Sunday Times 2
Launch of General C. S. Weerasooriya’s memoirs
View(s):- Duty and Devotion: The Unfiltered Story of a General and Ambassador
It was a balmy Sunday evening when the Esto Perpetua fraternity gathered at the school hall to cheer the annals of a man who for eight decades has stood for ‘duty and devotion’.
General C S Weerasooriya, the first Thomian Army Commander and former ambassador to Pakistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, led the army at the height of the civil war (1998-2000), after having had his ‘first brush with death’ during the 1971 uprising while in his twenties.
The book charts how the School by the Sea and the Pakistan Military Academy moulded the man and those years at the helm.
During his tenure as ambassador in Pakistan, the Weerasooriyas survived the bomb blast at the Protestant International Church in Islamabad. The personal and the public get intertwined as we get insights into an era from old Ceylon in its twilight days (the 1940s) to the end of the civil war in 2009.
General C. S. Weerasooriya and his wife, a section of the invitees and Rev Marc Billimoria
unveiling the portrait. Pix by M. A. Pushpa Kumara
Swathes of his life were revealed at the launch as distinguished personalities read excerpts from the book. The warden of the school, Rev Marc Billimoria, unveiled the portrait of the General in the hall.