This picture of Carl Fernando was posted by Rex de Silva in his “SEABIRD WATCH (Sri Lanka)” Group and there was definitely a reason for posting it.
Uncle Carl, Uncle Gomez, and Uncle Wilson are the senior-most citizens
in the Field Ornithology Group Sri Lanka [FOGSL] and they are all octogenarians
today. They were regular and
active members on field trips then and being of an earlier generation they had many
an experience of their childhood pranks and camping experiences to share with
us during these trips. Today they are confined to their homes but Uncle Gomez
still ambles in for the FOGSL-AGM in March every year to act as the Interim President
until the new office bearers are appointed. However, we have not seen much of
Uncle Carl for quite some time now. Wilson also in Galle is but very active with his birding through social media
Anthony Carl Fernando was born in
1940 in Chilaw. His childhood was spent in Chilaw but the family had to move to
Puttalam when he began schooling; his father in the Local Government Service had
to shift locations once every three years. It was due to this changing of schools that his
father preferred to get young Carl the best Jesuit education as a boarder at St
Aloysius College in Galle [SACG], says Carl. However, there were other reasons
that prevented him from joining St Aloysius College initially. His mother was not happy to send the boy away
to Galle and the parents thought that the boy would be a victim of favoritism;
for his mother’s uncle was in the college staff at that time. It was only after
the demise of the Fr. S. G. Perera that Carl was introduced to the Rector by the
Bishop of Chillaw and was enrolled in SACG in 1952.
He recalls this mother’s anxiety to
leave the child in the boarding school when she did tell the Rector not to let
him out for sea bathing. SACG had no swimming pool then and did conduct
swimming lessons to boys in the old jetty alongside the Dutch Fort until
recently. It was then that the Rector narrated this story to the parents says
Carl, “it was a conversation between a fisherman and a Judge when they met on
the beach, the Judge asks about the fisherman’s grandfather, to which he says ...
he died at sea, and about the fisherman’s father… again he says he died at sea.
Then the Judge asked the fisherman if he was not afraid of the sea?… then the
fisherman inquired the judge about his grandfather… the judge said he died in bed and the father? … he too died in the bed. Now the fisherman asks the
judge so are you not afraid to go to bed? … Carl remembers a blushing mother at
the end of the story. However, Carl did end up an expert swimmer and did enroll
in the Life Saving Club where he earned many an award and did give him an extra
day of swimming for the week.
He did finish off a bright
student at SACG passing his university entrance exams to enter the University of
Ceylon in Colombo to study Engineering where he opted to a carrier in Refrigeration
Engineering and served at S.V Industries, Ceylon Seafoods, and at Environmental
Laboratories turning out water treatment plants etc. It was during this time
that he spent his leisure with imminent outdoor men like Architect Lala
Adithiya who had a Land Rover improvised to hold water and other camping gear,
hunting expeditions with popular huntsmen who used firearms under game license. The experience he gained in these expeditions was immense and he was only happy to
narrate these stories to us during the FOGSL field trips later.
We at FOGSL first met Carl on the
first Field Trip to Sinharaja. From then on Carl was a regular… and when we had
to camp in tents he would come with his own personal tent and other paraphernalia.
It was a time when Fog Kids were also attending the trips together and it was
Uncle Carl who kept them kids amused with his unbelievable stories when narrated
to the elders would miss the catchy point. His famous story about the two human
skulls on his table at home. When people ask him about them he would say the
larger one is his grandfather’s and the smaller one was when the grandpa was a kid…
the unsuspecting adult would then say… Ahhh, “Ok, I see". But when
narrated to the kids they would howl back pulling at him … how can that be uncle?
He had a whole series of other silly
stories for the kids… how to catch three elephants at one time with only a rope,
a jar of Woodapple Jam, and an extra-large dose of laxative. The art of trapping
a crocodile into an empty matchbox with only a rocking chair, a convex mirror, and a newspaper. Listening to him, others would also contribute with theirs. My friend Amudesh
once came out with his; educating the school watcher of how the electricity
flows in a wire and of voltage and current… relating to the water tank where
the water is stored with the supply pipes as an example for the medium for the
current to flow. The climax of the story being when one day the watcher hooked up a plug point in the guardhouse to listen to his radio when the lights went
out … accepting to the fact in the example when the water is stopped at
the tank the pipe running dry. He positioned a person at the street light to give a shout no sooner the light came on. The watcher was a lucky guy to have lived that
day to narrate about his new plug point. Carl remembered Amudesh and his story
when I spoke to him about his wellbeing recently.
