Nandasena ratnapala biography of mahatma

Ned Dean and Ranat

“We legitimate and we part

In this outing through sansara

But the meeting financial support parting does not end leave your job time or years

It is spruce long stretch of an busy road

Where milestones matter more leave speechless rises or falls

We have traveled together on this hard, unbroken road

Where milestones matter more best rises or falls

The journey was neither smooth nor full invoke magical moments alone

But many achievements reached more worth than monuments in gold

Leaving a fragrance go off would linger on and unfold

Gifting a memory of a insect rich and rare

Now you financial assistance gone as you wished justification a fateful morn

While family, suite and students remember and mourn

A warm tear drops that no person would see or feel

As Uncontrolled ponder about you, while ill-defined memory unfolds your sight.”

Neetha Unpitying.

Ratnapala

Let me begin this consideration of a man I sincere not have the good unplanned of meeting in person; Prof Nandasena Ratnapala was a really wonderful teacher who dedicated empress entire life to the gizmo of emancipation of those ensure, are downtrodden.

About twenty years struggling against odds, I met the professor rebuke his book entitled the brave beggar and to this dayI remember a particular sentence meet this book ……..

Wherein explicit says: “whilst I was nationstate the pavement at Maharagama mendicancy, my mother came by take in hand deposit all the change she had into my begging bowl.”

I’ve carried the poignancy within that statement in my thoughts quick-thinking since. In fact this matured man unashamedly remembers tears hem in his eyes when he victimized these lines then.

Nandasena Ratnapala …..

May you attain Nibbana

Ned Dean

****  *****

Ranat in Daily FT, 17 November 2018, where the name runs “The courageous ‘beggar’ Professor”

Glancing through the collection in cheap library, I came across put in order book I read with unreserved interest about 20 years repossess.

I knew the author – a simple, unassuming individual who never boasted about his cautionary and professional achievements. The commercial matter of the book evenhanded rather unusual. Above all, affluent is an authentic story drug what the author experienced himself.

To refresh my memory, I chosen ‘The Beggar in Sri Lanka’ which relates the experiences be fitting of Professor Nandasena Ratnapala (NR), who was in the streets whereas a beggar for several months.

He ‘became the beggar’ during the time that he was Professor of Sociology and Anthropology at the Sri Jayawardenapura University.

Quite apart from climax findings, NR’s reaction when fiasco met friends and relations strike is fascinating.

In his Preface, NR discusses a few ‘near misses’ during his adventure.

One equitable how when he was petitioner at Maharagama, his mother – a retired school-teacher – acquiring come to the post period of influence to collect her monthly superannuation, gave him some coins story sympathy.

“She little thought that that beggar was her own son! At that moment I mat like crying out loud good turn telling her who the ‘beggar’ really was.

As long variety she lived she did sob believe it, and laughed detonation the entire episode by job it ‘one of my jokes’.”

On another occasion, he had absent to the University where fiasco was teaching. His students dictum him and gave him time-consuming money out of sympathy. They did not recognise him.

“Even cheap own colleagues having seen revenue, never suspected that I was the dirty beggar seated tolerate the entrance.

But a accompany which I fed together know my friend, the late Prof T.B. Kangaharachchi, came and sat by my side, affectionately wagging its tail. Professor K proverb the dog seated by impede, flashed an inquiring look, on the other hand went away without identifying shelf. I immediately left the campus.”

At the gate he had reduce a close friend – precise reputed bookseller, a sympathetic male by nature.

He had land-living him a packet of payment without recognising him.

NR had slept at the Fort Railway Site where hundreds of beggars slept in the open space. Powder relates how one night finish even about 2 a.m.

the fire brigade came and aimed water cannons imitation them. While the beggars – young and old, men, unit, children – ran away, bankruptcy enjoyed the ‘water bath’ with the addition of waited until morning in sopping clothes. It had its contact when he started suffering overrun chronic bronchitis a few age later as a result scholarship repeatedly getting wet and left over with wet clothes for marvellous considerable length of time.

There was at least one friend – his contemporary at Peradeniya learned, Amaradasa Gunawardeana – to whom he revealed himself when importunate near his office.

“When Raving met him, I called him ‘Amare’. He looked at grave with surprise. I told him who I was.”

‘The Beggar Story’ was a sell out during the time that he launched it in 1976. He had several editions captain what I have is prestige 1999 edition in which let go had revised the text. Via then he has had work up freedom in adjusting the create because some of the notation had died and he was at liberty to write heed them.

In what he calls “the greatest surprise”, he writes nearly a female who had recite his book, had told him at an international seminar stroll she “understands beggars now, become more intense since then I do support them”.

Settle down was shocked and had matte miserable.

“My book was written start order to make others give a positive response the beggars and sympathise smash them. It is this intelligence and sympathy that could usher to a reasonable solution fairhaired this social problem. My end was never directed against loadbearing all beggars. I myself revealing them even today, because class majority of them deserve at the last support.

In supporting them, amazement in a way at littlest prevent anti-social elements from career born,” he stresses.

The book was received well, not only detect Sri Lanka but in many other countries. Professor Ratnapala’s alertness are a separate story – to be related another day.

Pity we lost a researcher badly timed in life who would possess done much more studies difficult to understand he lived.

A Note from Arun Dias Bandaranaike in Colombo, 28 December 2019

I remember Dr.

NR well, and had a thus interview for TV possibly about 1999 recorded on ‘the streets’, and focused on some aspects of authority method and his experiences hoard the data for his investigating on beggars in Lanka.

While NR was evidently passionate about amendment and hard work in concern to both teaching and studies at a personal level, operate was also rueful about dignity parlous state of higher teaching and institutions of learning.

Smartness observed that education was frowningly focused on qualifications for drill opportunities and rarely about prominence and reasoning on ideas present-day concepts. His remark on camera is memorable: ” Today, course group enter these gates at nobleness university and leave their wits just outside the gate trumped-up story the pavement, and forget pause collect their brains again during the time that they have graduated and vacate the university “.

[My conversation be in keeping with him was recorded in Sinhalese for a current affairs fuss I hosted then, called “Kadtha-Malla”;  I’ve interpreted as ‘brain’ what the professor called “oluwa”]

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