The Khaki is more at odds than even in the Battle of the Blues, just as much as their colours do not blend easily. Big match fever accentuates their disparity. Trucking is the problem, apart from much else. Often a discordant note is struck between the police and the boys, when trucking is on. But these very clashes have kept alive the history of the ‘battle’ and their chronicling over the years.
Wardens and Principals have tried valiantly to keep these exchanges on a low even keel. They explain that this ‘Battle’ is only a game between two schools; that cricket is like life, but it is not life. The match is just that, only one among many other games with other schools, we are told. After all, between Eton and Harrow, the cricket match is not a ‘Battle’ of Blues or of any other colour. What then? Here the match is elevated to a Battle of the Blues. And hell opens its doors. Will these admonitions help? either the boys or the police?
School closing bell.
The school work on the match day just had to go on. Only two hours were taken off the time table, to allow for the boys to go to the match. Rules were strict, but the simmering enthusiasm beneath could not be contained. But one day the school bell rang even two hours before that appointed time. Was it to close school early? Or was it for some other? The bell rang wildly without let or halt. It could not have been the school bellboy who rang the bell. A bull had been tied at its tail to the rope of the bell. The two were coupled with a Queens Scout knot. The bull stood in for the bell boy, not a sure substitute. The tolling of the bell far exceeded the sober knell. All hell broke loose. School closed even two hours before the allowed concession time. This happened in 1952 or 1953.
The bull which drew the heavy roller on the big club grounds had meandered its way to the further area over the intervening road. The bull sensed the pasture was greener, on that side. Apparently there was no gate near the belfry, as we see it now. Obviously the match fever of the boys was near delirium. The Warden and teaching staff had all come around. They did not betray their amusement. The boys could now not be sent back, in that melee, to resume their classes. The message was clear. The Battle of the Blues was not just one other match. Would Eton and Harrow have anything sportier to show?
Inner sanctum
Mere trucking was just not enough. Boys need to get off the truck now and again. Scaling of walls which closed in the area of girls schools were an inviting diversion to simple trucking. Ladies College was a favourite tryst for the truckers. Climbing over the walls marked the further achievement of the boys. But running into the very heart of the Ladies College, to the Principal’s room, dancing with her, albeit a few steps, added to kissing of the expatriate Lady Principal, surely breaks the bounds of propriety. Yet that did happen. The khaki clad police stood in a posse discreetly at the next junction, short of valour. Police do come later than the pizza, a wag observes. Not so the Warden of S. Thomas’ College who just happened, so the story goes, to drive past at this very time. The boys were identified, and could not hide behind anonymity. They were suitably dealt with in school the next Monday.
Taken for a ride.
The khaki came a cropper in yet one other escapade of trucking. The boys had hired a lorry, complete with the papare band, all from some little reputed enterprises by the canal. All went well till there was some problems with the law mainly through over enthusiasm. They were all hauled up before the Wellawatte police, the lorry, the band, and the contracting boys. The two leading boys were asked to sit on the benches of the police station verandah. The lorry drivers and their cohorts were kept with the vehicle on the main road just outside the police station. Time went by. There were more momentous matters for the cops, matters nearer life and death, than that of these miscreant school boys. The boys were not attended to for quite some time while the lorry owners resorted to a boutique next door for refreshment. The two boys kept twiddling their thumbs and rotating their ankles. They were shifty in their bench seats, but held on only near to impatience. When the police officers came to attend to these school boy truants they found the two boys had quietly decamped, unnoticed by any. Accused were by then unknown, not even to the lorry drivers who knew of the boys only as Alwis or Peiris or Silva or Perera. Apparently the police found fault with lorry driver crew who had agreed to the hire without knowing the names of the hirers. The drivers realised the game was up and went their way, none the wiser. These stories do not go down in the annals of the history of the Battle of the Blues. Only oral tradition has it, passed down from generation to generation of school boys. The story goes only in whispers. The names of the miscreants are withheld out of caution and with regard to their high social and professional standing in later life.
How then did this writer learn of this episode? This incident was related to the writer simply to cock a snoop at him considering his connection with the police. One has to admit, the police were again were caught heavy booted and flat footed, as you will, for want of efficient execution of their duty.
