To
Reginald Sebastian Rodrigo Candappa, life has been a great adventure. In August,
this man with the Yul Bryner look celebrates fifty years of marriage and fifty
years of being the doyen of the advertising world. Today he is the Chairman of
Grants, McCann Erickson, a large if not the largest of the advertising firms of
Sri Lanka with 120 employees.
His office bears testimony to his artistic talents in the beautiful landscapes and the paintings on the walls.
Here we look at a day in Reggie's life as he reveals it himself
"I am a simple man. I get up at five in the morning and make my own coffee. Next I read the newspapers, this is a must for two reasons. First, I want to know what is happening around the country and the world. Second, I look at our own advertisements drawn up, of course for our clients, and get terribly upset if something is wrong with the production. I also study the ads to see whether our competitors have stolen a march over us.
"You see this advertising business is a highly competitive where one has to always be alert and also innovative.
"Since the household is just waking up I steal into my den to plan the day and write any personal letters. I sit in the stillness of the room and visualise ideas. I later listen to classical music, this somehow sets the tone for the day and soothes me.
"At 8.00 am. after a wash I eat a very frugal breakfast of only a slice of bread, with marmalade and a whole orange. Eating an orange may be a left over habit from my childhood days.
"I arrive at office just before nine. Now you see I take life relatively easy, as my daughter Neela who is the Managing Director and specially trained abroad for the job, has taken over much of the detailed work from me . If I may divert just a bit. Neela has made her acquaintance with the advertising world as a baby, for my first office was at my home.
"We meet for awhile in the morning to discuss and take action on any impending problems.
"Next, I attend to my official correspondence. I have two secretaries, one who has been with me for 21 years and the other for ten. So work flows smoothly and fast.
"Then I call some of our clients and sometimes schedule to meet them as well. Today when you came in I was at a conference where I talked to the heads of "client service" on the very important topic of creativity. It is our creativity that gives us the individualistic stamp.
"In the morning, I walk around the studio talking to artists, copy writers and even the efficient accountants. On the way I take time to talk to our well qualified librarian. A collection of books on a large number of topics, I feel, must be part of my office.
"I must say that my daughter manages the office adroitly but both she and I have delegated work to competent people who achieve excellence in their day-to-day work.
"I leave for lunch around 1 pm. Usually a social one such as with the Rotary Club or American Chamber of Commerce or Colombo Club. If I eat at home it is rice and curry watched over by my wife Therese who sees I don't serve myself excessively. For dinner too, almost every night I am out. If at home my wife would try to persuade me to eat a salad or a sandwich.
"Every night Therese and I watch a video. We are, I confess, video addicts and quite intoxicated but we don't ever look at horror videos.
"In the afternoons I take a nap from 1 to 2 and then go to office but on most days I indulge myself, now that Neela is there to paint. I love to paint and I have had three one man shows with much success.
"Then there is the Colombo Club and often during the day I arrange to have lunch and plan for guest speakers. I am the president and I have been so for five years.
"I often feel that I am part of the vitality of a large community also as President of the Colombo Chetty Association for the last five years.
"I visit the Association which has started the Vimukthi Nivasa which looks after eighty children who are under-privileged. They live with their parents but we provide clothes, food and books. The land for the building was donated to us by the late Mr. and Ms. Walter Casie Chetty. On days I visit this place I have a mixture of feelings within me of both joy at helping these young ones and also a sad feeling that there should be such poverty around us. We are funded by a German Organization, the Kakadu which collects money from housewives in Germany and sends it to us.
"On other days, I visit the Community Centre where we feed 200 children hanging around the beaches, the children of poor fisher-folk. This organisation was begun by my elder daughter Sriyani who now lives in the US. It is funded by American volunteers. Also the Community Centre has what we call the Lotus Buds to house, clothe and look after 200 orphans in and around Ratmalana. There are at present three volunteer American workers.
"All this I fit into a day's work. I am interested not only in business but also in people. It is this that sustains us in the end.
"One thing I don't particularly like is the daily cocktail parties but then again one must attend them to meet people. Also they are often organized by our clients and there are parties for launching products which one must attend.
"Believe me, when I sit and think of a day I think I have been lucky being in the right place at the right time.
