Category Archives: plural society

Three chapters from Rama Somasunderam: For the Record, privately printed, n. d. …

ONE: My Early Life and Education–School and University

I was born on the 13 June 1935. My parents were Tamils who had settled in Kandy within the Central Province of Sri Lanka. My father was educated at Victoria College in Chulpuram, within the Jaffna District of the Northern Province of Sri Lanka. His father had sent him in the early part of the last century to study in Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka, after he had completed the Junior Cambridge Examination. Strangely he entered Ananda College which was the premiere Buddhist College in Colombo. He passed his Cambridge Senior Examination and entered the Law College and passed out as a lawyer (Proctor E.N.P.).

My father practised for a while in Colombo, and thereafter joined the Kandy Bar. He married my mother in 1934. My mother’s family had settled for years in Kandy. She had studied at Girls’ High School in Kandy, which was a Methodist Mission School. She passed her Junior Cambridge Examination, and married my father when she was 18 years of age.

I was born in the house of my maternal grandfather, which was situated at 720 Peradeniya Road, Kandy. It was a typical joint family home in the traditional Tamil sense. My mother had two younger sisters and a younger brother. I was the first to arrive in their family, and therefore given a great deal of attention by my grandmother and my two aunts. I was an only child. Continue reading →