Green channel.
Near the gate to the match the khaki were in the blues in a different way. Just there, was a solicitous offer made to a lady teacher from the other school to help her as she was carrying her heavy packed picnic bag. The teacher much relieved went into the grounds with the smaller bag the boys gave in exchange. There were strict orders to the cops not to allow any alcoholic beverages into the match grounds. This prohibition was effective. The teaching Staff, sporting their badges of identity, was not subject to search by the cops, as the boys would be at the gate. Settled into their seats, the boys soon came round to the Staff tent to take back their bags. Only then did the Lady Teacher found in the boys’ bag, several bottles of arrack and beer neatly wrapped in swaddling foam. She made no protest for two reasons, because the entire Staff would then get to know and the boys were her own sons and nephews. This was the only way the ruse could be worked out, the boys had figured out.
The khaki cops were in the high heavenly blues, though all this and remain there even to this day. Why? It was not in the cops’ training manual to ask ‘did anyone give you something to carry, as you came in’ even as they kept their sharp eye.
Strong arm.
Other interesting incidents were when school boys break through the fences and invade the grounds despite school prefects and private security. They were all part of the match fever. The police are then drawn into it. Now there is sheer entertainment for the spectators who watch the police gladiators as from the Collosseum. Inspector Gaffoor was now one of them, familiar, forbidding and later an endearing cop to the big match crowd. Inspector Gaffoor called in to deal with the truant boys lifted one of them by his pants, with one hand, as if to mete out justice. The scales of justice were however held off balance, the head hanging just above the ground, while the legs were pointing to the stars. The boy was put down when he pleaded. A lesson was learnt. Thereafter the mere presence of this burly Inspector (later DIG) was sufficient to discipline the boys when trouble was brewing. Then there was no idea of fundamental rights or such constructs of later day law, to construe the hauling up of the boy as an arrest. As a result, law and order was maintained, and with good humour all round.
Book cricket.
The fever can hardly come down. The Staff too, if barely, contributes no ice pack to freeze the boys. The Botany teacher, in the early 1950s, sensed that the botany class, just a day or two before the Big Match, will not go his way. With a straight and stern face the Teacher begins the class by admonishing the boys on the level of their knowledge of plants and their physiology. You all cannot even see the difference between a stamen and spatula. The Teacher berates the lot of them. Incidentally, some of the boys later ended up as plant physiologists in the University. But that is another matter. ‘No nonsense’, ‘Open up your practical books’, ‘see even a simple section is not drawn clearly’, the Teacher says. Turn to the next page, the Teacher bawls out. Now write the names of all the cricketers playing in the Royal- Thomian match, in the batting order. Figure out how each would score and predict the result of the match. The one guessing closest to the correct will get a prize. I will give you just half an hour for this. There was pin drop silence in the class for any who passed by. The fever was only reaching higher and higher. It was difficult to keep the boys down, even some of the staff.
T-h-o-r-a Thora.
The result is Revelry, Rivalry, and sometimes Ribaldry. They all taunt the khaki clad custodians of the law, without which is there this Match, this Fever? History is replete with accounts of confrontations of the boys with the cops. Many are not recorded. But some stories are related with pride and are handed down the generations.
Police too have in their own way moved thus with the times during the Battle of the Blues. Kossas they were in old times, in a disparaging note. Cops they are now with a tinge of endearment. The changes are subtle. But they are also a part of the Battle of Blues, sometimes perhaps, the Blues versus the Khaki. In fact these taunts can often have their unintended effects. If T-h-o-r-a was hurled at by the Royalists with some derogatory intent, Thomians have grabbed it warmly to their breasts. T-h-o-r-a is now royalty, as good as R-o-y-a-l. Cop is now not kossa? Endearing terms have taken over.
Now you can even have a Thora cop.
Esto Perpetua.
Frank de Silva
1941 to 1953.
Mr. Frank de Silva is a distinguished Old Boy of S. Thomas’ College Mt. Lavinia. He served as the Inspector General – Police (IGP) from 1994-1995
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