Features

Maashooga (meaning beloved), my housekeeper in Sindh, Pakistan

Published

2 years ago

2024/11/17

Thilina Walpola

Jayantha P (left) and Maashooga

by Jayantha Perera

A young man was waiting at the wide-open gate of the university guest bungalow. The driver drove the van through the gate to the back foyer. The young man recognised Parvez, who was with me and smiled. When Parvez introduced me to him, he shook my hand and pronounced my name correctly. Parvez introduced him as Maashooga and smiled. He said Maashooga means ‘darling’ or ‘beloved.’ He was a charming young man, about six feet two inches tall, with a light moustache and penetrating eyes. His long hair partially covered his face, which had a few pimples. I thought he was in his early twenties. He wore a salwar kameez and a colourful Sindhi cap decorated with beads and threads. He looked like a polio victim as his right leg was about two inches shorter than his left leg.

Maashooga carried my suitcase to the master bedroom. It had been recently painted and had a brand-new air conditioner. The spacious bathroom had hot and cold water. The bed was large, and a new floral woollen blanket covered it. The room had two panels of large windows. I could see mango trees and several flower beds without any plants through the windows.

Parvez talked to Maashooga in Sindhi and left me at the bungalow, promising to visit me in the evening. I tried to speak to Maashooga; he knew very little English but understood me and responded. Maashooga wanted to prepare chapati, subji (vegetables) and mutton curry for dinner. He asked me whether I eat ‘double roti’ (bread)?’ I told him I like chapati. He understood and nodded with a smile. This was the beginning of our communication, which would later lead to a better understanding of each other’s culture and personality.

I slept two hours, and when I got up, the sun was setting. A cool breeze engulfed me in the large foyer of the bungalow. The front garden was a small mango orchard. The bungalow had a spacious sitting area, a wood-panelled office room and three bedrooms. Maashooga emerged from the kitchen with a hot cup of tea and a few biscuits on a wooden tray. He waited until I drank the tea and showed me the gate, indicating that I should go for a walk. The cool breeze and the lengthening shadows of the children playing cricket on the dirt road in front of the bungalow lifted my spirit.

The Director and several SDSC colleagues visited me in the late evening. Maashooga produced six half-pint bottles of Murray beer for the visitors! He sat on the floor, carefully poured cold beer into six glasses in equal measure and waited to serve the second round. When the six bottles of beer were consumed, my colleagues stopped the conversation. They left the bungalow, promising to revisit me often.

Maashooga served my dinner at 8 pm, and it was tasty. He held each chapati over the gas flame until it was cooked and looked like a balloon. He waited at the dining table until I had my dinner. He said I should buy a big-screen TV to watch Hindi movies. Then, he went to the kitchen, sat on the floor and ate a few chapatis. He gave several chapatis and a bowl of curry to the chowkidar (watchman) of the bungalow, who sat under a tree in the backyard. The chowkidar saluted me when he saw me and said, “Sir, I am your university guard.”

The following morning, I had the best breakfast I ever had. Maashooga prepared an authentic Sindhi breakfast – parathas (unleavened bread) with a generous spread of ghee on top of them, deep-fried bindi (okra) and slices of fried Panna (local salmon). After breakfast, he took me to a grocery shop across the main road. He introduced me to the shopkeeper, who was happy to have me as his new customer. As I browsed through the aisles, I felt a sense of discovery, finding new and unfamiliar items. I bought soap, shampoo, sugar, double roti, garam masala, lentils, salt, and basmati rice. The manager recorded the transaction in a ledger and told me to pay him at the end of each month.

In the evening, Maashooga showed me the university campus and the settlement where he lived. The campus was large and well-maintained. Beyond its boundary walls, I could see the desert I had seen earlier, spreading limitlessly to the dusty horizon. Maashooga’s brother, the van driver who drove me to Jamshoro from Karachi, was waiting for us. He invited me for a cup of tea. They did not have a chair for me to sit on. I sat on a log. I understood that Maashooga lived with his mother, brother, and brother’s family. Their house was just a hut, and the entire settlement looked like an overcrowded slum encroaching on the university park.

