‘Indy’ Pera – our dear friend
The demise of a former class-mate of mine, the warm-hearted ‘Indy’ Perayerawar, (aka Pera) who passed away on September 4 in London, proved yet again that old adage: ‘Life can be compared to a mere drop of water dangling precariously at the end of a blade of grass’.
Of course, Pera, having passed the Biblical span of life of three score years and ten by another ten years, lived a full life and spread cheer to all around him.
‘Indy’ was a sportsman who excelled as a cricketer, athlete (his forte, inter alia, being as an accomplished ‘hurdler’) and not forgetting the fact that he was a rugby football player of no mean repute, beginning at Royal College, Colombo.
In short, he was a natural athlete but unfortunately did not take his sporting life too seriously. Not for him to do measured wind-sprints or run a specified number of ‘rounds’ around the grounds to maintain his fitness.
‘Pera’, as many would clearly remember, did not possess a single malicious bone in his entire body.
He was a middle-order batsman, a brilliant fielder but was not a bowler. There are rumours about him which are sadly not in his favour but he always had an excuse to escape such charges!
For instance, there was that famous match against Prince of Wales College in Moratuwa. Their skipper was making mincemeat of our bowlers. If my memory serves right, he made a big hundred including 11 sixes.
In desperation, the Royal skipper called on Pera to have a bowl. The story goes, Pera refused! Not for him to be mauled by the skipper from the Moratuwa College. Pera’s excuse: “The ball was wet”. There was no rain on that day but the ball having been regularly hammered and resulting in being sent to the drain at the periphery of the ground regularly, was the reason. Of course, Pera did not realise that same plight would have affected the other bowlers as well.
By all accounts, which the writer himself would gladly confirm, Pera was a very safe fielder in the covers. Yet, the other story doing the rounds was, about an incident during the 1960 Royal-Thomian game. The Royal College leg-spinner, Vidanage, was advised by our coach/teacher, Mr. E.C. Gunasekera, to bowl a chest-high delivery to the Thomian left-hander R.M. Fernando. As expected the result was a simple catch to Pera but shockingly he dropped it.
In short, the best of fielders can sometimes be the butt-end of incidents of this nature and Pera could not live that down for quite some time. Stories of this nature were many. However, Pera took all these, as the saying goes, with that inevitable laugh of his.
May you rest in peace our dear friend, Pera.
Mahinda Wijesinghe