Advice in plenty was always freely available from those who had been through the
hoop before you - for example, in the matter of passing local language exams on which
depended your confirmation in appointment and promotion after two years'
probation.
"The trick," they said airily, "when asking a prisoner about the misdeed which has
landed him in Jail is to put your questions to him so that he answers in not more than
one or two words. If you ask him why he did whatever he did, you will open the
floodgates and you will drown miserably".
The dear old pundit who waited patiently every morning on the mess verandah for
his pupils to appear after early parade and breakfast tried to instil the same technique. Unfolding his copy of the Dina Mina (Daily News) he would point to a suitable court
report and guide one's hesitant tongue through the curley-cue lettering to an
approximate understanding. Whenever a juicy case cropped up, his eyes sparkled and
when, eventually, the stage was reached when you practised with real live prisoners in
the jail, he could not suppress a shiver of excitement when a flesh and blood murderer
was brought in for viva voce practice. They were remand prisoners who had
volunteered to break the monotony of sitting around doing nothing whilst awaiting
trial, by submitting themselves to interrogation by faltering language students, and
certainly they enjoyed twisting our tails a little whilst simultaneously rehearsing their
defence in court.
Why remand prisoners? Well, there was an old tale, probably mythical, that an
officer from an earlier generation took great pains to familiarise himself with the case
history of every convicted prisoner currently in custody, only to be confronted on the
day of the examination by a new face. With complete sangfroid, he "confessed" to the
examiner that he knew the prisoner's record, whereupon he was commended for his
frankness, the stranger was marched out, and replaced by a familiar face. Whether true
or not, in my time the floating population of remand prisoners was used for all official
language exams, and no advance swotting was feasible.
So, every three months, until crowned by success, a small group of probationary
officers presented themselves at the main gate of Welikade Prison and were directed to
a waiting room. Next door sat the Examiner, accompanied by a Deputy Inspector
General, and the official Interpreter Mudaliyar. (If the Examiner happened to be a
senior European Civil Servant, woe betide you: he would expect to hear the fluent
grammatical speech which he himself was capable of delivering to an audience of, say
members of a rural co-operative. In contrast, a senior Sinhalese or Tamil Civil Servant
always seemed to be pleased and surprised that you could utter any words at all in the
vernacular.)
When the day came to take the second more advanced exam, I appeared at the
appointed time and managed to translate without too much hesitation a crime report
written by a village headman in Sinhalese characters. Then a prisoner was brought in
for the oral examination. He was an elderly man, polite and dignified in manner, and
he took time to settle on his hunkers as gestured by the Interpreter Mudaliyar. "You
may ask him some questions, please", said the Examiner (a senior Sinhalese Civil
Servant, to whom much later I became a devoted and admiring staff officer.)
Taking a deep breath, I started off on the well-worn staple questions - Where do you
come from? - What offence are you alleged to have committed? - etc., etc. I gathered
that he was a peasant cultivator from Tangalle district in the rural south east of the
Island, and that he had been accused of manslaughter. Thus far I was in control,
although the prisoner had few front teeth and lisped through the gaps in the equivalent
of a very broad Devon accent. I gather also that he had been digging in his paddy-field
and that he had hit someone with his mammoty or hoe. So far, so good.
Then I made a crucial mistake: I asked, "How did you get into this fight?" He was off
in a flash. There was mention of a dead man; mention of two other men; a fight; and yet
another dead man. I floundered hopelessly and at this point the Examiner turned to
me with a compassionate smile and said, "I think you had better come back and try
again in another three months." As I withdrew, I heard him tell the interpreter to find
out what had really happened, and the DIG, who had kept a straight face throughout,
told me the rest later.
Even the Mudaliyar had difficulty in getting at the facts. The poor old fellow's story
was this:-
He had been digging peaceably in his paddy-field when two men came along the
bund separating his field from the next. They were carrying a dead body for burial:
(Corpse No. 1). Our friend remonstrated and told them to take another route, so that
the shadow of the dead man would not fall on his rice crop and blight it. The
pall-bearers replied that they would be blowed (to put it politely) if he expected them
to make a detour of several hundred yards just to oblige him and his superstitions. A
furious argument broke out and developed into a fight in which the old man wielded
his mammoty to such effect that one of the pall-bearers fell to the ground and died
(Corpse No. 2). Meantime the second pall-bearer fled leaving Corpse No. 1 lying in the
paddy-field. The local headman came and called in the Police, who (most unfairly)
arrested him and charged him with murder. I hope the Judge was not too harsh on
him.
Three months later, I managed to satisfy the Examiner and earned a second pip on
my shoulder. And then it was back to square one for another year, learning basic
Tamil.
Similar visits to the Prison followed, but with a very different type of inmate, mostly
a scattering of rickshaw or dock labourers. My Tamil pundit was a purist who insisted
on correct grammar, declensions and all, whether or no such high-flown speech was
intelligible to humble illiterates. He was right. When in due course I appeared before
another (Tamil) Examiner I passed without too much trouble. Whereas a young
Tamil-born officer, who appeared for examination at the same time, addressed the
prisoners in abominable vernacular (such as used daily by planters or by their wives in
the kitchen). He was turned away ignominiously and told not to return before he had
learnt his mother tongue properly.
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