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Schooling at Ladies College

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4 years ago

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BY PADMANI MENDIS


Excerpted from Memories that linger…..

 

I had started schooling at Ladies’ College at the age of five years. First memories are of dancing round the maypole with Miss Nellie, our teacher in the “Baby Class”. Her enthusiasm while with us was infectious. Singing with her “Jack and Jill”, “Little Miss Muffet”, “Humpty Dumpty” and so many other nursery rhymes is clear, is unforgettable. My favourite song was “The Pansy Flower is Purple” because to me, it was about my mother. I yet remember the words.

My best friend from our first day in the “Baby Class” was Deepthi Mendis. Our families knew each other which made ties stronger. We remained “best friends” throughout our time in school. That she is now my sister-in-law is but a coincidence. Other “baby” friends starting school together were Ruki, Chandrani, Yogarani and Sunil. Unfortunately, those are the only ones whose names come to mind.

Then there was Miss Freda and Miss Gladys, our class teachers over the next two years. I remember Miss Freda liked me and I received my first school prize that year. A vivid memory I have of this time is of the annual Kindergarten Concert. One year, one of the action songs I was selected to sing with two others was “Polly Put the Kettle On”. The younger of my brothers never let me forget this, three of them together often imitating me at home, exaggerating the performance of course. My mother was at the concert and bought me an ice-cream during the interval.

Other memories really become clear enough to recall only when I reached about the end of our time in Primary School. Mino had joined Ladies’ at the age of eight. She, with her sisters Shireen, Mali and Neelakanthi, had been at Visakha until then. Mino clicked immediately with Deepthi and me, so now we were three. When the Tamil and Sinhala streams were merged in Form I, Vasanth was put into the same class as Deepthi, Mino and me. We blended instantly and now we were four. The next year, Saro came to Ladies’ and we ended up as five best friends for the rest of our time at school.

While at school Deepthi’s sister Sita, and her friends, Kantha and Neela had been inseparable, starting school one year before us in the “Baby Class”. Savi was with us since she came to Ladies’ in the Upper Kindergarten and Deirdre since she came towards the end of primary school. Savi always carried away the class prize. So, it was no surprise when she took to the academia and as Professor Savitri Goonesekere, to become the first woman Vice Chancellor of the University of Colombo.In the latter years of school and after that, and with university, friendships merged and the group expanded. And now, nearly eighty years since some of us first came together, we have all been bound closely and remain friends. We meet frequently, sometimes on birthdays, at other times over a meal in each other’s homes.

Kantha is the most frequent hostess. She never forgets to include other friends from the past. She sometimes entertains in her home at Spathodea Avenue and at other times it has of course to be at the Green Cabin. After all she was the granddaughter of its founder, Mudliyar Thomas Rodrigo. Generosity, concern, hospitality and giving continue to be a part of her, as it is of her family. The Green Cabin continues to be a family business.

Mino at school was naughty, a born prankster. Her first prank, which we still recall with laughter, is one she played on our class teacher, Mrs. Samarasekera. Sambo was very religious. She had just been given a beautiful new Bible by her family and she brought this to the classroom every day, placing it lovingly on the front of her desk. One morning, Mino produced a metallic imitational blob of blue ink from somewhere and while Sambo had gone out for a moment, placed it on Sambo’s Bible. One does not need to describe the consequences…

Another prank I remember is related to the death of Joseph Stalin. Mino got us all, the whole class, to play a prank on “Rat” or Sugirtham Ratnanayagam, our class teacher in Form Three. She was very strict and made every one of us afraid of her. School finished at 3.15 p.m. Mino’s plan was that at 3.00 o’clock sharp, I as the class captain would stand up, and then the whole class would follow and stand to attention. A two-minute silence was to be observed for Stalin.