Just as many of us do, Carl too liked the locality and
the birding at Bundala. This photograph of him is also from
Bundala. It was he who introduced us to the sweet ripe fruit of the invasive cactus
plant that is plentiful in Bundala. The bulb that remains after the yellow flower
wilts gets ripened with the seeds around a juicy red jelly within. The crown of the pod
is slit across and a thorny star-shaped stone within should be removed with the
point of the knife and then the seeds and the sweet jell are squeezed into the
mouth that tastes “Necto”. Kids and Adults both did enjoy this new-found delicacy that day in Bundala. In the evening he would take us stalking into the
stunted forest patches around the campsite along the elephant tracks where one
could see the high branches with silt and mud where the giants had scratched their
shoulders.
Nilgala too was another haunt
where Carl braved the night in his single unit tent listing to the elephants
feasting on ripened jack fruit a few yards away from his tent when we all
vacated the tents and sort shelter in the verandah of the beat office. My son
Naveen was baffled once when in Nilgala, Uncle Carl went down on his belly stretching
out on the sandy banks of Gal-Oya to drink off the running river. And when
asked why he did not cup his hands to drink from the river he said that the
devil in the river will go mad when he sees a man making the whole river his
cup to drink off. On the same trip in the evenings, many did not go to the Gal Oya
for a bath but did the ablution at the well, fearing of elephants that also
came to the river in the evenings to drink. The bathers at the river were low
and Uncle Carl did enjoy a dip in a pensive mood. I found Carl amble off to the
river for his bath, and asked him to slow down until I go fetch my bathing trunk
and towel. Carl was in the river Oxford style with his wrinkled buttocks scanning the
banks. I had the laugh of the day for I went to collect my bathing trunk in
order to keep to the modesty of the old man but in the end, I too had to be
fare by the old man in bathing to Oxford traditions. This amusement did continue
when Upul Wicks also came over with a few others to bathe there that day.
It was through Carl that we all got
to know the Late Nihal de Silva the famed author of “ROAD FROM ELEPHANT PASS”. His
interest to study birds was fulfilled by Carl, introducing him to FOGSL. I remember
Nihal a keen and enthusiastic birdwatcher inquiring of the finer details on identification during a trip to Sinharaja accompanied by Carl. This was far before
he took to writing but he definitely did have a plan to write this book. In his
book, he did acknowledge many of us by linking to the birds and the forest on the escape
route of the duo through the Wilpattu National Park. But for Carl, he acknowledged
him differently by writing his obituary; Carl succumbs to the injuries during
an accident on a zebra crossing on the Galle Road in Dehiwala in his book. When I did call
up Nihal to ask if it was proper to finish off a good friend like Carl on the
Galle road, he said “that is the freedom that an author has even towards a good
friend.” Yes, they were best of friends.
It was so tragic for Nihal and
his camping buddies to have been blown to smithereens on an LTTE land mine in his
favorite habitat within Wilpattu.
Finally, I did ask Carl the Million
Dollar Question a few days ago while collecting details for this writeup …. The
reason for being so lonely all these years. And this is what he had to say.
Him being a bit of a
perfectionist, did go looking for that “Ideal Girl” … and surprise… after all he
did find the lady he was looking for……but alas she too was a perfectionist and
was looking for her “Ideal Man” …. And Carl did not qualify as her Ideal Man. So,
Carl ended being an eligible bachelor. He feels his never-ending love for the
outdoors more than anything may have taken off a good share of points from the points
table.
So, let me go back to Rex and his picture of Carl reminding us of this wonderful character full of humor love, and affection. Carl today is recovering from a stroke that he underwent three years ago and is attended to and taken care of by his nephew and the kids. He is still strong in his memory though quite slow in getting about with his four-prong walking aid. Has but given up the occasional shot of Brandy that he enjoyed while in the bush on medical advice. He is otherwise normal and loves to keep in touch with old friends reminiscing of the incidents in the wild with a very sharp memory for an 81-year old.
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