One evening, while having dinner, I heard several gunshots nearby. Maashooga got excited, grabbed me by my arm, and took me to the bungalow’s backyard. He asked me to climb over the boundary wall to the neighbour’s garden. I hesitated. I could have climbed the wall but was scared to jump onto a stranger’s land. He understood my predicament and took me back to the bungalow. Parvez visited me later to tell me that a group of dacoits (armed robbers) had tried to abduct two doctors from the hospital, but university security guards foiled their attempt. He instructed Maashooga to make a step ladder, which I could use to climb the wall in an emergency. He told me that my neighbour was a university professor and promised to get his permission to keep a raised platform in his garden so I could escape in an emergency through his garden.

Three months later, I collected the Land Cruiser jeep, my official vehicle, from the Karachi Customs Office and moved with Maashooga to my apartment in Hyderabad. I was happy as the apartment was in a gated community in a high-end residential area. The apartment was two-storied with five bedrooms and ample space for a front garden. I boiled milk in a new aluminium pot in the sitting area, following the traditions of Sri Lanka. I watched happily when boiled milk overflowed in all directions. I thought it was a good omen.

In the afternoon, Maashooga and I shopped to buy a TV, radio, cleaning material, cutlery, and crockery for the new apartment. He was very proud to oversee a big house. When I assigned him a room, he told me he would sleep on the rooftop during the summer and autumn. I bought him a charpoy (light bed), and he kept it on the rooftop. One night, I went with him upstairs and was mesmerised by the clear sky, cool breeze, and total darkness. One could gaze into the universe for hours; only an occasional shooting star might disturb one’s trance.

One night, Maashooga came down from the rooftop, wholly covered with dust. I could not recognise him and thought a ghost was visiting me! White dust covered his face and hair. He started laughing. That night, a nasty dust storm had hit the area, covering everything with dust. Dust looked like ash and clung to anything. Maashooga took about two hours to remove the dust from his body, especially from his thick, curly hair.

When I returned to Hyderabad after my home leave, I was delighted to see a beautiful garden in front of the apartment. Maashooga had planted cannas of different colours and several red rose plants. But I was shocked when I went up to my bedroom. It was a mess. Thousands of tiny beads were strewn everywhere with different coloured yarns and long needles. My bedsheets and pillows were dirty. My toilet was messy and smelly. Maashooga came upstairs with a cup of tea. I asked him why he had used my bedroom and bathroom.

He smiled and said he watched TV while weaving Sindhi caps and garlands on my bed. He showed me two exquisite Sindhi caps he had woven for me. I asked him to change the bedsheets and pillowcases and clean the bathroom, which he did diligently. He did not come up to watch TV for a few days. When I invited him to watch TV, he did not bring beads and threads to my room or sit on my bed. He smiled and told me not to tell anybody about his “bad work.”

One day, he wanted to go with me to the old fort in Hyderabad. We took a public bus to the city and walked 30 minutes to reach the entrance of the Pakka Qilla Fort, an 18^th-century structure. I was amazed to see thousands of people moving in the fort. There were small cubicle-type rooms and houses. Residences could not be distinguished from shops. We walked to the interior of the fort. But we could not go far because thousands were walking on narrow roads or flocking to small business places. Maashooga knew some people at the fort, and we had tea with them. He brought six Sindhi caps for his friends. When I told my SDSC colleagues about my visit to the fort, they were dismayed. They said that the fort was notorious for sudden clashes among militant groups. Being a foreigner, I could have become a target for abduction.

At the periphery of Hyderabad city, there was a private hospital known as the American Hospital. Three Sri Lankan Catholic nuns ran it. It was well-known for its excellent patient care. Several Catholic organisations in the USA supported it by supplying free medicine and equipment and sending specialists on short-term visits. Every year, the hospital trains about 100 young rural women in midwifery. After the training, they returned to their villages as dais (midwives) to serve their communities.