This we did. And there was “Rat”, not knowing what it was all about, shouting at us to sit down. As class-captain, Rat expected me to listen to her. So there she was, shouting “Padmini, sit down. Sit down.” That there was no response from her “goodie” Padmini was a surprise to her. She continued naming others who she thought would obey her, but none did. We kept our word to each other and sat down only when the time was up. Our punishment was severe …

As far back as I could remember, I had been the class captain. School was where we first learned democratic values. Class monitors and the class committees were always elected fair and square. Never selected by a class teacher. My classmates obviously liked me. And I am confident that they would not have liked me had I been loud and bossy. I was told that I was “quiet”. I believe I was diligent and conscientious and, I hope, with prejudice to none.Every year the school awarded a Class Shield for the best behaved, and our class had been a recipient of that. A Class Shield for the best kept classroom, Garden Shield and a Garden Prize were also awarded every year and we have received all those as well at one annual prize-giving or another.

Going back to Form Three. At the start of the last term of the year the new captain and committee were to be elected again. “Rat” our class teacher, had had enough of our pranks by now. So she declared, quite undemocratically we thought, that Padmini and the others could not be re-elected. She wanted a new set. So there it was.

But came the day of the announcement of prizes and Form Three had been awarded the shield for the best kept classroom. Now that made “Rat” proud. We were “her girls”. But what was she to do? She had set a dilemma for herself. Who was she to send up to collect the shield? She knew that I had not stopped being my usual diligent and helpful self.

It was in Form I that our class won the Garden Shield. Or it may have been the Garden Prize. As the school year started, any class wanting to do so could select the piece of land they wanted for a garden.So we selected a plot that was in size about 12 inches wide and may be 12 or 14 feet in length. This plot was convenient because it was close to where our classroom was located that year. We tilled the land with garden spades and other small implements we brought from home; we made proper drains for irrigation and then divided it into 12 small beds.

On six beds we planted vegetables – a carrot, a beetroot, a leek, a Bombay onion and the like. The space of each vegetable bed, as you can imagine, did not allow for more than one plant of each variety. Similarly, on the other six plots we planted flowers – marigold, cosmos, phlox, zenia and so on. Probably again from seeds we brought from home. Different groups led by committee members took responsibility for watering, fertilising, weeding and other associated tasks by the week. Another lesson in democracy. And oh what fun that learning was!

Much later I was a school prefect for two years, in Form six, one and two. Head prefects during these two years were the sisters Sita and Deepthi, now my sisters-in-law. The main role of a school prefect was to ensure school discipline. To ensure discipline in others, one had first to be disciplined oneself.

So being a prefect brought about within me an amazing change, responsibility together with self-discipline, one that I am thankful for to this day. That sense of responsibility and self-discipline carried me through a working life and career that was at times hard to face. These difficulties I will recall later. I am impatient now to share with you one of the happiest phases of my childhood – life with my Hulugalle cousins and their parents.

Boarding Life

But before that, to jump forward and get out of the way an experience that was to me not too pleasant. At the time I had started secondary school my mother felt I was old enough to be in the school boarding. Deirdre Jonklaas had also come into the boarding with me and was a friend indeed when one was needed. It was comforting to have her as a confidante because I was not very happy with boarding life. In a boarding full of girls, there were bound to be insincerity, petty tale-telling and broken friendships.

When I came to Form five and was getting ready to sit for the Senior School Certificate Examination, I persuaded my mother that she had to do something about my dissatisfaction. So she discussed my situation with Miss Mabel Simon, the School Principal. It was the practice at the time that our school principals would be sent by the Church Missionary Society in the UK and as was Miss Simon. By nationality, she was Australian.

She gave her permission for me to be a weekly-boarder. My mother could take me home on Friday evening and get me back on Sunday evening, in time to be taken to Evensong at Christ Church, Galle Face with all other boarders in Form one and above. That did not solve my problem. I was still unhappy. So my mother took me out of the boarding for my last year at school.

Living with Cousins

At around the year 1945 when I started school, Kalubowila, where we lived was considered to be quite distant from Colombo. Too distant for me to travel daily to school from there. It was natural that Aunty Lily asked my mother to let me live with her. Aunty Lily was my mother’s sister, Lilian, married to Herbert Hulugalle. H.A.J. as he was known in the world of journalism, newspapers and to all who knew him or of him. He was at one time the Editor of the Ceylon Daily News.

Aunty Lily was that to others, but to her nieces and nephews she was “Darla Mamma”. “Darla” because that was how my oldest brother just learning to speak said the word “Darling”. And with her unlimited affection, and equally unlimited kindness, concern and generous giving, she was “Darla Mamma”, darling to all of us nieces and nephews who were to follow.

