I Am Kandy

The Nice Burgher Girl

Jean Arasanayagam

Writer Jean Arasanayagam reflects on her Burgher identity, her experience of 1983 — “the watershed” moment in her life— and what it’s like being married to a Jaffna man.

Interview language: English

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We enjoyed life

I have no hierarchy. Burghers like to think that they have hierarchy. That they are pure Burgher, Dutch ancestry and all, but that’s a myth. It doesn’t really exist. And who knows about the Burghers anyway? Even in The Netherlands. Nobody.

I sometimes feel very lost and isolated, but they come to see me, my relatives as well as my old friends, come to see me as if it is a kind of shrine they come to visit. They come on a pilgrimage.

It’s only now, after writing A Nice Burgher Girl, that people are aware that there are so many different aspects to Burghers. Because I was talking about my childhood.

My father introduced us to different cultures. Every evening friends visited you. We sat down and had ginger beer and ginger ale, and the men had their whisky. The ladies chatted on the veranda or in the hall. We Burghers appreciate everything that belongs to everybody.

Kanabona minnissu? As Michael Roberts calls us, kanabona minissu? We enjoyed life!

Now I find that we are very closed-in. We make excuses that we don’t have time … enough time to talk to people or mix with people. And we have things do with our lives. But in the past it was just a life of friendship, and entertaining and going out to dinner and lunch and…spending the day. “Come and spend the day with us!”

So you go in the morning and then card games and having singsongs. The table is laid with everything under the sun. Yellow rice, ghee rice, chicken curry, beef curry. Ham. At home of course we didn’t eat thosai and iddli and all the rest of it; that was only much later on.

No politics coming at all. I didn’t know what it was to be part of an imperial colony or anything like that because they were all part of our house. We had all these colonials, you know, wanderers, as I said, Konradian characters who came, loved my father, then the planters… So I was able to experience different lifestyles. And I listened. I listened. I watched. I observed. I listened.

About this portrait

Photographer: Kannan Arunasalam

Interviewer : Kannan Arunasalam

Assistant : Menika van der Poorten

Editor: Kannan Arunasalam

Recorded: November 28, 2010

First published: August 6, 2023

Last edited: November 7, 2023

Comments

Kannan Arunasalam

December 1, 2010 at 12:43 pm

Everyone in the household came out to meet us on the veranda of their home on the Peredeniya Road in Kandy. Jean lived with her husband Arasa, their second daughter, Parvathi, and two excitable dogs. For a while it was a little chaotic as introductions were drowned out by the incessant barking. The key, Jean told us, was to sit down and remain seated otherwise the dogs would start up again. It was going to be a challenge to capture this interview I thought. I hadn't met Jean before, but we later discovered that we were both at the same funeral in Jaffna in 1979. I was just 6 years old and that would have been my last month in Sri Lanka. My father had come from England to attend his sister's funeral and then take my brother and I back to England with him. Jean knew my aunt and uncle well from their days at Peredeniya University. Kandy had been a big influence on my "Kandy mama" and mami. Eventually the dogs quietened down. Concerned they might get provoked again, I wanted to get straight into the interview with Jean. But Jean insisted on feeding us first. We were served cucumber sandwiches and afternoon tea. It was all part of the Burgher hospitality that I'd hear more about during the course of our conversation. Like most artists' homes, Jean's work was scattered all around the front room. Everywhere you turned there were drawings and a great many of her books. Jean said she had started to paint again and was keen to show me some of her drawings. I particularly liked one self-portrait she had done. Her early inspiration for her work were the murals and frescoes around the Kandyan devalas. But the family's experiences of the troubles of 1983 and Arasa's reflections about his hometown of Jaffna inspired much of her writing. As we talked, Arasa filled in the gaps when Jean struggled to remember a date or a name of a character in her stories of "facing the mob" or the "unknown world of the refugee camp". She said she would not have been a whole person without these experiences, however terrible. Despite having many cultural experiences through a father who had entertained all communities in their house, she felt she had been compartmentalised, largely because of Jean's marriage to a man from Jaffna, however atypical a Tamil he was. She had even been branded a Tamil terrorist by a principal at one of the schools she taught at. At the end of our interview, Jean wrote a message in a book of poetry. One of the poems was about my aunt. I was going to be meeting my cousins at a family wedding in London and Jean wanted me to pass the book on to them. They had left Sri Lanka during the 1980s. Although many Burghers had left Sri Lanka much earlier, after the Sinhala Only laws of 1956, Jean remained in Sri Lanka. Even after threats of violence close up during 1983, the couple refused to leave their hometown. I wanted to know why.
Sandy Austin

