Like all of us, he was a man of strength as well as weaknesses. Yet, unlike a lot of us, he had strength and courage in the bleakest of times to fight the bitterest of battles.
As a student activist and a long term member of the Peradeniya University Action Committee and as a medical student, he was a larger than life figure in the support lent by the Peradeniya University for the struggle against the Private Medical College, a struggle that came to define our twenties and affected all our lives in one way or another.
Unlike most of us, he was one among those who had to pay a bigger price than the others. And the legacy of that price dogged him through the rest of his life.
For all that there was no bitterness in him.
He was a man who had a sharp intellect and multiple talents. More than that he was a man with compassion toward the poor and the socially oppressed.
He was known as a man with a large heart and with absolutely no pretensions. And he remained true to himself, with feet firmly planted on the raw earth, no matter what he achieved or no matter what great potential he had.
A life lived for higher principles, taken an unjustifiable battering for that, a life reclaimed to what degree you can and lived without bitterness.
For all that we shall remember him with love and pride.
I wish his wife and the two sons, strength and courage.
Farewell Sudath. Farewell!!
- Former Colleague and Friend
