I Feel Very
Strongly...
I believe that we have to teach our children that we
are all one humanity. And that we have
to learn to live together happily.
My Parents
I
was born in Sri Lanka. My parents were
members of the Tamil (upper class) caste in Sri Lanka. They had a large family--twelve of us
children--six boys and six girls. Two
sisters were younger than me and three were older.
Sri
Lanka was under British rule when I was a child. Sri Lanka had two castes:
Tamils and Sengalese. The
British wanted to promote antagonism between the Tamils and the Sengalese, so
they put Tamilese judges in Sengalese communities. My father , a Tamil, was appointed a judge by the British for a
Sengalese community. My father did not
believe in punishing. He believed in
trying to make people better. The
Sengalese were very poor and could not afford lawyers and could not talk
English, so they could not win their case.
So before any judgment, my father sat down with the Sengalese and talked
their language (he had learned about five different languages because he wanted
to be a good judge). In that way he
managed to give them justice. But
people got mad with him for helping the Sengalese, so they reported him to the
government, and the government removed him.
So he didn’t know what to do.
But my brother said that he would represent the Sengalese and not charge
them anything. So the government
couldn’t do anything about that.
The Worst Class Becomes the Best Class
When
I was a teacher in Sri Lanka they gave me a class of children who
misbehaved. I was wondering what to do
about this. This idea came to me, so I
said to the children , “All the children who want to behave like intelligent
children come on this side of the room and all the children who want to do
foolish things and act stupid come on that side of the room.” And, you know, all the children lined up on
the side of behaving intelligently.
Other teachers got mad with me for doing that so they reported me to the
principal. So I had to go to the
principal who said “Why are you doing this?”
I said “Ms. Chort, I wanted to make the children realize that everyone
could do well in school. That is why I
am doing this.”
Another thing I did was have the children who
were very smart help the children who were not at all smart
Other teachers didn’t like that either. They thought that was the teachers’
job. I said “No. Let the children help
each other. If the children help each
other, the children can feel that they can be smart.” The principal said “ I never thought of it that way,” and told me
I could go ahead with my plan
Leaving Home to Learn to be a Nurse
I decided that I wanted to be a nurse, but
the only place where I could get that training was in England. I went to my
mother to get her permission to leave home and go to England. I thought that I would have to persuade her
to allow me to do this. So this is what
I told her:
“When
you were young you were not supposed to learn English because you were a
woman. But your father, my grandfather
, taught you English and you learned it.
It was useful to you. Now you
went against the law, didn’t you? But it
helped you. So I said, You may think I am going against the law to
go to England, but that is the only place I can learn to be a nurse because
there is no nurses training in Sri Lanka.
So what do you want me to do? Be
like you and do the right thing, or not do the right thing. So my mother said “You can go.” My parents didn’t really want me to go to
England, but they allowed me to go because they didn’t want to appear segregated.
So
I got a ticket on a ship going to England.
On the ship there was a man who got friendly with me. I found out that he wanted to rape me. If he did that, I would have been sent back
to Sri Lanka.
So
I said to him, “I found out what you are trying to do and why you are friendly
with me.”
He
said “what do you mean?”
I
said, “You are friendly with me in order to do something undesirable.”
He
said, “What is it that is undesirable?”
I
replied, “You may desire it, but I don’t desire it. I believe that you want to rape me and send me back home to Sri
Lanka.”
He
challenged me, “How do you know that?”
“Never
mind how I know it; I know it. I am sorry about that because you are a
gentleman. And gentlemen don’t do such
horrible things. I was surprised when I
learned that you had consented to do something
so ungentlemanly.”
He
was surprised and said, “Where did you learn all these things to speak like
that?”
I
said, “ I am speaking the truth, am I not?”
He
said, “You are.”
I
continued, “You are a gentleman. And
gentlemen don’t do certain things. If
you do what you are planning to do, you won’t be a gentleman. And that is all I am thinking about.”
He
said, “You are quite right; I should
never have thought of doing such a thing.