Now, my day is less hectic than it was when I was building my advertising business on a shoe string budget and could not even afford a proper office. I'm also lucky in having an understanding wife and two daughters who are great.
"We will be celebrating the golden anniversary of our wedding in August. In my den in the mornings I laugh when I recall my father-in-law who predicted our marriage wouldn't last six weeks. We had eloped of course. This year we will be celebrating fifty years in the advertising business as well.
"My daily life as you can see embraces many-faceted activities and still I have, though old, an enormous capacity for sustained activity for which I thank God everyday," he concluded.
"In Sri Lanka, approximately 400 babies are born every year with heart defects, and 200 of them die if they are not corrected in childhood. Unfortunately at present we do not have the equipment to operate on very young children," said Dr. Dudley Halpe a Paediatric Cardiologist from Arizona, USA who was in Sri Lanka recently.
According to Dr. Halpe a Paediatric Cardiologist's work consists of diagnosis of heart defects. It could also involve evolving or developing a process whereby the defect could be corrected without actually going into surgery, and this is known as "Therapic Catilaerization."
Dr. Halpe went onto say that the average layman immediately thinks of ailments such as a 'hole in the heart' when one mentions heart defects. However, the term encompasses much more such as 'Tetralogy of the Heart' 'Aortic Valve Stremosis' etc. which are the more common heart defects among children.
Dr. Halpe said that in the US, heart surgery is performed in new-born babies, sometimes when they are merely one hour old! "Although heart defects can be detected fairly early during pregnancy, the foetus is able to survive the nine months. Once the baby is born and the lungs expand we are able to perform the surgery," he added.
Dr. Halpe feels that operating on a foetus with a lung defect is not something that will happen for many years despite the rapid advances in medicine, even in the West. This is because it would involve anaesthetising the mother, 'detaching' the foetus from the womb, whilst still connecting the foetus to the placenta and is therefore a fairly complicated procedure. However, surgery is at present being done on foetuses with defects in organs such as the liver.
Commenting on the Sri Lankan medical field Dr. Halpe said that local doctors are extremely talented and are doing a very good job, given the present facilities. Dr. Halpe is also the president of the Sri Lanka Medical Association, North America, Inc. "Members of our association visit Sri Lanka annually voluntarily and share their knowledge with the local doctors. It is actually the latter who call the shots and tell us what they want to learn
Dr. Halpe said that during his visit to Sri Lanka he performed surgery on 12 children with heart defects.
The Sri Lanka Medical Association, North America, Inc. was formed in 1995 by a group of Sri Lankan doctors in the USA, said Jay Liyanage, asst. secretary of the association.
The primary purpose of incorporating this body was to bring together all professionals in the medical field as well as students affiliated with health care who are of Sri Lankan origin and living in North America," he said.
This body is run exclusively for charitable and humanitarian purposes, and also encourages investment opportunities in the field of medicine in the USA and Sri Lanka, Mr. Liyanage added.
Battered, shattered Shrimathi Shantha of Veyangoda left to Saudi Arabia hoping to earn some money to build a decent home for her family. But tragically she returned to the island two weeks ago barely able to walk, after a traumatic experience. Shelani de Silva reports:
Many are the horror stories we hear of Lankan maids, who go in search of a pot of gold, their poverty
and ignorance leading them to risk the unknown. Yet, as gruesome stories go, the experience of thirty two year old Shrimathi must surely stand out as proof of the trauma that many innocent Lankan women undergo.
Three months ago, Shrimathi Shantha of Veyangoda left to Saudi Arabia hoping to collect some money to build a decent home for her family. But tragically she returned to the island two weeks ago barely able to walk. Today Shrimathi is confined to her bed. Her whole body is bruised so much so that it feels like stone. The once active wife and mother who looked after her child and ran a home efficiently now has to depend on her family for every little chore.
When The Sunday Times met Shrimathi at her mud hut in Veyangoda last week, her husband Nimal was busy boiling some herbs to soothe her aching body. Though Shrimathi was more than willing to share the story of her nightmare in the Gulf, every time she made an attempt to do so, tears welled in her eyes. Choosing her words carefully and taking a long time to express herself, very timidly she poured out a saga of oppression.
