Uncle Carl, The Bushman and Backwoodsman...

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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