Cyril Ernest – Cardiologist and Cricketer par excellence

VIRTUAL INTERVIEW

It is my great pleasure to record this virtual interview with my pal Cyril and I thank him for his kind permission to post this on our own Blog, ColomboMedgrads1962, which as we all know is the brainchild of Lucky Abeyagunewardene.

Speedy: Good morning Cyril. 

Cyril: Good morning Speedy, or should it be Mahen?

Lucky, Me and Cyril 2012 Reunion

Speedy: Don’t mind! I know that you are used to calling me Speedy. Cyril, most of us of course know that you entered Medical school in 1962 after  doing a six-month course in chemistry at the University of Ceylon in Colombo. But coming from St Benedict’s, how is it that you were sent to Peradeniya and not Colombo?

Cyril: That remains a mystery but I was very happy at Peradeniya at the brand new Medical school there.

Speedy:  It is also on record that while at St. Benedict’s College you excelled in several sports – cricket, hockey, tennis, and track & field – representing your school in all these sports and also playing in combined-schools teams, and participating in public schools events and meets. Of course once you entered Medical School, your priorities must have changed. Tell us how you met these new challenges, i.e., pursuing a quite demanding study schedule with sports.

Cyril: Absolutely right Speedy. Once I entered the university, studies were my major concern, though I pursued my sporting career but confining myself to two sports – cricket and hockey. With my sporting prowess, I was able to get into the university cricket and hockey teams. Being in Peradeniya was a distinct disadvantage to combine sports with my studies, as all the sporting events were in Colombo. I was somehow able to manage to combine both pursuits, sports and studies, and keep up my grades, while being on the varsity teams for both.

Speedy: There were many talented cricketers in University at the time. Could you tell us a bit more about them?

Cyril: That is correct. When I entered medical school my classmates included contemporary cricketers Cecil Saveryimuthu, a fellow Bendictine teammate (pace bowler), Senarath Jayatilleke, a dashing batsman from St. Anne’s College Kurunegala, and Kumar Gunawardena, a wicketkeeper/batsman, from St. Thomas’ College. Talented as they were as cricketers, they did not pursue playing cricket and decided to concentrate on their studies. My other school contemporaries, Lareef Idroos (St. Thomas’ College), Harsha Samarajeewa (Royal College), and Kiththa Wimalaratna (Royal College) continued their pursuits in cricket. We were teammates in the University Cricket Eleven.

Speedy: That is an impressive list! I know that the University Cricket Team took part in the Sara Trophy Tournament. Tell us a bit more about those times.

Cyril: Yes Speedy. Looking back now, I often wonder how I did it!  Playing cricket on the Varsity A team, in the Sara Trophy Tournament, was very time-consuming and it did, to a certain extent, interfere with our academic pursuits. However, we persevered and we were regular members of the University Eleven. We were regular members of the Sara Trophy cricket team from 1961/62 to 1966/67.

Speedy: Could you give us some idea of the schedule in those days?

Cyril: During the cricket season, which was from March to August, we were involved in matches with our rival teams every weekend and having daily practices during the week. This was quite a tedious routine and we stuck to our tasks, helping the team to be a force to be reckoned with. Unlike the other participating teams in the tournament, Varsity had to contend with key players missing matches due to exams, as well as, leaving the team on graduation. Despite these hardships, we were an enthusiastic band of players and during our time, we reached the final playoff rounds every season between 1962 and 1967.

Speedy: What were the greatest achievements of the Team that gives you a lot of pride?

Cyril: 1962/63 was a great year, when we won the Sara Trophy championship, being national champions in cricket under the captaincy of Carlyle Perera – another medico. The next year too, we almost won the championship under Buddy Reid – another medico, losing by the slimmest of margins (0.04 points) to Bloomfield due to an unfortunate error in the field, a dropped catch. The university cricket team was rewarded for their national championship with an all-expense paid trip to Singapore and Malaysia in 1963. Here too, we excelled. Lareef, Harsha, Kiththa and myself, were preparing for our second MBBS exam, and foolishly we took our textbooks and skeleton to study on the tour! Which, of course, never materialized, being distracted by other goings-on.

