Features

BRIGHT STARS OF COLOMBO CHETTY COMMUNITY

Published

4 years ago

2022/01/2

by ECB Wijesinghe

I am beholden to my friend, Mervyn Casie Chetty, lawyer, poet, wit and reigning king of the Colombo Chetty community, for the fund of information he gave about Dr. Philip Sebastian Brito, one of the medical giants of a bygone era. His portrait showing a massive head, broad shoulders and sparkling eyes still adorns the walls of the Medical College.

The Brito family was famous even at the turn of this century and double-barrelled names like Brito-Muttunayagam and Brito-Babapulle testify to their pride in a distinguished ancestry. Old Dr. Brito-Babapulle’s name was a household word in Grandpas. Besides being a good doctor he was a humorist and even compiled a book of jokes. He paid the penalty for his reputation for making witty speeches by being invited to speak at every important public dinner and festive occasion.

Ultimately his digestion was affected and he went through life with a chronic gastric complaint. Which of course, was no joke. When I married, Dr. Babapulle gave us a wall-clock as a wedding present. One day when I was not feeling too well the clock stopped mysteriously and I thought my end had come. But to my dismay I soon learned that the dear old doctor had passed away instead. If he had known of my apprehensions I am certain he would have had a long, last laugh. Dr. Babapulle is no more, but the clock is still ticking.

Mervyn Casie Chetty is wrong when he says that it is mainly medical blood that runs through the Brito family. I was in school with the last of Dr. P.S. Brito’s sons, who rejoiced in the name of Andrew Theophilus Philip Gurunather Brito. His teachers called him Andrew. His mother called him Theo and his intimate friends liked to call him Gurunather.

Gurunather is an attorney-at-law now practising in Jaffna, but is better known as an astronomer of the first magnitude. Do not be surprised if, one of these days more lustre is added to a famous name by Gurunather, who spends half the night gazing at the stars. One may yet look forward to some celestial object swimming into his ken which, willy-nilly will have to be called Brito’s Comet. When that happens the Brito name will be immortal and the Casie Chettys, Savundranayagams, Aserappas, Ondaatjies, Muttukumarus, Chittys, Perumals,Anandappas, Fernandopulles, Candappas, Alleses, Pullenayagams, Christie-Davids, Rozairos, Rodrigopulles, Murugupulles and all the other collaterals will be able to bask in the reflected glory.

The Colombo Chetty community, incidentally, is an ancient tribe that migrated to this country from South India. They should not be confused with the Natukottai Chettiars, who are mainly money-lenders. One community is as different from the other as chalk is from Dutch Edam cheese. Legend has it that one of the three kings from the Orient who went to worship Christ in Bethlehem was a Colombo Chetty. His name, I believe was Casper. Though Herod wanted him to come up and see him some time after the Bethlehem visit, Casper, being a Wise Man, took a devious route and landed in Sri Lanka, where he lived happily ever afterwards.

It is not correct to say that the Caspersz family in Ceylon has anything to do with Wise Man Casper’s connections with our lovely land. In Kotahena where I spent my boyhood years, it is well known that you cannot throw a stone without hitting a couple of Colombo Chetties. As a clan they are easy-going and are fond of food and music, to say nothing of a little alcohol. Their choir at New Chetty Street compares favourably with any of the philharmonic varieties. Most of them bear Tamil names, but by nature they have greater affinities with the Sinhalese. They celebrate the feasts of St. Anne at Wattala and Welisara with greater eclat than Christmas. The mortality among the porcine population is heavy during these festivals, as they believe in the popular theory that fatty foods are easily digested when they are washed down with large quantities of what they affectionately call “Old Stuff.”

Many Colombo Chetty celebrities have surfaced during the past 200 years. Perhaps the greatest of them was Simon Casie Chetty, the great-grandfather of Mervyn. Simon, however, made two mistakes. One of them was to be born in Calpentyn, where there were no maha vidyalayas at the time. Undeterred by this handicap – or was it? – he educated himself, and, besides mastering four languages, achieved fame as a lawyer judge and historian. And all within a brief life span of some 50 years.

Simon’s other major mistake was to start a newspaper. It was in Tamil and probably the first in that language. But it folded up as most of the best newspapers do, not owing to lack of readers, but due to amnesia on the part of subscribers, who forgot to pay their subscriptions. The history of journalism is studded with such lapses of memory.