Will you go and have lunch with me?”
You
know I feel very strongly that Christ was quite right when he said “Seek ye the truth and the truth will set
you free.” The Truth has power!
About speaking your point of view
You
know, you must never try to express yourself in an arrogant way. Because when you do that you encourage
opposition. If you talk in a gentle
quiet way they can begin to see your
point of view. I see that if you
present the truth in a gentle way,people realize that what you say is not
antagonistic. When I was talking to the
Jews in Germany while Hitler was in
power. I was arrested. Hitler was near-by so I asked to speak to
him. I had learned that he knew how to
speak English. When I met with him, I
said that I knew that he spoke English. Then I said, “I didn’t go to talk to
the Jews because I was for them or against them. I just wanted to know what was happening to them because I feel
that we are all human. You are German and I am Asian but I share
one thing in common with you. We are
both human beings. You are German, I am
Asian, and they are Jewish, but we all share a common humanity. That’s the only reason I was speaking to
them because I feel that as a human being I can communicate with other human
beings, just as I am communicating with you.”
He said, “I never thought of it
that way before.”
My After School Program in My Home
I
was living near Boston in a neighborhood where there were children of many
races. On one side of my house there
was an all white neighborhood. On the
other side there was a neighborhood where families of several races lived with
their children. It was a time of
segregation when it was against the custom and law for different races to get
together. After-school programs cost a
lot of money then and many parents
could not afford to send their children.
So I said to the parents, “You can send them to me and I will work with
them.”
I had Japanese, Chinese, German,
French, and Afro-American children.
(They came to my home every afternoon and I helped them do their homework.) There were some people who didn’t like what
I was doing so they took me to court.
They said that I was “mixing the children up.”
In
court the judge said to me, “Why are
you doing this? You are not even a
citizen here.”
So I said “Your Honor, I am doing this to say
thank you to America.”
“So what are you thanking America for?”
“For not sending me back to Sri Lanka before
they have made up their minds about my becoming a citizen. They could have sent me back to Sri Lanka. That would have been a lot of trouble for me
and cost me a lot of money, but they didn’t do that. They let me stay in America until the matter was resolved. I’m a Buddhist, you see, and I am from
Asian In Asia if someone does
something good for you, you try to do something good in return. Now the government did something good for
me. What can I do for the
government? I can’t do anything good
for the government. But the children
belong to the government so if I do
something for the children, I am saying thank you to the government, you
see. The more the children benefit, and
the government feels happy about it. And that’s the only reason I’m doing it.”
The
judge said: “ You are charging the children?”
Two of the mothers had come to court. ( I
didn’t know they were going to come.)
They said, “We want to explain
because we are the ones who give that money and we know why we did it.”
The
judge said “all right”.
They
said, “She feeds our children after school and she doesn’t charge us anything
for that. She feeds them lunch and
supper too, before they leave, so we decided to give her $5 because she gives
them supper.”
The
judge said,” What?! You give them supper too?”
I
said “Yes, your honor, after all they
are children. Children are the most
important part of any country’s assets.
I want to help the children, and that’s all I am doing--helping the
children, because I love children and in helping the children I feel that I am
helping the country. And that’s the
reason I am doing this.”
The
judge said: “Carry on with your work.”
You know, I feel very strongly what Jesus said--if you
speak the Truth, the Truth has power.
The Trip I took with the Children
I said to myself, “I could bring these children on a trip.” I knew a lot of people across the United
States from several organizations I belonged to. They worked with children, too.
( I had money then, so I would send them money every month.) I asked them if they could help me house the
children. My friends said, “Bring the
children; we’ll look after them.”
I went to a bus owner and I
explained to him what I was trying to do with the children. I explained that I wanted to have all the
children travel together. I asked him
for a bus to help me have all the
children travel together and not be separated by the color of their skin. I told him, “They are all human children
and should be treated as human beings.
