bamba & the osc!

bambalapitiya and it's environs were much a part of the lives for many of us during our salad days. certainly it was for the osc and i have been asked, many a time, by those added on to the original mbb mailing list, as to who are the osc. who indeed!

answering that knotty question would probably take many tomes but i am mindful that the cousin wants these rants short and i will therefore be brief as i can.

the osc stands for oriental sports club. its other abbreviation is sfsc and you don't want to know what that stands for. no, really! it's a collection of guys who grew up around three roads in bambalapitiya; frankfort place, melbourne avenue and milagiriya avenue. it also included others, like me, who were connected to these guys in some way. the original founder members were faizul ( now in canada), kumar ( now in the uk) and ronnie ( in the states). there was even a formal application for membership which was kept in what was famously called the blue file ( "can duckweed play on sunday" "ah! is his application in the blue file?") . faizul tells me that he still has it.

there was also a membership fee which was something like 0.25 cents a month. a very steep fee considering that no drinks were served at the bar. then again, no one paid. there was a board with a president, secretary and a treasurer but this was more a dictatorship than a democracy. kumar insists that he continues to be president purely because he has not been unelected and also because no one else wanted the job.

the formal activity of the club was soft ball cricket. some rugby ( the osc once played against the havelocks bambaras and your scribe, all of 6' and 40 kilos, was prop with the other prop being mohan amith all of 4' and about 60 kgs. yes, i agree, the mind boggles!). table tennis at st pauls milagiriya. chess. lots of fooling around, climbing trees, hora police, cycle races, beach rugby, swims and so on. but, in general, activity of the club consisted of hanging around at all hours of the day and night and so annoying our parents.

the gnaneswaran's at number 23 frankfort place was the club house and also the nets for our practices. the neighboring houses had enormous repair bills to their roofs and glass panes whilst at night telephones would be abuzz with angry parents demanding all manner of compensation. decades later when miriam j joined the company i was then working for, she said " ah! when are you going to pay dad for that light bulb you broke".

and, when we got kicked out of no. 23 (which was often) we all gathered at the wall that ran along the galle road at the top of frankfort place. this was generally in the late evening. at the height of membership it was quite a crowd. i recently met a guy from the bamba flats who told me that they used to be pretty wary of walking past the hoard of mean and scruffy looking guys hanging around that wall. us, mean? tsk! meals, such as they were, were courtesy of jayanthi's, the kade across the galle road from the wall.

we had fun. we had seasons in the sun. who can forget those challenge matches? whilst we had a group well in excess of 20, getting together 11 for a cricket match was stressful. guys suddenly remembered chores to be completed and aunts to be visited. 40 used to be the average score by the club on a good day (this writers contribution was a princely 4). did we win? who cares, now. then there was beach rugby. getting up as planed at five and finding out that except for the pot who was mad on rugby, no one else wanted to get up till 6.30 was slightly annoying. so we threw stones at closed windows and got shouted at by irked parents.

we were tough. faizul and ronnie cycling to nuwera eliya and back was amazing. as were their trips down south. no, kumar, we are not going to talk about the light bulb. a day would start with beach rugby, then cricket and still more cricket. late evening would be time for road rugby and one needed to be tough for that. many of us still wear scars as a result of being stuffed into the milagriya culvert chasing after the loose ball.

then there were heroes. hetti, all on his own, stopping the rampaging july 83 mob from entering no. 23. mani, doing the same in india for some singhalese pals and paying for it with his life.

and oh yes! there was romance. but lets not go down that particular road.

but all of this does not even begin to describe the osc (and i can see my cousin chaffing at the bit). a group of friends had fun. and grew up ( or think they did). so, what?

i have no idea what. partly it is the fact that the entire group has remained best of friends after more than 35 years even though more than half the group is scattered to the four corners of the globe, married settled down and are now er... responsible adults. partly it is due to the fact that the osc has remained tenuous through growing up, marriage, kids, mortgages, alternate life experiences, disagreements and so on. partly it is of course due to the fact that they never grew up in the first place ( the women are nodding). we are multi ethnic, multi racial, multi religious and ( at times) mighty silly. remember the grass chaps? but, all of this is only part of the picture.

the osc, is a group of very good friends who have remained so. let it be at that. guys, take a bow.

faizul, fahmy, ronnie, kumar, gopi, malcolm, suresh, hetti, mevan, michael, joey, nilesh, rodney, yogan, mahesh, siva, mani, lawri, naleer, mohan

there's a copy of cosmopolitan in my toilet...!