She married after my mother and so her younger children were closer to my age. While the older ones were Damayantha, Upatissa, Harrischandra and Lakdasa, it was Lilamani, Arjuna and Ranjan with whom I interacted most. Damayantha was “Akka” to all and so she was to me. The love she demonstrated to me I can never forget. When she passed me by, she could not but resist squatting down, pulling my fat cheeks apart to place a quick peck on each. At other times she would grab me, tap me on my bulging tummy and say “what is in here?” And I would have to answer with the one she had taught me saying, “a baby elephant”. And we would both laugh happily over it.

Not long ago, her sister, my cousin Lilamani, whose father had called “Lili Budge” (and now her cousins continue to call “Budge”), and I were reminiscing about our childhood together. There was much to talk about our mothers and of the lasting influence they had on us, as they had with their other children. They were both loving and gave generously to those who had less. They were humble in their giving and made it demonstrably a sharing. They had been born with the literal “silver spoons in their mouths” and had an exotic childhood.

They had grown up in Regina Walauwa while frequenting their grandparent’s home just down the path at Alfred House to meet their cousins and to play with them. They had been schooled by English Governesses at home. They had been driven in carriages led by horses. Their father was the Consul for Chile. These were colonial times. They had witnessed their parents entertain bounteously foreign elite. It is said that their father raced horses and enjoyed that. There is still a flagpole standing in the front garden of College House. It would of course have been used to hoist the Chilean flag when occasion demanded it.

Our mothers seldom talked of this side of their childhood. Instead of what would have been stories from that life, they spoke to us of their family life at a more intimate and personal level so that they would implant in us values they considered to be important. It is clear to us to this day that this is what mattered to them and that it stayed with them; it was the foundation from which they could spin stories for us and from which we would learn and be what they wished us to be.

They spoke about the effects of losing their mother at a young age, and how they learned to cope with that; of how their father had done all he could to save her. His grief which was endless and what they did to comfort him. And more, how their father then took the place their mother in their lives so that they could use his ear to confide in; of him telling them stories at bed time.

At other times, with the younger perched on his knees and the others kneeling and sitting on the ground, encouraging them to share with him and with the other siblings, how they had spent the day. Which cousins they had met and what they had done together. What they had learned from their governess and how she had treated them. He would sing with them songs that they had learned.

Our mothers told us about the happy times they spent at their grandfather’s home in Moratuwa. They did not speak to us much about Alfred House. It was clear the glamorous side of their childhood had not remained with them. To them it seemed to be a past that could never be relived. That was taken for granted; it was a matter of fact. It had not influenced their values. And they did not wish it to influence ours.I was sad to leave the Hulugalle home when my mother moved me to the school boarding. I was used to being with loved ones all my life and I missed them. It gladdened me when many years later, Budge told me she too had missed me when I left them.

(To be continued)


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Features

BRICS upholds inclusive growth; re-affirms South-South cooperation

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2026/09/17

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BRICS political leaders at the 2026 New Delhi summit.(BBC)

A principal highlight of the recently concluded BRICS 2026 summit in New Delhi was the grouping’s unambiguous championing of the empowerment of ordinary people everywhere. This was yet another notable coming together of Southern governments over matters of common concern alright but it was the grouping’s people-oriented thinking that struck the impartial commentator as particularly important this time around.

The latter accent merits underscoring in view of the widespread perception that Southern oriented international organizations, such as the Non-aligned Movement (NAM), have had their day, so to speak. However the BRICS summit not only re-affirmed NAM principles but gave proof of its willingness to complement the main undertakings of NAM. Accordingly, causes such as South-South cooperation, international economic and social equity, multilateralism, international peace and the need to uphold the current UN-centred world order received resounding and fresh emphasis.

Particularly encouraging for those espousing Southern development concerns was the stressing of the historic ‘Bandung Principles’ in the New Delhi Declaration which crowned the summit deliberations. As is known, it was the ‘Bandung Spirit’ of 1955 that paved the way for the establishment of NAM and South-South cooperation in a major way. As such the ‘Spirit’ was primary in helping to reshape international development discourse and in giving it a pro-people bent. That is, development correctly conceived was birthed.