Speedy: It is my recollection that there were a lot of Medicos in the Varsity Team in that era who Captained the Team. Could you please tell us a bit about them?

Cyril: Your recollection is good! I see that so far you have been spared from memory changes which some of us may experience in the future. The Varsity cricket team was captained in 1963/64 by Buddy Reid, followed by Mohanlal Fernando in 1964/65, Lareef Idroos in 1965/66, and myself in 1966/67. In 1966, I captained the University of Ceylon cricket team on its’ tour to India for the inter-university cricket tourney in Bangalore.

Speedy: How did you fare in Bangalore?

Cyril: We had a very good team, but we were unable to advance beyond the second round, due to local conditions and most importantly, the biased umpiring decisions by the local umpires.

Speedy: That must have been tough to take.

Cyril: Yes it was and there were other unexpected problems too. Let me tell you an interesting story. I went on the Indian tour just three weeks before the third MBBS exam. I was in a panic on my return because of a lack of preparation for my exam. However, two of my classmates, whose names I shall not reveal, helped me out immensely by coaching me in bacteriology and forensic medicine. They were my life savers. Unfortunately, when the results of the exam were revealed, I had passed and they had failed in the very subjects they had helped me with.

Speedy: That seems so unfair, but that is life I suppose!

Cyril:  Yes indeed!

Speedy: Tell me Cyril, did you ever represent Sri lanka in cricket?

Cyril: Lareef Idroos and I, from our class, were fortunate enough to have represented Ceylon in international cricket competitions.

Speedy: That is a great achievement and we are very proud of both of you. Any other unforgettable cricketing memories?

Cyril: Well, there is something which I shall never forget. I was playing on the Rest Eleven against the Nationalised Services Eleven at the Colombo Oval in the Robert Senanayake trophy pentangular tournament in 1967, just one week before my finals. I was batting well and a Sylvester Diaz (pace bowler) bouncer did me in when I tried to hook him and had my nose shattered. I was taken to the emergency room, by taxi, with blood streaming, and had Dr. Rienzie Pieris reset my displaced nasal bone fracture. You wouldn’t believe that I came back and batted again, scoring 48 runs – this was at a time when I was vying for a place on the Ceylon side. I went back to BLOEM with a thundering headache but recovered in time to take my final exam the next week, and managed to pass again.

Speedy: That is some story Cyril, speaks volumes for your courage and tenacity.

Cyril: Not really Speedy. When these things happen, you just get on with it as best as you can!

Speedy: Any other cricketing memories from those days you want to share with readers?

Cyril: During our days in medical school, we also played on the medical college team, in the annual Law/Medical game. Lareef, Harsha, Kiththa, Easwara Kanapathipillai, and I were teammates in 1966. Lareef captained the side. After graduating from medical school we went our separate ways and Lareef played for SSC, and I played for the NCC side and later for the Adastrians, when I joined the Air Force.

Speedy:  You left Sri Lanka and moved to California in February 1972.

Cyril: That is right, In February 1972 I migrated to the United States, Lareef having left in 1971. I joined Lareef in New York and we were together at Coney Island Hospital in Brooklyn, New York, where there were several other Sri Lankans doing internship and residency. In 1977, I moved to California, Lareef having moved there in 1976.

Speedy: Were you able to pursue your interest in Cricket?

Cyril: We both resumed our cricketing career in California, playing in the Southern California Cricket Association tournament. Our cricketing abilities were recognized by the USA Cricket selectors and we were both selected to play on the USA Cricket team in 1979 against Canada in Vancouver. Lareef did well, scoring 60 runs in the first innings and I got 4 wickets in the match. I was once again selected for the Associate Member World Cup tournament in 1982, representing the United States in Birmingham, England. I took an interest in the administrative aspects of USA cricket and was at one time manager of the USA team, and also chairman of selectors, despite the heavy schedule of being a Cardiologist. Lareef and I were members of the Hollywood Cricket Club and we went on many a tour to countries like Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, South Africa, England, South America, and the West Indies. Those were happy outings and we had the privilege of meeting and playing against many an old test cricketer.