I take the children as human beings, so I can’t segregate them. I am taking them where I can take all the
children together.” The bus owner said,
“I wouldn’t have believed a woman like you would do that kind of thing. I’ll allow you to do that.”
I
took twenty kids. We traveled all
over. Wherever my friends were, they
took the children in. Wherever we
stayed my friends allowed my children
to participate with their children. So
we didn’t have any problems.
We were gone a
month. We went to New York and then all
the way to California. We came back
through the South. We went to any place
you could see anything. We went to
Canada; we went to Yellowstone; we went to the Grand Canyon; I can’t remember
all the places we went. You know, I did
this because I feel that children should know that they are loved.”
We are all One
I
wanted the children to know they are all the same, that their skin color was
not what was important about them. I
had this idea. I had roses blooming in
my garden--yellow, blue, red, and
white. So I took a rose of each
color to school. I said to the
children, “See these are all
roses. Are they the same color?”
“No”
“What
colors are they?”
The
children said, “White. Red.
Blue”
“They
are different colors. Does a rose being
a different color make one rose better or another rose inferior?”
The
children said, “No.”
So
I said, “You see, they are all roses, but different colors. None is inferior and none superior. Now, all human beings are not the same
color are they? Some are yellow, some
are pink, some are brownish--all different colors. Does that make them “not human”?
“No”
“So
you see the color of your skin has nothing to do with who you are. Whatever color you are, you are still a
human being. And that is what makes us
all one--our common humanity. They
can’t segregate you according to the color of your skin. But they may segregate you according to the
kind of person you are.”
My Home is a Haven for Runaway Children
A
lot of children were running away. I
would let them stay at my house. This
was during the time when there were a lot of hippies. Everyone said I shouldn’t do this. I said, “Look, if you help them see that they need not be hippies
and run away, if you help them see that life can be an exciting adventure. then
they will stop being hippies. And I
proved it!
I
somehow got their parents on the phone and got them interested in talking to
me. I said to them, “I know you are
angry with your daughter for leaving home, but don’t show anger or hate or
anything, show your concern for your daughter to make your daughter understand
that you were firm because you didn’t want her to do something foolish, not
because you didn’t like her or because you despised her.” The parent would say, “I don’t think that
will work.” I said, “If you don’t try
you don’t know whether it will work or not.
But if you try it then you will know whether it will work or not. So why don’t you try it?” So the parent said, “All right, I’ll try
it.”
Then
I told the daughter, “I spoke to your
mother and she wants to speak to you.”
The
daughter was all huffy and didn’t want to speak to her mother.
I
said, “If your mother wants to speak to you, she’s being intelligent. If you don’t want to speak to her you are
being unintelligent. Now what do you
want to be: intelligent or unintelligent?
“Of
course I want to be intelligent,.” the girl said back to me.
“Then
you need to speak to your mother. That’s
the intelligent thing to do.”
So
she spoke to her mother and they became friends.
The
neighbors were not happy that I was taking in these runaway girls. They wanted to take me to court about
it. So I called a meeting of the mothers and I said to them. “Suppose your daughter ran away. Would you want me to send her away or help
her? If you don’t want that to happen
to your daughter or your son, why would you want it to happen to someone else’s
daughter or son?” They said, “We never thought of it like that before.”
I
feel this way. If you want to do a good
thing, don’t do it with anger or malice .
Do it because it is the right thing to do.
Why I became a citizen of the United States
I’m
Asian, you know, and I came to the United States during World War II because I
was married to an American. I didn’t
become a citizen for a number of years because Immigration thought I should
return to Sri Lanka, where I was born.
Finally I had a hearing before a judge.
He asked me why I wanted to become a citizen. I told the judge, “I decided to become an American citizen when I
gave a New Year’s party. There were
many nationalities present and 15 languages were spoken that evening. I thought “this could only happen in
America.” And that is why I want to
become an American citizen.” The judge
said “Give me the order, I will sign it myself.” And that is how I became an American citizen.
--Transcribed
from a taped interview by
Marilyn
McDonald
@
January, 2000