I discussed with the hospital’s mother superior the possibility of correcting Maashooga’s polio-affected leg. At that time, a well-known American orthopaedic consultant was visiting the hospital. After examining Maashooga’s leg, he told me that the length of the twisted short leg could be adjusted by surgery. He explained that at least 1.5 inches could be regained after resetting his ankle bones, leg ligaments, tendons, and affected leg muscles. It was good news. The surgery would cost about US$ 800. The sisters agreed to give Maasooga a room and food at the hospital free of charge. I wrote to my supervisor in the UK requesting him to contribute. He sent $500 as a contribution.

The nuns contacted a surgeon in Karachi and fixed a date for the surgery at the American Hospital. Maashooga’s brother told me that his mother was distraught but respected my decision on the surgery. I consoled and assured him that the surgery would not harm Maashooga but enable him to walk without much limping. He asked me to sign the declaration as Maashooga’s guardian.

After the operation, Maashooga and his family brought sweets to thank me. His brother told me he could not have even dreamt of his brother’s leg recovery. I took them to the hospital to meet the nuns and the medical staff. We all enjoyed the sweets Maashooga’s mother had brought as we basked in a glorious sunset in the hospital compound.

Maashooga started cycling regularly to regain the strength of his legs. Six months later, the surgeon checked his leg and told me the surgery was successful, although the leg was about ½ inch short. Maashooga was happy with his new appearance. I bought him a pair of orthopaedic sandals to correct the length of the leg.

Soon after the northeast monsoons, Maashooga’s brother invited me to Maashooga’s wedding. I was happy but surprised. He had never mentioned his wedding plan to me. I asked him about the wedding after his brother had left. He just coyly smiled and went away. His brother borrowed money from me and promised to repay the loan over two years. The wedding was a grand affair. There were two separate tents for men and women, and about 80 invitees attended the wedding.

The bride was a young woman with a pretty face and dark complexion. She was in a saree draped in Sindhi style and wore some head jewellery linked to her nose by a gold chain. She was with her parents and never raised her head during the wedding ceremony. All those who attended the ceremony stayed for lunch. Lunch was served at 2 pm when mutton biriyani in giant cauldrons were brought in. Two elders served food first to the men. Women waited patiently in their tent for their turn to get biriyani. After lunch, young men and women danced separately and sang Sindhi songs until the evening.

Maashooga did not turn up at the apartment for three days after his wedding. He had arranged for one of his colleagues to prepare my food in his absence. Maashooga returned on the fourth day as if nothing had happened in his life. He smiled and started house cleaning and cooking. I told him he could go home after preparing my dinner early. He said he would stay at the apartment and go home to his wife for one night on Fridays. I increased his salary by 50 per cent so he would have enough money for himself and his wife. I tried to talk to him about his new life. Still, Maashooga was reluctant to engage in a conversation on the topic. On several occasions, he brought some sweets prepared by his wife. I watched him, and I thought he was happy. I also thought he was too shy to discuss his wife and family matters.

One early morning, Maashooga’s brother informed me that Maashooga’s wife had died while giving birth to twins. Maashooga had never mentioned to me that his wife was pregnant. I went to his hut where the body of the wife was. I looked for Maashooga and found him helping several women in preparing tea. At 11am, the body was buried at the public cemetery. Maashooga stood next to me with a blank and pensive look on his face. He looked tired and confused. He watched the rituals and the closing of the grave. At that point, he rested his left elbow on my right shoulder. He shivered briefly and told me, “We go to Hyderabad.” His brother told him to take me to their home for lunch before going to my apartment.

Maashooga continued to be with me and never discussed his wife’s death and the loss of two sons. He stopped going home on Fridays. Instead, he paid more attention to his flower beds in the front garden. He stopped playing football. I heard from his brother that Maashooga had assaulted two men in the village over an argument. He started sleeping on the rooftop and doing his favourite hobby – weaving Sindhi caps. I found him asleep several times with beads and threads on his lap. He lost weight and looked depressed.