Speedy: Cyril, that was a most enjoyable journey with you and I am sure all our readers will enjoy reading it as much as I did. Thanks you so much and I look forward to seeing you in March next year at our Reunion.

Cyril: Thank you Speedy for your interest and I do hope that these memoirs, recalled at your behest, is not misconstrued as if I am tooting my own horn. I am still working full time and hope to attend the reunion in Sri Lanka in March 2017.

Speedy: Rest assured Cyril, there is no danger of that at all and once again, thank you so much.

The ‘Whys’ and the ‘Wherefores’ of Sri Lanka

This thought provoking article I thought was worth publishing. But we must not make the mistake of judging the current generation of Brits on the basis of behaviour of their predecessors just as we cannot blame the current generation of Germans for what Hitler did. One could go further back in the history of Sri Lanka and recall the oppressive feudal spirit that prevailed in the days of Kings with unbelievable acts of cruelty to human beings. Yes, we must learn from history but we cannot hold the present generation as hostages forever. The way to overcome hatred is not through hatred but by love.

 The ‘Whys’ and the ‘Wherefores’ of Sri Lanka

One ‘Son of the Soil’s’ reading of the

Past and the Present

By

J.B. Müller

 The Sri Lankan Diaspora overseas (mainly in Australia, Britain, Canada, New Zealand and the USA) eagerly and indiscriminately absorbs everything appearing about their Motherland in the international print and electronic media.  All what is done is done in the naïve belief that there isn’t a spin on the news and that it is completely unbiased and objective.  Nothing could be further from the truth!  Of course, expatriates would like to believe that the BBC, VOA, Deutsche Welle, CNN, Al Jazira and others are feeding their hungry and even curious minds with the unadulterated truth.

It might be useful for those in the Diaspora to know, understand and acknowledge that Sri Lankans are no longer Eurocentric Anglophiles having at long last seen through the various Anglo-Saxon-Celtic ploys to continue their domination and exploitation by other, indirect means.  No longer are Sri Lankans willing to regard their erstwhile masters as ‘superior’ beings with a ‘higher’ civilization to which they should slavishly defer.  Those ‘good old days’ are gone and good riddance!

Sri Lanka is a very old country with a long history of civilization and a matured polity unlike some ‘Johnny-come-lately’ countries with hardly 500 years of history.  The latter period of its history was marred by 443 years of European exploitation, each European power building on its predecessors to refine its instruments of exploitation.  The British were the worst and the bloodiest when it came to merciless brutality as is evidenced by the manner in which it quelled the uprising of the Kandyans between 1818 and 1822.  It committed genocide before that word was coined by slaughtering every man, woman, and child (including babes suckling at the breast!) in the Uva Province.  That province comprised of the present Badulla and Moneragala Districts is yet to recover and is just now being developed by government.  The Colonial Office 54 series of documents available at the Public Records Office in London holds all the General Orders issued by Lt. Gen. Sir Robert Brownrigg, governor and c-in-c, to Maj. General Hay McDowall and the correspondence with the Colonial Secretary, the Earl of Bathurst. (The Great Rebellion of 1818 by Prof. Tennekoon Vimalananda, Five Volumes, Gunasena Historical Series, Colombo, 1970)

In 1823 the British began selling Crown Land at two shillings an acre to British entrepreneurs—first, to cultivate cinchona [from which quinine is obtained], then coffee, then tea and rubber—from which they made huge profits for 149 years—and Mincing Lane and the members of the London Stock Exchange prospered beyond the dreams of avarice. (Land Reform Commission Report by Colvin R. de Silva, tabled in Parliament)

