verti and
saalvai and in a pair of slippers, while the other Tamil master Mr Shaithananthan – when I last heard he was in Canada – wore white trousers a shirt and closed shoes. I must have been about 14-years old when Vinasi decided to unload a line from John Ruskin’s
Sesame and Lilies that got me into a bit of a panic, before he returned his attention to
Silapathikram or its antithesis
Manimehali or whatever he was trying to drum into our thick skulls. I cannot locate the line but it seems Ruskin spoke of “Books of the moment and books of all time”. I was a decent enough reader for a teenager but mostly ‘instantaneous’ stuff and it struck me that there were hundreds of books I would have to know before pretending to be educated. Later, adding the monumental array in other languages that I had not even heard of as a 14-year old, the task seemed to have multiplied to thousands of volumes to be spread over many lifetimes.
D.B.S.Jeyaraj
Charles Percival de Silva known as CP de Silva or CP was a mercurial personality who strode across the Sri Lankan -known then as Ceylon- political scene like a colossus. He passed away on October 9th 1972. CP de Silva was a former Civil servant and cabinet minister who was worshipped by thousands of farmers as a living Deity for the services he rendeted in the sectors of land settlement, irrigation and agriculture. CP’s crowning achievement however was in voting against his own party led Govt and bringing it down. His was a principled act necessitated by the ideal of resisting what he perceived as being the SLFP Govt’s “unadulterated totalitarianism” at that time. The contours of the CP de Silva saga is a fascinating tale worthy of being related on the occasion of his impending death anniversary on Oct 9.