Maama — (මාමා)

Maama is my uncle, my mother’s only elder brother. Maama (මාමා) means uncle in Lankan. His full name was Manchanayake Mudalige John Chrysostom Jayawardane. Christie was his short name.

When I was four, my parents relocated to a bigger home. Later that year, I got a little sister. We were a happy, close-knit nuclear family with one grandparent, my father’s mother.

That changed after my grandfather, my mother’s father, died. When he died, Maama was 30, and my aunt, my mother’s younger and only sister, was 22. Both were single. Maama was working in a remote village in Sri Lanka then. Upon his father’s death, Maama, as the new eldest in the family, did not move back into the family home. That left a void in security for my mother’s younger sister, who had to live alone in the ancestral home during the workweek.

My mother did not want to leave her younger sister living alone despite the inaction of her elder brother. My mother invited both to relocate to our home. That action was a great display of leadership from my mother towards her family. For her, self-sacrifice was interwoven with her psyche.

In Asian societies, the eldest in the family gets preferential treatment. Maama occupied the front room of our house by default. He came home only at the weekends. At home, he never talked to me or my little sister. He did not play with us and never bought us a toy, a book or sweets, unlike my aunt, grandmother and other relatives who were generous and loving. When he was home, he kept the room door locked to prevent us kids from coming in. I had no connection with him.

Love is a two-way street, even for a child of seven. I had no affinity with him and his bizarre ways. He did not want us in his life. He hardly talked to anyone, preferring to live in his solitude in his room.

On the weekends, when he was home, he only came out of his room for washing and meals. One could never know what this eccentric uncle was doing in his room. The kid in me was curious. My sister and I took turns peeping through the keyhole in the door of his room, silently giggling with each other.

In third grade, I desperately wanted to buy a children’s pictorial magazine. My father did not have spare money on the day and suggested I ask Maama instead. When I asked Maama, he ridiculed me harshly, refusing to give me any. I was angry and shocked by his reaction.

All these detachments aside, Maama was a handsome man of the day. Tall and fair, unusual for a Sri Lankan. His pedigree was strong, hailing from a respectable family. He owned houses, shops, and paddy fields. With their rental and produce income, combined with a job as a teacher, he was financially well off. He was educated and could converse and write in English.

Instead, he chose to live off his sister, not contributing to anything to help her either financially or logistically. He continued to teach at the remote school and visited our home on the weekends. A convenient and hassle-free lifestyle with no responsibility. He remained single.

Maama at his prime

At the dining table, the kids ate, sitting opposite Maama. Despite our efforts to engage him, he did not respond but strangely looked. He was this weird adult character sitting in front. He was a stranger in our home, a trait kids could not understand. On some weekends, he applied medicinal herbs to his head. In the mornings, he drank a green medicinal porridge that looked like vomit. My sister and I chuckled, seeing him with his head plastered with dried herbs and leaves, drinking that awful green porridge.

My mother’s mother had been in a mental asylum from when my mother was a child. My grandmother was now considered well enough to leave the asylum. Maama, the eldest in the family, was vacillating to take responsibility for his ageing mother. When he did not volunteer, my mother, the natural leader in the family, stepped in and brought her to our home from the asylum. It was temporary until Maama could organise permanent care arrangements for her.

Over a short period, my grandmother’s mental sickness took the better of her. She yelled at everyone with expletives, even us children. To complicate matters, my father was transferred to a remote town on a promotion around the same time. It was left to my mother to manage a home, three children, and a mentally ill grandmother. My sane grandmother was my mother’s sole supporter at home.

Two years pass by. Maama never kept his promise to his sister to make permanent arrangements to look after his sick mother despite having the financial capacity to do so. The expletives, arrogance and savagery from the sick grandmother were too much for a child of eleven. I no longer wanted to live at home. I was so sick of this drama that I entered a Christian brothers’ boarding school. In hindsight, it was my unintended reaction to escape the mayhem at home.

For the next four years, I was away from home. I returned home only during the school holidays.

Now, I wish I had not abandoned my mother in her time of need. Life would have been difficult for my family without me, the eldest child of my own family. My father was working at an outstation far away and came home on the weekend. My mother had my siblings to care for. Her mother would have been playing havoc at home with her mental sickness. Maama would have gone on uncaringly as if nothing was wrong at his sister’s place.

I returned home for good when I was fifteen, leaving boarding school. My sister was eleven, and my kid brother was about seven. My father was now working not too far from our home and came home on weekends. With my siblings now slightly older, the daily chores at home were easier. I helped my mother with the housework. I took care of my younger brother. I shopped for the family. It was left for me to get medicines for my mentally ill grandmother, which I gladly did for my mother.

Maama continued to enjoy his easy lifestyle, away during the workweek and enjoying weekends in solitude in the front room, locked up. His food was served on time, and it was a life with no responsibilities. My sick grandmother was still menacing everyone, but I was grown up. I had learnt to deal with it.

