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| ...continued.. |
| Victorian (pen-in-cheek) Vignettes |
| T.Wignesan |
| Debators! Or Fabricators! |
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| Time: second semester 1951. Place: VI Assembly Hall. |
| Light was still lingering from the slanting sunset rays enveloping the turret and the science wing when the hall was gradually getting packed; well, almost! A stealthy breeze picked up through the left-open bay-windows. The lights had not yet then been turned on when the chairperson, the State Education Officer or a headmistress of a girls` school , a rather short and darkish bespectacled white lady in the process of passing through middle age, took the chair with her back to the science wing. On either side of the centre table, four wooden chairs were laid out for the contestants. The audience of mixed Victorians and MBS lads and lasses in their best evening going-out-for-a-stroll-after-tea garments were fanned out in a half-open bracket, some four or five rows deep, somewhat enclosing the central table. That chairs had to be brought over from the library just before starting time was enough proof of the interest this debate invoked or rather provoked. Here and there teachers lurked. Was E.M.F.Payne, the head, around? Yes, he was, I`m sure: to introduce the presiding lady, and then he was off. Perhaps, he listened in from the gallery, across the corridor from his office, now and then, the picture of the tall slightly balding figure of the most considerate of the headmasters in my view come to mind: full-domed forehead over kindly eyes always in a pensive tilt while he listened to pupils in sympathetic silence. [Dr.Payne obtained a Ph.D. from the University of London in May 1964 for his thesis: "Basic Syntactic Structures in Standard Malay" submitted to the School of Oriental and African Studies, a work which inspired M. Blanche Lewis`s seminal effort Sentence Analysis in Modern Malay, Cambridge at the University Press, 1969.] |
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| Topic of discussion: "East is East and West is West and Ne`er the Twain shall Meet." |
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| For the Proposition: Unnamed/Unnamable (main speaker) and can`t for-the-life-of-me remember who?(supporting speaker) |
| For the Opposition: Ratnam (main speaker) and Ratnam (supporting speaker, probably a relative of the former) [Just an explanation: the name "Ratnam", quite common among Jaffna Tamils, is actually an abbreviated version of the Indian Tamil name and word: Rattinam, meaning " a gem, or precious stone" (there are nine in the Tamil vocabulary).] |
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| We must have got going by about a quarter to six. After a brief introduction of sorts by the presiding lady, the main speaker was called upon to state the case for the proposition. He was given about half an hour to do the job. Opportunities for airing one`s views being rather rare in those days (the same speaker having represented the school once before, I think, against the Klang High School, debate held in the tuckshop, and taking part in a school debate on another occasion), he naturally took forty minutes to round-up his case, much to the chagrin of the chairperson who kept interrupting him on three occasions, both at her annoyance at the views espoused by the speaker, which included some quotations from the Nobel laureate T.S.Eliot, Jawaharlal Nehru and Mahatma Ghandi, and at the anti-Imperialist stand taken by the speaker; she warned the speaker about being brief - a warning which naturally followed as a matter of course in those days in such circumstances. He had a chance at the end besides to conclude the debate with another ten minutes or so, if I`m not mistaken, but not without quoting in full Nobel Laureate Rudyard Kipling`s fated and fatidic stanza which I give here (quoting from memory - correct or condemn me if I`m wrong) for the greater edification of the lads and lasses from downhill. |
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| East is East and West is West And ne'er the twain shall meet! |
| Till Earth and Sky stand presently At God's great Judgement Seat! |
| There is neither East nor West Border, nor vision nor birth |
| Till two strong men stand face to face Tho' they come from the ends |
| of the Earth! |
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| If I interpret the stanza right, the VI was "one strong man" but where was the other? One would have in this light to go looking for the Oxford Union debating team. Never mind! Read on! |
| Ratnam, the Tamil "gem", took about twelve minutes to supposedly "retort" the VI case, but he did no such thing, as he was intently reading his "script" prepared in four and a half pages all through the VI extempore exposé. His speech was bible-oriented in the main (though I`d swear he was a Hindu then), and the passage beginning with these words: " Ye, though ye walk through the Valley of Death…" rang out from his paper to the full. Then, it was the turn of the supporting speaker for the VI who in a brief statement spoke about things that had no connection whatsoever to what the main VI speaker had upheld. (Even if I can`t recall the person concerned, I distinctly remember this anomaly in the proposition`s case, which I think the chairperson pointed out in her concluding assessment.) |
| Then, when it came to the MBS`s supporting speaker - the other "precious stone" - to make his plea, I was totally taken aback. Abraham Lincoln`s famous speech at Gettysburg, on the field of the dead in some decisive battle during the American Civil War, was rolled out as in a Speech Contest! Then, after reading through some more pages, he suddenly dropped a clanger. He read out: |
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| "The hand that rocks the world rules the cradle!" |
| For a few excruciating moments, no one knew what to say or do, given the gravity of the subject under discussion. The younger "gem" examined his text again and again in obvious doubt. There was a kind of unseemly silence which was about to be pricked. Then the chairperson intervened: "Surely you mean: The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world?" |
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| In an instant, the audience was in stitches, and so were the two "precious stones". What began as a serious discussion ended extremely well and in good humour, thanks to a slip of the tongue or the eye. Did someone drop a precious gem? |
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| Result: VI won hands down. |
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| ...click here to read on, the 'Corollary' to this! |
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| © T.Wignesan, Paris, December 12, 2000 |
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| Don't forget to read the next Victorian Times for more instalments of Wignesan's |
| Victorian (pen-in-cheek) Vignettes! |
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