Appreciations
View(s):Manthri Samaranayake Ramasamy
To me you were my sister; and many things to many others
My dearest sister, Prof. Manthri Samaranayake Ramasamy passed away on January 18, 2002 aged 52 years at the prime of her life. She succumbed to ovarian carcinoma after battling with it for two years. Before her illness set in at 50 years, she was Professor of Life Science at the Institute of Fundamental Studies in Kandy, general secretary of the Sri Lanka Association for the Advancement of Science (SLAAS) and vice president of the Visakha Vidyalaya Old Girls’ Association. She held and functioned in all these posts with great commitment and distinction.
Akka and I were great friends. We kept no secrets from each other. We slept on double bunks, Akka above and I below and chatted late into the night. Ammi sewed identical clothes for us and dressed us alike until our mid-teens when we protested saying we would like individual clothes. Soon after our O/L examination, Ammi sent us to the Kathleen School of Dressmaking and we learned to sew our own clothes which we wore when we entered the university later. At that time there were no readymade garments at all as now.
Ours was a close-knit family. We always had dinner together and long after-dinner chats. We lived at No. 10, Ascot Avenue, Colombo 5, until we married and moved away. Ammi and Thaththi taught Akka, Malli and me the values of simplicity, honesty and integrity, kindness, the importance of education and helping the less fortunate.
Our Thaththi was referred to as “Colombo Mama” as all other relatives lived in Horana. Akka and I readily shared our bedroom with our cousins when they stayed in Colombo. We rarely quarrelled except when I interrupted Akka during a film when I could not follow the conversation or the unfolding stories. This, she resented totally, threatening never to come to see a film with me again!
We initially began schooling at Ladies’ College but were soon admitted to Visakha Vidyalaya as Ammi wanted us to have a Buddhist education. Akka became very popular at Visakha Vidyalaya both with teachers and fellow Visakhians. In her final year at school, she was appointed President of the English Literary Society, the Science Association and the English Debating Society. I remember Akka debating with gusto against the Royalists and Thomians when they visited Visakha for the annual inter-school debates.
Our beloved former principal Susan George Pulimood and the teachers recognized Akka’s sterling qualities of leadership and responsibility and appointed her Head Prefect in 1966. This position Akka held with great distinction.
An outstanding Girl Guide, she was awarded the “Juliet Low International Friendship Award” at age 16, in 1964, to travel to the US and came back full of stories about her trip across the seas with little gifts for everyone.
When the Inter-house competition took place, she was the livewire of Jayatilleke House (created in memory of Sir D.B. Jayatilleke), organizing debates, netball matches and inter-house drama competitions. In 1964, Visakha Vidyalaya won the inter-school drama competition organized by the British Council to commemorate the 400th birth anniversary of William Shakespeare with the “Taming of the Shrew” by Jayatileke House. Akka was Baptista, Ramani Vithanachchi played Petruchio, Kshanika Wickremasinghe was Bianca and I played Katherine. It’s noteworthy that Visakha repeated this victory with the same production at the inter-school drama competition to commemorate the 450th birth anniversary of Shakespeare in 2014.
Akka gained admission to the University of Colombo to follow a degree course in Bio-science in 1966. At the prizegiving that year she was awarded the Junius Jayawardene memorial prize for the best prefect, the OGA prize for the best Visakhian, the Helena Wijewardene memorial prize for leadership and the Adrian de Abrew Rajapakse prize for the best all round student. Akka’s achievements gave much pride to my dear parents.
At the University of Colombo, she passed all examinations and obtained first class honours in Zoology with chemistry as subsidiary. She passed the final examination with first class honours and was appointed to the Dept. of Zoology, University of Colombo.
Akka won the Commonwealth scholarship to specialize in entomology, at the Churchill College, University of Cambridge. She was the first woman to receive a PhD. from this college which was exclusively for males earlier. Soon after the PhD she received a post doctoral research award at the Strangeway research laboratory in Cambridge. It was in Cambridge that Akka met Ranjan Ramasamy a fellow post doctoral student from Sri Lanka. Romance blossomed and they married in Colombo in 1975.
Their marriage was a partnership of two scientists who worked together professionally to set high standards, contributed articles to scientific journals, acted as reviewers of scientific publications and participated in seminars both nationally and internationally and became authorities in their respective fields of entomology and immunology.
After Cambridge she and Ranjan worked at the King Faisal University in Damman, Saudi Arabia. They came to Sri Lanka for the birth of their only child Maheshi and later took up appointment at the International Centre for Insect Physiology and Ecology at Nairobi, Kenya. After some time they took up appointments at the University of Jaffna for about two years. In 1984 they took up appointment at the University of San-Diego, USA and next went onto the Queensland Institute of Medical Research in Brisbane, Australia.