December 4, 2010 at 10:25 pm

Thank you for this article, but what is Jean's maiden name? I am a Dutch Burgher born in Colombo, Ceylon.
Nancy Fernando

December 5, 2010 at 02:00 pm

I sometimes feel I have walked into the privacy of someone's home when I read some of these articles. I enjoyed this story though.
Jennifer de Silva (Pereira)

March 6, 2011 at 04:43 am

Thanks for this. Jean is related to me through my grandfather - her paternal great-grandmother and my grandfather are siblings.
ranmalee perera

April 10, 2011 at 06:18 am

Jean is my grandmother Lilian's friend, actually one of her very good friends. They got to know each other when they were young women and continued their friendship even after Thathi Mamma migrated to Australia. My thathi mamma is now in a home for those suffering from memory loss. I remember when we used to visit Jean when I was a little girl, when I lived in Sri Lanka. Thank you for the memories.
Shamil Ranasinghe

April 15, 2011 at 11:13 pm

Jean and her husband are very close family friends of ours. Aunty Jean is always a character and I used to love going to her home and I can vouch for the “Jean’s work was scattered around" :) My mom is the same way. I wonder who the principal was who branded her a terrorist. I’m sure Aunty Jean didn’t keep quiet though! :) Anyway these are the faces of Kandy, no doubt about that. Warm regards to Aunty Jean, from Shamil Ranasinghe (son of late Mr. Eric Ranasinghe and Chitra Ranasinghe).
(@iam_project) (@iam_project)

July 23, 2012 at 09:05 am

To mark the anniversary of Black July listen to Jean Arasanayagam: "Then I knew what fear was. What alienation was" http://t.co/xuyAJAdw
jkanakaratnam

July 23, 2012 at 09:31 am

Jean is my grandmother's cousin.
Jerry Peck

December 24, 2013 at 02:39 am

Beautiful, beautiful piece describing a part of our heritage that only writing like this can preserve in time to come.
geoffrey moreira

February 17, 2014 at 03:44 am

So true. wonderful memories, sadly Sri Lankans adopt the Western attitude of "no time ". That's why we long for the good ol' days of Ceylon.
Desiree Oorloff

February 18, 2018 at 02:50 pm

A beautiful piece, thank you. I would love to know if she is related to Markie Solomons. A friend of my brothers but like a big brother to me. My Mum was a Kandy girl but she has passed. Being the youngest in my family I don't know much about my family in Sri Lanka but thank you for this.
Barbara Fernandopulle

February 19, 2018 at 03:29 am

Most of us Burghers had our lives disrupted when S W R D Bandaranaike came into power. He was a selfish man with the accumulation of power his one and only goal in life. His death at the hands of a Sinhalese Buddhist monk was a sort of karma. Unfortunately, neither his wife nor daughter did anything to correct the disruption he created in our lives. His actions were the catalyst for what happened later, i.e. the uprising of the Tamil Tigers. Yes, we can surely lay the blame for what our country has experienced in the way of segregation of ethnic groups at his feet! As Burghers, we have had the opportunity to make our lives in other countries. I often wonder what Sri Lanka would be like today if SWRD had not come into power?
Manorathie Ganeser

February 26, 2018 at 03:01 pm

I have known Jean and Arasa since I was at Peradeniya University. I was at the library for 22 years, then came over to the UK and now I'm attached to the University of London. Jean visited the library often for books and I knew her quite well. Arasa taught at the English sub-department. I must try to visit them when next in Kandy.