Opinion
Dr. Ajith C.S. Perera, a fighter to the last

Disability activist, accessibility consultant, accomplished author, writer and speaker
This is no eulogy. I leave the appreciation of Ajith’s work to others who knew him and his work better than I. I belong to another generation, that of his father. So what I say here is personal, not quite what a reader would expect, but it is honest and heartfelt and, above all, something to think about.
Ajith was a tragic and heroic player in a script not of his choosing. This is the role in which he was cast in this life. As a Buddhist I know that whatever befell him was the result of some cause or other – what, we do not know – and I know that the good generated by him in this life will generate good fortune to someone else down the karmic stream. Somewhere, today, a baby lies cocooned in a mother’s womb: a baby who will reap his legacy. That will be his gift to that child: but that child will not know from where it all came. As Ajith, himself, must have spent many hours wondering why things happened to him, himself.
I call him a tragic figure because so many things went wrong. I remember him as a little boy with a cricket bat in hand, waiting for someone who would bowl for him. Sometimes, that was me, and Ajith remembered those days. How was I to know that I was bowling to a future International Test Umpire? He did become that, and an authority on cricket. I lost sight of him after that till I met him in the office of the late Dr. N.R de Silva, my contemporary and colleague, who introduced “this bright young man with an enviable future.”
The road ahead was strewn with flowers: but then, the skies turned dark. One “dark and stormy night” snuffed out that promise. Two promising international careers in cricket and Chemistry, was cut short when a tree fell on his moving car, leaving Ajith paraplegic for life. Thus tethered at so young an age, he took upon four tasks: Keeping his father’s memory evergreen, caring for his widowed mother, giving back from his knowledge to Cricket and taking the lead in moves to make life easier for those who were as disabled, or rather differently-abled as him, or worse.
I do remember taking him to address a gathering of disabled soldiers. Ajith would not go on stage but spoke from his wheelchair on the floor of the Auditorium. He deftly wheeled his way down the aisles, stopping to speak to the soldiers on the same level as he, himself. His dexterity in handling the wheelchair, his ability to speak to one man at a time with full attention, and his self-confidence impressed the soldiers and they left the Hall with shoulders squared and heads held high again.
By reason of personal adversity he turned a voluntary disability activist, accessibility consultant on ‘Enabling Environments’, and accomplished author, writer and speaker. He is also the founder and Hony. Secretary-General of IDIRIYA, a not-for-profit humanitarian service organisation born from his passion and commitment for creating environments that are ‘enabling for all’. He didn’t appreciate pity on behalf of the disabled, nor dependency on part of the disabled, pointing out that able-bodied people often tended to see the ‘disability’ of disabled persons instead of their numerous ‘abilities’. He argued that if everyone adopted a charitable attitude to differently-abled people they would become unwanted dependents of society.
He believed that Sri Lanka needed social empowerment rather than social welfare. He discarded the medical model that labelled people like him ‘disabled’ in favour of the social model, which taught him that human abilities vary widely and is subject to continuous change leading to often debilitating conditions. It was Ajith’s a voluntary efforts that lead to the Supreme Court order to provide differently-abled persons with unhindered access to new public buildings. He hoped that, with the proper implementation of the law, all government and private sector buildings will soon be enabling for all. His tireless efforts made accessibility a legal obligation, rather than just a social responsibility.
He will be remembered for ensuring that his father’s name was remembered in the Navy and, when an oration in his name was delivered on the Golden Jubilee of the Naval Academy, that was Ajith’s day.
On top of it all, his father’s eyesight began to fail. A teacher by nature, Commander M.G.S Perera, had retired from the Navy to be a Staff Captain training Ceylon Shipping Corporation officer cadets. The man who taught celestial navigation to generations of trainees suddenly lost his sight: “the most unkindest cut of all.” Not being able to see “the sun in the morning and the stars at night.” Death would have come as a welcome relief.
With his mother getting older and weaker, he had to run house for her and, unlike most of us, he had no pension, having been disabled so young. It must have been a tough time for him. How can we understand what he was going through? He badgered people to do things, but what else could he do? He managed, though, not wonderfully well, but well enough. That is why I think of him as a tragic figure raging against Fate. He was hard and demanding at times – what else could he do, with no tools in his hand but his voice and his computer? We all found him hard, at times, and even resented it, but we knew that he was tethered to a wheel, and to others who looked to him.
With the death of his mother last year life became very hard for him because there was no purpose in running house. But what else could he do but run it? There were others there and there was no place for him to go. And where was the money? Illness finally claimed him and, perhaps, the will to live, a purpose to live for, deserted him. When had he last been happy I wonder? But he had been mere flotsam in a karmic stream he had no control over. All he could do was leave a legacy to an unborn child. And that, I believe, he did.
This is no eulogy. It is but an honest appraisal of a player cast in a tragic role “’midst the slings and arrows of outrageous Fortune.” Ajith will be remembered for what he tried to do, rather than what he could have achieved “had he (had) but world enough and Time.”
– Anon