Features

Memories of WW II and two Easter Sundays

Published

2 years ago

2024/03/31

British troops in Kandy during WW2.

My brother boasted he announced to the household and immediate neighbourhood the stunning news on September 1, 1939, by placing a painted placard on the door of our play tent in Katukelle, Kandy, which read War is Declared. I did not know who was warring against whom; however pictures of Winston Churchill and Adolf Hitler were etched in my child’s mind. And then restrictions and change of mode of living were felt with; however, a sense of complete security with widowed Mother managing things well, assisted by Grandfather.

Restrictions and Rationing

We soon felt the effects of war: difficulty in getting imported stuff like butter and cheese due to shipping to and from the UK being highly restricted. Torpedo laden German submarines prowled the oceans. Even local food was restricted because vast numbers of soldiers stationed in the island had to be fed – mostly local food. Later more were stationed in Kandy; the South East Asia Command (SEAC) being headquartered in Peradeniya. Dashingly handsome Lord Louis Mountbatten – Head of SEAC – resided in the Peradeniya Gardens, seen horse riding in Udawathakele. This was during the latter years of WW II when fighting was severe in the Far East, Japan having bombed Pearl Harbour on December 8, 1941.

Hundreds of soldiers were billeted in Kandy, its environs and more in Peradeniya. They were differentiated by us kids as ‘White’ – British, Canadian and Australian; Indian – with some in turbans, the name Gurkha being mentioned; and ‘Black’ – from African countries. The last were the most dreaded by us children but more so by villagers. Rare consequences of secret co-habiting were evident later by the birth of unusually dark babies with crinkly hair. Presumably more consensual than rape; soldiers being generous with money, food stuff and cigarettes. Discipline was strict among them.

Conditions then

As I mentioned earlier, food was scarce. Oliver Goonetilake was Food Commissioner liaising with the foreign army commanders. One could not even transport one’s own paddy and rice from owned village fields without a permit from the Kandy Kachcheri. Mother was managing things competently with my eldest brother helping. His greater help was keeping a strict eye on my three elder sisters’ friendships. Our family, like many others, was conservative. Romances were strictly debarred, but the elder two had their love interest intact, with secrecy. Exchanged letters and brief encounters in the much chaperoned gatherings of family friends, was all they enjoyed. I remember clearly running to the postbox at the junction of the upper Peradeniya Road and the lower road to the Kandy market, to post letters. They were my second sister’s correspondence with a relative, disapproved of by Mother as a mere clerk. She had ambitions for this most beautiful daughter: marriage to a higher grade public servant.

I also remember a widow who had seen much better times with her husband, who shot himself. Many a day she would visit, pleading with Mother to let her have some raw rice. Pity would overcome Mother’s fear of being detected ‘transporting rice’ – a punishable offence. Thus son Teddy arriving surreptitiously late in the evening to collect a bag of rice through a window in our front room.

Preparedness

Air raid practices were soon initiated in Kandy. The moment the ominous wail of the siren was heard we hurried under a bed with pencils stuck across mouths. An air raid shelter was built in the neighbourhood; Mother said we were not going down in it. Why? No exposure of elder daughters to the scrutiny of other shelter seekers and Air Raid Wardens. In schools, these practices were on at least once a week. Miss Allen, Principal Girls’ High School where we were students, would blow her whistle and march from block to block peeping into classrooms. Sometimes, kids in our class – Middle Kindergarten (age 6) – would fall asleep on their desks! A second whistle ended the practice session.

Admiral Louis Mountbatten in Kandy.

Blackout was strictly enforced with less lights being switched on or lamps in homes lit. No road lights. Very thick curtains were insisted upon and if streaks of light escaped outside, the Warden in charge of the area would visit and reprimand.

We never went outdoors after early sunset. Mother was particularly apprehensive of soldiers coming to our verandah with dating girls in mind. This was mostly due to the next door Burgher family entertaining soldiers for evening parties. Sylvia, the grown up daughter, would play the piano and sing while couples ballroom-danced; considered a heinous crime by Mother. It was whispered that that home had plenty butter, corned beef, chocolates and other forbidden luxuries. Maybe alcohol too was brought in by the soldiers.

One probably drunken soldier did enter our verandah one early night. Mother gathered all of us like an enfolding hen and we silently shivered. A rickshaw coolie parked his vehicle in the open front verandah and slept therein too; a security guard to us. He intrepidly rose to the occasion and persuaded or man-handled the intruder. Mother was so thankful that henceforth he was served dinner and breakfast!

