Our man on the spot writes this report

Even in today's fast crowding Sri Lanka, not far beyond the Peradeniya University campus are quiet and relatively uninhabited retreats of lovely, green undulating land, with the outline of hills in the distance. Not any one of them, though, would be called Quorrobolong . After two highly successful annual week end bondings by the Peradeniya University Alumni Association of NSW formed in 2007, the Hunter Valley Retreat in “Qurro” many thousands of miles away has floated into the land of the imagination as an extension that is only a little beyond the Peradeniya of our youth.

Even the ad hoc events of the Friday 13 February evening made us feel we were back in place and time when “to be young was very heaven”. Cecil Fonseka the steadfast friend of the “Peras “gave us the musical backing for the whole evening beginning with “ Dhunno Budunge “ which in the spirit of Peradeniya's quicksilver universality of old, slipped into Ben Johnson's famous “ Drink To Me Only With Thine Eyes ”, sung by a member of the earliest Peradeniya batch of our Association, reminding the young woman he courted on the campus, still snugly with him that evening.

Mixed with lovely hot stringhoppers and curry reminiscent of our old Hindagala boutique, post modern Tamil songs by a well known “Pera” singer heated the night though a cold rain, just like in some Peradeniya months, fell outside. Families, as is our tradition, were indispensable, and the little daughter of an alumnus, sang and danced for us, entertaining both young and old. A variety of good music and dancing made the night all too short even past 1 am !

Saturday morning, and the whole gathering of over one hundred and twenty men, women and children were happy to casually dismiss the rain they noticed through the glass panes of the large function hall, as they set about exploiting the concentration in one place to refresh old friendships and make new ones, and “it gave us extra time for bonding” as one post success e-mailer put it.

And while a palmist was busy scanning ladies' palms in a secluded corner, the cutlets, vaddais, and kadalai made by the indefatigable ‘spouses of the committee' and other Pera. wives were well washed in with Tooheys Dry as the morning passed into a sausage sizzle lunch.

The balloons of maroon and gold of the university floated over alternate table cloths of the same colours as the night lights came on sometime past 7 pm, and our brilliant institutionalized master of ceremonies got the culminating night moving with invitations to “tell how you met your ‘kella' on campus”.

The first was hilarious, both in how our man crossed the ethnic divide with a strict Hindu family, and to boot, had ‘something of a honeymoon' before the ‘poosari' got to the ceremonies! Contrasting silence and apparent attention followed as we were given an account of an enduring “Peradeniya Mystery”. How Dr. Senarat Paranavitana in the dying light of his great vision saw mysterious Sanskrit writing in-between existent and well established Sinhala and Pali inscriptions, which other scholars are still struggling to see properly!

This year we had many friends of Peradeniyites join and Dr. Tom Silva addressed the gathering on matters of historical interest with entertaining humorous twists. Then ‘Bonnie and the Clan' the youthful Sydney band of Sri Lankan origins took over for the rest of the night. The uninhibited dancing that followed and the dinner from “Flavour of Ceylon” made the evening and the whole week end close memorably.

Rarely, we think, in the history of organizing verve and intelligence has so much been owed by ‘so many to so few' as our committee!

Click here to enjoy an album of photos submitted by Janaka Seneviratne