Francis Joseph Pillay(My Dad)

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Odiang: Chapter Three – The Pre-War Years

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ODIANG

A Loving & Speculative Chronicle of

Francis Joseph Pillay(My Dad),

told against the long and colourful passage of the Chetty Malacca community through the history of Malacca.

By Gerald F Pillay

Chapter Three

The Pre-War Years

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My Dad’s Schooling

I was never able to find out what primary schools existed in the vicinity of Meringu Lane. It would have been natural to send Dad to the nearest one, at least at the beginning. We only know that he was educated at St Francis’ Institution (SFI). The new one was already built at Bandar Hilir. It was overtwo miles away, over the Clock Tower Bridge across the MalaccaRiver, round St Paul’s Hill and beyond Porta de Santiago[1]. It would have been rough on a six year old to walk to school and back by himself. I doubt his daddy could manipulate the gary schedules and routes to deliver and collect him. Nenek Kathai would certainly have had better things to do thanchaperone him twice a day, except perhaps for the first day. Perhaps a relative, like young Aunty Letchimy might have. All in all, I concludethat, most probably, he was bundled off to school by himself and returned, in a trishaw arranged for the purpose. Maybe they had already invented a “school trishaw service”. I can just imagine my grand-father organizing such a system – maybe a system of local networks feeding the gary service. I still suspect my Dad went to a primary school nearer by, maybe an informal one, at least for the first few years.

Until someone does some research into the municipal records of the town, we have to speculate, that there were no street lights or house supplies in Meringu Lane in the first decade of 1900s, My Dad studied by oil lamp, the coconut oil lamp certainly if not also the kerosene lamp. I am not sure the carbide lamp or the incandescent pressure lamp was in use yet. The family was poor. There were no luxuries. Education was the big luxury – and investment.

To my best knowledge, none of the adults in his household spoke Tamil or English, except perhaps for a few functional words. Judging by his occupation, his daddy, my grand-father, probably had not completed schooling, or at most primary. It is unlikely the women folk had been to school. So, there was no home tuition; Dad had to work things out for himself. The family language, and Dad’s mother-tongue, was Malay. This was a creolized version of the language, a Malay-patois, also known as Baba Malay, developed as the lingua franca among all communities in Malacca. They shared a common base for their intercourse, while interspersing terms from their own language to deal with things peculiar to their own needs. It was oral only. And it continues to be used even today as the street or market language throughout Malaysia and Singapore.

Meringu Lane itself was a narrow stone-compacted lane, between two longish brick shop-houses on Tranquerah. It opened out behind into a regular unpaved lane with a row of brick and wood single storey terrace houses on either side, with No 7 lodged in the middle on the left side, while No 10 marked the end of the row opposite. This was followed by an assortment of single storey terraced and compound units, ending in open scrub and a swamp. The whole lane was about 150 yards long. When you stepped on to it, you were in our kampong. Except for our families, the other residents were Peranakan Chinese. At the end, a narrow footpath veered left through the bush leading to Gajah Berang Road and Kampong Tujoh, half a mile away, the domain of the Chetty Malacca. This footpath still existed as of ten years ago when I last visited it. As will be significant later in this history, if one veered right, one arrived - in those days - at the famous “Kandang Lembu” (cow sheds) of the Pillays.

We know nothing about his schooling, his classmates, his teachers, his distractions or his diversions. Nenek Kathai must have been a dragon of a grand-mother, for she saw to it that he stayed the course. The general recollection seems to be that my Dad was a playful kid, but serious. There is one story about him being punished as a boy for being “banyaknakal”, i.e. very naughty. There was a well in front of No 10, under the areca nut tree. He was made to go down into the well and stay there for his sins.One can imagine that by the time he completed primary he would have been bi-lingual. He would have been equally comfortable in either part of his dual world, the city and the kampong, each with its own language and multiplex of co-existing customs, conventions and values.

English would have been substantially installed as the language of administration, the street signs, in city-based business,in the Christian churches, and of course in school. Soon he would have been reading the Straits Times, whenever he could get a copy of it, and thereby begin to be “plugged in” to the information streams of the times, whether it was about King George V or the Wright Brothers’ first flight, perhaps the local murders and the railway arrivals and departures. He would know all about the world’s first rubber estates just a few miles inland. My Dad would have discovered that advancement lay in acquiring an English education, and that he was both born to inherit and be a product and beneficiary of the system in place; provided he put his shoulder to it. And he did.