The New Delhi Declaration said in this regard: ‘We recall the 1955 Asian-African Conference in Bandung, Indonesia that proclaimed general principles, including equality, independence, non-intervention and mutual benefit. We stress that the Bandung Spirit serves as a reference in the pursuit of a fairer, more inclusive, and representative multilateral system.’

‘Geopolitics’ was not glossed over or ignored in New Delhi, but it is quite forgotten by some sections of opinion in particularly Sri Lanka that BRICS, while being an important Southern counter-balance in terms of power to the global North is also essentially about international economic growth with equity. The New Delhi summit helped to put right this conceptual imbalance in what groupings such as BRICS ought to be thinking and doing.

Even more precisely, people should be at the heart of development and in the exertions and preoccupations of international organizations claiming to represent the South. Southern governments equipped with economic and military might in particular remain important but it is people’s empowerment that ought to be the overriding consideration.

The latter concerns help stress the cruciality of democratic development since it is the latter that facilitates best the well being of people. Unfortunately, BRICS happens to be top-heavy with authoritarian governments that could deliver economic growth but not equity. It is fully representative, participatory governance that could best deliver to the people their essential needs and not totalitarian governments.

This is a complex dilemma for BRICS. It could be resolved somewhat by admitting more and more pro-people, democratic states into the BRICS fold to counter-balance the power and influence of authoritarian states. At present among the principal BRICS countries it’s only India that meets most of the criteria for democratic development.

Hopefully, more and more Southern democracies would see it fit to join BRICS in consideration of the latter’s potential to be a prime ‘economic powerhouse’ of the world. Equally hopefully, people’s empowerment in the true sense would come to be valued as a crucial merit for BRICS membership. It is relevant to stress that the fulfillment of the fundamental rights of a people is integral to their complete empowerment.

A grave negative fallout from the Trump administration’s current militarism is that more and more states world wide would come to value military heft over people’s empowerment. Consequently, the preference for military power could lead to countries wanting BRICS membership for the wrong reasons. That is, security through collective armed might would come to matter over all else and the world would be rendered an increasingly ‘dangerous place’.

But thinking people would expect from BRICS a more responsible role in world affairs and prefer to have from it inspirational guidance in democratic development, correctly understood.

A commitment by BRICS at the summit of considerable importance to world peace that should not be underplayed is its commitment to the UN system and the strengthening of International Law. The relevant quote from the Declaration spoke of BRICS’ ‘Commitment to strengthening multilateralism and multi-polarity and upholding International Law, including the Purposes and Principles of the Charter of the United Nations.’

Coming at a time when the UN is seen by some as a spent force, lacking effectiveness, the above endorsement of the UN Charter and International Law is of crucial significance. This amounts to solidly upholding the post World War Two order despite current largely rhetorical assertions that it is fast unraveling.

While UN reform remains a compelling necessity, the endorsement of the UN-centred order holds out the possibility of some of the BRICS heavyweights, who are currently acting in violation of International Law, eventually getting back to conduct that would be more in keeping with the requirements of International Law.

The UN could put these developments to constructive use by redoubling its efforts to work out diplomatic solutions to the current conflicts and wars that are showing no signs of being receptive to fresh peace efforts.

Two of these theatres of conflict are the Middle East and the Ukraine. While the US, Israel, Russia and Iran would need to be engaged by the UN with exceptional persuasive power to sort out the conflicts where they have come to feature directly and indirectly, the relevant BRICS members’ commitments to world peace and multilateralism could be used as instruments of moral pressure perhaps to induce them to get onto the path of peaceful conflict resolution.

The wide consensus among the BRICS powers amounts to their scoring a significant political victory over the US and its allies. Their espousal of international peace and the UN Charter exposes the US as being at cross purposes with peace-oriented and democratic sections world wide. Specifically, the moral and intellectual poverty of the Trump administration is being revealed glaringly.

This does not amount to a condemnation of the people of the US perse. It is just that some of them have voted quite unwisely. As a first step towards correcting this situation they could make good use of the upcoming mid term elections to register their strong disapproval of the Trump administration and the political extremists among the US Right. Course correction is not impossible.