I consulted the nuns at the American Hospital. They said that he needed counselling, and the hospital could get a therapist. They cautioned me that his relatives might interpret such therapy as a way of converting young people to Christianity. He attended several sessions at the hospital. I dropped him and collected him from the hospital. The nuns told me he had shown good progress in returning to everyday life.

When I left Sindh in 1996, after living in Hyderabad for five years, Maashooga came to the airport to see me off. He had never been to Karachi. His brother drove us to the airport, and we stopped for tea at a roadside kiosk. While tea was prepared, I walked around the kiosk. Suddenly, I remembered my arrival in Jamshoro from Karachi. Then, I had thought I would not survive five years in a desert. But now, sand dunes and the blurred horizon looked enchanting. I felt sad to leave Jamshoro. Maashooga held his brother’s hand and cried. His brother explained that Maashooga was very sad to see my departure. He wanted to know whether I would return to Jamshoro. I did not have the guts to tell him that I might not. I wondered whether I would ever see him again.

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Features

Revolt in the Temple: Poverty as Structural Control

Published

15 hours ago

2026/05/31

Thilina Walpola

The underlying issue in Anuradhapura is a struggle between a few families who, for years, have waged a quiet cold war over control of the Udamaluwa. Similar situations exist in Mihintale as well. These places, among others, are treated as treasures of Buddhism but, in practice, function as tightly controlled economic centres. The same pattern repeats in Kandy around the Temple of the Sacred Tooth Relic and in Kataragama at the shrine of God Kataragama. Variations of it exist across religious spaces of Islam, Catholicism, and Hinduism too, where institutional authority becomes indistinguishable from localised power networks. What is presented as sacred order often operates as inherited control.

It is indeed devastating to see situations where parents have no alternative but to expose their children to predators in robes for survival. This has nothing to do with religion itself, but with human pathology in the context of survival. These are the questions that demand answers, not superficial responses that treat symptoms while ignoring the conditions that produce them. What is more shocking and disturbing is not the tragedy itself, but the reactions to it. Social media has overwhelmed us, not towards understanding, but towards a fragmented cognitive state with no exit route.

A friend of mine in Nairobi used to keep all his electronic devices at home and go into the forest once a month, spending days there before returning. He called it “detoxification”, but in reality it was an escape from a system that no longer allows uninterrupted thought. Daily life is now saturated with unnecessary content, and attention itself has become a commodity extracted, processed, and sold back to us. This is where we have become unable to understand what really drives certain tragedies we endlessly react to, while remaining blind to the systems that quietly manufacture them.

Multi-dimensional poverty

Poverty is structural, poverty is political, and poverty is functional; it is a tool and a manoeuvring force of power. The question is no longer whether poverty exists, but who benefits from its persistence, and who is forced to survive within it. From education to medicine to basic food supply chains, countries like Sri Lanka are not simply mismanaged; they are structurally captured by a small number of actors who remain stable regardless of who is formally in power. Small-scale enterprises and NGO circuits that circulate foreign funding to “solve structural issues” often operate as hollow administrative performances, producing reports rather than transformation.

Poverty is not merely the absence of money. It is the absence of bandwidth, absence of protection, absence of time, and absence of cognitive stability. As Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir state, “Scarcity captures the mind. Just as the starving subjects had food on their mind, when we experience scarcity of any kind, we become absorbed by it.” This is a description of how human cognition is structurally reorganized under constraint. Scarcity does not sit outside the person; it occupies them.

They also state, “Scarcity leads us to borrow and pushes us deeper into scarcity.” That is the mechanism that must be confronted without euphemism. Poverty is not only deprivation; it is a self-reinforcing trap in which survival decisions generate the next layer of crisis. Once a society crosses a certain threshold of scarcity, it stops producing long-term reasoning as a default condition. It produces short-term survival logic, often mistaken by outsiders for irrationality.

It is precisely here that public discourse becomes intellectually dishonest. Everything is translated into moral language because moral language is easier than structural analysis. But morality without structure becomes theatre. It produces outrage, not understanding, and repetition, not reform.

