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Sapporo Soup Curry – By GEORGE BRAINE Recently, The New York Times carried a feature article on what to eat while traveling in Asia. It recommended a specific dish from India, Thailand, Korea, Japan, and Singapore. Soup Curry was the dish from Japan, and Sapporo, in the northern island of Hokkaido, where I live, is the home of soup curry. To a Sri Lankan, “Japanese curry” sounds like such a mismatch. What would the consumers of sushi – raw fish – know about curry, in which ingredients are cooked to death? So, for a couple of years, I thumbed my nose at local curry. Most supermarkets display a mind boggling variety of packaged curries, but they did not appeal to me. Curry is said to have arrived in Japan in the 19th century, when Anglo-Indian members of the Royal Navy brought curry powder with them. Since then, the Japanese ...

Oct 25, 2022 Posted by eLanka admin In Articles, George Braine Tagged INDIA, Japan, Japanese curry, Korea, Singapore, soup, Thailand

Mrs. Nicol’s Century – By George Braine My father was the youngest of nine children. They grew up not far from Negombo, in their mother’s ancestral village of Boralessa. With time, for employment and marriage, the siblings moved away, three to the Kandy area, the extended family meeting only rarely. Aunty Alice had begun working as a teacher and had later turned to nursing; three of her sisters were nurses, too. While serving at Teldeniya, she met and later married Ned Nicol. For many years, they managed a farm at Aspokuna, in the Digana area. In the early 1960s, aunty retired from nursing to become a full time farmer. She and Ned also had a keen interest in orchids. In the early 1960s, I was studying in Kandy, and met Aunty Alice a few times. We barely exchanged a few words. I saw how busy she was with the farm ...

Oct 17, 2022 Posted by eLanka admin In Articles, George Braine Tagged Aunty Alice, Negombo

The Talaimannar Pier – By GEORGE BRAINE A couple of years ago, I visited Madhu church after an absence of 50 years. The church has been restored by the army, but, in contrast, the area is in a deplorable state. The verdant forest is gone. Instead, what is mostly visible on either side of the road are small houses, some mere shacks, sitting in the middle of shrub jungle. Not even a chili plant can be seen near most houses. Some have been abandoned. Poverty and despair haunt the landscape. The usual practice in our country is to fell the trees, sell the wood, put up a shack to claim ownership, and aim for the next piece of forest. Pity the poor animals. The only commercial activity appears to be cattle herding. However, the splendid railway track and the modern railway stations built with Indian help, do offer much hope. ...

Sep 30, 2022 Posted by eLanka admin In Articles, George Braine Tagged George Braine, Madhu Church, South India, Sri Lankan agricultural produce

A Deathbed Conversion – By GEORGE BRAINE My grandfather Charles Stanley Braine was born an Anglican. In 1924, he married Engracia Nonis, who was a Catholic, at a Catholic church. (The two witnesses were Catholic nuns.) Their nine children were brought up as Catholics attended Catholic schools. Charles Stanley is buried in the Anglican Section of Negombo’s General Cemetery. But, on a visit to my aunt Bridget in England about 10 years ago, I found a yellowed newspaper clipping among her papers which told a strange story. My aunt later confirmed its veracity. The clipping is from the Catholic Messenger dated 5 March 1944. (Charles Stanley died on Feb. 11, 1944, in Negombo.) The article is written by a Catholic priest, going by the acronym XYZ. He does not identify Charles Stanley by name (only as Mr. X, an Englishman) nor does he even mention the town where the incident occurred. I ...

Sep 25, 2022 Posted by eLanka admin In Articles, George Braine Tagged Catholic, Catholic church, Catholic priest

Irrepressible Julia Margaret Cameron, at peace in Bogawantalawa – By GEORGE BRAINE Some years ago, my sister, BIL, and I drove to the Dickoya area, visiting Anglican churches and graveyards looking for evidence of our ancestors. At the quaint St. Mary’s church at Bogawantalawa, we found the grave my grand uncle, Frank Wyndham Becher Braine, who had died on March 9, 1879, at only 11 months. We may have been the first family members to visit his grave in more than a hundred years. That graveyard is also the resting place of a husband and wife, Charles Hay and Julia Margaret Cameron. Julia, during and after her lifetime, has been described as “indefatigable”, “a centripetal force”, “a bully”, “queenly”, “a one-woman empire”, “infernal”, “hot to handle”, “omnipresent”, “a tigress”. She was “impatient and restive”, for whom “a single lifetime wasn’t enough”. Who was this remarkable Victorian? Julia was born in ...

