Appreciations
View(s):I will treasure your legacy always
E.P. DE SILVA
I write this reflection for what would have been my father’s 100th birthday on November 16 this year. My father was the nicest person that anyone could wish for. He passed away 41 years ago and I am still struggling to come to terms with his demise.
A product of St. John’s College, Panadura, he was a keen sportsman. His flair for journalism was evident even as a student as he showed a keen interest in writing articles to newspapers on a regular basis.
He started his career as a clerk attached to the Department of Prisons and rose to be the Chief Clerk but soon bade goodbye to the clerical service and joined the teaching profession.
His first assignment was at Polgahawela RC School where he rose to be its Headmaster. He did not stick to teaching for long either, because the call of journalism was in his blood. He joined the Times of Ceylon as a journalist attached to the Daily Mirror and covered almost every field. Later as Parliamentary Reporter, he associated closely with leading politicians of the time including Prime Minister S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike, Dr. N.M. Perera, Dr. S.A. Wickremasinghe, Peter Keuneman, Dudley Senanayake, J.R. Jayewardene, Ranasinghe Premadasa and later Anura Bandaranaike.
The crowning point in his journalistic career was when he was appointed Editor-in-Chief of the Daily Mirror.
My father who penned the biography of Dr. N.M. Perera was widely travelled and represented the Times of Ceylon at several sessions of the International Organisation of Journalists.
My father had a nasty experience when travelling to Cuba with his friend, B.A. Siriwardana, Editor of the Aththa newspaper. The plane they were on was hijacked in Bermudas. However, it was released with the passengers after being held for several hours by the hijackers and my father and his friend were able to proceed to Cuba where they would meet President Fidel Castro.
My father was very duty conscious and always endeavoured to be of service. He was very fond of his granddaughter Maya but he was not there to see his second granddaughter Gayathri though she was born on the same day as him – November 16.
He passed away in March and his funeral was held at St Sebastian’s church cemetery in Moratuwa. Prominent personalities such as Ranasinghe Premadasa, Anura Bandaranaike, ministers and many others were present at the funeral.
Thank you Dad for being a good father. I will treasure your legacy always and remember you with love, joy and gratitude.
Till I meet you again, I love you. May your soul rest in peace.
Sadly missed by your eldest son,
Lalin
Loving and kind and so much more
EILEEN PAUL
Her year’s death anniversary came so soon it’s beyond belief
The good qualities she left behind exude joy, give some relief
She was kind and loving
Never unkind and unloving,
She was never cunning and crafty,
Which showed that her concepts were lofty,
She was open and affectionate,
Never known to plot, plan and discriminate,
She was innocent, unknown to retort,
Silently bear the brunt of it was her resort,
She has helped her friends in kind,
Only now it’s revealed it pleases our mind,
Harbouring grudges was not her nature
Impossible for commoners like us to feature
Conclude with a heavenly goodbye
Someday we may meet, till then you sing us a lullaby.
Ashwini and Sanjana (on behalf of all grandchildren)
Pera’s wise and gentle Classics scholar is no more
Prof. Merlin Peiris
Through many countries and over many seas, I have come, Brother, to these melancholy rites, to show this final honour to the dead- Gaius Valerius Catullus
What shall we say of him? How will he be remembered? As one by one, the lights go out on our beloved campus, we think of Merlin, the wise and gentle scholar, whose devotion to the Western classics went hand in hand with a spirit of inquiry that did not exclude him from a lively interest in the Mahavamsa and the historical aspects of oriental studies.
His was a truly rare spirit at that time – the 1950s – when academic activity, even at Peradeniya, which had built up an international reputation as a home of liberated minds – was becoming increasingly politicized and narrow-minded. The once revered classic works of Greece and Rome were becoming increasingly neglected because their study appeared to the minds of powerful but essentially indifferent politicians little more than a hobby of privileged young men. The English language itself – Sri Lanka’s highway from its medieval past to an understanding of the modern world – was treated as a weapon of social destruction, rather than recognised and valued as the precious treasure that it was.
The perennial beauty of the Peradeniya campus, the euphoria surrounding Independence, and our own youth and inexperience must have blinded us to the danger in which we lived there in our student years. How else could we have failed to observe what was happening around us? It was my own great good fortune that I was an undergraduate at Peradeniya from 1954 to 1958, years that I think of now as golden, because they were comparatively unstained (though they could not escape being occasionally touched) by the rot that must have been already setting in.
Merlin was one of the university teachers who kept the Western arts alive during those years. Working with, and ultimately directing, a rapidly shrinking student body, he had inherited the skills and dedication of the generation that had preceded him – J.L.C. Rodrigo, Cuthbert Amerasinghe, Roland Sri Pathmanathan. When he found that a classic work in Latin was beyond a student’s capabilities, he used a translation or translated it himself. He explored the possible links between ancient Greece and the literary monuments of India and Sri Lanka. His work on the Mahavamsa is illuminated by his knowledge of the epics of Greece and Rome. A strong personal interest prompted his book Elephants at War.