At this point, I should touch on the parallel history alluded to earlier. This stream of recollection suggests that Nenek Kathai sent my Dad off to his relatives at their home in Tranquerah, where he was brought under proper supervision. The family in question was educated, well-to do, and had children who would all have been attending school. In this environment my Dad would have had all the support necessary to do well in school I will come back to exploring this alternative history later at the end of Chapter Five.

Be it as it may, in 1892, the Cambridge Local Examinations Schools Examinations were introduced, setting the course for further development. Up to about then, English education was being delivered mainly in an eight year framework, to prepare pupils for employment. Typically, pupils followed three years’ primary, three years’ elementary, and up to two years’ secondary. The Junior Cambridge Examination was installed as the terminal examination after eight years. It was the norm for employment, in particular entry into the government services. Those who wished to go further could take the Senior Cambridge, after a further year nine. As early as 1863, the Straits Settlements government introduced “higher scholarships” for a few of the brighter pupils to pursue higher education – in Britain. In 1885, these were constituted as Queen Scholarships. It inevitably followed that the awards of the latter became based on the Senior Cambridge results. This led to the ninth year of study being lionized by the elitist few and intensely competitive. Led by Raffles, only the première schools went for it. As an example, a student of Victoria Institution in KL transferred to Raffles, took his Junior Cambridge there in 1898, then did his Senior Cambridge in 1899, and won the Queens’ Scholarship in 1900. The Senior Cambridge was the path for higher education – which would necessarily have to be abroad. My impression is most other schools took their time, until either they had the capacity to provide competitive scholarship level education and had pupils who had both the means and the caliber required; or later when the Senior Cambridge became in demand as the school leaving norm.

My Dad successfully passed the Junior Cambridge Examination in 1917 or thereabouts. I could not ascertain whether the De LaSalle brothers had instituted the Senior Cambridge by then. I read somewhere that St Joseph’s Institution in Singapore did not introduce the Senior Cambridge until 1927. I also could not find out when the MalaccaHigh School had done so. But, by then, the point became irrelevant. The Queen’s Scholarships were discontinued in 1911 just as they were coming within target range for my Dad, and were not resumed until 1929 with new entry conditions which are not relevant here.. Thus, even if my Dad wanted to, there was no incentive to go for the Senior Cambridge which led nowhere. The family would not have been able to afford the luxury of an extended education, and would have no financial resources to send him for further education. So, I conclude my Dad did not bother with the Senior Cambridge. What I am clear is that he always spoke of the importance of completing school to advance in the world, referring to himself as an example for my benefit.The one memento I had of his schooling was the copy of school-edition of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar which he used. In 1951 when I sat for my Senior Cambridge, this self-same play was prescribed and I used his book. It was a wonder how it survived the Second World War. By what must have been a still uncommon feat in those days, which only a percentage of children then achieved, he completed secondary school.

My Dad Joins the Workforce.

And so, around 1918, my Dad stepped out of the kampong into the world of work.Newly emerging from a rural community, he had neither the wealth, the property, the tradition nor the connections for business or trade. But, it was the Roaring 1920s, and his education had prepared him for one prized occupation – employment in British administration. At that time the state was the biggest employer, with great security of tenure, good pay and decent prospects of promotion and emplacement on the pensionable establishment. With seniority came housing and medical benefits. A government servant was respected in colonial society, and even the middle and lower levels of officers enjoyed bureaucratic power among the uneducated population. As I see it, my Dad had three options which were variously pursued by his peers: to be a school teacher – which many Chetty Malaccans chose, to enroll in the technical services, or join the administration. He joined the Colonial Clerical Service. I could not establish the facts, and so I am theorizing that the service would have comprised three tiers, the Clerk Assistants, the Clerks, and the Chief Clerks. The basic recruitment grade would have been the Clerks, with the Junior Cambridge. They would have filled the roles corresponding to those discharged by executive officers in the 1950s, who were by then recruited from Cambridge Higher School Certificate holders (nowadays graduates), On promotion to Chief Clerk, they would assume responsibilities corresponding to those discharged by executive officers promoted to higher executive officers; many becoming heads of departments. I have no idea what his first job was or subsequent postings were, for the clerical service was a Common User function. All I can say is that by the beginning of 1930 or thereabouts, he emerged as Chief Clerk of the Malacca Volunteer Corps (MVC), had been courting a teacher from Singapore, and was within a year of marrying her.