Before Simon Casie Chetty’s star began to shine in Colombo there was a Colombo Chetty named Jurgen Ondaatjie who emigrated to Holland and became an instant favourite with the Dutch ladies. Ondaatjie’s virile personality and glib tongue appealed to the phlegmatic dames from Amsterdam to the Utrecht. They immediately took him to their bosoms and tip-toed through the tulips with Jurgen. They liked not only the tan on his face but the tang of his name, which sounded so Dutch that they persuaded their reluctant husbands to give him a high Government post, in fact a four-poster, from where Jurgen Ondaatjie disseminated Oriental culture and added a touch of colour to the sallow complexions of the Netherlands natives.

I had the good fortune to work alongside one of his descendants, a journalist named B.R.J Ondaatjie, the fastest shorthand writer of the day, with probably one exception, Stanley Morrison. He was possessed of a sharp tongue and it was a treat to hear him after one of those confrontations with his boss, D.R.Wijewardene. It was then that he expended his ire on his colleagues, a thing he could not do to D.R.W.

Other Colombo Chetties who made good abroad were the de Mello Aserappas, who rose to the top wherever they went, but the man who really put Ceylon on the map was Emil Savundranayagam. He made a long name short by calling himself Dr. Emil Savundra. If the term “genius” can be applied to any living Ceylonese it is to Emil. Before he was 35 he had acquired an international reputation as a financial wizard. From China to Peru hard-boiled entrepreneurs were dazzled, if not by his virtue, at least by his virtuosity.

Emil made them look like the rabbits which he pulled out of his capacious bag of tricks. Emil was the only Ceylonese to own a luxurious sea-going yacht though owing to recent vicissitudes he has had to give it up and paddle his own canoe. But he is bound to set sail in his yacht once more. You cannot keep a clever man grounded for long.

FOOTNOTE TO HISTORY

My learned friend and kinsman, Stanley Suraweera, the Lion of the Kegalla Bar, has taken my light-hearted romp into the past somewhat seriously and kindly sent me some more details of the famous Colombo Chetty who emigrated over 200 years ago and made good. The point that Stanley wishes to make is that Quint Ondaatje was not only a greater man than Simon Casie Chetty or Dr. P.S. Brito but that he was the greatest Ceylonese of all time. And that of course, includes not only our dear old kings but coming closer to our own generation, men like Dr. Ananda Coomaraswamy, Charles Ambrose Lorenz, Sir Harry Dias, Arunachalam, Ramanathan, D.S. Senanayake, Dudley and S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike.

This statement should raise a hornets’ nest if I knew anything of the idiosyncrasies of these troublesome insects. I do not pretend to be a historian and the little bit of history I crammed for my Cambridge Senior was forgotten immediately after the examination. Nor do I wish to probe too deeply into the cupboards of ancient families because the rattle of skeletons can sometimes be most annoying. Anyhow, this is what Stanley Suraweera writes, and I am giving it headings and all, for the edification of my less-informed readers:

THOSE ONDAATJES

Your reference to the third generation Ondaatje, better known as Quint Ondaatje, in this column, recalls to me this paragraph in Cassell’s Biographical Dictionary – Ondaatje Peter Philip Jurgen Quint, Phd and JUD born Ceylon 1758, died Java 1818. Remarkable as the only Asiatic who figured in European history. He was an orator, writer, politician, lawyer and soldier, but par excellence, a patriot and champion of liberty.

In later years, he was Quartermaster-General under the great Napoleon Bonaparte. Early in life he collected, not only a Master’s degree in Arts at the University of Utrecht, Holland, but also Doctorates in Philosophy and the literal sciences. In February, 1783 he received the honour of the Freedom of the City of Utrecht. He also took to Dutch politics. In the year 1806, Quint was nominated as Councillor of the Court of Finance of the Batavian Republic and towards the end of that same year appointed resident of the Council of Imports and Prices in the Kingdom of Holland, under Louis Bonaparte. By February 1815 he was by royal mandate, included among the Civil Servants of the First Class, destined for the East Indies Service. On April 30, 1818, he was dead.

And in the words of his biographer Mrs. C.M. Davies, the wife whom he had loved so long and so well, sank from a state of perfect health into the grave, a few months after him.

(Excerpted from THE GOOD AT THEIR BEST first published in 1976)

All News Advertisement

Features

US’ drastic aid cut to UN poses moral challenge to world

Published

6 hours ago

2026/01/1

Thilina Walpola

An UN humanitarian mission in the Gaza. [File: Ashraf Amra/Anadolu Agency]

‘Adapt, shrink or die’ – thus runs the warning issued by the Trump administration to UN humanitarian agencies with brute insensitivity in the wake of its recent decision to drastically reduce to $2bn its humanitarian aid to the UN system. This is a substantial climb down from the $17bn the US usually provided to the UN for its humanitarian operations.

