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Samuel Abraham, my grandma's cousin and author of several English language books (A.S. Kanagaratnam) had written proudly about my mother as being the first girl ever to ride a bike, in Jaffna. It was in the 1930's and I wouldn't be surprised if it's a national record. In fact, I first heard this from my best friend's Mom -- when we met for the first time and I was trying to answer her about where I was from and who's daughter -- she said "Oh, I know her from Uduvil Girls' School... very pretty and was the first girl ever to ride a bike to school."
The first thing my mom did when she started teaching was to buy her own car and drive to work. Mind you: This was in late 19-forties/early fifties. She always told me that the challenge was to reverse the car and that she avoided it as much as she could. This was a real car with stick-shift, not meant for faint-hearted ladies. In the seventies when mopeds (cute version of Scooters) showed up she wanted to get one to go for marketing, etc. Me and my brother managed to discourage her -- only because we were not so brave like her.
So it was no surprise that my mom was disappointed that I had not learned to drive even after being abroad for sometime. She would ask my husband to teach me driving and often offered to baby-sit Deepan and sent us off to practice. However, it took 10 more years before I actually muster my courage to drive on the street. But I drive now and I am sure she is very proud.
Just happened to read "women of Uduvil" in Wikipedia and amazed to see it explicitly described as "highly educated" compared to anywhere in the world!
I am my Mother's proud daughter,
VeerajaR
P.S._ Samuel Abraham, my mom's uncle is the son of former Hartley College principal Abraham (my grandma Lily Arulamma's dad--Dr. Breckenridge's brother). The Hartley College sports house "Abraham House" was named after him.
Copyright©2011 VeerajaR