For a young man of his day, my Dad was moving fast. It is intriguing to thread together what we do know from the scraps of of his working life as a young lad in his twenties. He emerged as very focused. This was not surprising for someone starting from the back of the grid. We get a picture of a young man with three strong features. Firstly, he was serious and responsible. You could depend on him to confronted and settle matters. Secondly, he was determined to blaze his way out of a subsistence level existence. And thirdly, he had an engaging personality and mixed easily. He always instilled in me to be straight, generous and frugal, virtues which characterised him. Above all, he was fun to be with. That’s why he always had many friends.

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We are told that in his early adulthood Dad took the Hindu religion seriously. He attended temple and he observed its rules. This may well substantiate the alternative history that he grew up in the strict Hindu atmosphere of his relatives’ home. By all accounts he was shaping up to be a fine and eligible young man. It seems an open secret that he fell in love with a young lady. Proposals of marriage were discussed but did not go through. Here the alternative history kicks in explaining that the lady belonged to his relative’s family, and the union was not approved because they were too closely related.

When Nenek Kathai passed away, Dad was without a family nucleus. But as is the common Chetty Malacca custom - in fact, in the Peranakan and Malay communities as well - he would have been welcomed in any of the close relatives’ homes, and in practice probably lived in more than one place. Not unlikely, he continued after school to live mostly with his Tranquerah relatives. We may assume that when he started working, he found his own digs. What we are told that at some point my Dad moved into government bachelor’s quarters in Pengkalan Rama. Here we lose track of the alternative history for a while, as Dad enters a new phase in his life.

Dad’s Bachelor Days

It must be supposed that my Dad was exposed to the Christian religion as he went through school at St Francis’. His early interest in Hinduism attested both to his natural piety as well as the strength of that faith in his relatives’ home. When its natural outcome did not materialise, ie settling down to marriage, it must be supposed that there was a break .It was at this point, probably in the mid 1920s, that he cam under the wing of a Eurasian family, whose name I regret I do not have except for vague memories of conversations between my parents referring to a “Dr. Pereira.” I also have vague recollections being told that they lived in the Pengkalan Rama area, not unlikely also in married government quarters. If these surmises are correct, then “Dr. Pereira” would have been a member of the medical services, such as a senior nursing officer, rather than a doctor. The latter would be living in quite another part of town. One could even postulate that my Dad was actually living with them. This family nurtured my Dad in their world and faith, and I believe led him to be baptised a Catholic. I have no date for this but intend to commission someone to research to find out. It would have been before 1931, when my Dad married my mother. It should be easy enough for he was baptised by Father Curado, whom my parents spoke about with reverence, and to whom I would have been introduced to some time as a tiny tot. Dad was baptised in St Peter’s Church, which also was and still is located at the Pengkalan Rama- Bungah Raya junction, not too many stones’ throw away from where my Dad would have lived. Needless to say, I was also baptised in this church by the self-same Father Curado in December 1934.

As his career matured, he acquired a motor-cycle. I seem to recall mention of a Triumph, if my memory holds true. Young, eager and mounted, his radius of activity widened and he made new friends. I believe that the Pereira family may have belonged to the Ceylonese Burgher community that was burgeoning in British Malaya to manage the rubber plantations, as well as fill the growing number of technical occupations. This was the new economically and socially emergent stratum of local society. Generally slotted at the sub-professional and sub-managerial levels, they mixed easy with the growing English-educated local population, especially the Dutch Eurasians (with whom they were cognate) as well as the Portuguese Eurasians. Many of them lived in beautiful country homes in the rubber estates. Their weekend diversions were to drive to each others’ places in turn for a bash. Sometimes they would organise parties to go hunting wild-boar and flying foxes. Many of them married local girls, mainly Eurasians, and their social groupings became increasing mixed. My conclusion is that through his “adopted family” my Dad got introduced to this social circle. Over time, the plantation communities grew more diverse, as the young generations of mixed parentage took on their parents’ occupations.

The plantation communities faced one major problem: what to do for the schooling of their children. This is where the borders-system fulfilled a vital role. Girls were sent to the convents and boys to the (La Salle) Brothers schools at the nearest towns, namely Malacca but as far as Singapore. The children would visit their parents during the holidays. The borders system was used by the British for their offspring of mixed parentage outside the bonds of wedlock; their own children they would send home to England. Not surprisingly, the borders were the happy grounds for young bucks looking for some fun or their parents for suitable spouses to be. The bigger concern was the girl borders as they completed school. Finding them a job was a first responsibility. Handing them over to a suitable husband was the last happy step. Until then, it was not uncommon for a girl to continue to border in a convent for the time being. If without relatives. In those days, there was no “open society”; :girls could not just walk out and live on their own – without falling into evil ways as they would say.