The mortuary surprise – Story by Dr. Joe Fernando formerDGHS

This story was related to me by Dr. Joe Fernando, a former Director-General of the Health Services of Sri-Lanka. Yes you heard it right. Now there is a Director General, Directing all the other directors under him in our health department. We managed to get a 'General' after all these years.
    Dr. Joe Fernando had been a District Medical Officer in one of the peripheral hospitals, in the 1960s. Maintaining discipline in the work force is one of the many duties a DMO has to shoulder. One night, one of his laborers had come to tell him, that some of the male junior staff were playing cards ("booruwa") for money - gambling -, inside the mortuary building. Dr. Joe Fernando and the laborer were stealthily going towards the building, when they were heard approaching and all the card players fled, leaving the lighted lantern and the cards on a mortuary slab. However Dr. Joe Fernando had gone inside the mortuary. He saw the lantern and the cards and three dead bodies on the bench type mortuary slab. He was about to turn back on what was a 'failed mission', when the laborer accompanying him had told him, that there had been only two dead bodies late in the day, now there were three on the marble slab. It was then that they found out that one of the "dead bodies" was very much alive and was one of the card players. He was too short, to jump over the windows and run for it and had taken quite a bit of liquor. With his 'Dutch courage' he had pretended to be a 'dead body'. Needless to say he was hauled out and faced the consequences.