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Sunday, November 24, 2019

Prof. Basnayake, recollections


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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