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Not I — We: A new uniform will mean nothing if the person inside it is left behind

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20 hours ago

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2026/09/17

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by Mahil Dole

Senior Superintendent of Police (Retd.)

Sri Lanka Police has just marked 160 years. The parades were in order. The sentence that should have followed them has not been written with enough force. A police service that is pulled by politics, rewarded for individual glory and tried every night on social media cannot protect a country that is now a maritime hinge for international narcotics and financial crime. The political authority must decide, not in a speech, but in conduct, whether this force belongs to the law or to the loudest faction of the week.

That is not a plea. It is a warning.

The political hierarchy and the police hierarchy now agree that the service needs a new outlook, beginning with the uniform. The cut and the kit are not yet settled. That conversation is overdue. Criminals have moved into containers, encrypted apps and international logistics. An officer equipped for a quieter decade is less able to detect, and less able to come home.

Sophistication of kit is essential. Body-worn cameras, communications and protective equipment that match the threat are not luxuries. They keep a policeman alive.

If the first decision of this compact is only what the officer will wear, the wrapping will be modern and the person untouched. The priority is not a new silhouette. It is a different person inside the uniform.

The officer is a human being

He and she is a product of this complicated society. The fractures that run through the village, the school and the social-media feed run through the recruit. Communal suspicion, religious identity and ethnic memory are not checked at the armoury gate. The question treated as delicate is operational: is this officer mentally geared for ordinary crime and for communal, religious and ethnic conflict?

What is his stand if he belongs to one community and is sent into a dispute involving another? How will the parties look at him? How will the media frame the first photograph? That decides whether a crowd sees the law or “the other side.” We are all Sri Lankans. The sentence is easy on a Police Day banner. It is hard at a junction when rumour is already ahead of the patrol.

Every officer, from constable to gazetted rank, must be trained for these issues as deliberately as for a baton. Not one lecture at Katukurunda: recurring, scenario-based work on mixed neighbourhoods, mixed complainants, and keeping personal faith out of the method of work. The media will hunt the communal angle; parties to a conflict will hunt the ethnic one. The only answer that holds is an officer whose first identity on duty is Sri Lankan and whose first loyalty is the law.

That is “We.” Assuming the uniform dissolves identity is how a single incident becomes a national story.

What they have been is not what they can remain

From the 1866 ordinance this service has been the state’s civilian arm, colonial order-keeping, post-independence law and order, then a wartime partner that buried its dead beside the armed forces. Specialised units were built for terrorism, organised crime and financial intelligence. The same institution was used as a residual army, a political instrument and a promotion marketplace. Loyalty too often attached to a person, not to the law. Easter Sunday made the price visible. So did every file that moved, or stalled, according to who was in office.

A history of sacrifice does not excuse a present of capture. It makes the capture more shameful.

What they are today

On paper the force is large, some 79,000 authorised, 609 stations. On the ground it is thin. More than 4,300 officers have left since 2020. Vacancies exceed 30,000. Shifts of twelve to eighteen hours are still treated as normal. Distress is still logged as discipline rather than welfare. That is waste, not toughness.

Crime has two faces, and both strike national security. Gang violence over narcotics still produces shootings. Sri Lanka also sits on feeder routes moving Afghan and Pakistani product toward other markets. Harbour and high-sea detections in the hundreds of kilograms are no longer rare. Ice hidden in towels at Colombo Port; heroin pulled from multi-day trawlers; scam compounds and frozen assets in the billions of rupees, these are not “ordinary crime.” They buy influence and fund the next consignment.

The third battlefield is information. Reels and anonymous accounts impersonate officers, launder rumour as fact, and reward the man who seeks a following. Inside the service the culture still teaches “I”: my file, my photograph, my briefing. Rank is being treated as a prize. It is a trust.

The container that became a campaign

Late August 2026, officers opened containers at the Colombo International Container Terminal and recovered some 463 to 472 kilograms of crystal methamphetamine, concealed in towels, originating from Pakistan and valued in the billions of rupees. Suspects including foreign nationals were arrested. The United States DEA publicly associated itself with the intelligence. The criminal case sits with the Central Crime Investigation Bureau.