Considering that the US has hitherto been the UN’s biggest aid provider, it need hardly be said that the US decision would pose a daunting challenge to the UN’s humanitarian operations around the world. This would indeed mean that, among other things, people living in poverty and stifling material hardships, in particularly the Southern hemisphere, could dramatically increase. Coming on top of the US decision to bring to an end USAID operations, the poor of the world could be said to have been left to their devices as a consequence of these morally insensitive policy rethinks of the Trump administration.

Earlier, the UN had warned that it would be compelled to reduce its aid programs in the face of ‘the deepest funding cuts ever.’ In fact the UN is on record as requesting the world for $23bn for its 2026 aid operations.

If this UN appeal happens to go unheeded, the possibilities are that the UN would not be in a position to uphold the status it has hitherto held as the world’s foremost humanitarian aid provider. It would not be incorrect to state that a substantial part of the rationale for the UN’s existence could come in for questioning if its humanitarian identity is thus eroded.

Inherent in these developments is a challenge for those sections of the international community that wish to stand up and be counted as humanists and the ‘Conscience of the World.’ A responsibility is cast on them to not only keep the UN system going but to also ensure its increased efficiency as a humanitarian aid provider to particularly the poorest of the poor.

It is unfortunate that the US is increasingly opting for a position of international isolation. Such a policy position was adopted by it in the decades leading to World War Two and the consequences for the world as a result for this policy posture were most disquieting. For instance, it opened the door to the flourishing of dictatorial regimes in the West, such as that led by Adolph Hitler in Germany, which nearly paved the way for the subjugation of a good part of Europe by the Nazis.

If the US had not intervened militarily in the war on the side of the Allies, the West would have faced the distressing prospect of coming under the sway of the Nazis and as a result earned indefinite political and military repression. By entering World War Two the US helped to ward off these bleak outcomes and indeed helped the major democracies of Western Europe to hold their own and thrive against fascism and dictatorial rule.

Republican administrations in the US in particular have not proved the greatest defenders of democratic rule the world over, but by helping to keep the international power balance in favour of democracy and fundamental human rights they could keep under a tight leash fascism and linked anti-democratic forces even in contemporary times. Russia’s invasion and continued occupation of parts of Ukraine reminds us starkly that the democracy versus fascism battle is far from over.

Right now, the US needs to remain on the side of the rest of the West very firmly, lest fascism enjoys another unfettered lease of life through the absence of countervailing and substantial military and political power.

However, by reducing its financial support for the UN and backing away from sustaining its humanitarian programs the world over the US could be laying the ground work for an aggravation of poverty in the South in particular and its accompaniments, such as, political repression, runaway social discontent and anarchy.

What should not go unnoticed by the US is the fact that peace and social stability in the South and the flourishing of the same conditions in the global North are symbiotically linked, although not so apparent at first blush. For instance, if illegal migration from the South to the US is a major problem for the US today, it is because poor countries are not receiving development assistance from the UN system to the required degree. Such deprivation on the part of the South leads to aggravating social discontent in the latter and consequences such as illegal migratory movements from South to North.

Accordingly, it will be in the North’s best interests to ensure that the South is not deprived of sustained development assistance since the latter is an essential condition for social contentment and stable governance, which factors in turn would guard against the emergence of phenomena such as illegal migration.

Meanwhile, democratic sections of the rest of the world in particular need to consider it a matter of conscience to ensure the sustenance and flourishing of the UN system. To be sure, the UN system is considerably flawed but at present it could be called the most equitable and fair among international development organizations and the most far-flung one. Without it world poverty would have proved unmanageable along with the ills that come along with it.

Dehumanizing poverty is an indictment on humanity. It stands to reason that the world community should rally round the UN and ensure its survival lest the abomination which is poverty flourishes. In this undertaking the world needs to stand united. Ambiguities on this score could be self-defeating for the world community.

For example, all groupings of countries that could demonstrate economic muscle need to figure prominently in this initiative. One such grouping is BRICS. Inasmuch as the US and the West should shrug aside Realpolitik considerations in this enterprise, the same goes for organizations such as BRICS.

The arrival at the above international consensus would be greatly facilitated by stepped up dialogue among states on the continued importance of the UN system. Fresh efforts to speed-up UN reform would prove major catalysts in bringing about these positive changes as well. Also requiring to be shunned is the blind pursuit of narrow national interests.

Features

Egg white scene …

Published

7 hours ago

2026/01/1

Thilina Walpola

Hi! Great to be back after my Christmas break.

Thought of starting this week with egg white.

