A play-school concert, Avissawella, Sri Lanka

Parents in present day Sri Lanka are a very pushy lot. They want their children to excel. They are sent to the 'play-school' when they are 4 years old. They learn to socialise, learn nursery rhymes, to produce various art objects and generally enjoy themselves. The classes start at 8.30am and are over at 11.30am, five days a week. At the end of the year, they perform at a concert. Here you see a scene from a 'pot dance' which they performed.

A decorative bridge, Peradeniya Campus, Sri Lanka.

Sir Ivor Jennings, took a lot of effort in designing the campus of the Peradeniya University, Ceylon, in the early 1950s. His concept was 'an Oxford University, on the banks of the Mahawely Ganga'. It was a beautiful site and the aesthetics of the choice, was superb. There were large lawns, foot-paths and nooks where romance could blossom. You see a wooden bridge across a stream in the campus in this photograph.

Waterfall by the roadside Beragala-Koslanda road, Sri Lanka.

                  On the old main trunk road to Amparai the eastern part of the Island of Sri Lanka, from Colombo its western part, you have to go through part of the central highlands. It is beautiful country here with hills, valleys and quite a few waterfalls by the wayside. This is a photo of one of those waterfalls, near a village called Lemastota on this road. It is a good place to have a bath and picnic.

Wayside waterfall, on the Hatton - Nuwara Eliya road, Sri Lanka.

            When the rainy season starts in Sri Lanka, you find plenty of small waterfalls by the side of the road. I took this picture on the Hatton - Nuwara Eliya road, in November 2007. Passers by often stop at these beautiful spots, to have a leisurely bath in the ice-cold water, followed by a lunch partaken on the side of the road, from their parked vehicles.

'Remembered Vignettes' - The story of a medical student's life in Ceylon of the 1960s.

A review of the above book
"Medical students in the 1960s didn't have it as easy as today's students but they appear to have worked hard, played hard & benefited from the expertise of excellent teachers who taught them value and integrity along with medicine. Dr.Veerasingam who was a medical faculty student during this period....shares humorous anecdotes that are often politically incorrect and which border on the risque' while remaining free of malice. One cannot help but be taken up with the story-telling and the chances are that you will begin recounting these vignettes to your family, around the dinner table long before you even get to the end of the book".

A review by Senaka Abeyratne, winner of the Gratien Prize 2006.

– A Darn Good Read

by Seneka Abeyratne

“The Resurrection” is a charming, anecdotal account of life at the Colombo Medical Faculty in the 1960s, written by eminent members of the “Batch of 1960”, namely Philip G. Veerasingham, with the assistance of Shanthi Fernando, Heather Nicholas, Kalu Nana, Milroy de Silva, Bernie, Chandran, Sadiq, Singaratnam, Victor Gnanadurai, Daya Jayasinghe, Karals, Tissa Kappagoda (editor), and many others. The title, says the main author in the acknowledgements, derives from a decision taken by him and his colleagues (at a reunion in Habarana) to dig deep into their respective memory banks and “resurrect” their lives as medical students almost five decades ago. In the process of compiling this book (through an exchange of emails), they have, in effect, immortalized one of the most cherished periods of their lives.

I was a young schoolboy in the 1960s (first half in Kandy, second half in Colombo) and had no trouble tuning into the book’s mise en scene as well as its nostalgic pitch. The description of new medical students tumbling on the carpet of yellow flowers on Kynsey Road (opposite Koch’s clock tower) brings back fond memories, for I too skidded on it once while cycling in the rain.

The book gives due prominence to the “icons” who lectured the Batch of 1960 – Prof. A.C.E. Koch, Dr. Valentine Basnayake, Dr. David Jansz, Dr. Tommy Wickramanayake, Prof. Milroy Paul, Prof. D.A. Ranasinghe, Dr. Ernie Pieris, and Dr. P.R. Anthonis,  to name a few. I was recently given clean copy of the manuscript (prior to publication) and found it a darn good read. Underneath all the zany stories, ribald humor and smutty jokes, there is a serious thread – a sincere attempt to show life as it was at Medical College before the country slipped into an unending cycle of violence, bigotry and lawlessness.

To quote from the Foreword by Tissa Kappagoda: “The last years of the sixties saw an unparalleled exodus of physicians from the country … A few like myself departed the shores at the first opportunity that presented itself, while others of a more optimistic frame of mind stayed, until the roof began to show definite signs of falling in. The resilient ones who are the real heroes, depicted in the pages that follow, stayed the course and completed careers of exemplary service to the country and its people.”    