That is a success. It should have been protected as a success.

Instead, an internal process review, ordered by the Inspector General into how information moved between bureaux, was translated on social media into another story: that the IGP and Senior DIG Ranmal Kodituwakku were being “chambered” over the detection. An Opposition MP warned, correctly, that putting the officers who delivered the raid under a public microscope will teach the service the wrong lesson.

State the distinction without apology. A criminal file is about the network and the money. A process file is about timelines and chain of custody. A blog is neither. Collapsing a Senior DIG’s recorded statement into “the hierarchy is in the dock” is not accountability. It is a gift to those who packed the towels. After a half-tonne interdiction, a process review is normal; leaking it as a morality play is not. Complete the inquiry on the record. If negligence is found, deal with it. If not, say so. Half-spoken files let rumour colonise the institution.

Training, technology and a mind that can bear the load

The IGP and the hierarchy must stop treating training as a calendar ornament. Immediate programmes are required, not next year’s paper.

First

, the evolving issues: communal and religious tension, narrative operations, child and women protection, financial and cyber crime, harbour interdiction, the law of arrest.

Second

, the technologies: digital evidence, data protection under the Personal Data Protection Act, disciplined open-source work, body-worn cameras that protect the public and officers alike.

Third

, mental health as operational infrastructure, counselling an Inspector can use without becoming a Legal Division case, and early recognition of burnout before it becomes a headline.

Incentives must follow: allowances for certified competencies, promotion credit for courses applied, not for attendance photographs. Asking for sophistication at the port with no path to acquire it is theatre.

A new uniform that can carry a camera, worn by an officer unprepared for the society he polices, is a costume. The station, the cell, the unseen hour Look next at where this officer lives and works. Many stations are old, congested and unhygienic. Living standards on duty are low. You cannot demand a different person in the uniform and house him as if he were expendable.

Cells are a particular failure of command. Too many sit out of sight of the men on duty. They are dilapidated. What happens inside goes unnoticed until a death, an assault or an escape. That is a design of our own buildings, not a secret of the underworld. A cell that cannot be seen cannot be defended in court or in conscience. Refurbish, fix sightlines, monitor what the Constitution requires, and treat an escape as a failure of supervision before it becomes a press note.

These are not welfare extras. They are the conditions under which evidence is kept, suspects are held, and officers decide whether the job is still worth the family cost.

The health of the officer is the health of the public

One of the first duties of the hierarchy is the health of the policeman and his family. A sick officer with a sick child is not “uncommitted.” He is a risk to himself, to the next raid, and to the citizen at the counter. Police hospitals are few. Officers in rural stations cannot reach them in time. The IGP should not wait for a building programme. Speak to the health authorities now. Arrange priority access for officers and their families at government hospitals. Dedicated wards or reserved beds are not a privilege class. They are the minimum owed to people sent into harm, and into other people’s crises, at every hour.

Good health is a good mind. A good mind is good care for the people. No uniform compensates for an officer who has not slept, has not been treated, and cannot reach a Police hospital.

What they must be tomorrow

The country does not need more decoration. It needs a service the public can approach without fear and that no politician can casually redirect: intelligence-led against networks that threaten the state; digitally capable and legally bounded; trained for communal heat as well as narcotics; housed and treated as human beings; collectively minded. We hold the ground, not I cleared the file.

The constable at the junction and the analyst tracing a hawala chain are the same institution. National security is not a specialist’s private property.

To the policymakers and the political authority

You have agreed with the Police hierarchy on a new outlook. Use it for more than cloth.

Independence is not the IGP’s personal autonomy. It is the institution’s ability to apply the law without fear or favour, and still answer to the law. You cannot have that and also have a Police summoned, transferred or publicly undermined according to the needs of the week.

Appointment and removal of the Inspector General must remain a process, not patronage. The National Police Commission must exercise its powers over promotions, transfers and discipline without being hectored from the gallery. Cabinet sets policy and budget. It does not choose Tuesday’s suspect. Comment from the House on the guilt of named officers while a file is open is not oversight. It is interference under another name.

