First shot failed Ranjan’s second shot at the A’ levels
Body builder Ranjan Ramanayake, 56, after pumping iron for the last many years of his life is now in the process of pumping brain into his brawn as he showed by sitting for the Advance Level examination this week to dare prove to the world that if he had missed the bus the first time round he had the spirit to give it another shot, even 38 years later.
Film star of the movie One shot and a host others, now turned politician and now wannabe scholar must be given hundred out of hundred for admitting to the public his dismal school record. Ah, but all must be forgiven. For that were in his salad days when he was green in judgment and perhaps not so cold but more hot in blood.
How many are in Parliament who do not possess even their O’levels? How many will admit it, even as they do not reveal their assets but gaudily flaunts it in the public air in cars? And how many will have the intelligence to realise that learning is a lifelong thing; and that the more one grows old the more one comes to know how little one knows? And how many of them will subject themselves to undergo the discipline of study even at this late stage in a bid to improve their meager store of knowledge? If only they strived to do so in the self same manner the work underhand to improve the store of their ill gotten gains, the nation will be in a much better state.
All the best Ranjan and may you pass with flying colours.
Only one word of caution.
In the words of the poet Alexander Pope, remember:
A little learning is a dangerous thing; drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring: there shallow draughts intoxicate the brain, and drinking largely sobers us again.
Best of luck at the exams. And best of luck at the courts too.