Come
September melody
Old email from Tissa Kappagoda
My overwhelming impression of Professor Basnayake was his
sense of kindness. In many ways one felt that it was genuine reflection
of the man himself and how he viewed his place in the world. Around 1989
I was visiting my parents in Kandy
and someone suggested that I give a lecture to the Department of
Physiology in Peradeniya. After my presentation, Professor Basnayake
offered to give me a lift to my parents' home in Kandy. As we left the Department and headed
to his car he suddenly excused himself and rushed back to re-position a saucer
which was by the door of the building. I noticed that it contained
some colorless liquid and as we moved away I asked him what he was doing with
it. I was thinking in terms of a physiological experiment. "It's the ants,"
was all he said and we moved on to other topics. Much later I mentioned
this to a friend at Peradeniya who smiled and said, "That's Bassa for
you!" According to my friend Professor Basnayake was moving the
saucer which contained some sugary liquid to a spot where the ants could get
better access to it. Although I cannot vouch for the accuracy of his
interpretation, it is conceivable that his concern extended to more than humans
and puppies......
Tissa
Recollections of Philip
When I was Resident Surgeon/ VS OPD at the GH Kandy in the mid 1970s, Prof. Basnayake came to see me. He had a habit of picking up abandoned stray pups. One of them had bitten him. He came for a course of anti-rabies injections. He made the observation that you could judge the nutritional status of a population, by looking at the nutritional status of its stray dogs.
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