Affectionately known to his family as Chandra Aiya or Chandra Maama, Senerat Harischandra Jayasena, my father, passed away last April (August 1931-April 2023), leaving a bereaved family, friends, employees and numerous others he had helped in the course of his productive and successful life.
He was born in Galle to A.K.D Jayasena and Esawathi Jayasena nee Nanayakkara.
Growing up, he had a reputation as a precocious and mischievous child. His father worked in the provinces and before his return home for the weekend, my father would clean up his act by Friday evening to avoid punishment.
After his early education at St. Aloysius’ College, Galle, he moved to Colombo to study at Royal College and lived with his maternal uncle in Thimbirigasyaya. During World War II, the family lived in the relative safety of rural Galle while Colombo underwent Japanese bombardment.
Having been admitted to Ceylon University College, he had to drop out due to the sudden death of his father. As the oldest surviving son, he took upon the responsibility of managing his father’s properties and being a father figure to his young siblings. That responsibility was carried through his entire life.
Subsequently, he worked at the Government Factory and earned his professional qualifications as an engineer, as a member of the British Institute of Engineers.
Never to conform to the security of middle class life, he got involved in left leaning politics. He never ran for public office, but supported causes dear to his heart. Fair treatment of his employees was very important to him. He considered them partners rather than traditional employees.
Owing to his sense of adventure, he once travelled overland to Europe. I still remember getting a post-card he mailed from Kabul, posted when he was travelling through Afghanistan. This was 40 years before the Internet and cell phones, and we would not hear from him for weeks. As children, we didn’t fully realise it, but this must have been extremely stressful for my mother.
In the late 70s and 80s, he worked in West Africa where we visited him on an extended holiday. There, he got interested in fish processing and exporting and on his return to Sri Lanka, started his own business exporting seafood. After many years of struggle, failures and successes, he built a thriving business employing hundreds and acquired his own processing factory.
Later, he got interested in health supplements and the benefits of Nelli and started growing Nelli trees in Bibile. His goal was to process and market the fruit as a health supplement.
He had a wide ranging interest in music, literature and history.
As a parent, he left the day-to-day matters of raising my siblings and me to my mother. But from him, we learned about different cultures and food. He introduced us to classical music and opera.
He had a large record collection from which he played music at home, helping introduce us to a world of culture. In contrast to me who always played it safe and exercised caution, my father was a visionary. He was also a thinker who took risks. Most times, it paid off. When it didn’t, he shrugged off the negative results easily.
If we have acquired any sense of social justice and fairplay as his children, we got that from our father. We inherited our values of kindness and empathy from our mother.
He never craved for creature comforts or fancy luxury cars. However, he enjoyed a good drink of arrack, or a beer in the evenings. For the past 30 years or so of his life, he became a pescatarian, shunning meat.
He was not overly religious, but he appreciated the philosophical teachings of the Buddha.
May he attain the supreme bliss of Nirvana. – Rohan Jayasena
