Celebrating Life – A Pictorial Biography of a person’s life story to be named a book is extraordinarily novel and admirable. To me, that is the case. Humbly I admit and exhibit my ignorance, if it is not a new way of titling a one’s life story as a pictorial biography. It’s quite a brilliant idea to note.
This Pictorial Biography is about Nandasiri (Nandi) Jasenthuliyana. The book is about the luminosity of the extraordinary activities of his life at the UNO. He began his life there famously as the Director General of Outer Space. He subsequently rose to many high positions in it. Most important is that he functioned as the Deputy General Secretary of the UNO. This happened when he was at Vienna as the Head of the Vienna Office, and was in control of over 4,000 employees. This is absolutely admirable.
He, in fact, received credentials of other nations’ ambassadors representing UNO. He in fact received the credentials from Poologasingham as the Ceylon ambassador, Nandi himself being a Ceylonese at the time.
What is interesting is that the information of all events is reported via photographs. This becomes quite convincing and significant. All the events happened in his life are presented via photographs. They are provided with names denoting chapters.Chapters idealise meaningfully of the event signifying the person’s presence and their capacities. In the event what represent via photographs were described in words they would have been normal biographies and perhaps laborious having had to spend a lot of time to read picturising different notions in reader minds.
The photographs are named very distinctly and distinguishably. There are altogether twenty-seven chapters. A few I have to present considering the importance of the occasions and events. They are thus – his sporting days which categorically presents his college and early life. This chapter speaks of his simplicity and rawness. More important presentations I wish to label are many. Of them I record them very important. A few of them are thus – photographs with United Nations Secretary Generals, with Heads of States accepting Credentials from Ambassadors, with Astronauts and Cosmonauts and the photographs of him speaking at International Conferences consisting of 4 pages. I note that every page is paramount. For that a reader has to look at them patiently.
Before I conclude this article, I cannot forget about the brilliant write-up titled “‘Nandi’- the Southern Star in Space” by H. L. D. Mahindapala. I quote him in consequence, by one important paragraph.
“The Washington-based National Space Society honoured him with the rare distinction of being one of the 100 “Space people who have had the greatest impact on our lives.” In this exclusive club he is in the company of celebrities like John F. Kennedy, astronauts Yuri Gagarin and Neil Armstrong, movie director Stanley Kubrick exploring futuristic themes and movie producer Steven Spielberg. All these are shining stars of space exploration. They are the Columbuses of the new age going in search of the unknown space that is most critical to the next stage of man’s evolution. The first was in the Silurian Age when the fish and algae came out the sea and established colonies on land. The second was when man went out on voyages exploring the unknown parts of the earth.The third–and perhaps the final stage – was when man stepped out of the earth and moved into space.