It is indeed brutal when an individual wearing religious insignia—whether robe, symbol, or institutional identity—is accused of acts that fundamentally contradict the moral authority attached to that position. It is equally brutal when institutions that depend entirely on trust begin to function as shields rather than safeguards. But the deeper question is not shock. The deeper question is what kind of social condition produces families who see placement within such institutions not only as devotion, but as a survival strategy under constraint.

Ethical decision-making

That is where the argument collapses into its most uncomfortable form. Poverty does not produce ethical decision-making environments. It produces constrained optimization under pressure. When food insecurity, debt, and social instability converge, institutional spaces that appear stable become transactional destinations for survival rather than moral choices. To interpret this as purely cultural failure is to deliberately ignore the structural compression of options.

Mullainathan and Shafir describe this clearly: “Instead of saying that scarcity ‘focuses,’ we could just as easily say that scarcity causes us to tunnel: to focus single-mindedly on managing the scarcity at hand.” That tunnelling effect is not abstract. It is visible wherever long-term planning collapses under immediate pressure. Systems then misread this as irresponsibility, when it is in fact cognitive overload produced by structure.

What is rarely acknowledged is how deeply this extends into governance itself. Institutions increasingly operate as if they are managing rational, unconstrained individuals. In reality, they are interacting with populations whose cognitive bandwidth is already structurally taxed. The result is policy failure interpreted as public non-compliance, enforcement interpreted as moral correction, and reform interpreted as communication failure rather than design failure.

Social media has intensified this distortion. It does not merely spread information; it destroys sequencing. Structural problems require temporal depth. Social media removes that depth and replaces it with instantaneous judgment. Every event becomes a surface object, detached from causality. The outcome is a society permanently reacting and never diagnosing.

Poverty, in this environment, becomes invisible in its real form. It is not seen as a continuous structural condition but as episodic failure. A scandal appears, is consumed, and disappears. Another replaces it. Nothing accumulates into understanding because attention itself is exhausted before synthesis can occur.

Modern Condition

The modern condition reflects a reversal of earlier social organization, where human relationships are embedded within abstract systems of finance, law, and administration that often fail to recognize the lived constraints of those they govern. In this disembedded state, institutions increasingly misinterpret human behaviour as their capacity for structural understanding weakens. At the same time, attempts to resolve systemic failures through expanding administrative complexity produce diminishing returns: more regulation, oversight, and reporting generate less coherence. Over time, institutions shift from functional effectiveness to symbolic performance, maintaining the appearance of control rather than achieving it.

This is why public outrage repeatedly fails to translate into structural change. Outrage is not a tool of reconstruction. It is a signal of system fatigue. It circulates, intensifies, and dissipates without altering the underlying architecture. Meanwhile, the conditions that produce repetition remain intact.

The most persistent illusion is that these are separate problems: poverty here, institutional misuse there, media distortion elsewhere. They are not separate. They are expressions of a single condition in which scarcity, complexity, symbolic authority, and fragmented enforcement interact without coordination. The system does not fail in one place; it fails in the gaps between these layers.

Symbolic systems

What makes this condition more severe is that symbolic systems continue to operate at full strength even when structural systems degrade. Religious identity remains powerful. Political rhetoric remains strong. Cultural symbolism remains intact. But enforcement capacity, institutional coherence, and social trust degrade beneath them. That gap is where instability grows. Until that gap is addressed at the level of structure rather than sentiment, repetition remains inevitable. New scandals will emerge, new interpretations will circulate, and new cycles of outrage will follow. Nothing resolves because nothing is being reconstructed beneath the surface of reaction.

This is no longer repairable through adjustment or rhetoric. It is a form of decay that persists until it exhausts itself, because the mechanisms meant to correct it are now part of the same failure. It continues until rupture, not reform. At that point, instability ceases to be episodic and becomes structural. Pressure will accumulate into breakdown, and what follows will not be managed transition but forced reversal. The responsibility lies with those who govern these institutions to prevent that trajectory, not through language, but through change. The drama is ending; farce is over; what we are witnessing is tragedy unfolding with unprecedented consequences.

by Nilantha Ilangamuwa

Features

Are threats to Buddha Sasana external or from within?