It happened one early night that the next door neighbor – Fernandos – had to be visited to get some brandy probably, which was a panacea for all ailments then, or ginger to boil Kottamalli. Mother opted to take me along – her escort – leaving my older brother to guard the sisters. Mother decided to exit from our back door and walk along on the lower road, since Peradeniya Road was full of soldiers returning to their barracks. I remember clearly my mother clutching tight my hand and us entering a totally dark road. But glowing with many red lights surging forward. They were the lighted cigarettes between lips of a multitude of walking soldiers. Knocking on the Fernando’s back door we got what we wanted and Mr Fernando magnanimously walked us back to our door. I still picture that scene: the marching boots with no bodies seen, only the red brightening and dimming as cigarettes were smoked.

Totally unaware of the dread suffered by the elders due to the soldiers’ presence in vast numbers, we kids quite enjoyed showing the V sign to passing, open backed vans and trucks that traversed Peradeniya Road. We would stop our evening games in neighbours’ homes and run out on the road with the sign for victory held above our heads with the first and second fingers raised. We were often rewarded for our ‘patriotism’ with the soldiers throwing us chocolates, sweets and packets of chewing gum (forbidden by mothers then as teeth damagers).

Privation to foreign residents

Shipping to England was especially dangerous and thus resident British were greatly inconvenienced, being deprived of their annual furloughs in the home country and delays or non-arrival of newspapers and letters. We once were at morning Assembly in the KHS hall when Miss Allen announced the death of our Irish Vice Principal, sailing to UK when the ship she was on board was torpedoed.

I suppose this restriction was suffered by planters in our tea estates, at that time all British. It was later that locals were recruited as ‘creepers’ and took over estates and enjoyed furloughs in Britain, traveling by ship.

Easter Sunday 1942

Things were hotting up world-wide with two ferocious wars on-going in two regions: Europe and the Far East. The Japanese armies had advanced almost to the Indian border. Ceylon was embroiled with SEAC stationed here and the Trincomalee harbor used for naval forays and as a refuge for attacked Allied ships. Colombo suffered an air attack on Easter Sunday April 5, 1942, the target of the raid being the destruction of the British Eastern Fleet in the Trincomalee Harbour. Much has been written about this and a later Japanese air raid.

There was unease even in Kandy. My elder sister was married and living in Katugastota. This brother–in-law, more a father to us siblings than an in-law, suggested we move to his sister’s home where he and my sister were living then. Many schools closed temporarily and some opened branches in securer areas in the Hill Country.

Leonard Birchall who spotted the approaching Japanese armada

We moved to Ranawana, Katugastota, and lived with a family of five children. The generosity of the host family is remembered with joy and gratitude.

And then on May 8, 1945, the war in Europe was over with Allied Forces marching as conquerors to Germany – VE Day. The war in the Far East ended on August 15, 1945, with the surrender of Japan signed by Emperor Hirohito. The day was named VJ Day.

Gradually the situation in Kandy, especially, moved to how it had been before the war. We returned to our home on Peradeniya Road, Katukelle, to a secure life and resumed schooling which we had missed for months.

Easter Sunday 2019

Easter Sunday, April 21, 2019, is still painfully fresh in mind and kept in the news by the quest for the mastermind that goaded or encouraged the terrorist suicide bombing of three churches and three luxury hotels in Colombo. Some 269 people lost their lives, including at least 45 foreigners and three police officers and eight suicide bombers while 500 were injured.

Neither the affected families nor the Catholic Church have had the comfort of closure of this most terrible tragedy. Malcolm Cardinal Ranjith keeps insisting on the truth being bared as he firmly believes there was a hidden hand behind the bombings – not solely that of the Islamic die-hards nor ISIS – but an instigating political push given them. The latest is ex Prez Sirisena declaring he knows who was, or whom were, the instigators of the massive massacre for personal gain. Sri Lanka needs to have the truth out and due compensation paid those who suffered.

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Features

Recruiting academics to state universities – beset by archaic selection processes?

Published

2 hours ago

2026/03/3

Thilina Walpola

by Kaushalya Perera

Time has, by and large, stood still in the business of academic staff recruitment to state universities. Qualifications have proliferated and evolved to be more interdisciplinary, but our selection processes and evaluation criteria are unchanged since at least the late 1990s. But before I delve into the problems, I will describe the existing processes and schemes of recruitment. The discussion is limited to UGC-governed state universities (and does not include recruitment to medical and engineering sectors) though the problems may be relevant to other higher education institutions (HEIs).

How recruitment happens currently in SL state universities

Academic ranks in Sri Lankan state universities can be divided into three tiers (subdivisions are not discussed).

* Lecturer (Probationary)

– recruited with a four-year undergraduate degree. A tiny step higher is the Lecturer (Unconfirmed), recruited with a postgraduate degree but no teaching experience.

* A Senior Lecturer can be recruited with certain postgraduate qualifications and some number of years of teaching and research.

* Above this is the professor (of four types), which can be left out of this discussion since only one of those (Chair Professor) is by application.

