This is no exaggeration, he really was that special
My name is Rebecca Cody and I formed part of a team that visited Sri Lanka in the Spring of 2006 to make a Channel Four documentary about the rise of religious fundamentalism. Prasanna was our appointed local producer or “fixer” in Colombo. This dedication is from Mark Dowd, the programme presenter, who cannot be here today due to long established conference commitments in Canterbury. Mark penned this tribute to Prasanna and asked me if I would be happy to share it with you today.
I seriously doubted whether there were such things as militant Buddhist monks as I had read in the press. But when our team winged into Colombo in 2006, within half an hour, Prasanna had convinced me. I knew within minutes I was in the presence of a charmingly eccentric and inspiring human being. For a week, Prasanna played an amazing hand. By day, we were shadowed by the local state minder and filmed mind-numbingly boring sequences of palms trees, beaches and Buddhist temples. By night, however, in this Jekyll and Hyde TV production, once the government stooge had gone, Prasanna had lined up extraordinary interviews with monks, priests who had had their churches attacked by angry mobs led by the Buddhist leaders and also secured rare access to the Buddha Tooth temple in Kandy. When our film aired in the UK, there was a national outcry and questions were raised in the Sri Lankan parliament. “How had these foreign journalists managed all this??” We were safely back home, but it was Prasanna who had to duck and weave and play a very dangerous game with the authorities. No surprise that he soon left and made a permanent home in the UK.
It’s rare to maintain strong friendships with people in TV whose services you have secured abroad for a mere week, but Prasanna and I became firm friends. He was the gentlest and kindest of men and enthused about my TV work, offering to construct my own website with all the films and blogs loaded up on them. He was also amazingly direct about asking for help himself.
“Mark” he asked me one day in 2008, “can you lend me four thousand pounds?”
“Whatever for?” I asked. “I have identified an amazing video camera and a state of the art laptop. I will pay back in instalments once I get work. I promise.” he said True to his word, he never defaulted on his payments and that loan gave me the joy of watching him blossom as a camera operator and film editor, working for Amnesty International, Save the Children and many others.
I introduced him on one occasion to my mother. It was like the Tower of Babel. My 78 year old mother with her heavily accented Bolton accent and Prasanna’s very distinctive lilting Sri Lankan linguistic fingerprints on his English intonation. More than once I acted as intermediary, but they made a firm connection and he always, ALWAYS began our meetings with questions about her welfare.
I never heard Prasanna utter an unkind or malicious word about anyone in all the eleven years I knew him. He was dogged, to the point of obstinacy about an issue or matter he really cared about. He had immense integrity, kindness and a warmth that always extended to supporting the underdog and the downtrodden. To me, as a Christian, he showed me the face of Jesus in his dealings with others and I know he would be hugely touched to hear me talking of him in those terms. This is no exaggeration, he really was that special. He exuded that elusive “peace that surpasseth all understanding.”
I will miss him enormously. I can feel his presence in his absence as I write these words.
Margaret, I send you my deepest and sincerest condolences. If I feel like this, I have no idea what you must be going through and I will not descend into cliché with trite formulas of consolation. All I can say is that he was and is a great man. It was and is and will be, a privilege for us all to have been touched by him.
It is nothing less for us, than an outpouring of grace.
I seriously doubted whether there were such things as militant Buddhist monks as I had read in the press. But when our team winged into Colombo in 2006, within half an hour, Prasanna had convinced me. I knew within minutes I was in the presence of a charmingly eccentric and inspiring human being. For a week, Prasanna played an amazing hand. By day, we were shadowed by the local state minder and filmed mind-numbingly boring sequences of palms trees, beaches and Buddhist temples. By night, however, in this Jekyll and Hyde TV production, once the government stooge had gone, Prasanna had lined up extraordinary interviews with monks, priests who had had their churches attacked by angry mobs led by the Buddhist leaders and also secured rare access to the Buddha Tooth temple in Kandy. When our film aired in the UK, there was a national outcry and questions were raised in the Sri Lankan parliament. “How had these foreign journalists managed all this??” We were safely back home, but it was Prasanna who had to duck and weave and play a very dangerous game with the authorities. No surprise that he soon left and made a permanent home in the UK.
It’s rare to maintain strong friendships with people in TV whose services you have secured abroad for a mere week, but Prasanna and I became firm friends. He was the gentlest and kindest of men and enthused about my TV work, offering to construct my own website with all the films and blogs loaded up on them. He was also amazingly direct about asking for help himself.
“Mark” he asked me one day in 2008, “can you lend me four thousand pounds?”
“Whatever for?” I asked. “I have identified an amazing video camera and a state of the art laptop. I will pay back in instalments once I get work. I promise.” he said True to his word, he never defaulted on his payments and that loan gave me the joy of watching him blossom as a camera operator and film editor, working for Amnesty International, Save the Children and many others.
I introduced him on one occasion to my mother. It was like the Tower of Babel. My 78 year old mother with her heavily accented Bolton accent and Prasanna’s very distinctive lilting Sri Lankan linguistic fingerprints on his English intonation. More than once I acted as intermediary, but they made a firm connection and he always, ALWAYS began our meetings with questions about her welfare.
I never heard Prasanna utter an unkind or malicious word about anyone in all the eleven years I knew him. He was dogged, to the point of obstinacy about an issue or matter he really cared about. He had immense integrity, kindness and a warmth that always extended to supporting the underdog and the downtrodden. To me, as a Christian, he showed me the face of Jesus in his dealings with others and I know he would be hugely touched to hear me talking of him in those terms. This is no exaggeration, he really was that special. He exuded that elusive “peace that surpasseth all understanding.”
I will miss him enormously. I can feel his presence in his absence as I write these words.
Margaret, I send you my deepest and sincerest condolences. If I feel like this, I have no idea what you must be going through and I will not descend into cliché with trite formulas of consolation. All I can say is that he was and is a great man. It was and is and will be, a privilege for us all to have been touched by him.
It is nothing less for us, than an outpouring of grace.
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