In its early years, Bonsoir began by focusing entirely on France – on French people, French events, and all things French. However, with the European Union (EU) coming into effective play, our boundaries expanded and gave us greater flexibility to open out into Europe.
The Old Dutch Hospital in Fort had often intrigued and fascinated me. I remember visiting it often during my undergraduate days with like-minded fellow undergrads studying architecture and getting lost in reverie there. Much has been written and many have waxed eloquent about the metamorphosis of the Old Dutch Hospital.
Just like the Old Racecourse Promenade, it is today one of the (restored) crown jewels of the city of Colombo. But there was a time when this urban heirloom was a badly neglected and a sorry sight – where vagrants, beggars, drug peddlers, pimps, and assorted prostitutes ruled at night as the sun went down.
I decided that I would take Bonsoir to the Old Dutch Hospital. How, I wondered, was I to angle this programme? I was no expert on des affaires hollandaises. I then remembered that I vaguely know the legendary Deloraine Brohier, having once met her at the Dutch Burgher Union (DBU) in Colombo.
The stories she related to me that day fired my imagination and have stuck in my mind ever since…how the DBU’s front gardens extended way beyond today’s Thunmulla Junction and extended right into Bauddhaloka Mawatha; how the “ancestor” of today’s Bauddhaloka Mawatha was a mere gravel road on which horse-drawn carriages rolled; how, according to her mother Pansy Werkmeister Brohier, children were scared to go down this road since the Mental Asylum was housed in an old colonial building, “somewhere past Radio Ceylon”; how the Burghers celebrated St. Nicholas Day (named after Nicholas, the Fourth Century Bishop of Myra) on 6 December; and how “St. Nicholas came riding a white horse to the DBU”.
I finally located her and invited her to be our guest on this “Bonsoir Dutch Hospital Special”. What better choice than the famous daughter of the famous R.L. Brohier. I’m happy she graciously agreed.
The French Embassy got us the necessary police permission to shoot in this high security zone and there we were among the weeds, the rubble, the stray dogs, and the relative ruins of the Dutch Hospital with Sri Lanka’s grande dame of Dutch-descent in tow.
Although she looks delicate and frail, Deloraine is a sport with a mind of her own. With her absolute, total, and willing consent we played with a time warp and transformed poor Deloraine into her own “ghost”. She loved it, to say the least, and still admits that she revelled in it. With a haunting soundtrack in the background, we had her appear in and out of those old doorways…waft across half-closed and creaking windows hanging off their hinges…drift ethereally along the verandahs…with a vacant, faraway look in her eyes, while her brilliant (voice off) narrative brought the magnificent edifice back to life.
The “ghost” of Deloraine took us decades back to her childhood when she visited this building with her celebrated father. She even took us further beyond, back in time, and told us how the hospital staff threw buckets of water on the stone floors to cool the place while the punkahs facilitated air circulation. She played her role to perfection: An authentic phantôme hollandaise from the past, caught up in a time warp in 20th-Century Colombo!
The aesthete in me loved every moment of it. We literally had the entire Dutch Hospital all to ourselves – AND with a very knowledgeable “ghost” as a bonus.
It was April. The sun was harsh and the air sticky. The cacophony of the Fort traffic wasn’t helpful. Nor were the noisy vendors down Hospital Street. Yes, there were many takes, but Deloraine braved it all. I admired her spirit. We even had chilled bottled water in the diplomatic boot, which she didn’t avail herself of. Not a drop.
We crawled all over the place to our heart’s content and finally climbed the wooden stairs into the little upper room to get the high-angle shots. From there we even got a good view of the Janadhipathi Mandiraya. Then incumbent President Madame Kumaratunga was apparently not in town, and so we thought a few quick shots of the old Queen’s House were okay.
Less than four minutes later, we had a visitation by men in civvies. They said they knew Bonsoir, but very politely wanted to know if we had permission. Yes we had. We were cleared. It was only then that I realised that the PSD had been watching us all the time!
NOTE:
On 26 April 2002, Her Majesty Queen Beatrix of the Kingdom of the Netherlands bestowed on Deloraine Beryl Brohier a royal honour, when she made her a Knight of the Royal Order of Orange Nassau.
A quarter century earlier, on 26 September 1978, Queen Beatrix’s mother, Her Majesty Queen Juliana of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, had similarly bestowed on Deloraine’s distinguished father, Richard Leslie Brohier, a royal honour in the higher grade of the Order – Officer of the Royal Order of Orange-Nassau.
This is a rare honour bestowed on two persons of the same family.
