Training College Days – By George Braine In memory of Colonel Nizam Dane, Died in Action on June 24, 1997 The entrance to the Maharagama Teachers Training College wasn’t particularly impressive. It was a narrow, tree lined, pot-holed path leading off High Level Road, some distance from the Maharagama junction. About a hundred yards beyond the entrance, the path opened up to the training college premises. The sight, in the early 1970s, was more akin to an internment camp than the premier teachers’ college in the country. World War II vintage Army barracks, made of carelessly white washed rough-hewn stones, rusty wire mesh, and grimy asbestos roofs, were scattered among overgrown lawns and gravel pathways. To me and the others who had gathered there on a January morning in 1970, our first day as teacher trainees, the environment was indeed forbidding. Senior trainees, rumored to be merciless raggers, hovered menacingly. ...

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