When they are born it is a habit of theirs to continue somehow to live on.
An ingrained and deep seated habit it would appear to be, seeing that the experiment has succeeded in the nearly three and a half million cases on present record.
In the course of living they do not show themselves eager for dying unnecessarily and without adequate reason. They, therefore, habitually eschew dangers. They like their feet firmly planted, if anywhere, on terra firma. They do not care for fancy or for acrobatics. As it is not habitual for them to leap they consider themselves dispensed from looking.
It must damp the enthusiasm of those who wish to make them air-minded to meet the objection that if one were meant to fly wings would have been given. This philosophic criticism is part of their habitual wisdom.
Upon this principle they live and move; that a train is not so safe as a station platform, that boarding a bus or motor or any other mechanically propelled vehicle is not so blessed as alighting therefrom.
Between working and not working they are minded to choose the latter. If there were no option, it is habitual to their frame of mind not to work six days a week, if three suffice to maintain the experiment of living. Gloom is reflected on their faces on Monday mornings, but happiness on Saturday afternoons at one o’clock. The end of a month is a nicer proposition than the beginning, and nicer even than that are public holidays. There are thirty holidays or thereabouts on the public calendar. The nicest proposition would be one to increase this number. They will carry it with acclamation.
Unkind critics say that the sons of the Lion Race are deficient in grit, perseverance, industry, initiative and what not. Whereupon the Lion Race point to the Ruined Cities, Giant Tanks et cetera, and having thus clinched the argument, remain quiet, and continue to do so.
Their ideal form of government may, somehow, appear to others to be Utopian, but this does nothing to shake their firm notion that the best government is that which fulfils its functions free of charge. No such government tendering free services has yet arrived. So the Lion Race pays its dues to the not so ideal government on the very last statutory day of all, hoping against hope that some inspired voice behind the wire net will say: ‘ Thanks so much, keep your money, the services are free.”
They dislike exactions of money even in other ways. Dues, bills, the Income tax, charges, tees have to have their attention directed to the payment several times. A collector is their Bogey Man, the Figure of Evil. Their letters stamped with a two-cent stamp they receive without pleasure and more often than not omit to read.
But they jump out of their shoes (or sandals) to give away freely on their own and without pressure from others. They like the word “voluntary”. Flag days and other methods of voluntary giving thrive enormously. They arrange “Farewell Functions” for departing benefactors, paying liberally for the entertainment. They cap it all with the Group Photograph with the departing benefactor in the central chain. A copy of this they send to the newspaper.
On occasions of greater solemnity they hold a Farewell Dinner. They have a gift of post-prandial eloquence, which discovers and lauds all the hidden virtues of the man in die seat of the Guest of Honour. To begin with their speakers complain they do not know much. Towards the end the matter would be enough to fill a book, nearly.
They do not like the business of punctuality. They prefer to keep the appointment at a different time to that which was set down in the engagement. This compulsion of a set tune they feel to be a curb on the freedom of a people who have enjoyed independence for two thousand three hundred years.
If they call without appointment they say at the outset that it is about nothing in particular. Then it becomes a small matter. Then, later and at leisure, they unfold a tale of utmost complexity and dramatic elaboration very nearly equalling the best in the plots of the late Mr. Henry James. This they understand to be a Form of politeness. Their code demands that the subject be introduced with due apology, and by degrees, and with the decorum described by Sidney Webb (now the Lord Passfield) as the inevitability of gradualness.
Mr. Chesterton has said that people who argue never quarrel. The Lion Race neither argue nor quarrel; they litigate.
They are drawn mightily to parliamentary institutions and thrill at the name of democracy. They cultivate the art of pleasing demos, shake hands with him, take their hat off to his wife and fondle her babies all in good time for parliamentary election. Even a man not elected finds the attempt so considerably heroic that he is content to sleep the rest of (as he thinks) his political career on that laurel. The elected man goes straight to his seat and sits there for the full term of three years. There is no record of even one such representative getting fed up, or disagreeing violently with policy, and refusing to sit any more.
