The 2015 election and my entry to Parliament on the National List

One of the pleasures I derived from being MP for Kandy district was that I could interact with academic communities at Peradeniya and Polgolla. Polgolla was the venue of the Mahaweli Teacher Training institute as well as training institutes of the Cooperative and Rural Development Departments. This was in addition to a large number of private teaching institutions located there. In fact Polgolla or nearby Aruppola) was earlier considered as a possible site for our first residential university. The proponent of Polgolla was A. Ratnayake who was the dominant politician in the Kandy district during the DS Senanayake era. Polgolla was passed over for Peradeniya because more land was available there from a large tea estate which belonged to a British planter. Says the official history of Peradeniya Campus: The goverment acquired this site in 1938. The extent of land was about 700 hectares and a further 120 hectares were added later. About 150 hectares of the land were developed and landscaped to create the University park on which the University complex is now located while the rest of the land remains forested".

- SARATH AMUNUGAMA

Ian Goonetilleke who was the chief Librarian at Peradeniya is a legend. His erudition, commitment and ready assistance to fledgling scholars has been recognised by many I was lucky to be included among his friends during my student days in Peradeniya and after. Ian and his wife Roslin often invited hungry undergraduates like me for a meal.

The food was good. But the conversation that preceded it was even better. His anecdotes about his best friend George Keyt were hilarious.

We would often see George being driven through Campus in Ian's Volkswagen, to his house in Mahakanda for a meal and the former's scandalous conversations about local artists, politicians, film stars, businessmen, villagers and his rapacious neighbours in Sirimalwatte.

In 1958, HL Seneviratne and I as undergraduates helped Ian and Ralph Peiris to mount an exhibition of George's latest paintings in the Senate room at Peradeniya.

We visited the artist's atelier in Sirimalwatte to choose the paintings which had to be mounted for the exhibition. For the cover of the souvenir George selected the line drawing of Vessantara and his queen which the famous Steuben Glass company of USA had embossed on their expensive products.

Ian had collected a large number of paintings, line drawings, sketches, postcards and letters from George Keyt which he had lovingly framed and hung in his dining room. After retirement and a series of letters criticizing the then Minister of Higher Education for emasculating the independence of Universities, he built a small house in Navinna which did not have space-for his full collection of paintings and books.