Maama continued to remain single still. He was in the sight of marriage brokers, mature men in their sixties and seventies who were socially connected to good families. Their job was fixing up prospective brides and grooms in a period when marriages were arranged between families for a fat commission. The brokers arrived at our home with proposals carrying photographs of prospective brides and details of their pedigrees. Maama would not engage with the brokers directly. He did not open his closed door to them, them opting to speak to him through an open window of his room. The whole thing was a spectacle to watch.

A few months later, the mentally sick grandmother hit my mother with a stone, causing her head injuries and requiring immediate medical treatment. I saw this mayhem firsthand as a child. Now in my mid-teens, I was furious. I was beginning to hate Maama and saw him as the cause of the disruption of our family.

One day, my mother had had enough of her mother’s antics. In anguish and anger, she lost the plot and broke plates and utensils by dashing them to the ground. My father was away then. Fortunately, our next-door neighbour William came running and helped my mother to calm down. I was too young and inexperienced to help my poor mother. The root cause of this mayhem, Maama, my uncle, was not lost on me. I was angry at this gross injustice to my mother, siblings, and father. Also, to my sane grandmother.

Fews years later

A few years passed, and I was now assertive and confident as a nineteen-year-old. I had no room of my own. Meanwhile, Christie occupied the front room and came home only every second or third weekend. But the front room was kept reserved for him, unused. It was a waste of space in a tightly packed home.

I was having a great social life, as any nineteen-year-old would. When friends visited me at home, I had no place to hang out. No place to hang my posters or listen to my mid-seventies music. I had to share my space with many others at home, including my mentally ill grandmother. I slept along the open corridor at the back of the house. No privacy. I was frustrated and angry.

A Lad’s Resistance

The front room was ideal for me and should have been mine in the first instance. The room was locked in case the aloof and ageing crown prince, Maama, turned up.

The next weekend, I talked to Maama, asking his permission to occupy the room when he was away. His room had a desk, a bed, and my pappa Lewis’s large cabinet of books. I would not disturb his stuff, just occupy the room when he was away. Maama brushed me aside rudely. He said to me in a harsh tone, “This property does not belong to you”. Everything he said was deeply hurtful.

I asked Maama again on the next visit permission to occupy the room. Again, crude responses from him belittling me. To him, I was a nobody. I felt mad. I told him I would now occupy his room whether he liked it or not. He responded, “You would not dare?”

Challenge accepted.

When he left, I determined I would move his stuff to the room next to our kitchen. One glitch; there was this massive book cabinet, heavy and locked. I could not move it myself because of its size and weight.

I was a popular lad in my home village. I had many friends who hung out, partied, and would do anything for me. I gathered five friends and asked them to come home on an evening. I took the spare key from my mother and opened the front room. With my friends, I moved his things, bed, table and other items to a room next to our kitchen at the back of our home. The huge, ultra-heavy cabinet was the hardest to move. But the power of six young lads should never be underestimated. They moved it with ease.

My job was accomplished. Satisfied, I moved to that room that night. I hung my pop star posters on its walls. I set up a desk and bed and slept very well that night listening to my radio. I had my space.

Two weeks later, Maama turned up at our home. Seeing that I was now in his room and his things were in the backroom, he yelled at me. It was beneath him to occupy the backroom for a day or two. He went into a fury and said nasty things to me like, “You will never do well in life. You are cursed”. His derogatory words did not unsettle me. I laughed at him. Years of anger had made me hard and ready to face this monster of an uncle.

Maama left a few minutes later in haste. I had unsettled the beloved crown prince.

I did not care. I was firm.

A couple of hours later, Maama turned up at home with a lorry and some labourers. He moved his furniture and things into the lorry from the backroom, including the huge book cabinet. He took his mentally ill mother with him. Joining him was his aunt, Anna, who was squatting at our home for a year or so, exploiting my mother’s hospitality.

We were back as a nuclear family: no more crazy grandmother and a weird uncle at home.

Maama, despite having financial resources, including many properties that he had rented out, parked himself at my mother’s younger sister's home. Yet again, he took the easy option. He moved there with the two elder women, his mother and Anna. My aunty Catherine had four kids, but just like my mother accepted them into her home.

Liberating the family

For me, it was good riddance. With one stroke, I got rid of Maama, with him my mentally sick grandmother and a grand-aunt who was exploiting my mother’s hospitality. I got a bedroom to call my own. As for me, Maama went into oblivion. His impositions had been very hard for my parents to bring their kids up independently.

Maama had lived off our family for twelve years when he was evicted following my standing up to him.

My mother and father never said anything to me about what I had done. I think they were secretly happy that I stood up for myself. In the painful process of confronting my uncle, I released my family from the enforced, unwanted burdens. I had learnt to stand up against injustice at a young age.

What happened since?

Maama lived with my aunty for eight years, exploiting her generosity and kindness. He married in 1982 when he was 52 years past his prime. Paradoxically it was a year before I, his nephew and son of his younger sister, married.

I forgave him a few years later for what he did to me as a young boy and a youngster. But I cannot forget what was done to me and my poor parents.

Maama died in 2020 at the age of 89 years. I did not feel any emotion from his passing.

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