They are muckle ta’en in ceremony. This makes them good for showing people round, receiving people at their coming and for taking the chair on those occasions. At a pinch any one of them can officiate in the place of King Dutugemunu or King Parakrama Bahu the Great; failing that in the capacities of Acting Minister, Acting Director, Acting Head Clerk, Acting What-not.
At the weddings of the Lion Race two-handed guests will make it a strictly private one. Two to three thousand will be a fair gathering of the public. The champagne must flow and the newspaper report would do well to say that it was served ad lib. To the statement of the dowry in terms of cash or acres of plantation it is not forbidden to add a few noughts to the totals. This is not out of fraud but for prestige.
Though the Upper Ten of the Race are driven in motor cars they are a walking race. They walk the roads calmly and with easy nonchalance though pavements are there and vehicles sound horns or ring bells and chauffeurs curse. Sprung from the oldest race of man they walk, on their own road. It is foreigners who invented the notion that roads are for people in a hurry. Because of Wijaya and All That, road-rules that have been made have been promulgated in vain.
The queue-habit is one of which they have not the foggiest notion. In places where groups or even crowds have to be served they have no use for the right of first come first served, in the scramble the more posh-looking man expects to catch the eye of the server and be served. If the reciprocation of eye did not ensue it would not be doing justice to the greater influence of the more posh-looking person.
They do not think reading books and the rest of printed matter a profitable occupation. But they are open to receive complimentary copies of books and periodicals which is proof that their patronage counts. Under the head of literature in their house-hold budgets they observe rigorous economics. Twenty of them in a railway compartment buy one newspaper thus getting in a ten-cent-worth for half a cent per head.
Between easy money and hard money they choose the former without hesitation. Thus sweep ticket lists in horse races become over-subscribed in a little more than a jiffy. They are not impressed by the fact that the chances of getting rich quick is one in ten thousand or more. Being optimists they are so engrossed with the happiness of the one who sweeps the pool that they properly relegate to oblivion the nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine others who also ran. The winner wraps the pile of God-sent money in a large handkerchief which he ties round his waist next the skin, and then departs home; the nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine others sportingly proceed to stake the next fifth cents.
Critics say that they are fond of receiving honours. They enjoy, it is true, being Knight Bachelor (the feminine, Lady, is specially appetizing.) M.B.E., J.P., Gate Mudaliyar, and so forth. But they also delight in lavishing on other people honours, which are within their dispensation. No one can find fault with the candidates they select for signing as witnesses at their weddings and speakers of the bridal toast or for holding the pall at funerals. They scatter Presidentships and Vice-Presidentships and also Patronage (including Distinguished Patronage) of Societies or occasions with a hearty lavishness and a keen sense of propriety as to where such tokens should go.
One of the few most splendid features of their ancient culture surviving to this day is their epistolary style in the vernacular. Compared with its sustained courtliness and elaborateness of ceremonial phraseology a modern letter in the English tongue touches a depth of banality. Two ordinary fellows from any village will correspond one with the other with the decorum and gravity of a bishop inditing an epistle to his venerable brother.
Their males shake hands. Their females kiss. That is, the females kiss other females. Often times females who are strangers upon introduction at once kiss. The mixed kiss is very rare and is a token of consanguinity, affinity or other relationship.
The Upper Ten occasionally proceed to England on holiday. The process is via Marseilles and Paris. The London Correspondent confesses in the London Letter to have heard that they are in town. Sometimes he has even seen them. Their sons also proceed. This is to prosecute their studies.
Perhaps no Government in the world has such devoted people among its governed as the Lion Race. They have no other or better future for their sons than to see then listed in the Government Service. Every father’s heaven is a Government Office with a punkah overhead and his son underneath seated in the chair of the Assistant Government Agent. The full logic of the aspiration would be really three million and a half Government Servants. All servants and no masters. But the thought does not disturb them one bit. The total is only sixty thousand at the moment.
They marry first and love afterwards. But their domestic policy has been a thorough success.
As the Lion Race they believe themselves to be the best people anywhere on this planet. Proof? It is all there in the Mahavamsa. A copy can be borrowed from the Public Library.
Times of Ceylon Christmas Number. (1936).