode leaving them orphaned.

Life must have been agonizing for Lewis as he watched his three kids suffer from lack of proper care and the hopeless state of his mentally sick wife.

Susan, my mother, at the tender age of six, assumed the carer’s role to her younger sister, Catherine. It was a tough responsibility for a six-year-old girl. Susan learnt to cook, wash and care at that young age and continued schooling.

This was the time of the 2nd World War when the British army was at the forefront of a turbulent time in colonial Ceylon ruled by the British. There were many a hardship and food shortages.

In the 1940s, public awareness of mental sicknesses was non-existent in Ceylon. Society treated the affected as ‘mad’. It was a public shame when a mentally sick person was in the family. This social stigma would have heavily burdened my mother, her brother and younger sister. (This stigma continues even today in Sri Lanka; some quarter of a century later, when I was growing up, I never acknowledged to any of my friends that I had a mentally sick grandmother. I was ashamed and carried on as if my maternal grandmother did not exist, taking extraordinary steps to cover up her presence in my life).

Lewis did not give up the idea of healing his sick wife. Regularly he visited his wife at the hospital, sometimes with his two daughters but rarely with his son, who lived in the boarding school, protected from the turbulence at home. Every year Lewis requested the authorities to release his wife and brought her home in the hope that she would get better in her own home. That did not work, and after a few weeks, Euphracia flared up again and was taken back to the mental hospital.

Lewis hoped a change of location might alter Euphracia’s sickness. Lewis built another home at Dalugama on a property that Euphracia owned and relocated the family there. The change of location radically altered the lives of my mother and her younger sister. To the children’s dismay, they were removed from the school in their hometown. They were sent to a new school at St. Paul’s Convent in Kelaniya few kilometres away from their new home.

In their newly built home in new surroundings, Lewis brought Euphracia home from the mental hospital with high hopes of redemption for his wife. Alas, she did not get better but progressively got worse. There was a point when Lewis reluctantly had to send his wife away again to the asylum. After a while again, he would return her with the hope that she would be better the next time. Unfortunately, Euphracia got worse at home after a short while, and she would be sent away again and again. This hopeless pattern continued.

While this repeating drama was going on, Lewis could not find adequate safe transport for his two daughters. He removed the two young girls from St. Paul’s Convent, Kelaniya and transferred them to the local village school where education standards were lower. That was their third school move.

These traumatic events were tough on the entire family. My grandfather, Lewis, struggled as a single father. He was a prominent school principal in the colonial state of Ceylon, financially stable yet unable to properly care for his children. The thought of his once dear wife locked up in Ceylon's only public mental hospital distressed him. When he visited Euphracia at the mental asylum, she was drugged and was often under restraints Seeing his kids grow up without their mother was very hard on him. It was agonising.

Nobody divorced their wives then, especially devout Catholics like my grandfather, Lewis. There was no way but to go on in one’s misery and hope God would reward the perseverance if one had faith left at the end of that turmoil and agony.

My mother, Susan, became the natural leader among the three children. She became steadfast, tough with a no-nonsense attitude and backed her father.

Her elder brother Christie, the leader he should have been, was secured in English private boarding schools in Colombo. He, Lewis’s only son, increasingly became aloof to the situation at home. Perhaps being a school principal, Lewis would have expected that his firstborn, a son, would be a perfect leader. My uncle seemed to have detested the family environment from the outset, influenced by his detachment from the suffering at home due to his lack of a mother and subsequently being immersed in a heavily disciplined school boarding environment run by the Christian brothers. Coupled with a father who would have expected a lot from his firstborn, my uncle may have felt inadequate in facing his much-achieved, self-made, widely respected and educated father.

Christian Brothers had enticed Christie to enrol in their ministry and become a Christian brother. Lewis refused to hand over his only son to a Christian order and instead wanted him to grow up and look after the family affairs. My uncle was removed from St. Benedict’s and put into another private boarding school, St. Joseph’s College, another premium institution in Colombo.

Lewis’s youngest, Mary Catherine, was luckily sheltered from the initial mayhem simply due to her young age to experience the early turbulence at home. She grew up as the most loving and balanced person among my grandfather’s children. Even now, I wonder where she got her grace, kindness, and charm. Certainly not from her absent mother.

The hope that a change of location would alter his wife’s mental sickness proved futile again. After a few short years in their new home in Dalugama, Lewis and the kids returned to Eldeniya, his original home. Lewis continued to care for his orphaned nephew and niece, Jeramius and Mary in his home until they were married off.

Lewis and his children grew up virtually without a mother. Lewis protected them as much as he could. Lewis retired as a school principal in 1950 at the age of sixty. In 1953, my father married my mother, who was 19 then.

I was fortunate to meet Lewis and be loved by him. That did not last long; Lewis died when I was six years old in 1961.

That new home in Dalugama that provided temporary refuge to Lewis was given to my mother upon her marriage in 1953. With my father, she raised my siblings and me on this great land where my elders’ endurance was put to the test.

Euphracia's suffering

This story is about my grandfather, Lewis. But you may be interested to know what happened to his wife, Euphracia, my poor grandmother.

Poor Euphracia languished in the mental asylum until 1965, four years after Lewis’s death, when my bold mother, with my father’s support, brought her to our home to live. Euphracia was sixty years old then. My mother took care of her despite her unpredictable sickness's challenge to my mother’s young family. I was ten, my sister six, and my kid brother was two. My uncle, Christie, never took any responsibility for his mother despite having resources both financially and logistically to care for her, knowing very well that it put enormous pressure on his sister. That challenging period in our lives deserves a separate story.

You may be surprised to know that my parents, in their continued treatment of Euphracia found that her sickness had been caused due to a thyroid deficiency. That diagnosis came too late for my grandmother. The damage to her mental well-being had been too deep to recover after decades of being locked away in a harsh asylum. It was left to me, as the eldest child in the family, that too as an early teenager, to fetch medicines from the hospital for Euphracia. I did that happily for my mother. What had happened to Euphracia was a gross injustice and violation of her human rights, but that’s how it was back then in society.

Subscribe to my stories https://djayasi.medium.com/subscribe.

Images belong to the original copyright owners.