PROF. C.C. de Silva: My father, my mentor, my role model

Ever since my long-lost childhood, I thought my father was the handsomest, tallest, and cleverest man I had ever met. It was hero worship of the highest level. His birth anniversary is on February 25.

My paternal grandfather died when my father was just five years old. My grandmother informed me that my grandfather was very proud of my father, even at that tender age, almost as if he knew even then the heights which my father would achieve in his professional life. My father schooled at S. Thomas’ College, Mt. Lavinia, following the family tradition, and excelled as a student. His portrait is there now with other distinguished old boys. He began at Medical College here and later finished his medical degree at King’s College, London. He started with private practice at Mt. Lavinia, and I was born there at Bertram House. Nothing pleased me more as a child than when he used to repeatedly tell me that his luck changed for the better after my birth. He got his MD soon in London and started another dispensary in Kollupitiya. He had a huge practice and was also the doctor at Bishop’s College, where he began school in the Kinder Garden. He was also family doctor to many prominent families here.

He was very interested in research, and the work he did in this respect stood him in good stead. The Chair of Paediatrics was offered and created for him. Thus he became a Professor and gave up his private practice and dispensaries.

My father was also a connoisseur of the arts, a collector of art and of books on every conceivable subject, and had a vast library, which is how my love for reading and writing began. When the Jaffna Library was burnt, he donated half his library to them. He was a pioneer in establishing the Paediatric Association, the Family Planning Association, and the Ceylon Nutrition Society. It was his brainchild to start a convalescent home in Ragama for children from Lady Ridgeway Hospital so that they would have proper nutrition and care after leaving it. He also persuaded my mother to have a committee from the Red Cross do home visits for these children after they returned home, to check and advise on hygienic conditions and nutrition. He was the first, through his research, to discover thalassaemia in Sri Lanka. It warms my heart to hear him described as a legend. My heart filled with pride recently when a visiting lady paediatrician from the UK told me that it was my father, through his research, who had put paediatrics on the world map of medicine. I miss him so much still, although he died in 1987. He was always at my side when I was ill, even after I married. He took up a post in Mauritius after retirement. My son, who was a few months old, developed a temperature which lasted several months. I took him to Mauritius to my father, who cured him instantly, and we spent three months there. After his return, he turned to agriculture, planted all kinds of fruits — passion fruit, mangosteen, soursop, etc. — and our homes were always full of fruit. Unfortunately, the acres of passion fruit were lost with Land Reform. The books he wrote — ‘Mother, Your Baby’, ‘Out Steppes the Don’ on his trip to Russia, and his autobiography ‘Life As I Lived It’ — are still much sought after but unfortunately out of print. I gave the title for his autobiography and handed him the first copy the evening before he died. When my twin daughters were born, he insisted that I have them at the De Soysa Hospital built by his grandfather. It was an emergency birth, and he was out of town. I woke in the night to hear him; he had rushed back, shouting at the nurses about my condition as my pressure had dropped. I recovered the moment I saw his face. I miss you so much, my handsome Thaththi. No one on earth can replace you. You’ll always be the moon and the stars to me. I owe everything I am and have achieved to you and to no other.