Published

15 hours ago

2026/05/31

Thilina Walpola

As Sri Lanka celebrates the birth, Enlightenment and the Parinibbana of the Buddha, almost a month after the rest of the Buddhist-world did so, there is widespread discussion about threats to Buddha Sasana provoked by some recent incidents. Regarding the views expressed about postponing Vesak celebrations in my article ‘May Day and postponement Vesak 2026’ (The Island, 25 May), my very good friend Dr Upali Abeysiri has sent me the following comments: “The Mahanayakas have a good reason to postpone Vesak. The dawning of the full moon has to be on the same constellation (nekatha) as when the Buddha was born and attained enlightenment. Although Adhi Poya is reckoned as the second full moon arising in the same calendar month, this is supposed to be an odd exception.” Though it would have been ideal if a consensus could have been reached prior to the split of celebrations, perhaps, it does not matter very much as celebrations occur on a symbolic rather than an actual date, there being no historical or archaeological evidence confirming exact dates.

Whilst there are no direct threats to Buddha Dhamma, as the expanding horizons of science continue to confirm the fundamentals of Buddha Dhamma, there is no doubt whatsoever that there are threats to Buddha Sasana. However, these threats become important as the Buddha Sasana performs the pivotal role in protecting and propagating the Dhamma and, hence, become an indirect threat to Dhamma itself. Therefore, it should be the concern of all Buddhists and it is in this spirit I am making some comments which some may interpret as disrespectful to the Maha Sangha. I can reassure that my intentions are entirely directed towards the preservation of the Buddha Dhamma and Sasana. Though the Buddha proclaimed that the Sasana consists of Bhikkhu, Bhikkhuni, Upasaka and Upasika, for all practical purposes Sasana had been led by Bhikkhus, often at the expense of others.

There is hardly any doubt that there are external forces at play in Sri Lanka and even some Buddhists seem to object to Sri Lanka being called a Buddhist country. Interestingly, no one seems to object to countries like the UK and the USA being called Christian counties. I

There is no registration or baptism in Buddhism and there are no rewards for Buddhists for conversions. As I pointed out in a previous article, ‘How does the Buddha differ’ (The Island, 1 May) unlike most other religions, Buddhism is not a ‘high-demand’ religion, nor ‘law-based’ religion and is not exclusivist. Perhaps, it is this liberalism, pacifism and gentleness, which are the real strengths, that are being exploited as weaknesses by others.

There will always be external threats and the Buddha too faced many during his lifetime. Before addressing those, is it not more important to address the threats within? One of the most important problems seems to be the breakdown of discipline. Bhikkhus are bound by Vinaya rules, laid down by the Buddha and some recent incidents highlight total deviations. Though there were many previous incidents like unsubstantiated claims of Arahanthood, Bhikkhus attacking each other on YouTube and Bhikkhus conducting YouTube channels, not for the propagation of the Dhamma but for the accumulation of rupees, attention was focused after the detection of 22 young monks carrying narcotic drugs.

Though many commentators were quick to condemn the Sangha on this account, we need to go deeper. Narcotic menace has become a huge problem in Sri Lanka and it looks as if the drug lords would resort to anything to achieve their objectives. Though it looks as if some gullible young monks had been duped by drug lords, we need to question why it was possible. Is it due to the lack of supervision of these novices by their seniors that allowed them to accept a request in a WhatsApp group? Should there be checks and balances on foreign travel by Bhikkhus?

What shocked Buddhists was what followed next; the arrest of the Nayaka of Atamasthana for allegedly having sex with a minor. Anuradhapura was our first capital and Sri Maha Bodhi is the longest surviving authenticated tree in the world. Ruwanweliseya and Jetawanaramaya were among the ten tallest man-made structures in the ancient world, Jetawanaramaya still holding the Guiness record for the largest stupa in the world. Cyberspace is full of theories. Whilst some have condemned the Nayaka Thero even before the conclusion of inquiries whilst others claim that this was a coup by another Nayaka Thera in an attempt of succession.

