Saturday Dec 14, 2024
Saturday Dec 14, 2024
Saturday, 16 March 2019 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}
Following the hilarious ‘Remembered Vignettes’ which detailed his medical school years and ‘Cry of the Devil Bird’ which chronicled the life of an itinerant surgeon, ‘Tales of an Enchanted Boyhood’ is Dr. Veerasingam’s third memoir. 
In a far from humdrum career that began in Ratnapura, and that took him to far flung parts of our island, Dr. Veerasingam retired as senior consultant surgeon of the Colombo General hospital. Given his remarkable career, he remains one of the better known surgeons of Lanka’s medical fraternity. His conversational writing style which gathers new readers to him, will draw you in with the familiarity of an old friend as he takes you back in time, this time to his childhood which began in Alupola in the 1940s.
Education in rural schools doesn’t seem to have been disadvantageous in any way – or doesn’t have the negative connotations it seems to have now. Children led normal, balanced, country and estate lives, playing, studying and absorbing experiences and life lessons that city children who follow the classroom to tuition class routine sadly never will. Train journeys which were a necessary mode of transportation, became a magical experience and in an era when fewer cars plied our roads, Dr. Veerasingam was a keen observer of both – describing trains and cars with such ardour that you might wonder why he didn’t choose to become an engineer instead of doctor. 
Motorised transport wasn’t the only thing that fascinated Dr. Veerasingam. He tells us about every unusual thing that he saw, Ropeways that shuttled tea between distant hills and Thirukkaleys that transported people; magic shows which introduced the concept of illusion to a young audience and film shows that pushed that magic further; Kodaalivedi axe crackers used to celebrate weddings and old fashioned tea samovars, which produced real kadé thé instead of today’s uninspired and ubiquitous tea bags. He takes us on car journeys where he remembers seeing petrol stations with glass jar fillers; he reminds of busses which had wooden benched seats and takes us on train journeys to Jaffna where the steam locomotives had fireboxes with lumps of coal and that changed direction in the station’s turn table.
With his characteristic sense of humour, Dr. Veerasingam recalls how Baptist Missionary Schools were referred to as Bath Mas Iskolyas, how school boys jumped into a mango plantation to help themselves to unripe mangoes and were chased off by the irate owner, and he even reminds us of rituals like the Saturday head bath which today are things of the past. But most of all he tells us extensively about the environs of Jaffna and its history.
Describing life in his ancestral village of Thondamanaru, we learn about its beaches, ‘thangu madams’ or rest places, cadjan fences with ‘Padalai’ doors which seem to shut automatically; of small trap doors in fences where one could buy a ready-made breakfast of Thosai or Appam. And of course, he gives us a run-down of Jaffna’s famous schools – from Atchulevely to Uduppidy to Point Pedro’s Hartley College.
Fast becoming an octogenarian, Dr. Veerasingam gives us a nostalgic view of a not so distant past which he remembers in vivid detail and evokes a more leisurely, fulfilling lifestyle that today, has evolved almost unrecognisably.
(Sam Perera is a partner of the Perera-Hussein Publishing House which publishes culturally relevant stories by emerging and established Lankan and regional authors – for a primarily Lankan audience. Ph books are available everywhere books are sold and through www.pererahussein.com.)
TALES OF AN ENCHANTED BOYHOOD
– a memoir
