Appreciations

Flame of love burns on

Devi, Sujatha, Chitra, Mala & Gamini 

Left to face the world alone

Shari Atukorala

An outstanding Visakhian

We started the morning with 'devotions' under the na tree and ended the school day with gatha. In between we studied and played and competed with each other at games and tests. When term tests ended, we pushed all our desks together to make a stage, tried our hands at tumbler-talk, and palm reading, and put up plays for the other classes. At bana all the classes in one grade gathered in the old school hall and listened to Rev. Piyadassi from Vajiraramaya. When the school went on a day's outing, we went to the zoo, or walked in twos to the Majestic cinema to watch a film. When it rained and the lower school grounds flooded, and the school declared a rain holiday, she took off her shoes and waded in the knee-high rain water with us, sharing things that little children do that bond their friendship. The four squads of Visakhians who took part in the CESPA rally marched with her to win a trophy and remember her driving a toy car, dressed in her mother's sari, with sun glasses too big to balance on her child's nose in the play that the school presented.

In her final year at Visakha, her co-students elected her the president of the Science Association, the English Literary and Debating Society and the Buddhist Society. She also held office in other school societies. Her teachers recognised in her, qualities of leadership that they promoted, and elected her the head prefect of the school. Manthri conducted herself in office with a strong sense of responsibility, but never forgot to have fun with her friends; once as a close friend recalled, even taking turns at pushing a friend on Mrs. Pulimood's revolving chair, while waiting with the other prefects for a meeting with the principal.

The Brownie grown into a Girl Guide, she persevered and became a Ranger, getting together with the others in Visakha's 11th Co. to go on hikes, sing round campfires, spend days out camping and sell flags for the CNAPT. In 1964, she received the Juliette Low friendship award to spend six weeks at the Girl Scout Senior International Round-up in America. We met at the Ratmalana airport to wish her a good journey, and gathered round her father who couldn't contain the tears of pride that rolled down his face, and her mother who stoically held her head high, to watch Manthri walk towards the airplane. She came back with a little gift for each of her friends, full of stories of her trip across the seas, and wrote about it in the school magazine of 1965. "Each time I think of it, 'Round-up is fellowship, service and cheer, Round up the aims we hold so dear'... it brings back memories of six joyous weeks and an unforgettable experience I shared with thousands of girls."

When the inter-house competitions took place Manthri, a Jayatilleke was in the thick of it, playing net-ball, organising the science quiz, leading the English debating team, acting in plays by Shakespeare and Shaw with an equally brilliant sister - Anula. Some of these activities took Manthri beyond the school, to compete in debating, in oratory and the 'Light of Asia' contest. When she left the school, she won the Junius Jayewardene memorial prize for best prefect, the Helena Wijewardene memorial prize for leadership, the OGA prize for the Best Visakhian and the Adrian De Abrew Rajapakse Shield for the best all-round student .

Passing examinations came easily to Manthri who always combined her exceptional intelligence with hard work. She went into the science stream with some of us and sat for her (GCE) A. Levels - the selective examination to enter university. She qualified to enter the science faculty, of the University of Colombo, and graduated with first class honours in Zoology '70. As she recalled in the 70th anniversary publication of the school " it almost seemed as if being Visakhians, we had an unfair advantage - for often those who topped the batch always came from the same school!" displaying a humility that didn't mention that she was one of them.

Throughout her undergraduate career and when she was retained as an assistant lecturer in zoology, in the campus, she came to Visakha to meet old friends and new. When Visakhians celebrated 'Founder's day' with an all-night pirith ceremony and alms giving, she was there to partake of it, to chat with old friends and new, and catch up on news of those who weren't there. Usually it was she, who gave news of old friends who were spread out across the world, as she kept in touch with most of them, and when they returned to Sri Lanka, drew them in to meet the others.

Manthri left Sri Lanka on a Commonwealth scholarship to specialise in entomology, at Churchill College in the University of Cambridge, where she became the first woman to receive a PhD. Soon after she received a post doctoral research award at the StrangeWay Research Laboratory in Cambridge. It wasn't only studies that occupied her interests there. Romance took over when Manthri met a fellow doctoral student from Sri Lanka, Ranjan Ramasamy. Their marriage was a partnership of two human beings who worked together professionally, setting high standards in their work as researchers, contributors to professional journals and reviewers for publications and participants in seminars nationally as well as internationally, in their respective fields.

There followed several years where she worked, with Ranjan, as a scientist in King Faisal University, in Damman, Saudi Arabia, when their daughter Maheshi was born, then onto the International Centre for Insect Physiology and Ecology (ICIPE), in Nairobi, Kenya, after which they became senior lecturers in the University of Jaffna for a year. In '84 they left again, and Manthri worked as a research associate at the University of San Diego, USA, and went onto the Queensland Institute of Medical Research in Brisbane Australia, as a staff scientist and senior lecturer.

Returning to Sri Lanka, enriched by the experience gained in many universities across continents, they took up posts as senior Research Associates at the Institute of Fundamental Studies, Peradeniya, under the direction of Dr. Cyril Ponnamperuma. They based themselves in Colombo where Maheshi schooled, and commuted weekly to the IFS. Manthri sought out the Medarata branch of her OGA which she joined and worked with, and combined a busy schedule as researcher, reviewer, organiser of symposia, seminars and public lectures for the Institute, and also the Sri Lankan Association for the Advancement of Science, of which she became the General Secretary in 1999. Very few of us knew then, that she was fighting an illness which she laughed off as if it were a common cold, till the very end when it restricted her to one place and she called her family and friends around her.

When she gave the Pulimood Memorial Lecture at Visakha in 1995, from the class of '66, Manthri Samaranayake Ramasamy had become a recognised scientist in the field of entomology and parasitology, the mother of a teenage daughter, who would emulate her parents' academic excellence. 

By then she had also become an Associate Professor at the Institute of Fundamental Studies, simultaneously lecturing at the Post Graduate Institute of Science of the University of Peradeniya. She was still the outspoken friend we had known, speaking with authority on a field in which she had achieved international recognition, but keeping in touch with a school which had moulded her being.

We wished that she would have lived longer among us, and been spared the pain of her last year. She had no regrets in a life she had lived to the full. As we live on, the echo of our late Principal Mrs. Pulimood's words ring on "Let the girls of Visakha realise..that the work and standard of their Alma Mater are judged by the lives they lead. Let them take up the challenge to serve their time and generation". Manthri, you fulfilled this wish, and will be missed sorely as we carry your memory with us.

Class friends from Visakha Vidyalaya

Duty came first for him

He was a strict disciplinarian and never paid attention to those who came to him with false information. If he saw a mistake, he punished the employee, but had no malice towards anyone. He always helped them who were in need irrespective of their position. He had regard for those who carried out their duties efficiently. He believed that duty comes first.

May his journey in Sansara be short.

C.S.N.D. Peiris
 

He lived life to the full

He lived his life to the full, his foremost aim and ambition being to uplift his family members, relations and friends. 

He was born on June 13, 1921 and had his early education at T.B. Jayah Maha Vidyalaya, Slave Island.

He served in the Old Boys' Association and Al Iqbal Maha Vidyalaya Parent Teacher Association for school development. 

He served in many positions and was Secretary of the Wekanda Nusrathul Islam Association, Shahul Hameedia Mosque, Slave Island and Maligawatte Janaza Welfare Society. May Allah grant him "Jennathul Firdhouse" . Inna Lillahi Wa Inna Illaihi Rajioon. 

M. Ruzaik Farook
President, 
Sri Lanka Islamic Society