His early spell at S. Thomas’ College introduced him to the Western classics, and his sense of humour allowed him to appreciate the appearance of his own surname in a ‘version’ of Kennedy’s Latin Primer that schoolboy ingenuity produced:
Aulis, actis, caulis, collis,
Jamis, Peiris, Francis, follis …
Years later, he savoured the Sinhala ‘version’ of the STC motto: Esto Perpetua (“Isthoppuwa Pichchuwa”).
As an English Honours student, I did not have the pleasure of being taught by Merlin, but as colleagues on the Peradeniya staff from 1962 to 1972, I met him often, a genial member of a circle of like-minded scholars in the University Staff Room. And it was there, over a cup of tea, that Merlin, speaking of some talented students in his class who had lamented the absence of a university journal in which they could publish and circulate their English poems, remarked that it would be a good idea to establish one (“Just a few cyclostyled sheets of paper, stapled together would do”). These were the words that inspired the literary journal New Ceylon Writing.
Vale, Merlin Peiris. We, who were your colleagues and friends, salute you.
Yasmine Gooneratne
Remembering a life well lived
Vijitha Fernando
We were saddened to hear of the demise of our dear friend Vijitha Fernando. A close friend and fellow traveller has departed, and I feel the loss and share the sadness with those who knew him.
My association with him goes back to the mid-sixties when he arrived at the port of New York on a steamer bringing him from London carrying a letter of introduction from J.R. Jayewardene. He moved in with me and our mutual friend W. Dharmawimala.
The next day I accompanied him to the Headquarters of the Chase Manhattan Bank. He went in with the letter of introduction and came out with a letter of appointment. He worked there for several years before he joined the World Bank in Washington D.C. There he met Ambassador Sarala Fernando, who was at the time a junior diplomat at the Sri Lanka Embassy to the United States, and in due course, married her and settled down in Washington.
Throughout his stay in the United States, he was intimately involved in Sri Lankan societies both in New York and Washington D.C. in their social activities, as well as fundraising for projects in Sri Lanka.
On his retirement, he moved back to his ancestral home in Mount Lavinia with a team of Dobermans who were his best friends. Once Sarala retired, he moved to their residence on her ancestral property on Horton Place. He returned to his previous love of swimming and continued to take an active role in the Sri Lanka National Swimming Association. At the time, he was also a columnist and sportswriter of the Daily Mirror reporting on the Olympic Games.
Buddha said that death is the inescapable destiny of all creatures and that, given its inevitability, one has no cause to grieve. As such, condolences are in order with the sincere hope that his family and friends will have the courage not to mourn but to celebrate his life, friendship, service to the community and his humanity.
May his Samsaric journey be a brief one!
Nandi Jasentuliyana
He epitomised what an ideal physician should be
Dr. Chandra Dissanayake
Dr. Chandra Dissanayake, a senior member of the expatriate Sri Lanka community in Los Angeles, passed away on August 8, 2022, at the age of 83.
After obtaining his secondary education at Nalanda College, Chandra entered the Faculty of Medicine, University of Colombo in 1960 and graduated from the Colombo Medical School in 1965. He did his internship at General Hospital, Ratnapura and served as house officer at the National Hospital Colombo, General Hospital Colombo South and General Hospital Kandy.
In 1974 Chandra migrated to the USA. From 1974 to 1979 he did his orthopedic residency at Maimonides Hospital in Brooklyn, NY and paediatric orthopedics at Albert Einstein Hospital in the Bronx NY. After obtaining Board Certification in orthopedics, Chandra practised in New Jersey until 1983.
In 1983 Chandra moved to Cerritos, California and practised as an orthopedic surgeon at Kaiser Hospital South Bay from 1983 until his retirement in 2006.
Orthopedics is one of the most demanding specialties in medicine and Chandra was on call 24/7 for weeks on end, leaving him little time for personal activities. He was a highly skilled and ethical surgeon, held in the highest esteem by his patients and colleagues. In addition, friends, acquaintances and members of the Sri Lankan community, used to call him at all odd times of the day and night for free orthopedic advice, which he generously gave with no complaints.
I am ten years junior to Chandra. As a senior colleague, Chandra was a role model to me, as he epitomised what an ideal physician should be.
At a personal level I came to know Chandra when he moved to Cerritos in 1983. Chandra had many acquaintances, but only a very few close friends and I was lucky to be one of them. He was a private man, but with his close friends, he opened up about contemporary issues and had a superb sense of humour.
Following retirement, Chandra was able to spend quality time with his beloved wife of over 50 years Ramani and with his three daughters and four grandchildren whom he adored. He travelled the world with Ramani, and indulged in his passions — reading, gardening and photography.
He was a philanthropist who donated to the local temples and to charity, though these acts were never publicized.
Chandra departed this world on August 8 after a productive and exemplary life. He will be sorely missed by his family, friends and the Sri Lankan community in Los Angeles.
Farewell dear Chandra, you played your part well. Thank you for the memories and may you attain the supreme bliss of Nibbana
Dr. Mohan Kumararatne
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