State universities cannot hire permanent academic staff as and when they wish. Prior to advertising a vacancy, approval to recruit is obtained through a mind-numbing and time-consuming process (months!) ending at the Department of Management Services. The call for applications must list all ranks up to Senior Lecturer. All eligible candidates for Probationary to Senior Lecturer are interviewed, e.g., if a Department wants someone with a doctoral degree, they must still advertise for and interview candidates for all ranks, not only candidates with a doctoral degree. In the evaluation criteria, the first degree is more important than the doctoral degree (more on this strange phenomenon later). All of this is only possible when universities are not under a ‘hiring freeze’, which governments declare regularly and generally lasts several years.

Problem type 1

– Archaic processes and evaluation criteria

Twenty-five years ago, as a probationary lecturer with a first degree, I was a typical hire. We would be recruited, work some years and obtain postgraduate degrees (ideally using the privilege of paid study leave to attend a reputed university in the first world). State universities are primarily undergraduate teaching spaces, and when doctoral degrees were scarce, hiring probationary lecturers may have been a practical solution. The path to a higher degree was through the academic job. Now, due to availability of candidates with postgraduate qualifications and the problems of retaining academics who find foreign postgraduate opportunities, preference for candidates applying with a postgraduate qualification is growing. The evaluation scheme, however, prioritises the first degree over the candidate’s postgraduate education. Were I to apply to a Faculty of Education, despite a PhD on language teaching and research in education, I may not even be interviewed since my undergraduate degree is not in education. The ‘first degree first’ phenomenon shows that universities essentially ignore the intellectual development of a person beyond their early twenties. It also ignores the breadth of disciplines and their overlap with other fields.

This can be helped (not solved) by a simple fix, which can also reduce brain drain: give precedence to the doctoral degree in the required field, regardless of the candidate’s first degree, effected by a UGC circular. The suggestion is not fool-proof. It is a first step, and offered with the understanding that any selection process, however well the evaluation criteria are articulated, will be beset by multiple issues, including that of bias. Like other Sri Lankan institutions, universities, too, have tribal tendencies, surfacing in the form of a preference for one’s own alumni. Nevertheless, there are other problems that are, arguably, more pressing as I discuss next. In relation to the evaluation criteria, a problem is the narrow interpretation of any regulation, e.g., deciding the degree’s suitability based on the title rather than considering courses in the transcript. Despite rhetoric promoting internationalising and inter-disciplinarity, decision-making administrative and academic bodies have very literal expectations of candidates’ qualifications, e.g., a candidate with knowledge of digital literacy should show this through the title of the degree!

Problem type 2 – The mess of badly regulated higher education

A direct consequence of the contemporary expansion of higher education is a large number of applicants with myriad qualifications. The diversity of degree programmes cited makes the responsibility of selecting a suitable candidate for the job a challenging but very important one. After all, the job is for life – it is very difficult to fire a permanent employer in the state sector.

Widely varying undergraduate degree programmes.

At present, Sri Lankan undergraduates bring qualifications (at times more than one) from multiple types of higher education institutions: a degree from a UGC-affiliated state university, a state university external to the UGC, a state institution that is not a university, a foreign university, or a private HEI aka ‘private university’. It could be a degree received by attending on-site, in Sri Lanka or abroad. It could be from a private HEI’s affiliated foreign university or an external degree from a state university or an online only degree from a private HEI that is ‘UGC-approved’ or ‘Ministry of Education approved’, i.e., never studied in a university setting. Needless to say, the diversity (and their differences in quality) are dizzying. Unfortunately, under the evaluation scheme all degrees ‘recognised’ by the UGC are assigned the same marks. The same goes for the candidates’ merits or distinctions, first classes, etc., regardless of how difficult or easy the degree programme may be and even when capabilities, exposure, input, etc are obviously different.

Similar issues are faced when we consider postgraduate qualifications, though to a lesser degree. In my discipline(s), at least, a postgraduate degree obtained on-site from a first-world university is preferable to one from a local university (which usually have weekend or evening classes similar to part-time study) or online from a foreign university. Elitist this may be, but even the best local postgraduate degrees cannot provide the experience and intellectual growth gained by being in a university that gives you access to six million books and teaching and supervision by internationally-recognised scholars. Unfortunately, in the evaluation schemes for recruitment, the worst postgraduate qualification you know of will receive the same marks as one from NUS, Harvard or Leiden.

The problem is clear but what about a solution?

Recruitment to state universities needs to change to meet contemporary needs. We need evaluation criteria that allows us to get rid of the dross as well as a more sophisticated institutional understanding of using them. Recruitment is key if we want our institutions (and our country) to progress. I reiterate here the recommendations proposed in ‘Considerations for Higher Education Reform’ circulated previously by Kuppi Collective:

* Change bond regulations to be more just, in order to retain better qualified academics.