i kid you not. there is.

having three females in the house this past month means that the bathroom / toilet has developed into my place of refuge and the quiet contemplation of my navel. into this sanctuary someone has inserted a copy of the famous women’s monthly. over the past week i have gathered invaluable intelligence that will prove quite useful in my on going battle. i must also admit to taking one or two of the personality tests the revered magazine runs for it’s discerning readers. no, i am not going to tell you the results. sufficient to say that it recommends ( among other things) that i upgrade my wardrobe to include things er… leather!

in sri lanka, we have had a thing about women as well. in the 60’s and again in the 70’s we had the world’s first women prime minister. since 1994, her daughter has been head of state. still is. and, despite everything, she is still very popular. cosmopolitan does not explain this. on a factual basis neither the mother nor the daughter (or the father for that matter) can claim much to moving the country forward. the other direction is perhaps more descriptive. can any of us, alive then, every forget the 70’s when mrs. b was in charge? the past 10 years have been a bit different to that period, i must admit, but not by much.

as i write, sri lanka is once again in the throes of one of those cyclic upheavals we like to think are defining moments in time but are nothing more than notches on our chakra. with all this talk of statues and rioting priests one would think that we would be extremely religious and pious people. one could also think that cosmo is the font of all wisdom.

i dropped in at the hetties the other night for a cuppa. “why do we keep electing women who get us into even deeper shit” i asked, perfectly innocently.

“machang, the thing is that we sri lankans are full of it” he answered meditatively. “in the greater scheme of things, it’s all a sexual role playing thingy. woman boss. man meek.”

he admitted that he had a peek at the cosmopolitan issue in my toilet.


“step by step, heart to heart, left right left
we all fall down, like toy soldiers
bit by bit, torn apart, we never win
but the battle wages on, for toy soldiers.”

- like toy soldiers - eminem

ssdd!

gentlemen (and ladies)!

well now, this is all nice and comfy. a new home always is. having said that, amitha for one is not too thrilled with the new arrangement. however, to paraphrase jfk, you cannot please ‘em all.

in sri lanka though, the politicians do try. to pleasure us all, that is. that, of course, is a polite phrase for it. this is after all an on line bulletin now. the president’s term of office ends late next year, we think. in parliament her government which is a coalition with the jvp has a one seat majority. the jvp will not allow her ( they say) to sign a joint mechanism with the ltte to handle tsunami reconstruction work in the north and the east. the jvp says they will pull out of government if she does sign thereby collapsing government. in the meantime the weekend papers say that she is promoting her brother as the next president sidelining her prime minister who had ambitions for the position. the opposition unp say they will not support a minority government. all sides are wooing individual parliamentarians. and, at times like these, the banks do excellent business.

in the meantime the country muddles on and nothing much is happening on the ground by way of tsunami reconstruction or otherwise. over the past 10 years or so it is as if we have all been in siesta. look at what india has achieved in 10 short years. nay, look at the maldives tsunami and all. of course there has been the war. but that particular excuse has not existed for the past 3 or 4 years.

to put it another way, ssdd.

what is it about us sri lankans? is it that we really believe the politicians and expect as a god ( there’s a politically incorrect word in sri lanka) given right all the freebies offered at election time? do we really believe that we can sit back in our little shack and have everything handed over to us by the politician we voted for? do we really believe that ethnic minorities or majorities should have no rights or voices?

in trincomalee there is this big hullabaloo over the covert construction of the statue of the buddha in the middle of the town (lets not go down the road of whether statues are ok for buddhism). people have died this past few weeks because of it. and yet, all over the town the hindu’s and the christians have erected various other statues / shrines which are equally without authority (lets not go down the road of whether statues are ok for hinduism and christianity). so what’s the fuss about? even bala cannot answer that one.


“but this long run is a misleading guide to current affairs.
In the long run we are all dead. “
- john maynard keynes

and, in reality, that’s the only pure pleasure available to us sri lankans.

the friday yellows

chappies & chapperettas!

well, i have finally decided to go on line! saves the bother of typing and e mailing and saves you the bother of clicking and deleting. it also saves me the bother of receiving terse notes from the cousin indicating that the mbb is too bloody long.

the mbb on line has been an aim of ye olde scribe for sometime now but costs of setting up a page has been a barrier. however with googol offering on line blogs we are now off and running. if you feel the urge to comment please click the comment tab at the bottom of this post and leave a message.

if anyone wants to donate anything, please do.

please book mark the page for further rants!

luv / joey