An adventurous life
1968- Rienzie Weereratne is being escorted around his new residence in Ghana. Suddenly a man jumps out from the thicket. He looks ferocious, brandishing a spear in African battle dress. Alarmed, Weereratne is about to make a run for it when his escort makes the genial introductions. “…and this is your night watchman, by the way.”
Great memories: Rienzie Weereratne Pic by M. Nissanka.
Mr. Weereratne’s memoir ‘Journey of a Lifetime’ is brimming with such adventurous tales and fascinating people. The author has lived the kind of life that inspires envy; as a former stalwart of a well-known multinational, he had travelled to over 80 countries around the world. His attention to detail in the book is notable. “Since my wife Elaine passed away I’ve been a compulsive writer,” he explains somewhat wistfully. “I keep a schedule when it comes to my day and it has helped me immensely.”
Today Mr. Weereratne resides in the home he shared with his wife and children in Colombo before moving to London, where he was based for a number of years. At 87, the writer finds himself somewhat limited physically with the passing of time, although his conversation is lively and colourful and quite fascinating.
Elaine, the love of his life, was his constant companion over the 49 years of their marriage. They travelled everywhere – across Europe, making their way through Africa and the jungles of South America. Mr. Weereratne’s life was a colourful cornucopia of faces and places and he has already documented these trips extensively in ‘The World I Saw’ (2008). This memoir, ‘Journey of a Lifetime’, is more nuanced biographically, delving deeper into his early life and upbringing in Colombo.
The early years are remembered in the book with the kind of nostalgia one reserves for childhood, with recollections of family gatherings and friendships that have lasted a lifetime. “I was very close to my mother as a child,” he shares “and when she passed away it was very difficult on us, especially my father.” In the book, the author describes being shunned along with his siblings by a father overcome with grief. Mr. Weereratne, together with siblings Vernon, Dudley, Neville and Imelda moved to another part of the house to support themselves.
Later, he would become “quite the dropout” from school until a friend- Leo Singham, encouraged him to take the banking exam. Sri Lanka had only one fully qualified banker at the time (C. Loganathan, the first Lankan General Manager of the Bank of Ceylon). Weereratne was hesitant but willing to take on a challenge. He enrolled himself as a clerk at the Bank of Ceylon (students were required to be employed at a bank) and took the exams, passing the first stage rapidly. “They then offered me a scholarship to work at the London office while completing my exams and I took it up immediately,” he remembers. “Elaine, whose mother was highly disapproving of my clerk status, said she would wait for me.”
The independence that was unwelcome at first later proved invaluable. “When I was studying abroad I didn’t have much in the way of income,” recollects the author. “My brother Vernon was in London at the time, and he was always helpful but I had to work very hard to keep on top of expenses. For a couple of years my day would begin at 7 a.m., when I left for work, and end at 1 a.m. when I would complete my studying for the day. It was very hard but certainly not impossible and young people can learn from that, I think.”
He passed his exams, returned to Sri Lanka and married Elaine with the blessings of his father, with whom the family had reconciled. They would go on to have four children; Ianthe, Hishani, Hiran and Aswini of whom their father remains immensely proud. Weereratne received a good post at the Central Bank and was later headhunted by multinational Unilever, where he worked for several decades and through which he travelled the world. The memoir is peppered with amusing anecdotes of his assignments abroad, of meeting tribal heads, sighting the rare silver-backed gorilla, and witnessing Mount Etna in full eruption. “Each country is special,” he reminisces. “For example when I first visited Africa friends and colleagues were nervous because no one really knew anything about the continent those days. I discovered that the culture was civilized and sophisticated, and met many wonderful people.”
The memoir spans over eight decades of Mr. Weereratne’s life, with titbits of history rearing its head on occasion. What the book may lack in organization it makes up for in spirit, with clever observations and a touch of nostalgia. “The reason I wrote this book was really to highlight that our differences are not as great as we imagine them to be,” says the author. “I’ve seen the world and met many, many people and I can tell you one thing-we’re more alike than we realize.”
Journey of a Lifetime’ by Rienzie Weereratne (Rs. 2300) is available at the Barefoot Gallery Bookshop. The book will be sold at a special discounted price of Rs. 2000 until July 2.