On returning to Sri Lanka, enriched by the experience gained in many universities abroad, they took up posts as professors at the Institute of Fundamental Studies in Kandy. Akka combined a busy schedule of research, review, supervision of PhD thesis of post-graduate students and organizing of symposia etc. Simultaneously she was general secretary of the Sri Lanka Association for the Advancement of Science (SLAAS) in 1999. She carried out the duties assigned to her in a dynamic and dedicated fashion, especially organizing school seminars to popularise science among schoolchildren. She organized the annual session of the SLAAS, the details of which she finalized meticulously to the satisfaction of all.
Akka had many sterling qualities such as simplicity, kindness and desire to help others which endeared her to her family, friends and fellow Visakhians. She was fiercely loyal to her alma mater and was the dynamic vice president of the OGA for many years. I remember how she led the Visakha Walk in 1998 riding in a police vehicle with microphone in hand introducing the aims of the walk to the onlookers. She helped young Visakhians in an outstanding production of the musical “Fiddler on the Roof”, supervising all the details.The switchboard of the Institute of Fundamental Studies was inundated with telephone calls from young Visakhians “Aunty Manthri, what shall I do with my costume? Can’t you change my script” etc etc. during the weekdays when she worked in Kandy.
Akka loved a sing-song. Along with Ammi and me, Akka would liven up any family function, singing with much gusto. Even during the time of her illness, she organized ‘paduru parties’ at home with fellow Visakhians.
Among her colleagues who showed great concern and helped in many ways during Akka’s illness were Chandrika Pathirana, Savithri Nagodavithana, Srimal de Silva and Kirthimala Kaviratne.
Manthri was greatly devoted to her only daughter Maheshi and was delighted when she was selected to do medicine at the University of Cambridge. She would have been extremely proud of Maheshi’s progress. Maheshi has completed her MRCP and the PhD and is currently a lecturer at the University of Oxford in infectious disease and immunology. She is a very capable and loving mother of three delightful children, a role model indeed! How much Akka would have relished Maheshi’s success and enjoyed the company of her grandchildren! Sadly, it was not to be.
Dearest Akka, you were a wonderful sister to Malli and me, a dutiful daughter to our Ammi and Thaththi, a kind and caring teacher to your pupils, a helpful and caring relation and a true and loyal friend loved by us all.
May you attain the supreme bliss of Nirvana.
-Anula Wijesundere
(your everloving Nangi)
Henrietta & Walwyn Fernando
You had little but gave much
Achchi and Seeya: We never thought of you separately. You were one entity in the love and warmth you gave. It’s been a long time since you both went away. Surely to heaven, because I cannot think of you as being in any place else. You taught us to love unconditionally; to listen before speaking. Going to your house was going home for many, not just family.
Many around us experienced your love and generosity, not just your family. Many came to you when they needed someone to just listen to them.
We know life wasn’t easy for you. God sent many tests your way and you faced them with faith and courage. You made life better for everyone who came your way–from the seven sisters who came to you every morning for bread crumbs to your grandchildren who could never get enough of love and affection. You showed through your example how Christian charity worked. Because of you many learnt English and they still think of you.
You showed us that it is the people who have little who give the most, whose acts are the most noble and philanthropic.
Ashanthi Ekanayake
Ruth Sarojini Gladys Nallathamby
She led a life of spirituality
“We keep our loved ones in our hearts. And that is where they stay. Our parents and siblings will only ever be a precious thought away.”
The certainty of death has taken away from us my only sister. She died in November of last year.
Her chosen vocation in life was that of a teacher in the Junior School of my old school in Kandy, Trinity College. In choosing the noble vocation of a teacher, she did what our paternal grandmother did, for Grandma Knight was the head of a CMS School in Gampola, St. Andrew’s.
When I sat near her coffin at the Trinity College Chapel, I asked myself the pertinent question: what then was the secret of my sister’s life? It was of course her inner life and spirituality. This was because of our Papa who was indeed a role model as he was a single parent after my mother whom we really did not know, died in 1944. He inculcated the practice of night prayers at the family altar, grace before meals and certainly Sunday worship either at our home parish of St. Mark’s Badulla or at our home, led by Papa. Papa’s father, Grandpa Knight, was a lay worker in Gampola at sadly what used to be called the Tamil Coolie Mission and later called the Tamil Church Mission.
May the soul of my only sister, along with the souls of all the faithful departed, rest in peace and rise in glory.
Sydney Knight