Debators! Or Fabricators!

ot just because it was placed a rung or two (seemed like a fathomless mile or two) below VI-level, The Methodist Boys School (MBS), somewhat lost in the mud-stained foliage that covered the low-lying pit of a ground (where sixes and boundaries could be collected with minor flicks of the wrist) and the non-descript school-building in the shape of a dangling sprained-elbow, the MBS always, it seemed, aspired to vie with the VI, much like the vain though imitative efforts of the youngest in the family constellation trying to outshine and outdo the lonely but heroic eldest son. In terms of the Yijing constellation: Gen, the Mountain and youngest son, trying to usurp the powers of Zhen, the Thunder and eldest son, resounding in the plains during spring, after the yearly cycle awakens again in February. And since the VI in those post-war years stood regally head and shoulders above all its peers in the peninsular (it was secretly rumoured in a hush that the boys of the Penang Free School and the Raffles Institution on the island down under could rub shoulders with Victorians in the metropolis as "equals", but then, remember, this might have been a rumour or a mere fib quite probably put out by the boys from downhill themselves), it was hardly likely the VI would condescend to dispel any doubt about its rightful place in the hierarchy.

Victorians belonged to the Premier School of the Federation, including those kicked out of the Fed., and we all knew it only too well! No need to remind Victorians from that period, WHO was first, WHO got nine As at the Overseas Cambridge School Certificate exams, and WHICH school topped the list with grade ones, WHO won all the state and inter-state matches (and by innings defeat, too, at that!), WHOSE headmaster's science books schoolboys and girls up and down the peninsular poured over day and night, WHOSE boys filled the King Edward the VII College of Medicine, Raffles College, Technical College, Agricultural College, Normal Training Schools, including Kirkby in U.K., the Inns of Court School of Law, Cambridge, Oxford, et j'en passe les meilleurs! WHICH school from that era produced the greatest sportsmen, soldiers, generals, admirals, pilots, writers, poets, teachers and professors, scientists, lawyers, doctors, engineers, magistrates, civil servants, diplomats or politicians, all on a national level of course (so much so the island of Singapore itself had to rely on the overspill of talent from the school to man the young and foundering state); WHO had the honour of receiving the HMS Bell, and WHO the visit of the Secretary of State for the Colonies? Did someone say the Prince of Wales as well? Right-on, Man! In 1920!

The Tao Te Ching says: He who boasts cannot succeed! But, quite frankly, can telling the truth be thought of as vaunting! Give merit where it is due. Give unto Victorians what is Victorians'...

To set the picture right (as if this was necessary at all!) for those then-yet-unborn Victorians, here's a titbit from the past. In 1950, the VI Literary & Debating Society dealt a stunning blow to the tongue-tied lads from downhill. As if this wasn`t enough, they came back asking for more in 1951.

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.]

Topic of discussion: "East is East and West is West and Ne`er the Twain shall Meet."

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).]

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.

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!

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 expos . 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:

"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?"

   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?

Result: VI won hands down.

Time: 1951, in the afternoon or perhaps on a Saturday morning (I think the latter though).
Place: the VI tuckshop.

As the tuckshop was open for drinks and titbits, a festive air reigned in there. Dripping lads emerged from the pool and stood around, leaning against open windows, and sucked on straws dipped in iced barley water. A Tamil lad who had Caliban's role in Tempest never stopped repeating his lines, there where he stationed himself at the back entrance to the tuckshop.

The debate against the Klang High School (or was it a school debate in which a post-school certificate class ex-Klang High School boy was the main opposition speaker?), quickly got under way, but no sooner begun, the main speaker for the VI got pulled up for dropping a clanger. In the middle of his speech, he uttered: "What the hec!" [I think he yelled: "What the HEC!"] He was in his school, and he was at ease. Nothing doing! F. Jeyaratnam (later a doctor who qualified in Singapore), the opposition speaker from Klang, quickly raised his hand and called the attention of the chairman who was I think a VI teacher and vehemently protested the use of unseemly language. A to-be Rodger Scholar, present on the floor, raised his hand and asked for permission to speak. Having been thus regularly invited to make his statement, he said that he thought this debate was not a parliamentary session but an open get-together of students: he didn't see why language which depicted the common usage of students should not be employed in a school debate. Then, the chairman, too, showed no hesitation in saying, "That's alright! In the context the speaker used the expression, it is not out-of-place", or words to the effect, and the crowd composed mainly of Victorians waiting to take yet another dip in the pool, and rather unruly by then (due probably to the laced barley water), cheered and roared. The Victorian was lucky, for there was hardly a handful of Klang-ites present in the audience.

Result: We won that encounter, too!

© T. Wignesan December 12, 2000, Paris

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