28th December 1997

People and Events

• Morning to remember
• Towards gentleness and kindness

Morning to remember

By Roshan Peiris.

Sixty four years ago a small band of women led by Dr. Mary Ratnam and Lady Vaithianathan decided to help the needy and less privileged women in their midst.

Today the Women's Conference stands as a symbol of help and encouragement to women, with forty affiliated Socio-Economic Women's groups in Colombo, and six groups out of Colombo.

The concept of the founders was to instill a compassionate awareness among women to the needs of women in want. To collect funds the Sri Lanka Women's Conference last Saturday organised at the Hotel Inter-continental "A Morning to Remember", where one could buy a ticket and relax with the variety entertainment provided.

Mano Muthukrishna - Candappa well known through the years for her excellent organising abilities had planned this fund-raising event.

The funds will be given to NGO's working with women. President of the Conference Siva Obeysekere said the funds would be used to help rural women realise their inherent potential and importance of their contributions to the country.

"Our motto is the more we give the more we get," Ms. Obeysekere added.

Earlier in the week a panel of judges headed by Ms. Sujatha Jayawardena with Anne Abayasekara, Alfreda de Silva, Padmini Rajadurai and Sybil Wettasinghe judged the associations that had made the biggest contributions in time and effort to help the ideals of the Conference.

Angela Seneviratne and Faizal Bongso compering the event and baila singing, dancing and Christmas carols made the young and the old keep time and sing along.

The mother and daughter fashions where little girls greeted their mothers with a rose and a kiss and then modelled clothes, some look alike ones, was the highlight of the show.

Towards gentleness and kindness

Now and again, fads of various kinds make an appearance. Among these is vegetarianism. In the United States vegetarianism has caught on so well that now there are about ten million vegetarians. Professor Mahinda Palihawadana with a PhD in Sanskrit is one of the prime movers of the Vegetarian Society of Sri Lanka. He has an impressive list of qualifications academically, but what interested us was his concept of vegetarianism.

The Professor has never tasted any kind of meat, fish or even egg from his babyhood. "Ven. Narada was a good friend of my mother's brother who in turn influenced my mother to adhere to vegetarianism. The purpose of the Sri Lanka Vegetarian Society with its Headquarters at 136, High Level Road, Nugegoda, is to popularise vegetarianism as a way of life. The society hopes to launch a quarterly magazine. "We have planned our society intelligently with adequate knowledge. We owe a great deal to people like the late Krishnamurti and Dr. E.W. Adikaram who with the courage of their convictions tried their best to inculcate the goodness of vegetarianism to a sceptical society."

The Professor said the Vegetarian Society hopes to begin with the young people by talking about vegetarianism in schools.

"We are not basing vegetarianism on religion. It embraces a wider spectrum. But I must observe that being religious helps being a vegetarian. Anyway what right has man got to take anothers life?

"It is also healthy to be vegetarian. Look at the elephant and the cow. Soya lentils and milk products provide all the proteins the human body needs," he said.

So vegetarianism is not so much a fad as a creed to be practiced by those seeking an environment of gentleness and kindness to both man and beast is what the Professor preaches.

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