Like many others, in Shrimathi's case too it was poverty that led her to seek employment as a housemaid. Ironically she says she had heard many terrible stories and her family had insisted that she go through a registered agency, no matter how high the fee. Finding the passage fare had been difficult so her brother had pawned some jewellery to raise the money.
Her only hope was to collect some money to buy a plot of land and build a decent home for her husband and ten year old son. The agent sent her to Saudi Arabia as a domestic.
'My employers were very wealthy. I had to look after five children and also cook and do the house work. At first they were very nice. I was treated well the first two weeks. Later my meals were restricted, but still I did not mind because they were very kind, but the trouble started at the end of the month when I asked for my pay,' she said.
Since her contract clearly stated that she would be paid monthly, Shrimathi had asked for her salary, but instead of her wages, what she received was a barrage of abuse and injury that continued for three months.
'It was the lady of the house who battered me the most. She used a thick baton to hit me. She used to ask me to stand straight with my back to her and aim the blows at my spine. My legs got fractured because the children were asked to ride their cycles over my feet and while they did this, the lady used to cane my back so that I couldn't move away. It was so painful that I used to faint and when I regained consciousness, they would still be beating me,' said Shrimathi trying to hold back the tears.
She was not only physically tortured but also starved. ' I was given rice only for three days. Later I got a small piece of 'Rotti' which was so dry that I had to dip it in water. This was given only for dinner and I had nothing for the other two meals. Since I could not survive I started eating from the dustbin. Even this was done secretly, and one day I got caught to the master and since then the family started to spit into the dustbin to prevent me eating out of it,' she said.
By this time Shrimathi could not take anymore so she wrote to her family saying that she was being ill-treated and wanted to return. Since she was not allowed to go out of the house she had no choice but to give the letters to the family to post. Her family had received only two letters . 'From those letters, I did not know it was so bad. All I could do was conduct bodi poojas which I did. Though Shrimathi said she was being ill-treated, I only prayed that she would bear everything and return to the country. But if I only knew my wife was treated like a dog I would not have asked her to wait another day in Saudi,' said her husband Nimal Shantha.
Shrimathi spent her nights locked up in a dingy toilet with no proper clothing or sheets, let alone a pillow.
'No one would believe me, if I said that for the whole three months I had a bath only three days. I had only two dresses. At times I felt so dirty, that I could hardly bear it. The toilet was always wet and in the nights I used to shiver because I had no proper clothing. It was so tiny that I could not stretch myself. I had to get up early in the morning. It was the lady of the house who used to open the door and as a ritual she used to slap me twice before taking me out. It used to be so bad that I used to worship her asking her not hit me. One day the pipe which she used to hit me broke into two and she took one half and twisted it on my cheek. I howled so loudly that she got scared and went out of the house. I was bleeding badly, but there was no medicine and I had to only wash it with water,' said Shrimathi showing us the scar which has now turned blue.
Shrimathi's back and hands are still a purplish blue but she recalls that when she returned she was so badly bruised that she could barely open her eyes. "I still can't remember clearly my journey back home. As I had no meals I fainted at the Saudi airport. For my luck, there were two other maids who were coming home and they helped me. As I could not walk they almost carried me to the plane,' she said. Her employers gave her ticket home but no wages.
The family cannot afford proper medical attention. Shortly after her return she had seven X-Rays taken of her legs and received some medicine but was unable to continue the treatment due to lack of funds. She has now turned to native medication.
The future seems bleak for the family who not only have to find money to treat Shrimathi but also to pay their debts. Although they had lodged a complaint at the Foreign Employment Bureau upto date there has not been any response.
According to FEB's Publicity Manager Kushal Perera the procedure carried out is that once the complaint is lodged they get in touch with the relevant parties to verify the complaint. ' We cannot say exactly how long it will take. Her complaint will be sent to the Saudi Embassy and they will do the needful. The agency too will be notified. But it will take some time, depending how soon the work is done,' he said.
However Mr. Perera said that since Shrimathi went through the Bureau she is eligible to the new Insurance scheme introduced by the Bureau. "She should not have any problem with the contract, and the insurance money will be given to her soon,' he said.
Shrimathi may receive some compensation but the bitter physical and mental humiliation she suffered is not likely to fade as fast as the scars she bears.
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