I was intrigued, reading in a Sri Lankan newspaper about the 80th birthday celebrations of a Nayaka priest, who was convicted in London in 2012 of historical child sex abuse and sentenced to seven years in prison. I remember the case very well as he was the head of the Vihara, we had our first contact on relocating to the UK. I also remember his devotees, who believed that he was wrongly accused, collecting over £50,000 for an appeal. In spite of being represented by one of the top Barristers in the UK, the conviction was upheld but the jail-term was reduced by a year. His name is still on the sex-offenders register in the UK and he is permanently prevented from association with children. One can argue that as he has served the sentence and not reoffended, this should not be held against him but what baffled me is that he is still being referred to as the Chief Sangha Nayaka. Should a person on the sex-offenders register be the Chief Sangha Nayaka?

It is high time we put our own house in order before fighting the external enemies. It is reported that the former president CBK has written to the Mahanayakas requesting urgent reform and we should be obliged to her for taking the lead.

There are many aspects that need urgent reform, the first being removal of caste barriers practiced by some Nikayas, which is the greatest insult to the Buddha who promoted equality. The second is the active encouragement of Bhikkhuni Sasana which has not happened in spite of the landmark ruling by the supreme court. The third is the establishment of proper disciplinary processes under a single Adhikarana Sangha Nayaka with powers and support than allowing the government to take over the control of even non-criminal Vinaya matters.

There are many other issues that need settlement like the controversy of the land of Buddha’s birth which seems to linger on. An expert committee should hear all evidence and settle this issue once and for all.

As I have pointed out on many occasions in these columns, it is high time a Dhamma Sangayana was held, as the last one was 70 years ago. Ideally, it should be different with active participation of lay experts as well. It is the duty of us Buddhists to ensure that the words of wisdom of the Buddha continue to enlighten generations to come.

By Dr Upul Wijayawardhana

Features

Vijaya Kumar: Academic, Activist & Genial Fellow-Traveller

Published

15 hours ago

2026/05/31

Thilina Walpola

Professor Vijaya Kumar

The University of Ceylon, Peradeniya, was in our time, a less-crowded residential university, where everybody knew everybody else or at least knew of everybody else.

I knew of Emeritus Professor Vijaya Kumar of the Department of Chemistry at Peradeniya, or Kumar, as we referred to him fondly, before I got to know him. His dear wife Savitri, also a member of the academic staff of the Department of Chemistry, was nicknamed Kumee, by some of their students (of which vintage is unknown to me) and the duo were thereafter referred to affectionately as Kumar and Kumee.

The Faculty of Science became a regular haunt of mine as I would go there in the company of my batchmates to attend lectures on Basic Mathematics given by Professor Maheswaran, as it was a requirement for our General Arts Qualifying Examinations. I would also go there to listen to some excellent talks under a programme that was held in the auditorium of the Science Faculty referred to as “Popular Science Gossip”. The “gossip” at these talks were not confined solely to science but were broad enough to include Literature, History and other branches of knowledge as well. I would often spot Kumar in the audience at these talks or bump into him in the corridors of the Science Faculty. But I got to know him personally only after he became the Warden of Arunachalam, my hall of residence, during my undergraduate years initially, and later, as a member of the academic staff of the Department of English.

Our Science Faculty undergraduate contemporaries, especially those at Arunachalam Hall and its immediate neighbour, Jayatilaka Hall, both within a stone’s throw away from the Science Faculty, shared many an anecdote about Kumar and their other lecturers. One of these anecdotes, had to do with a spectacular (motor car) driving feat of Kumar’s. Legend has it that he drove from his university bungalow-home to the Faculty of Science deploying only the reverse gear of his car! Kumar, on hearing of this, had told certain of his student friends, including some who became his colleagues later on, that this story is one of the biggest yarns he had heard in his life!