Yes, eggs are brimming with nutrients beneficial for your overall health and wellness, but did you know that eggs, especially the whites, are excellent for your complexion?

OK, if you have no idea about how to use egg whites for your face, read on.

Egg White, Lemon, Honey:

Separate the yolk from the egg white and add about a teaspoon of freshly squeezed lemon juice and about one and a half teaspoons of organic honey. Whisk all the ingredients together until they are mixed well.

Apply this mixture to your face and allow it to rest for about 15 minutes before cleansing your face with a gentle face wash.

Don’t forget to apply your favourite moisturiser, after using this face mask, to help seal in all the goodness.

Egg White, Avocado:

In a clean mixing bowl, start by mashing the avocado, until it turns into a soft, lump-free paste, and then add the whites of one egg, a teaspoon of yoghurt and mix everything together until it looks like a creamy paste.

Apply this mixture all over your face and neck area, and leave it on for about 20 to 30 minutes before washing it off with cold water and a gentle face wash.

Egg White, Cucumber, Yoghurt:

In a bowl, add one egg white, one teaspoon each of yoghurt, fresh cucumber juice and organic honey. Mix all the ingredients together until it forms a thick paste.

Apply this paste all over your face and neck area and leave it on for at least 20 minutes and then gently rinse off this face mask with lukewarm water and immediately follow it up with a gentle and nourishing moisturiser.

Egg White, Aloe Vera, Castor Oil:

To the egg white, add about a teaspoon each of aloe vera gel and castor oil and then mix all the ingredients together and apply it all over your face and neck area in a thin, even layer.

Leave it on for about 20 minutes and wash it off with a gentle face wash and some cold water. Follow it up with your favourite moisturiser.

Features

Confusion cropping up with Ne-Yo in the spotlight

Published

7 hours ago

2026/01/1

Thilina Walpola

Ne-Yo: His management should clarify the last-minute cancellation

Superlatives galore were used, especially on social media, to highlight R&B singer Ne-Yo’s trip to Sri Lanka: Global superstar Ne-Yo to perform live in Colombo this December; Ne-Yo concert puts Sri Lanka back on the global entertainment map; A global music sensation is coming to Sri Lanka … and there were lots more!

At an official press conference, held at a five-star venue, in Colombo, it was indicated that the gathering marked a defining moment for Sri Lanka’s entertainment industry as international R&B powerhouse and three-time Grammy Award winner Ne-Yo prepares to take the stage in Colombo this December.

What’s more, the occasion was graced by the presence of Sunil Kumara Gamage, Minister of Sports & Youth Affairs of Sri Lanka, and Professor Ruwan Ranasinghe, Deputy Minister of Tourism, alongside distinguished dignitaries, sponsors, and members of the media.

Shah Rukh Khan: Disappointed his fans in Sri Lanka

According to reports, the concert had received the official endorsement of the Sri Lanka Tourism Promotion Bureau, recognising it as a flagship initiative in developing the country’s concert economy by attracting fans, and media, from all over South Asia.

Nick Carter: His concert, too, was cancelled due to “Unforeseen circumstances

However, I had that strange feeling that this concert would not become a reality, keeping in mind what happened to Nick Carter’s Colombo concert – cancelled at the very last moment.

Carter issued a video message announcing he had to return to the USA due to “unforeseen circumstances” and a “family emergency”.

Though “unforeseen circumstances” was the official reason provided by Carter and the local organisers, there was speculation that low ticket sales may also have been a factor in the cancellation.

Well, “Unforeseen Circumstances” has cropped up again!

In a brief statement, via social media, the organisers of the Ne-Yo concert said the decision was taken due to “unforeseen circumstances and factors beyond their control.”

Ne-Yo, too, subsequently made an announcement, citing “Unforeseen circumstances.”

The public has a right to know what these “unforeseen circumstances” are, and who is to be blamed – the organisers or Ne-Yo!

Ne-Yo’s management certainly need to come out with the truth.

However, those who are aware of some of the happenings in the setup here put it down to poor ticket sales, mentioning that the tickets for the concert, and a meet-and-greet event, were exorbitantly high, considering that Ne-Yo is not a current mega star.

We also had a cancellation coming our way from Shah Rukh Khan, who was scheduled to visit Sri Lanka for the City of Dreams resort launch, and then this was received: “Unfortunately due to unforeseen personal reasons beyond his control, Mr. Khan is no longer able to attend.”

Referring to this kind of mess up, a leading showbiz personality said that it will only make people reluctant to buy their tickets, online.

“Tickets will go mostly at the gate and it will be very bad for the industry,” he added.