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by Aditha Dissanayake

His father cast him off when he was three months old. His foster parents (three bachelor uncles and an unmarried aunt whom he called his three dads and one mum) cut him out of the family when he married a girl from a different ethnic background with whom he corresponded for seven years through love letters written in invisible ink. Yes.

Invisible ink.

The letters which to her unsuspecting father who read them all looked in outward appearance as letters written by friends called Mary, Mabel or Jane concealed declarations of love written in invisible ink which could be read when ironed. Yet, as if to make up for being twice rejected by the people he loved so much, Reggie Candappa opened his arms wide and embraced the whole world with a heart eternally flowing with love.

Reggie Sebastian Rodrigo Candappa was an Icarus who managed to fly close to the sun without getting burnt. The secret of his success was simple. He believed in hard work. His daughter Sriyani Tidball says she has never come across anyone who worked as hard as her father did. He began his day at four in the morning and worked throughout the day believing that no one can be "too busy to work". Sriyani believes one of the best lessons she learnt from her father is that, "if you work hard, you can make it".

And make it, he did. Having started life after eloping with Therese Senadhira, the daughter of a Gate Mudaliyar, in a rented room with two push bikes, Reggie Candappa became a successful artist, cartoonist, journalist and above all, as the Chairman of Grant McCann-Erickson, the guru of the local ad. industry. Advertising agencies being almost non-existent at the time, he didn't simply climb the ladder of local advertising, but made the ladder himself, adding each rung as he climbed.

After sitting for the Matriculation examination Reggie started to work for architect S. Shanmuganathan who told him he was free to learn and work at the office near Paivas Tea Room where he could "have a table, but no salary". Later he joined Lake House and soon had four desks in the advertising, art, engraving and lithographic departments.

His big break however, came in 1957 when he was asked to set up an office for Grant Advertising in Colombo. He was given US $ 1,000 to start the business and was told he must earn the kind of luxurious offices with air-conditioning and wall to wall carpeting he had seen at the other branches of the Grant offices spread throughout the USA.

Undaunted Reggie turned his living room into an office and used the dining table as his desk and went on to become the owner of the company, which now has around 140 employees and is under the guidance of his younger daughter, Neela Marikkar. Sriyani, who was about ten years old at the inception of the business, remembers answering the phone for her father and dreaming of growing up to be a telephone operator one day.

When she grew up, however, she graduated from the University of Colombo, lived in America for a while and has now returned home as the Chairperson of Minds FCB (Pvt) Ltd.

Sriyani is grateful to her father who placed great value on education and believed parents should put their energy into educating their children because knowledge is the best legacy one could give one's offspring. But the most important message he sent out to the world was about relationships. Yes. Relationships. Reggie Candappa believed in equality.

He saw greatness in every human being and loved everyone who crossed his path, be it a beggar on the street, or a business tycoon in a five-star hotel with equal fervour.

Sriyani recalls the many beggar friends he had, and how he would give even the last ten rupee note in his pocket to someone more in need of it than he, once even giving away, (no, not, as the cliche goes the shirt off his back), but his pants, to a cousin who wished to borrow them and who never returned them. Dad used to tell me, reminisces Sriyani, "If you can get on well with the janitor and the peon, you'll be doing fine."

Five minutes later, her daughter, Subha Tidball, strides into the office and says much the same thing. "My Seeya used to say that the 'class' of a person is never important. Everyone should be treated equally, from the Chairman to the security guard." She smiles and continues in gentle tones, "He always reminded us not to forget to bring a gift for the security guard."

Deshabandu Reggie Candappa, the man whose lifeblood was advertising, was himself an advertisement. An advertisement for the persevering entrepreneur who knew how to love, his family, his friends, his employees... in short every living being he met throughout his life.

For more revealing details about this persevering guru of the local advertising world, watch Situ Medura tonight at 9.30 on ITN.

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