Some of his one-time younger colleagues, now in retirement like Kumar, tell me that Kumar exuded warmth and friendliness in all of his professional and administrative interactions with others in the wider university community. But there was no warmth or mercy for those who indulged in the unsavoury pastime of student ‘ragging’. He was a very strong proponent of the need to ensure to all freshers an environment free of the menace of ‘ragging’. He remained ever-vigilant during the ‘ragging’ season. There are stories of his chasing ‘raggers’ and catching them. Professor Maheswaran, who later became an intimate friend and remains so after more than half a century, was another who was fiercely opposed to ‘ragging’. I was a personal witness to Mahes chasing a ‘ragger’ up and down the stairs of the main library to nab him. Yet another of his students has noted that Kumar’s office room in the Faculty was a total mess at all times. It had tables, piled so high with books and documents that one could not easily spot Kumar at his desk. He, however, had the knack of pulling out from amidst the clutter, any document that he needed at any given time. If anybody were to volunteer to help tidy his desk, Kumar would respond firmly with “Don’t you touch my desk!”.

Kumar, like several of his colleagues in the other faculties as well, had his own eccentricities. According to information received from reliable sources, Kumar who taught Organic Chemistry used to carry his lecture notes in his shirt or trouser pocket with ‘the entire lecture condensed in point form on a half-sheet or half of a half-sheet of paper’. The way he rummaged through his sling bag filled to the brim with stuff to find an item that he needed was another ritual that amused onlookers.

Kumar, interestingly enough is a Royal-cum-Thomian product, in that he had his primary education at S.Thomas’ Prep School, Kollupitiya and the entirety of his secondary education at Royal College, which he entered in 1953. In a note written by Kumar himself, he notes that despite having had excellent teachers at Royal, his was not a notable school career. He goes on to say that “the only achievement I could boast of was my being the joint-winner of the school General Knowledge Prize”. However, he had been active in a Scout Group outside of school (1st Port of Colombo, Sea Scouts) where he “was Queen’s Scout, Patrol leader, and later, Assistant Scout Master”.

Kumar entered the Faculty of Science of the University of Ceylon in 1961 and secured from it an honours degree in Chemistry in 1965. He joined the academic staff of the Department of Chemistry in the Faculty of Science, University of Ceylon, Peradeniya in 1965 and left the following year for Magdalen College at Oxford University, from which institution he obtained his doctorate in Chemistry. His entire teaching career was at Peradeniya, where in the period 2003-2006 he served as the Dean of the Faculty of Science, a position that his late father-in-law had held a few decades earlier.

Among the other highlights of his career are: Chairman of the Industrial Technology Institute (formerly the Ceylon Institute of Scientific and Industrial Research, CISIR); Member (representing Sri Lanka) of the Geneva-based UN Commission on Science and Technology from 1999 to 2007 and its President from 2001-2003; President of the Sri Lanka Estate Workers Union from 1989 onwards; Member of the Politburo of the Lanka Sama Samaja Party from 1988 to 2014 and currently, a member of the Executive Committee of the National People’s Power (NPP).

Vijaya and Savitri Kumar are parents of daughters Shamala and Ramya, who are following in the footsteps of their parents: with the former teaching in the Department of Agricultural Economics in the Faculty of Agriculture, University of Peradeniya and the latter, in the Department of Community Medicine at the University of Jaffna.

(I wish to thank the following who assisted me in the writing of this brief essay: Mr. Bandula Warnakulasuriya, Emeritus Professor Ratnayake Bandara, Professor Mahinda Wickramaratne, Professor Swarna Wimalasiri and Mr. Manik de Silva).

*Editor’s note: Prof. Vijaya Kumar, a member of the NPP’s National Executive Committee and is still active in politics turns 84 today. This article by Tissa Jayatilaka, former Executive Director of the United States – Sri Lanka Fulbright Commission for Mutual Academic Exchange, was written for an upcoming collection of essays on Kumar’s life by his friends.

(Colombo Telegraph)

By Tissa Jayatilaka