* Update the schemes of recruitment to reflect present-day realities of inter-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary training in order to recruit suitably qualified candidates.

* Ensure recruitment processes are made transparent by university administrations.

Kaushalya Perera is a senior lecturer at the University of Colombo.

(Kuppi is a politics and pedagogy happening on the margins of the lecture hall that parodies, subverts, and simultaneously reaffirms social hierarchies.)

Features

Talento … oozing with talent

Published

2 hours ago

2026/03/3

Thilina Walpola

Talento: Gained recognition as a leading wedding and dance band

This week, too, the spotlight is on an outfit that has gained popularity, mainly through social media.

Last week we had MISTER Band in our scene, and on 10th February, Yellow Beatz – both social media favourites.

Talento is a seven-piece band that plays all types of music, from the ‘60s to the modern tracks of today.

The band has reached many heights, since its inception in 2012, and has gained recognition as a leading wedding and dance band in the scene here.

The members that makeup the outfit have a solid musical background, which comes through years of hard work and dedication

Their portfolio of music contains a mix of both western and eastern songs and are carefully selected, they say, to match the requirements of the intended audience, occasion, or event.

Although the baila is a specialty, which is inherent to this group, that originates from Moratuwa, their repertoire is made up of a vast collection of love, classic, oldies and modern-day hits.

The musicians, who make up Talento, are:

Prabuddha Geetharuchi:

Geilee Fonseka: Dynamic and charismatic vocalist

Prabuddha Geetharuchi: The main man behind the band Talento

(Vocalist/ Frontman). He is an avid music enthusiast and was mentored by a lot of famous musicians, and trainers, since he was a child. Growing up with them influenced him to take on western songs, as well as other music styles. A Peterite, he is the main man behind the band Talento and is a versatile singer/entertainer who never fails to get the crowd going.

Geilee Fonseka (Vocals):

A dynamic and charismatic vocalist whose vibrant stage presence, and powerful voice, bring a fresh spark to every performance. Young, energetic, and musically refined, she is an artiste who effortlessly blends passion with precision – captivating audiences from the very first note. Blessed with an immense vocal range, Geilee is a truly versatile singer, confidently delivering Western and Eastern music across multiple languages and genres.

Chandana Perera (Drummer):

His expertise and exceptional skills have earned him recognition as one of the finest acoustic drummers in Sri Lanka. With over 40 tours under his belt, Chandana has demonstrated his dedication and passion for music, embodying the essential role of a drummer as the heartbeat of any band.

Harsha Soysa:

(Bassist/Vocalist). He a chorister of the western choir of St. Sebastian’s College, Moratuwa, who began his musical education under famous voice trainers, as well as bass guitar trainers in Sri Lanka. He has also performed at events overseas. He acts as the second singer of the band

Udara Jayakody:

(Keyboardist). He is also a qualified pianist, adding technical flavour to Talento’s music. His singing and harmonising skills are an extra asset to the band. From his childhood he has been a part of a number of orchestras as a pianist. He has also previously performed with several famous western bands.

Aruna Madushanka:

(Saxophonist). His proficiciency in playing various instruments, including the saxophone, soprano saxophone, and western flute, showcases his versatility as a musician, and his musical repertoire is further enhanced by his remarkable singing ability.

Prashan Pramuditha:

(Lead guitar). He has the ability to play different styles, both oriental and western music, and he also creates unique tones and patterns with the guitar..

Features

Special milestone for JJ Twins

Published

2 hours ago

2026/03/3

Thilina Walpola

Twin brothers Julian and Jason Prins

The JJ Twins, the Sri Lankan musical duo, performing in the Maldives, and known for blending R&B, Hip Hop, and Sri Lankan rhythms, thereby creating a unique sound, have come out with a brand-new single ‘Me Mawathe.’

In fact, it’s a very special milestone for the twin brothers, Julian and Jason Prins, as ‘Me Mawathe’ is their first ever Sinhala song!

‘Me Mawathe’ showcases a fresh new sound, while staying true to the signature harmony and emotion that their fans love.

This heartfelt track captures the beauty of love, journey, and connection, brought to life through powerful vocals and captivating melodies.

It marks an exciting new chapter for the JJ Twins as they expand their musical journey and connect with audiences in a whole new way.

Their recent album, ‘CONCLUDED,’ explores themes of love, heartbreak, and healing, and include hits like ‘Can’t Get You Off My Mind’ and ‘You Left Me Here to Die’ which showcase their emotional intensity.

Readers could stay connected and follow JJ Twins on social media for exclusive updates, behind-the-scenes moments, and upcoming releases:

Instagram: http://instagram.com/jjtwinsofficial

TikTok: http://tiktok.com/@jjtwinsmusic

Facebook: http://facebook.com/jjtwinssingers

YouTube: http://youtube.com/jjtwins