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| Sunday, 25 May 2003 |
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He travels furthest who travels alone by FACTOTUM Alone he travelled and the furthest he went, in tune with an adage he believed in - Bibliographer and ex-Librarian of Peradeniya University H.A.I. Goonetilleke (Ian) just two days ago when he was cremated on Friday within 24 hours of his sad demise.
When Ian Goonetilleke retired prematurely it was said of him that 'his passion for the printed word, the intensity of his bibliographical scholarship, his uncommon dedication to our country and its University, the retirement eight years too early signals the passing away of an era. But the signal would be seen and needed on one condition only: that one recognised the power of his incisive intelligence and had no fear of his unrelenting sponsorship of truth nor of his intrepid denunciation of falsehood and chicanery. These are the qualities, the principles and the values that guided Ian Goonetilleke in the performance of his duties said the cleric. In a farewell message to his library staff he wrote "I have learned that work is a sacrament and its only reward, and librarianship is in its highest form, an art of social service to the mind of one's fellow - man." In his Preface to E.F.C. (Lyn) Ludowyk's "Those long afternoons" that posthumous publication of Ludowyk's Childhood in Colonial Ceylon Ian's comments on Lyn could very well have been autobiographical ... "In later years he became increasingly disillusioned with the unbridled materialism, moral hypocrisy and rapid debasement of social values and political norms ...." In his Preface to "Lanka, their Lanka" Cameos of Ceylon through other eyes H.A.I.G. dwells on the subject of travel again. "Arm-chair travelling, no less than actual foot-slogging, turns up unexpected treasures of serendipity. To the sedentary, desk bound voyager, cloistered by force of vocation, charmed magic casements open out only onto serried library shelves. Travel, of all sorts, is time-honoured therapy for escape from the human tangle, the riddles of the enmeshed ego, and the web of self-alienation. I was bitten, as a young schoolboy, by the travel-bug in the beguiling shape of the late Herbert Keuneman, raconteur extraordinary and incomparable guide to the hidden vistas of our land. He taught me in those bright, elysian days on Richmond Hill, Galle, to treat each journey, however humble, as a pilgrimage to the secret places of the heart and the lost centres of innocence". Ian Gunatilleke has set off on another journey and will soon have travelled the furthest all alone. |
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Unannounced he meant to go but those who got to know among fellow
Richmondites of his vintage and less, former colleagues at Peradeniya
University and the simple folk of Oruwala and Athurugiriya who cared for
him in his twilight years and others were there at Kanatte to bid him
adieu without much fanfare as was his wish.