They created a huge ethnic and social problem by transporting indentured labour from the Ramnad district of Madras Presidency (present day Tamil Nadu).  These helpless people were auctioned off at Matale like the African slaves at Charleston, SC, and families were cruelly torn apart.  They reached Matale walking over 100 miles from Talaimannar along a route that came to be known as the ‘Skeleton Road’ because of the numbers that had perished by the wayside from hunger, thirst, snakebite, attack by wild beasts, cholera, dysentery, and what-have-you.  Their tragedy has been carefully documented by Donovan Moldrich in his‘Bitter Berry Bondage’—the story of the 19^th century coffee workers in Sri Lanka.  Another Burgher author, Lorna Ruth Wright, OAM, wrote “Just another shade of Brown” which graphically details the sexual exploitation of the women plantation workers and the creation of the Eurasian Community (disowned by their very prim and proper British fathers!)   Many authors domestic and foreign have written about what colonialism did to Sri Lanka (Ceylon up to 1972) and it is a wonder that the people of this country tolerated what was done to them for so long, so patiently. (‘Bitter Berry Bondage’ by Donovan R. Moldrich and ‘Just another shade of brown’ by Lorna R. Wright)

Father Paul Caspersz, SJ, head of Satyodaya, Kandy, has been labouring amongst the Tamil plantation workers of Indian origin for decades and has written extensively about how these human beings have been mercilessly exploited.  They have lived in sub-human conditions for over one hundred years and their emancipation has been a long and hard struggle to restore to them their intric dignity as human beings. (Satyodaya Centre, Kandy, sri Lanka)

When I was working at the then Ceylon Broadcasting Corporation as a Relief Announcer on the Commercial Service I distinctly remember reading a sign affixed to the gate of a British Club facing the Dutch Burgher Union headquarters which said: “Natives and dogs NOT allowed.”  This was in 1969!  I phoned friends working on the ‘Ceylon Daily News’ and they sent a photographer round to snap a picture.  It was published and shortly thereafter the Government ordered the Club to take down the offending notice.  Do any self-respecting people endowed with inherent dignity have to tolerate such barefaced arrogance?

Britain was one of the most ‘successful’ imperial powers on earth and they created a worldwide empire (on which the sun never set because it was everywhere on the globe) and bled its colonies.  London is such a magnificent city despite its foul weather because it has risen, literally, on the blood, sweat and tears of countless millions in Asia, Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean, and Australia.  In their imperial schema of things Australia produced the wool, New Zealand the milk, Malaya the rubber, Ceylon the tea, Rhodesia the tobacco, South Africa the diamonds and gold, Mauritius the sugar, West Africa the cocoa and so on—to the great delight of those who sat in London and counted their pounds, shillings and pence.  They didn’t mind exploiting their own in the textile mills of Lancashire and the coal mines of Scotland. [Charles Dickens]. The exported their poor Scots, Irish, and Welsh to all these colonies to supervise the black, brown and yellow natives [and the ‘half-caste’ Eurasian offspring known as Burghers, Anglos and even bastards].  The slightest rumble from their workers and the Redcoats (now Khakied) were there to shoot their b***s off!

Look at the Burghers.  The British looked down on them with great disdain classifying them as ‘half-castes’ and included them amongst the indigenous population.  In 1796 they issued the Burghers an ultimatum—learn English or leave.  Many who had the means went to Batavia (modern Jakarta).  The others stayed and learned the new tongue.  Very soon, these Burghers knew better English than the British themselves and were therefore enlisted in that great corps of clerks that they employed.  These Burghers also learned how to play cricket and challenged the British to a one-day on Galle Face Green.  They were superciliously asked what the name of their ‘club’ was to which a Burgher sharply retorted:  “Nondescripts Cricket Club, Sir!”  The name stuck.  The club still exists (from 1889).  So do the ‘nondescript’ Burghers. The entire British establishment including the ‘shoppies’ turned out one fine Sunday morning to watch these half-caste upstarts being licked.  The imperial governor himself came and occupied the clubhouse that now stands before the Taj Samudra Hotel.  Well, to cut a long story short, the Burgher ‘nondescripts’ beat the British who were ‘hoist with their own petard!’  They were learning, ever so painfully, that other people were not only their equals but could also better them in many spheres and they learned this lesson on this Island.(People Inbetween by Michael Roberts, Ismeth Raheem, Percy Colin-Thômé, Sarvodaya, Ratmalana, 1989).

