To continue, I thought of reminiscing of my days from birth. Born in 1938 at the General Hospital, Batu Gajah and brought up in Ipoh – 12 miles apart. My first home was H block, No.1 at the class eleven quarters at Fryer Road, Ipoh. I was the only one born at a hospital. My siblinigs, 8 of them were born at the one room house No. 1 Fryer Road. To my knowledge the mid-wife was a lady named Gnamma, who worked as an ayammah or female attendant at the General Hospital Ipoh. She was a specialist of a sort for all the pregnant ladies at the Railway quarters Ipoh. Her fees for the delivery of the child, plus pre-natal care before delivery was, at present day fees a pittance. After delivery she would be given a saree and about $10/- for expenses.
During the time my mother was recuperating after child-birth, guess who was doing the cooking of special curries for a mother after child-birth. Special curry with herbal medicine was done by my father. No electric grinders those days but hand based grinding-stones which we don’t see nowadays. I am sure my grandmother helped but most of the time my father was on leave to help. At my advanced age, boiling water is a no no, but those days fathers and husbands were at it. My father’s breakfast was left-over rice from the previous day and he would prepare it by himself as he leaves the house early. The children got their usual breakfast of coffee thosai or bread.
Diverting a bit – the question of the birth certificate and Tamil names. The birth of a baby had to be reported to the Police station immediately. The person receiving the report is invariably a Malay policemen basically educated in a Malay school. His knowledge of the spelling of Tamil names was nil. Mary became mail. Many more atrocities with names and some difficulties at the time when citizenship was made law in Malaya.
My birth certificate was correct. My name was spelled correctly, but the name was written with a different colour of ink and I had to declare my position with the authorities legally before getting a citizenship certificate.
A bit of my schooling. During the Japanese occupation from 1941 to 1945, I was admitted to the Perak Sangeetha Sabah, a tamil school which still stands along side Silibin Road Ipoh. It was one year of Tamil schooling in 1945, and then in 1946 the British were back and I started my schooling in ACS – Anglo-Chinese-School Ipoh.
Sangeetha Sabha (music sabha) was established in the 30’s to cater for the music education of the children of railway men, those days mainly of the Jaffna clerks and others from Ceylon then. Their children all received English education. I don’t know when this sabha turned into a Tamil school. Possibly during the Jap occupation.
In 1945 the school had three classrooms. You graduate when you passed Standard Six. Then you become a Tamil school teacher. A temporary class room was set outside the school building. It was a raised platform on wood about 2 or 3 feet high, no roof, and classes were inside the school when it rained. As I was being taught at the raised platform one day, I saw a stream of water flowing through, and though at that moment it not strike any oddity, a child had peed but school went on. It was co-educational, there was a Headmaster Mr Karuppiah, and my teacher was one Mr Savarimuthu, who stayed opposite my house H1 in the Railway block in a house belonging to his father-in-law a railway worker. Even now I can imagine running away from him as soon as you saw him, something you can’t avoid because you stayed closed, about 20 yards, from his house.
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