I don’t think I ever had a choice but to study and get a degree. That was the story of all the middle class Sri Lanka Tamils growing up in the 1960s and 1970s. We were indoctrinated from a very young age that education was our path to salvation. That too, all of us had to become engineers or doctors. If we failed to get admitted to the two or three Sri Lanka Universities that existed at that time (Colombo, Katubadde or Peradeniya), the rich kids were sent abroad to study medicine and the others studied accountancy at home. I don’t know why Sri Lankan parents wanted their children to study medicine or engineering. Some have told me that it is because of their desire for their children to excel in fields with good career potential. There might be some justification for that in Tamil literature. Great Saint Thiruvalluvar wrote “The benefit which a father should confer on his son is to give him precedence in the assembly of the learned” ( தந்தை மகற் காà®±்à®±ு நன்à®±ி அவ
