October 1, 2020, 9:48p10

Yesterday, Wednesday 30th September was Rosy and Athula Senanayake’s 39th wedding anniversary, barely three months since he passed away. That evening, at the Mayoral Residence down Sir Marcus Fernando Mawatha, was a beautiful Memorial Service to which friends and family and colleagues were invited. It was more to ‘celebrate’ Athula’s life rather than to ‘mourn’ his death. That’s how he had wanted it to be and that’s how it happened … with beautiful gospel music interspersed with short, nostalgic speeches recalling the multi-dimensional person Athula was. At the end, just before the final hymn ‘Amazing Grace’ was sung, Thisakya announced that Pastor Tissa Weerasinghe would speak. That moment instantly took me back 45 years to the early 1970s to the same, and much younger Pastor Tissa Weerasingha of the Calvary Church in Siebel Avenue, Kirulapona, whose Sunday School my little brother Nirmal and I attended. I was eleven or twelve

Read more...

August 5, 2020, 9:48p08

This looks like a rundown animal shelter in some farm deep in the countryside. Sorry you’re wrong. This is Polwatte and this was the Department of English of the University of Kelaniya. This was home to me for four full years, from August 1981 to July 1985. Our part of Polwatte was semi-verdant terrain that periodically stank of bullshit. There was also cow shit and cat shit and dog shit, and if we were really unlucky, random goat shit too. After the rains this buffet of shits turned mushy and runny, like mousse au chocolat, in texture and colour, and that’s a totally different story. Let me now elaborate ! This elongated building with its half brick / half mesh walls housed three lecture rooms, one staff room, a small and congested room for the Head of Department and a disgustingly miserable ‘toilet’. Polwatte was still ‘gama’ (village) at that

Read more...

June 26, 2020, 9:48p06

It was 4.00 am on a fabulously cold and chilly, wet and windy, dreary and drizzly, utterly rainy morning two weeks ago, on Thursday 11 June, when our alarms began ringing, rudely throwing us out of our warm and comfy beds in our respective houses. All of us. The De Lanerolle Brothers Rohan and Ishan, and Neranjan De Silva and the entire 30 member crew and Myself. Pre-dawn Colombo was barely awake as we all trooped in, bright and chirpy, at the Lotus Tower. With permissions all cleared by the very efficient and ultra-meticulous DLBros, brief formalities saw us in and literally whoooooshed up, in a high speed lift, from the bowels of the Nelum Kuluna, perched on the waterfront of the Beira Lake at D.R Wijewardene Mawatha in Colombo, Sri Lanka … to the very summit of this tallest self-supported structure in South Asia. Oh boy, weren’t we all

Read more...

June 19, 2020, 9:48p06

Anne-Marie Bulathsinhala (29 Jan 1953 – 19 June 2020) The thick pall of death lies over of ‘Kelvin Grove’, 5/2 Hill Street, Kandy. Since early last evening, in the sitting room, lies the casket bearing the mortal remains of Anne-Marie Bulathsinhala. She looks peaceful in death. The news of her demise early last morning, Friday 19th June, after a brief illness was not totally unexpected, but it did come as a shock too, to us all. And as this morning wore on, text messages and watsapp calls zigzagged across the world breaking the sad news to grieving family and friends. Anne-Marie was the light of ‘Kelvin Grove’. She was, for years, the epicentre of the Pereira and Rodrigo and Bulathsinhala families, and the extended families too. She held them all together. In this day and age of high parapet walls and padlocked gates and appointments, ‘Kelvin Grove’, the family bastion,

Read more...

June 7, 2020, 9:48p06

So this was thirty years ago in 1990 when the Wendy Whatmore Academy turned 50 years old and Aunty Bundle (Wendy Holsinger) and Co decided to stage ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs’, the musical. Directed by Christine Tambimuttu, there was Rita Vedamuttu (who also helped me with my horrible stammer) as Vocal Coach and Maryanne David as Music Coach. The costumes were designed by Thusitha Jayasundera and the lighting was designed by Steve de la Zilwa. Snow White was (the wide-eyed teenager) Tracy Holsinger while Andrew David was the Hunter who spared her life. The Seven Dwarfs were all WWA ‘girls’ – Sonali Pathirana as Grumpy, Simone Christoffelsz as Doc, Candice Morrel her sister as Sneezy, Yasmin as Dopey (and she was a WWA teacher too at that time), Renoza her daughter as Bashful, Gaia as Happy and Manisha as Sleepy. How I ended up in this production as

Read more...

June 5, 2020, 9:48p06

Phew what memories …. my journey with you began with Bonsoir (and the Embassy of France) in 1986. It has been one massive learning experience and full of great memories too. Fanclub came almost immediately afterwards. I was brought in when the regular presenter was sacked. You told me, and very specifically too, that I was only a ‘temporary presenter’ until you found a suitable replacement. Fifteen years later, when I quit ‘Fanclub’ on my 40th birthday in 2012, you had still not found that “suitable replacement”. I consider myself exceptionally lucky. And in between you gave me so many, many other opportunities. There was ‘Dhamma in Daily Life’ (a discussion every Poya night), Talk Shows, Business Talk Shows, etc etc etc. You made me a News Reader too. To this day I call myself “Sri Lanka’s worst News Reader”. That’s what I say to myself, chidingly and convincingly. How

Read more...

May 31, 2020, 9:48p05

I bumped into these beauties in a little flower cum garden store one beautiful drizzly autumnal Sunday morning in Britanny off the northern coast of France. Audrey and I mandatorily parked in the parking lot, and, fighting the biting wind from blowing our jackets off, rain stinging our faces, scrambled into this store. My intention was to buy fleurs for (my adopted Breton mother), Maryvonne Lefebvre of ‘Les Bois Normands’ in St. Alban, a little bourg equi-distance between St. Brieuc and Lamballe on the côte Eméraude. And as I surveyed the fleuriste’s interior, love at first sight it was. “Coup de foudre” as the French would say. There they were, perched on a counter top, heads held up haughtily high as though it was beneath their dignity to look at the clientele. They were relatively expensive for my Sri Lankan Rupee into Euro conversion. Old Mme Henriette, the fleuriste, behind

Read more...