If you want an apolitical Police, stop using internal inquiry as a factional weapon and social media as a substitute bench. Different treatment of files is the old disease. Naming it only when the officer is someone you dislike is the same disease.

Then fund what a new uniform implies: immediate training, habitable stations, cells that can be seen, and a health arrangement with the Ministry of Health that does not leave a rural sergeant’s family outside the gate. Announcing kit and withholding living conditions is not reform. It is dressing the service for a photograph.

The public has a part. Distinguish error from crime. Cooperate with the officer who is fair; demand consequences where he is not. In conflict, look at the uniform as the law, not as a census of name, faith or village. Do not outsource judgement to an anonymous account.

The stand It is not I. It should be We.

A new uniform will not make an officer Sri Lankan. Training, health, housing, an apolitical file, and a command that treats him as a human being might. A service that thinks in individual glory will be outrun by networks that think in systems. A political class that thinks in capture will keep receiving detections and wondering why the pipeline never closes. A country that argues about the cloth while the person inside it is exhausted, untrained for communal fire, and unseen in a dilapidated cell block is not preparing for tomorrow. It is rearranging the wardrobe.

The law cannot serve two masters. Neither can the uniform, old or new.

(This analysis is offered in the interest of national security, institutional reform, and public safety)

Mahil Dole, SSP (Retd.), served as Deputy Director in charge of the Counter-Terrorism Desk of the State Intelligence Service and later as Intelligence Coordinator to the Inspector General of Police. He is a former Member of the Sri Lanka Wakfs Board and author of Security Beyond Enforcement: Practical Approaches for a Safer Nation. Email – mahildole54@gmail.com

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Features

The Miss World 2026 scene …

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2026/09/17

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History was made under the lights on 05th September, as Joheirry Mola Dominguez, of the Dominican Republic, was crowned Miss World 2026 by outgoing queen Suchata Chuangsri of Thailand at April 2nd Square in Nha Trang, Vietnam.

It is only the second Miss World title for the Dominican Republic; 44 years after Mariasela Álvarez’s win in 1982. Reports described it as an “emotional and historic moment” for the nation.

Joheirry, 24, beat 110 other delegates to take the crown.

A dedicated educator and community advocate, she holds a degree in Business Management and Administration from Universidad Iberoamericana. She is Founder and President of “Voices of Tomorrow”, an initiative expanding access to English education for children in vulnerable communities. She also teaches Literature and Social Studies in English, and works as a correspondent for Univision New York’s Ventana a Quisqueya.

Her advocacy won hearts

It was her advocacy that won hearts.

“My Beauty With a Purpose is to take English programmes to kids in vulnerable communities,”

she said at the Grand Final. “Because I believe that when they know this language, the opportunities, the doors that can open to their life, it’s huge. English is a tool that will stay with them and benefit them for the rest of their lives.”

Spain’s Elisabeth Reynés finished 1st Runner-Up, while Malaysia’s Taanusiya Chetty, also winner of Beauty With a Purpose, took 2nd Runner-Up.

The Top 6 included Vietnam’s Le Nguyen Bao Ngoc, Eritrea’s Snit Habteab, and South Africa’s Romanda Hombir.

The 75th Anniversary edition, hosted for the first time in Vietnam, was a spectacle before 20,000 spectators. Staged on a 110+ meter outdoor platform by Nha Trang beach, the square was lit up with huge LED screens and high-power sound.

Even heavy rain during the Americas & Caribbean segment couldn’t dampen spirits. Umbrellas and raincoats popped up and the show resumed 15 minutes later. Nobody left. That’s dedication.

With 111 ambassadors, cultural dances, ao dai performances, and the seaside backdrop, officials called it a celebration of beauty, talent, confidence, and social responsibility.

With 20,000 people, rain or shine, screaming, cheering, live-streaming, waving flags… it was, indeed, pure Miss World magic.

For Sri Lanka, Prathibha Liyanaarachchi did not make the Top 40 at the 73rd Miss World Festival, but she reached the finalist stages of four fast-track events — Top Model, Talent, Sports, and Beauty With a Purpose.

Miss World magic: The square was lit up with huge LED screens and high-power sound

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