Remembrance: 5th Death Anniversary:

Lakshman Kadirgamar: His life, an engaging Decathlon

M V Muhsin

Lakshman Kadirgamar once asked rhetorically, whether politics and cricket have anything in common. Both are games, he mused: Politicians and cricketers are superficially similar, and yet very different.

Both groups are wooed by the cruel public who embrace them today and reject them tomorrow. Cricketers work hard; politicians only pretend to do so. Cricketers are disciplined; discipline is a word unknown to most politicians in any language.

Cricketers risk their own limbs in the heat of honourable play, politicians encourage others to risk their limbs in fruitless causes while they remain secure in the safety of their pavilions.

Cricketers deserve rewards they get; the people get the politicians they deserve. Crickets retire young; politicians go on forever. Cricketers unite the country; politicians divide. Cricketers accept the umpire’s verdict even if they disagree with it; politicians who disagree with an umpire usually get him transferred.

Cricketers stick to their team through victory and defeat, politicians in a losing team cross over and join the winning team. Clearly, cricketers are the better breed, Kadirgamar , the lawyer, the sportsman, lawyer and politician argued in lighter vein.

The two camps

The occasion: he was proposing a toast to the Sri Lankan cricket team at a dinner in the UK in 1995. The raconteur that he was, he postulated that the world is divided into two camps—those who revel in the intricacies of cricket and those who are totally baffled by it, who cannot figure out why a group of energetic young men should spend days, often in the hot sun or bitter cold, chasing a ball across an open field, hitting it from time to time with a stick—all to the rapturous applause of thousands, now millions, of ecstatic spectators across the world.

We reflected on these and other matters on that quiet Sunday in March, 2005, when Lakshman and Suganthie chatted with me as we sat in their verandah and sipped thambili.

Trinity Traditions

He painted a broad canvass of thoughts, rich in texture and resplendent in colour : they ranged from the stories behind the murals from India that adorned his walls, to the deeper meanings of the paintings of Stanley Kirinde, from the traditions that Trinity had handed down to the importance of playing one’s role with integrity in politics.

We also spoke about the importance of a rounded education reposed not only in books but in the character building that sports brings; from the broad role that culture and religion can play in nation building to the importance of English as a language to earn global citizenry.

Spurred by Suganthie, we then talked about setting up a Foundation that can further the teaching of English in rural areas. In just two hours I felt so enriched and stimulated by the wisdom of this true all rounder.

Reminiscing comes too late to all of us. But there are times when we feel we must recall from our library of thoughts. Lakshman’s life was filled with volumes of rich, rare and many pleasant memories until cowards took his precious life.

For here was a man who in his crowded 73 years had proved what a fine all round Gold Medalist he was at Trinity, a celebrated President of the Oxford Union, a leading attorney, orator, diplomat, politician, negotiator, and above all a gentleman.

Best All-rounder

The word Gentleman is alas so commonly used that it often loses it’s meaning. But, Lakshman was the word’s personification.

Athlete, Cricket Captain, and Ruggerite at Trinity, life was an engaging decathlon. He was unarguably the best All-rounder that his school has produced in its history.

His command of history made him persistent in the marathon of politics, his unrelenting defence of what he believed to be right reflected his stoic prowess to remain at the crease under attack; and his ability to give and take a hard tackle made him a resilient technocrat, diplomat and politician.

Those who knew him well and learnt from him know how much he believed in the shield of justice and the sword of truth.

No wonder as a young schoolboy he had the spunk to refuse the Cricket Lion at Trinity in 1950, saying he was “not quite up to standard.”

His determination knew no bounds. It is reflected in a story: a youngster completely untutored, was in the difficult art of preparing for his first practice of the hurdles on the Asgiriya grounds.

The ground boy Marthenis, his battered hat on his head, was watching the boy’s preparation with a twinkle in his eye, knowing full well what was about to happen.

The boy charged at the hurdles and crashed ignominiously and painfully. Marthenis strolled to the bruised and shaken boy and said prophetically “don’t worry, Duncan White also crashed like that!” Many years later the boy that Marthenis had picked up was awarded the ‘Lion’ for Athletics— the insignia for excellence at Trinity. The boy had persisted…he never gave up!

Story retold

That was the Lakshman Kadirgamar we knew, never failing to recount, as he once did chairing a Duncan White Sports Foundation meeting, the adversities he faced and how he overcame them through his upbringing on the playing fields. And then saying to the Foundation’s Secretary Vijitha Fernando: this is a story that I hope will be retold to inspire our young athletes.

And as a sportsman he urged that criticism be take in the right spirit. “Do not allow yourselves,” he argued at that after dinner toast in the UK, ‘to be disturbed by the armchair critics’.many of these critics never put bat to ball. It makes them feel good to indulge in the past time of amateur criticism.

They do not know what it is to face fast bowling in fading light; to engage in a run race against daunting odds; to find stamina and sheer physical endurance to spend concentrated hours in the field of play.

They know nothing of the psychological pressure that modern sportsmen are subject to. Therefore, my advice to you is…ignore them! Go your way with customary discipline and methodical preparation for the next game, the next series in different parts of the worlds under different conditions’. He was surely not only talking about sports in a competitive world, but rather about his life and the principles he applied.

Bade good-bye

In determination, integrity and uprightness there are few equals in contemporary Sri Lankan politics. As the Bard put it in Hamlet:

This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man, Farewell; my blessing season this in thee!

Most humbly do I take my leave, my lord.

As Suganthi and Lakshman bade me good-bye I asked Lakshman as to when we will see the collected works of Lakshman Kadirgamar published. His response was self effacing: do you really think anyone will read it!?

Read for sure, we will. For after all:

“His life was gentle and the elements So mixed in him, that Nature might stand up, And say to all the world THIS WAS A MAN.”