One has to keep in mind that this book is not fiction. But since it resembles a collection of short stories, arranged in a logical sequence and presented in a rich, anecdotal form, one might call it creative non-fiction, for it is meant to inform as well as to entertain. All the events, incidents and episodes are true (I presume) and all the people are real. The “protagonists” (there are plenty of them) include the lecturers, professors and consultant physicians who dominated the medical scene in the 1960s. Some of these legendary figures are dead, some are still living. Those who are alive, I would imagine, are in their eighties and nineties. They will no doubt enjoy this book immensely and find themselves chuckling from beginning to end, as every page is likely to ring a bell. I do not think they will mind it at all if they find themselves the butt of a good-natured joke or quip. The author has taken a swipe at practically every one of his mentors, but in a civilized manner, of course.    

The book is peppered with jokes of a medical nature – some of them concerning the most intimate parts of the anatomy. Cracking anogenital jokes, I guess, was and continues to be an integral part of lectures at Medical College. It is considered a perfectly normal state of affairs by the doyens of medicine, and the students dare not criticize them in this regard. If there is one institution in Sri Lanka that does not give a hoot about gender-sensitivity, it is the Medical Faculty, and “The Resurrection” will attest to this. The wild jokes, the infamous digs, the hilarious anecdotes…They comprise the meat of the book, its flexible, connective tissue. This is virtually a recipe book on medicine, for contained in almost every joke or anecdote is a miniature lesson on some aspect of clinical medicine.

For anyone who would like some “quick and dirty” lessons on medicine, this book is a must-read. The buffet of “naughty” extracts taken from scholarly lectures over a five-year period (straight from the horse’s mouth, as it were) is sumptuous and likely to test the limits of one’s intellectual curiosity, not to mention one’s gastric capacity. The more you read, the greedier you get for those spicy tales and mouth-watering anecdotes. If the book triggers a bout of acid reflux, do not be alarmed. It simply means you have tasted every tidbit, every morsel laid on the table, and are thereby suffering momentarily from a phenomenon known as “spice overload”. (This is not a medical term.) The heartburn will soon give way to a dreamy sensation and you will find yourself basking in the afterglow of what has turned out to be a fine and entertaining piece of literature. This will be true especially for those who have been to Medical College and can identify closely with the tales, as well as the characters described in the book.  

The book is very well crafted. It moves briskly from one rib-tickler to another, and in the process we get some rare insights into the lives of men and women who graced the annals of the Medical Faculty in the 1960s – either as teachers or as students. The teachers, of course, are the main focus of the book and the writer deserves praise for the artful manner in which he has depicted their personalities, including their idiosyncrasies.

This is, indeed, a little gem of a book; wickedly funny, entertaining and deeply evocative at times; a lovely slice of topical, Sri Lankan, post-colonial history. The stories and characters are as real as they are unforgettable. Veerasingham is a fine storyteller and has shown considerable skill in the way he has used the valuable template provided by his batch-mates to create a fascinating picture of what life was like at Medical College in the sixties. The editor too has done a good job in cleaning up the manuscript and can be forgiven for having overlooked some minor syntax errors.    

The penultimate chapter is titled “The Bicycle Trip to Jaffna”. Veerasingham did this trip in 1962 along with two other medicos and two outsiders. The trip involved traveling though dangerous, elephant-infested jungles in the Wanni and taking the ferry from Poonery to Karaitivu. It was an arduous trip but they eventually made it to their destination. Says Veerasingham: “My mother happened to be at the entrance to our house when I arrived. She inquired from me where I was coming from. When I told her that I had come from Colombo, she was struck speechless. I took my bike inside, parked it, had a quick meal prepared by my mother and lay down to sleep.”

Talk about nostalgia. This is the Sri Lanka we have lost, perhaps for ever.  

..."This is, indeed, a little gem of a book; wickedly funny, entertaining and deeply evocative at times; a lovely slice of topical, Sri Lankan, post-colonial history. The stories and characters are as real as they are unforgettable. Veerasingam is a fine storyteller and has shown considerable skill in the way he has used the valuable template provided by his batch-mates to create a fascinating picture of what life was like at Medical College in the sixties. The editor too has done a good job in cleaning up the manuscript ..."

Cost per copy USDollars Eleven with postage.

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