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He stood tall and faced them all
Struck down by polio at a young age, Pahala Gedara Jayathilake limped to school with the determination to become an engineer. Today an Assistant Lecturer at the Moratuwa University he is on his way to a Ph.D in Singapore

By Ayesha Inoon
How can you take your circumstances, your upbringing, your character, the time and place you live in, and make something extraordinary out of it? What can you do with what you've got? Pahala Gedara Jayathilake’s amazing story of courage and determination is a shining example of the victory of willpower over the hardships of life.

At the age of ten, he was starting school for the first time. As he waited in his wheelchair in the Principal’s office, one teacher said to another, “Will this crippled child be able to learn anything?” and the other replied, “Maybe he’ll at least learn to sign his name.” The Principal of the school, also not too hopeful about this awkward child who had come to school at such an advanced age, admitted him to Year 1. Thus Jayathilake, who is now an Assistant Lecturer at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Moratuwa, embarked on an educational career that has now seen him receive a full scholarship to read for a Ph.D at the National University of Singapore.

Born in 1976, Jayathilake, afflicted with polio, spent the first ten years of his life crawling about on all fours. Unable to attend school, he managed to pick up a few lessons from his elder brothers while they were studying. His mother a widow had to fend for her eight children with the meagre earnings she made cultivating vegetables. In 1986, a crippled villager died in Devahuwa, near Dambulla, the remote village where Jayathilake lived. By a stroke of luck, his wheelchair was given to Jayathilake. This enabled him to go to school, where his quick intelligence and sharp memory quickly dispelled the doubts of anyone who questioned his academic abilities.

When he was in Year 8, a boy in his neighbourhood was selected to study engineering at a local university, and this sparked his own ambition to become an engineer. Having chosen his dream career, he began determinedly to walk the path to achieving it. His first outstanding feat was to obtain first place in the O/L exam in his educational zone of Galewala.

He then entered the Kurunegala Maliyadewa Maha Vidyalaya to study for his A/Levels. By now he had mastered a technique of walking by limping on one leg, and supporting the other. This is how he travelled barefoot, the two-kilometre distance from his home to school. With the support and encouragement of his family and teachers, Jayathilake went on to obtain the first place in the Matale district for the A/L exam.

In 1998, the barefoot boy, with Rs. 1000 in his pocket, stood among the students who had been selected to read for a degree in engineering at the Moratuwa University. During that first year, for the first time his courage faltered as he tried to fit into the different world of the university, where sympathy and encouragement for those who were different was not a common trait among the students. As he struggled to come to terms with the attitudes of students as well as lecturers, Jayathilake did not achieve his usual standards in the final examinations of the first year.

His original intention was to study Electronics, or Electrical Engineering. As his marks were insufficient to do so according to the regulations, he attempted to speak to the lecturer in charge, to see if any allowances could be made. The lecturer’s harsh words sent him back to the hostel in tears, but a friend told him, “ Don’t give up. Just do your best with what you have.” Drying his eyes, Jayathilake once more determined that he would go forward alone, and if he could not be an Electronics Engineer, he would be the best Mechanical Engineer there was. Straightaway he went for his first lecture in ‘the Mechanics of Materials’, the subject that he teaches today.

At the convocation ceremony in 2004, where Jayathilake received a First Class Honours Degree, he was also awarded the Jayaweera Kuruppu award for the Best Student in Mechanical Engineering. He joined the department as an Assistant Lecturer soon after and also volunteers as a coordinator at AFLAC (Association For Lighting a Candle) International, an organization that has sponsored him since he began University. Through this organisation he is able to assist other students in a position similar to his. Captain Elmo Jayawardena, Founder/ President of AFLAC International has been an inspiration to him, he says.

Jayathilake’s exceptional performance in his undergraduate studies has enabled him to receive a scholarship to follow Ph.D studies without an M.Sc as usually required. Hoping to study Bio Medical Engineering, Jayathilake says that he hopes he would be able to use his knowledge to invent new machinery and technology that would help make life easier for the differently abled.
“ A disability is not a problem,” he stresses, “unless you choose to make it so.” He adds that when a person focuses on a goal and strives to achieve it, regardless of the opinions of those around him, he is sure to go far on his chosen path. He is a reminder, that the quality of life, as always, is the choice of those who live it.

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