I do not claim any great competence to review this book in which Bradman Weerakoon plays Mark Antony to the many "Caesars" [ stuffed with sawdust, some of them, in my heretical view] whom he has served with unquestioning loyalty and devotion . Having spent most of my working life in distant kachcheries, I have had only the briefest of acquaintance with these personages as they swept through on tours of inspection or for some ceremony. Far away in the provinces, working with humble peasants, we led –

" Lives of middling celebrity

Attendant lords, supporting actors

Watching in the wings , whilst great dramas unfolded centre stage

I will, therefore, not touch on Bradman’s career centre stage, in the palaces of his Caesars, but rather on the period [1970-1977] when he was fortunate enough [ in my opinion, not his!] to join the cohort of unsung administrators slogging away in the provinces [`85"apata kekiri" !]

Although Bradman clearly enjoyed his spells as Government Agent in Ampara, Batticaloa and Galle I am saddened by his reference to this period as ‘Years of EXILE’ signalling that his rightful place was serving Caesars in Colombo and not peasants in the outer reaches of our island nation. He "assumed duties" in Ampara at a crucial period of its transition from the aberrant autonomy of the Gal Oya Development Board to that of the tried and tested Kachcheri system that prevailed over the rest of the country. Interestingly, twenty odd years earlier as an undergrad, he had been part of a pioneering sociological survey of the Gal Oya valley and this gave him an intellectual and historic perspective that stood him in good stead during his tenure in Ampara District. Bradman succeeded Ampara’s first Government Agent, the pugnacious Victor Unantenna who waged a no-holds-barred battle against the resentful remnants of the GODB hierarchy, tenaciously clinging on to the perks of their downsized set up – offices, vehicles, bungalows and the like. Bradman’s smooth diplomacy, well-honed in the service of his Caesars, stood him in good stead and smoothened both the ruffled feathers and the quiet exit of the devalued bigwigs of the GODB.

At last, the man from the palace came to understand the ordinary people in the countryside and expresses his ‘revelation’ thus:

"Here one was at the root of the problem. This was where it all started; the search by young men and women for employment, hunger for land, shortage of water for agriculture, hospitals for the sick, and the overall struggle for survival But what encouraged me most was the indomitable will of ordinary people to keep going in the face of impossible odds."

He got down to tackling his responsibilities with the enthusiasm of a novice. His ‘circuits’ ranged far and wide , from the heterogenous [and unfortunately named] colonization schemes, the outer reaches of historic Dighavapi, and the Buddangala hermitage to the ‘forgotten’ village of Kumana and ‘Leonidas’ its fascinating leader . He writes of these places, people and problems with understanding and compassion. Strangely, his narrative does not touch at all on the Muslim majority coastal region – which was fated to face the tsunami’s fury almost four decades later.

The ill-fated insurrection of 1971 is recounted with objectivity and great sympathy towards the unfortunate young men and women caught up in its misguided fervour. It is difficult today to recall the tightrope we Government Agents had to walk in order to maintain a balance between the humaneness of civil administration and the mailed fist of the Police and Military over-reacting to attacks on them. Bradman’s humanity shines through in the two incidents he recalls. One is of old Jayawickrema from Uhana who was found sobbing at The Residency in a futile search for his son, later found to have been buried in a lonely grave after brutal interrogation. The other is of his experience carrying a little parcel of necessities from her parents to Welikada Jail where ‘revolutionary’ teenager Renuka from Buddangala was incarcerated – but mercifully alive. The G.A’s humility and humanity would surely have earned him the undying gratitude of her parents. Was it after this ‘labour of love’, I now wonder, that Bradman, Stanley Gunaratne [G.A.Batticaloa] and I [G.A. Trinco] were flown back to our respective ‘stations’ after a Security Conference at the Defence Ministry in a lumbering Russian military helicopter which left us with ringing ears and queasy bellies?

Soon after this Bradman went further east – to Batticaloa which does not seem to have inspired the same enthusiasm in him that Ampara did, judging from the few pages he spends on it. It is here that he observed the simmering ethnic tensions between Sinhalese and Tamils that were, later, to erupt into tragic violence. Relevant to this are the illegal settlements in Vakaneri around which he tiptoes [it seems to me] with strange caution. In this connection both Bradman and I [from Trinco] were instructed by the Defence Secretary to do a ‘joint inspection’ of this phenomenon where MPs Devanayagam and Thangathurai were spearheading a subversive campaign to settle stateless Indian labourers, displaced by unemployment, in Batticaloa and Trincomalee Districts to bolster their Tamil population. I wonder whatever happened to our joint report?

Bradman, alas, makes no mention of two of his achievements in Batticaloa – both in the Muslim ghetto of Kattankudy. The first was his fostering of their wonderfully designed handloom table linen for sale in Laksala. The second was the population studies he pioneered here, that stood him in good stead later.

Galle District was ‘under’ Bradman’s administration for two years as well. In this period, he had to tackle two political ‘tsunamis’[!] that almost overwhelmed Kachcheri administration. The first was Land Reform which simultaneously caused great heartburning [among estate owners] and great rejoicing [among the landless peasants]. In his account of its impact on the estate ‘way of life’ Bradman admits that he too was, uncharacteristically, carried away by the "euphoria which was sweeping the country".

The other was the establishment of the, now unlamented, administrative aberration grandly termed the District Political Authority which was meant to give openly politicised leadership to district administration and lead to the whittling away of the Govt. Agent’s powers. Bradman was fortunate that his "D.P.A" was that old "public school gentleman" Neal de Alwis and they seem to have worked out a gentleman’s agreement not to step on each other’s [administrative] toes. And all went well.

But I do feel that Bradman has been rather cavalier in his treatment of this last of his districts. The disproportionate number of pages devoted to a brief history of Colonial Galle and the search for the grave of a long-forgotten American Vice Consul seem to indicate the withering away of his interest in, what he sadly considers , the Siberias of his exile.