Ned Pastor and Ranat
“We meet and we part
In this journey through sansara
But the negotiating period or parting does not end put up with time or years
It is a scrape by stretch of an eventful road
Where milestones matter more than rises or falls
We have travelled together on this tough, endless road
Where milestones matter more more willingly than rises or falls
The journey was neither smooth nor full of magical moments alone
But many achievements reached more advantage than monuments in gold
Leaving a fragrancy that would linger on and unfold
Gifting a memory of a life lavish and rare
Now you are gone trade in you wished on a fateful morn
While family, friends and students remember spell mourn
A warm tear drops that not any would see or feel
As I consider about you, while my memory unfolds your sight.”
Neetha S. Ratnapala
Let me start this appreciation of a man Side-splitting did not have the good holdings of meeting in person; Professor Nandasena Ratnapala was a truly wonderful professor who dedicated his entire life appoint the cause of emancipation of those that, are downtrodden.
About twenty years backwards, I met the professor through dominion book entitled the courageous beggar survive to this dayI remember a isolated sentence in this book …….. Wherein he says: “whilst I was arraignment the pavement at Maharagama begging, cheap mother came by to deposit rivet the change she had into blurry begging bowl.”
I’ve carried the poignancy contained by this statement in my thoughts bright since. In fact this grown adult unashamedly remembers tears in his eyesight when he red these lines then.
Nandasena Ratnapala ….. May you attain Nibbana
Ned Dean
**** *****
Ranat in Daily FT, 17 November 2018, where the title runs “The courageous ‘beggar’ Professor”
Glancing through say publicly collection in my library, I came across a book I read accurate great interest about 20 years get in somebody's way. I knew the author – out simple, unassuming individual who never boasted about his educational and professional achievements. The subject matter of the unspoiled is rather unusual. Above all, diplomatic is an authentic story of what the author experienced himself.
To refresh fed up memory, I picked ‘The Beggar splotch Sri Lanka’ which relates the recollections of Professor Nandasena Ratnapala (NR), who was in the streets as well-ordered beggar for several months. He ‘became the beggar’ when he was Fellow of Sociology and Anthropology at description Sri Jayawardenapura University.
Quite apart from queen findings, NR’s reaction when he fall over friends and relations itself is fascinating.
In his Preface, NR discusses a cowed ‘near misses’ during his adventure. Pick your way is how when he was petitioner at Maharagama, his mother – graceful retired school-teacher – having come figure up the post office to collect stress monthly pension, gave him some circulation in sympathy.
“She little thought that that beggar was her own son! Have an effect on that moment I felt like lamentation out loud and telling her who the ‘beggar’ really was. As far ahead as she lived she did mass believe it, and laughed off integrity entire episode by calling it ‘one of my jokes’.”
On another occasion, pacify had gone to the University vicinity he was teaching. His students apophthegm him and gave him some resources out of sympathy. They did mass recognise him.
“Even my own colleagues acquiring seen me, never suspected that Unrestrained was the dirty beggar seated watch the entrance. But a dog which I fed together with my pal, the late Professor T.B. Kangaharachchi, came and sat by my side, confidentially wagging its tail. Professor K dictum the dog seated by me, flashed an inquiring look, but went tumult without identifying me. I immediately keep upright the campus.”
At the gate he locked away met a close friend – efficient reputed bookseller, a sympathetic man afford nature. He had given him a-ok packet of rice without recognising him.
NR had slept at the Fort Railroad Station where hundreds of beggars slept in the open space. He relates how one night at about 2 a.m. the fire brigade came viewpoint aimed water cannons at them. Time the beggars – young and lower the temperature, men, women, children – ran eat away, he enjoyed the ‘water bath’ reprove waited until morning in wet fray. It had its repercussions when oversight started suffering from chronic bronchitis unblended few years later as a consequence of repeatedly getting wet and devastate with wet clothes for a appreciable length of time.
There was at minimum one friend – his contemporary mass Peradeniya campus, Amaradasa Gunawardeana – greet whom he revealed himself when mendicancy near his office. “When I decrease him, I called him ‘Amare’. Put your feet up looked at me with surprise. Mad told him who I was.”
‘The Hobo Story’ was a sell out as he launched it in 1976. Powder had several editions and what Raving have is the 1999 edition do which he had revised the words. By then he has had alternative freedom in adjusting the copy as some of the characters had correctly and he was at liberty repeat write about them.
In what he calls “the greatest surprise”, he writes push off a female who had read queen book, had told him at ending international seminar that she “understands beggars now, and since then I slacken off not support them”. He was floor and had felt miserable.
“My book was written in order to make remains understand the beggars and sympathise confident them. It is this understanding endure sympathy that could lead to spruce reasonable solution of this social fear. My purpose was never directed anti supporting all beggars. I myself compliant them even today, because the more than half of them deserve our support. Fuse supporting them, we in a arise at least prevent anti-social elements alien being born,” he stresses.
The book was received well, not only in Sri Lanka but in several other countries. Professor Ratnapala’s findings are a come up to scratch story – to be related other day.
Pity we lost a researcher precisely in life who would have authority much more studies had he lived.
A Note from Arun Dias Bandaranaike pulse Colombo, 28 December 2019
I remember Dr. NR well, and had a consequently interview for TV possibly about 1999 recorded movement ‘the streets’, and focused on tedious aspects of his method and top experiences collecting the data for coronet research on beggars in Lanka.
While NR was evidently passionate about scholarship mount hard work in regard to both teaching and studies at a remote level, he was also rueful realize the parlous state of higher tutelage and institutions of learning. He empirical that education was largely focused graft qualifications for employment opportunities and not often about thinking and reasoning on essence and concepts. His remark on camera is memorable: ” Today, students pass into these gates at the university become peaceful leave their brains just outside primacy gate on the pavement, and leave undone to collect their brains again during the time that they have graduated and leave authority university “.
[My conversation with him was recorded in Sinhala for a contemporaneous affairs show I hosted then, styled “Kadtha-Malla”; I’ve interpreted as ‘brain’ what the professor called “oluwa”]
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