There is no land on the globe that the British touched that has not been left with a wholly untenable legacy of problems:  India with Pakistan have Kashmir; the Holy land has Jewish Israel contending with Arab Palestine; the Cypriots are divided between the Greeks and the Turks; Africa is an indescribable mess.  Glaring problems were created on the North American continent with the marginalization of the native Amerindian and Inuit peoples not to mention the stand-off between Blacks and Whites.  In Australia the original inhabitants, the aborigines were decimated and then marginalized whilst their land was robbed from them by white colonists.  It is a despicable record of man’s inhumanity to man carried forward on the specious premise that ‘White is Right’ and because they had a head-start in the practice of barbarism!  What is even more despicable is that their so-called ‘Christianity’ condoned their barefaced discrimination and unfettered brutality.

Today, these Anglo-Saxon-Celts pontificate o the whole world about human rights—yes, fundamental human rights which they denied millions from the 16^th to the 20^th centuries of the Common Era.  They sanctimoniously presume to interfere in the internal affairs of countries that attempt to stand-up to their bullying (amply exposed by Wiki-Leaks).  The ongoing bloodletting in Afghanistan and Iraq demonstrate their manifest hypocrisy.

They left behind what were basically alien concepts, structures, systems, and constitutions that have confused and confuted the peoples they formerly ruled.  They uprooted and deliberately destroyed indigenous systems that had endured for millennia and which the indigenous people were comfortable with.  Today, the peoples of these lands are divided into innumerable factions and cliques contending bloodily for command and control in the name of the ‘democracy’ they left behind.  They are happy with what they see because it is a continuation of their ‘divide et imperia’ or ‘divide and rule’ policy.  It is easy to manipulate and exploit those who are divided!

Sri Lanka’s problems which some expatriates gleefully point out (as a justification for their living overseas) is a damaging inheritance bequeathed by the departing British to a class of indigenous people brainwashed and nurtured by them in their own image:  the English-speaking Middle Classes represented by several leading families of Low-country upstarts and Up-country traitors.  These families have lick-spittle hangers-on who have attained some upward social mobility and the privileges that go with that mobility and occupy the second and third tiers of governance.  Whether they inhabit the governing party or the Opposition or their sundry and various coalition cohorts they have become the ‘corrupt of the earth.’

The decent and law-abiding majority are a patient, tolerant and hospitable people (sometimes referred to as the ‘broad masses’) who have taken much abuse. If you believe the many travellers who passed through, they are a giving and forgiving people.  If we are to trust the historical record, these gentle, hard-working people have been driven to and fro by the Pandyans, Cholas, Cheras, Pallavas and Javakas; then, by the Portuguese, the Dutch and the British—each, in turn, more subtly brutal than the previous.  Ever since 1186, when the indigenous polity began disintegrating with the breakdown of central authority [and fissiparous tendencies manifested themselves], there has been a traumatic crisis that is yet to come to a conclusion.  We know that history works in cycles and that that conclusion will come, perhaps unobtrusively or dramatically to sweep away the detritus of several centuries.

True civilization does not consist of the worship of science & technology or the tinsel and glitter of modernity or of roads, railways, harbours, airports, and the frenzied rush one might be bemused by.  It consists of the maturity and wisdom gained through the practice of virtue, the development of good moral character, to decent family life and values, the unswerving commitment to social justice and equity.  This also means and implies the practice and active pursuit of harmlessness and a belief in the sacredness of all life—all mankind is of one blood.  The serene tranquility of spirit thus attained is a universal norm that needs no sectarian labels.  This is the civilization that grew and was nurtured on this Island for centuries until rudely and repeatedly disturbed.  It is yet the goal of those who appreciate the intrinsic beauty of Nature rather than that of soulless concrete, glass and steel.

Let’s discuss this further if you are minded to,

jb.muller@gmail.com