Yellow flowers fallen on the Kynsey road.

 

    I recall coming to work one bright morning after it had rained all night.  We were then in the 2^nd MB. I used to travel from Wellawatte by bus to the ‘As-vaattu-handiya’ by bus. We used to enter the hospital from Ward Place at the entrance to the old Eye hospital and walked through the corridors of the General hospital, making our exit at the Kynsey Road entrance near the Koch’s Clock Tower. We were marked as 'Block students' by the bones we carried. They were usually long bones or the base of the skull.

            There was a tall tree on the opposite side of Koch’s clock tower, near the main hospital entrance gate. It provided shelter on hot sunny days, to the visitors waiting for the gates to open at 12 Noon. This huge tree used to bloom annually, with lovely yellow flowers. On this particular day the yellow blooms, had fallen en masse with the drizzle in the night and lay carpeting the road. In those days for most of the hospital minor staff, clerks, the majority of medical students and at least one senior lecturer, commuted to work by bicycle. The traffic on Kynsey Road began to build up and the first bicycle skidded on this carpet of flowers made mushy by the drizzle, around 7 a.m. The bicycle traffic increased by the minute as did the number of people skidding and falling off their bicycles. Some helpful souls tried to stop the cyclists before they reached the dangerous slippery patch, by clapping and gesticulating to them from the roadside. These efforts though meant kindly, only added to the confusion.  Very soon a large crowd gathered to witness the mayhem. Eventually the police arrived and blocked off the road to traffic from either side. The indignant bicyclists were forced to dismount and roll their machines along the pavement. When order was restored finally on that memorable day in 1961, there was little to show other than bent handle-bars, a few torn dresses and some bruised egos. That tree has long been felled.

            The students who had bicycles   parked them in the shed near the Medical Students Union Common Room. It was rumoured that after the final results were announced, quite a few newly minted doctors abandoned their bicycles in the shed, as they felt that it was infra dig for an MBBS to ride a push cycle.  Often these bicycles were appropriated by 'Marker' of MSU Common Room fame, who later sold them. Now one could count the number of medical students, riding to the faculty on bicycles, on one’s fingers. A large number of present day medical students own cars. The authorities at the faculty have covered the drain that ran along the Norris Canal Road by the Physiology Block with concrete slabs and have created a road-side car park, for the medical students.  A few brave souls still ride motor powered two-wheelers, but this is a high-risk proposition, because of the mayhem, that is Colombo traffic.