Obituary - Dr. N. Rasalingam

: Professor Sanath P. Lamabadusuriya <sanathp.lama@gmail.com>
Date: 29 August 2017 at 22:13
Subject: Re: Dr.N Rasalingam
To: Udaya Lakshman Kaluaratchi <ulkayk@hotmail.com>

Kalu , didn't he get colours in badminton as well?

Sanath

On 29 August 2017 at 16:58, Udaya Lakshman Kaluaratchi <ulkayk@hotmail.com> wrote:

Just got the sad news that Dr. N. RASALINGAM has moved on.

He was our Head Cop in 1956. Got College Colours in Boxing, Hockey, Baketball. Was a member of the first ever Royal Baketball team in 1954/5 , in which most players were also national players.He was also in the first ever Royal  Hockey team  of 1955.

It was  in 1956 that our entire  rugby team under Lionel Almeida was taken to task by Dudley de S on the famous/infamous cigarette-butt complaint by the Trinity Principal Walters. No colours were awarded.There were suspensions, too,I think.

 Cops in the team were debadged as well as  members of the College debating team who travelled up to Kandy. 

Ras the Head Cop was not involved as he fortunately happened to  travel down with our Principal after the match!

One significant consequence of this episode was that Royal had no rugby coloursmen in 1957 at the beginning of the season. Perhaps for the first time Royal were being led by a non-coloursman, Roti S.! 

Those in College  at the time will recall how the farewell  Friday General  Assembly for Bob Edwards, our much revered Head Master, was disturbed by outside elements just outside our Hall, with catcalls etc.,which made Edwards get up and  go off the stage! 

ULK.

The Consultant Anaesthetist’s dilemma

             It was the time of the second JVP uprising in Sri-Lanka in the 1980’s. I was working as Consultant Surgeon at Kandy Hospital. One of my colleagues was a very pretty cheerful Lady Consultant Anaesthetist. Her husband also was a consultant at the same hospital. Being a Consultant Anaesthetist involved late working hours in the private hospitals. There were various check-points manned by the army and police in Kandy town. Our Lady Anaesthetist had been doing a case in a nursing home by the side of Kandy lake, close to 8 pm that day. Her worried husband had rung her up and she had said that she would be finished in about 10 mins and would be driving her car herself to their home in Asgiriya. The night was hot and she had put on the air-conditioning in the car which meant closing all the windows in the car. Thus sounds from outside also would be diminished inside the car. She was approaching the climb to Asgiriya from near the railway crossing when she heard a loud noise and the windscreen in front shattered to bits. She was taken aback, but had the presence of mind to turn off the engine, pulled up the hand-brake and lay across the front seats. She heard the approach of booted feet on the pavement. Someone peeped through the broken windscreen and saw the figure lying on the seat. Then one of the police-men identified her and shouted ‘Me apey dostora nona ney’ (Hey, this is our Lady Doctor). Then only she had the courage to get up. One of the Junior Sub-Inspectors in charge of the street check-point, had called her to halt and the car not being stopped he had opened fire with his pistol. The bullet had pierced the rear door window, pirced the driving seat and struck the buckle on her safety belt, got deflected and exited through the front wind-screen. She had had a narrow shave. She told me that when she got down from the car she was shaking all over. She got a call to her husband, who arrived on the scene.

                The subsequent drama was rather comical. The police authorities were very sympathetic. They said that they would get the insurance to pay for the damage. For this a police entry was essential. The police did not want an entry made which might implicate the Sub-Inspector. They wanted a cooked up story to be entered, to save the SI. The Consultant husband refused this and got the wind-screen replaced at his own expense. The SI had the pistol taken away from him for some time.

                It was very dangerous to drive around after dark in those turbulent times. I once was stopped at Kosgama. When I tried to park the vehicle on a side I heard the safety catch on an automatic being released. I promptly stopped the vehicle to await further instructions from the army personnel on duty. Another time in Colombo I did not see an army check point on the road, till a soldier pointed an automatic at me from the center of the road ahead. Such was life in those days.

Law-Medical 1960

Sent by Premalatha Balasuriya 1959 entrant

There used to be an annual cricket match- staff vs block students in the 1960s. Sheriff Deen happened to be the compere.  Dr Watson had just started neurophysiology lectures and it was like Greek to most of us. When he started to bat, the compere announced ‘Dr Watson is receiving an afferent input from  ???? and he is sending an efferent discharge’ and so on..

The travails of an intern House Officer

Sent by Dr. Premalatha Balasuriya

When we were doing Prof C C de Silva’s appointment at LRH, Malkanthi (Dr Channa Wijesinghe’s wife) was the intern house officer. Prof used to sit at the table and teach with the students around him. The intern house officers had to be there. He carried a long knee hammer with which he used to hit anyone missing an answer to his question. Malkanthi happened to answer a question put to a student. He said ‘next time you do that, I will put you under the table’ and he did just that. Whenever a student missed answering a question he used to hit Malkanthi under the table with the knee hammer. She was shouting ‘Please don’t sir’. She had to wait there until the end of the class

Defining a CAT

Dr. Piloo Rustomjee was Senior House Officer in Surgery working under Dr.P.R. Anthonis. At any party Piloo would pull out a small notebook from his trouser pocket. He would scrutinize it for a few minutes and replace it. He will then have a fund of jokes to relate  for the next one hour. He gave a definition of a CAT as ‘The only type of ball-bearing rat-trap available in the market’. We were not quite sure whether he was referring to the four-legged or the two-legged variety.

Some sights at Anuradhapura, Sri Lanka.

A photo record of my visit with Vignaraja.

Please click on the web-link below with speakers on :- 

https://youtu.be/BNnUVYgxzus