Sep 19, 2022 Posted by eLanka admin In Articles, George Braine Tagged Anglican churches, Bogawantalawa, Dickoya, Dimbula in Ceylon, julia Margaret, Julia Margaret Cameron

Singing “Sukiyaki” in difficult times – By GEORGE BRAINE All round the world, at the height of covid, people paid tribute to frontline medical workers in various ways. In Japan, where I live, thousands across generations – from schoolchildren to grandparents – sang a 60-year old song, “Ue O Muite Aruko” (“I look up as I walk”). Known to the rest of the world as “Sukiyaki”, the song became an instant hit in 1961 and went onto become one of the world’s best-selling singles of all time. This song has a special resonance for me. I first heard “Sukiyaki” on Radio Ceylon being sung by The Blue Diamonds, two brothers of Indonesian/Dutch origin. The lyrics went “The charms of Sukiyaki The arms of Sukiyaki Are all I long for since I left Nagasaki Why did I roam Far away from home I hope that she will wait for me …” ...

Sep 15, 2022 Posted by eLanka admin In Articles, George Braine Tagged Japan song, Kyu Sakamoto, Radio Ceylon, Sukiyaki song lyrics in english, Ue O Muite Aruko

A hailstorm at Dankotuwa – By GEORGE BRAINE The sky is a cloudless blue, but the ground is covered in snow and ice. The temperature has plunged to -15 centigrade. The landscape is searing white. I have returned home after shoveling snow off the driveway, my fingers numb with cold. I am in Sapporo, in Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido. My memories go back to 1956, when I first saw ice. My father was the superintendent of Carrington Group, a coconut plantation at Dankotuwa, in the NWP. The plantation also had a large dairy and a piggery. The bungalow was on top of a hill, with “sweeping vistas” (as my father later wrote) on all sides. One morning, around 10am, we were startled by the crashing of rocks on the tin roof. On rushing outside, we were dumbfounded to see, not rocks, but a storm of ice falling from the sky. (We ...

Aug 16, 2022 Posted by eLanka admin In Articles, George Braine Tagged Carrington Group, cloudless blue, ice falling from the sky

Those Pilgrimages to Madhu Church – By GEORGE BRAINE “Pilgrims” now complete day trips to Madhu, a 250km roundtrip from Colombo and Negombo, leaving at dawn and returning by late evening. They are boastful of this “achievement”, made possible by a fast, auto drive, air conditioned, power-steering car, on well paved roads, helped by cafes on the way where they could pause for tea. But, they have no idea of what they are missing on such quickie trips. My father, the youngest of nine children, wrote about his trips to Madhu as a child. This was in the 1930s, and his English father had bought a Galloway saloon car for the family. He even remembered the registration number: S-264. His Sinhalese mother (my grandmother) was a devout Catholic. The pilgrimage to Madhu, an arduous journey through dangerous jungle, to a shrine reputed to have miraculous powers, was expected to bring ...

Aug 8, 2022 Posted by eLanka admin In Articles, George Braine Tagged Negombo, pilgrimage to Madhu

Two Books, Two Backstories – By GEORGE BRAINE I have recently finished reading two books, and this describes their special significance for me. The fall of Singapore to the Japanese during WW II is the topic of Sinister Twilight, Noel Barber’s masterful account of Britain’s debacle. Inter-service rivalries, poor leadership, complacency, and just plain stupidity were the causes of Britain’s surrender within a week. (Churchill had called Singapore a “fortress”.) First published in 1968, the book is meticulously researched and written at a brisk pace. At the end of the book, Barber states that the “Japanese victories in battle destroyed forever the legend of the white man’s supremacy”, paving the way for eventual independence throughout Asia. Henry Colin Christy was a Captain in the Welsh Regiment stationed in Singapore, and was living there with his wife and infant daughter Jennifer. As the Japanese troops came sweeping down the Malay peninsula ...

Aug 5, 2022 Posted by eLanka admin In Articles, George Braine Tagged Empress of Japan, Henry Colin Christy, Sinister Twilight

Air Force Days – By George Braine Source : eLanka In 1978, needing a change from teaching English, I applied to join the Sri Lanka Volunteer Air Force. After facing an interview and passing a medical exam, I was asked to report in a few days to Air Force HQ in Colombo, before departure by train to Diyatalawa for training. At HQ, I first met my fellow trainees, about 20 in all. We were taken to the office of the Commander, Air Vice-Marshall Harry Goonetilleke, in groups of five, where we were sworn-in and commissioned. On the night mail train to Diyatalawa, I got to know the other trainees better. We ranged in age from early 20s to late 30s and were a motely lot, coming from varied educational and occupational backgrounds: teachers, agricultural officers, technical officers, budding accountants and bankers, an engineer, a veterinarian, and a dentist, a mix of ...

Aug 1, 2022 Posted by eLanka admin In Articles, George Braine Tagged air force locations, Air Vice-Marshall Harry Goonetilleke, Diyatalawa