The Badge of Honour

You needed that school badge right up there! It was the cherry of what the Prefects advocated as “the Kingswood dress code” (eyeroll): long whites, short-sleeved shirt neatly tucked in. No bands, or pirith strings. No watches except for the thin black-strap digital one. No wallets. No facial hair. Head-hair neatly parted on the side: no overgrowths or undergrowths. Black shoes. Plain white socks. No jerseys, pullovers or sweaters. And, right up there abreast with your shirt-pocket: the college badge.

If you broke the school “dress code” you got booked for discipline breach. It could mean one of many things — A morning weeding the gardens, cleaning the drains, or running errands in force-labour shramadana. Standing, kneeling, and absorbing the D-vitamin you been missing. A good period of punishment. Even if it meant you were now missing the morning class you so badly wanted to skip, you were knee deep inside a drain trying your luck with inexpert plumbing.

The Arts and Commerce classes were housed in the red-arch building facing the Kandy-Colombo road. In the days of old, this was the school’s primary, right under the Principal’s offices. In later years, when the primary was removed to the school’s edge the pre-adolescents were replaced by the “big babies” of Arts and Commerce classes. The childlike prattle ceased. The mischief alone remained.

From the Arts and Commerce classes one often operated courier services to bail out those who came to school without badges. The few who had badges passed them out of the windows to a classmate who was stationed there for that purpose. Like a relay runner, he would take the badge up to the fence closer to the primary gate and pass it to a friend who waited just outside on the pavement – A boy without a badge and in no mood to pull the drains.

One morning, the Arts class bailed out no less than 14 boys who came in passing the screening test but using the same badge. It would have been easier to purchase a badge from the office for Rs. 75, or remember to wear the badge you had at home. But, as 17 and 18 year olds you had your own creed, code of freedom, and due process that didn’t allow you to take Prefects too seriously. To hoodwink and score an offside goal was a better way to start a late-teenage morning. The school could impose the school-badge rule: but, let us wear the school-badge our way!

One day, overseeing the courier service, two of our boys stood at the grilled window passing badges to the relayer who came and went to the corridor outside. Right in front of the building, under the shady tree, the Senior Prefect stood with one of the Scribes. A reasonable distance from them, on the pathway to the Commerce-Arts section, a monitor held his position checking bags. Unknown to them, right under their noses and behind their Prefect arses, false VISA was being forged for one illegal entry at a time.

Until, coming from nowhere (and having no clue what he was just about to interrupt), the Commerce Head, Herath Sir (Bawa Sir) barked orders for the boys at the window to move away and stop staring at the road outside. Herath Sir went on making other complaints about the cleanliness of the class and demanding cause for the corridors not being cleaned that day. Somewhere in the fracas and confusion the badge that was being exchanged was lost and never came back to its rightful owner.

The rest of the morning the owner was seen to grumble and mope. Everyone denied knowledge of what happened to the badge. But, surely someone among us wore it alright like a birthright. [RR]

The Principal’s Principle

The tragedy had struck by the time we came to school. A boy lay sprawled on the crossing, the mini-bus that hit him stopped having run over him. The body lay on a side and the head wound was an ugly gash. It couldn’t have been more than five or ten minutes ago. The boy had died on the spot.

Kingswood had its own Cross-Safe road safety unit. But it was still only ten minutes to seven and the boys who man the traffic hadn’t come on duty yet. It was a small-made boy no more than 12 that had died. He had with him a crude, wooden cricket bat. Later, an angry crowd gathered, toppled and set the mini-bus aflame. We watched from the safety of the college fence.

A senior boy who had been out came walking through the side gate. He was a towering six-footer with a name as a ruggerite. The Vice Principal madam stood there watching. She called him up to her and motioned him to bend. Slapping sounds cut through the morning air like pistol shots.

That day, the Principal Sir was not at school. As I learnt later, he had been to Colombo for official work. Someone had phoned the ministry and relayed the tragic news. It was there the Principal Sir had first heard. He had heard of disruptive elements setting the bus aflame and, in front of the school he was in charge, of making a bonfire. Soon, the Principal Sir resigned from the post he had held for eight years.

Growing up I was told that the resignation was on a matter of principle — That the Principal Sir felt that whether he was on the premises or not, the school had to remain in the best discipline. A collapse of discipline – no matter how fleeting, no matter how hard the terms were – reflected on his administration.

When the small boy died I was also only a small boy. It was only many years later I saw Principal Sir again. He was by then an older man, his mustache that gave us all the involuntary urge to pee whenever we saw it now a drooping grey. In the less busy corner of Gunasena Bookshop, Yatinuwara Street, Principal Sir was going through some hardcover editions one by one.

In life I had grown up by then. I had seen men who held on to power and position like thick leeches did in virgin jungles and in tea estates. I had seen men who hid behind powerful politicians and used conniving methods to hold on to little footholds in life they had gained. From the country’s highest chair downwards I would be destined to see over and over how men lost glory simply not knowing when to leave.

At such time, I often thought of Principal Sir. He was a man of principle. His adroitness made the school suffer because he probably had a few more years ahead of him to serve Kingswood. But, his spine remained straight and unwavering. And when History is written one day that, perhaps, may matter. [RR].