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More on having foreign mothers in then Ceylon

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3 years ago

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(Left to right) Goolbai Gunasekera, Kumari Jayawardena and Suriya Wickremasinghe. Maya Kularatne (below) and Chitra Malalasekera (below-right) accomplished women who had English mothers

(Excerpted from Chosen Ground: The saga of Clara Motwani by Goolbai Gunesekera)

Having British and American mothers also meant that we were spared much of the meaningless ritual of the East. Our parents protected us from prejudice, since caste and creed were not matters of high priority to them. Their Theosophical backgrounds ensured that we grew up with eclectic beliefs, as far as religion was concerned. What was stressed was ethical behaviour.

We read about all the faiths, and they were discussed in our homes. Buddhism and Hinduism were our Father’s leanings, but as far as we remember there was no `must’ about religious observances. From Father I learnt Hinduism and Sikhism, from Mother, Christianity and Buddhism. I can say the prayers of all religions, and am quite happy in any place of religious worship.

At my Ooty convent in the Nilgiri Hills of India, I won the Catechism prize two years in a row, even though I was not a Christian at the time. Our parents encouraged us to mingle with everybody. It mattered little to them who our friends were, just so long as they came from educated and cultured backgrounds. I attended eight schools altogether, while Suriya easily topped my record by attending 11 – 13, if she counted repetition in the same school. She finished her secondary school career at Ladies’ College, and I at Bishop’s.

Unlike the normal run of Asian mothers, ours were not busy collecting jewelry for us to be worn when we ‘grew up’ – a euphemism for our first menstruation. Kumari received her first set of gold bangles from her future mother-in-law before she married. She promptly lost them all. My own mother-in-law left me a lot of good jewelry in her will.

I loved her and remember her daily, but not because of that jewelry. Mother would have rather spent the money on books, and it says much for us that we never felt deprived. Our classmates may have worn their gold bangles to school, but we simply did not notice. Our ears were not pierced till we were ready to marry, but then again, who cared ? No one, except gossipy, but good natured, family friends who worried about our futures in a traditional society.

On one never-to-be-forgotten day I had taken my Indian cousin (a boy) to the Women’s International Club for a game of tennis. Boys were tolerated there on a one-day-a-week basis, but we were not expected to know any young boys. Our mothers did the inviting if necessary.

Anyway, the ladies of the Club were treated to the sight of me cheerfully playing singles without a chaperone in sight. Unable to concentrate on so mundane a matter as bidding a hand, they hurried to the phone and collectively informed Mother of my goings-on on the tennis court. Such freedom, such laxity, such license boded no good for my matrimonial hopes, they told Mother.

And this brings me to marriage: such an important milestone in the lives of Asian girls. In point of fact, all four of us made ‘good’ marriages; which is to say, they were socially commendable, although here again, our parents only checked on whether the boy was ‘nice’… an adjective that covered a multitude of qualities to which traditional parents would not have given much thought.

Kumari married Lal Jayawardene, son of the Governor of the Central Bank of Ceylon. Naturally I wanted to know how romance had blossomed. Kumari had been studying at the London School of Economics while Lal was at Cambridge. Dining one night with an Indian friend at a restaurant in Russell’s Square, Kumari was introduced to a young man (Lal) who must have been smitten instantly, for they married a year later.

All four of us ‘sisters’ are much fairer of skin than our contemporaries. All of us are dark-haired, except for my sister who had hair that was almost golden at birth. Certainly, we do not display the conventional looks of the average Sinhalese or Tamil girl. What was amazing to us was that Lai had not noticed this far from usual Sinhalese colouring, and was surprised when Kumari mentioned later on in their relationship that she had an English mother.

Relating this story, Kumari told me in amused tones: “You might have thought that Lal should have realized something was wrong!” Blinded by love he did not. and, anyway, ‘wrong’ is not the word we would have used on ourselves.

Maya Kularatne

Suriya married Desmond Fernando, a distinguished lawyer, scion of a well known Sri Lankan family and at the time of my writing, President of the Sri Lanka Bar Association. Theirs was a typical ‘boy-next-door’ romance which blossomed in idyllic surroundings, since they lived on opposite sides of a tree-lined road in a beautifully quiet and shady residential area.

Maya married Stanley Senanayake, who ended his career as Inspector General of Police of Sri Lanka, and I married ‘Bunchy’ Jayampati Gunasekara, son of a Judge, Mr. P.R. Gunasekara who was subsequently Ambassador to England, France and Australia.

I met my husband when I was 15: it was a standard case of opposites attracting. My mother had made sure that I had imbibed her own stand-offish doctrine and attitudes vis-a-vis boys. Bunchy, on the other hand came from a gregarious, highly sophisticated Sinhalese family who entertained a great deal, and loved ballroom dancing. (I need hardly say here that I did not know how to dance at the time.)

At my classmate Malinee Samarakkody’s birthday party, my friends were twirling around happily while I just twiddled my thumbs on the sidelines. Bunchy asked me to dance. I often wondered why he came up to me and asked me to do the foxtrot but ask he did. “I don’t know how,” I told him forlornly.

Bunchy was all bright, breezy and confident. “Oh, that’s no problem, ” he said airily. “I’ll teach you.”

To this day I swear he added the words “I’m very good at it” but he denies this so vehemently that I’m getting confused myself. For the sake of family peace I shall go along with his story…..and it was never in any doubt that he was then, and still remains, a superlative dancer.As I said earlier, we met when I was just 15, and he 18. When I went away to University, Bunchy left for England to study the tea business. By all accounts, he had a marvelous time in London, and can still find his way from pub to pub if need be, while I had a pretty boring time in University being faithful to an absentee boyfriend.

The four of us found our own partners in spite of our parents’ attitudes, and not because of them. They were concerned with teaching us how to live our own lives as fulfillingly as possible, rather than telling us that such fulfillment for women lay only in marriage.

The lives of these eight people shaped and moulded the lives of young Sri Lankan children for years to come. While it is true that the medical doctor and politician fathers were busy with their patients and constituents, the others headed schools like Visakha Vidyalaya, Colombo; Sri Sumangala in Panadura, Sujatha Vidyalaya in Matara, Musaeus College, Colombo, Ananda College in Colombo for boys, Ananda Balika in Colombo for girls, Hindu Ladies’ College, Jaffna, Buddhist Ladies’ College, Colombo, and Sujatha Vidyalaya in Colombo.

My own father went back to India as Professor of Sociology and was a visiting lecturer in countries all over the world. But Sri Lanka was his base and he frequently gave a series of lectures at the Colombo University campus when Sir Ivor Jennings was the Vice Chancellor.

Both Mother and Hilda Kularatne were Principals of their schools at the age of 23. Both began teaching their students to be Sri Lankans and not just good little British colonials. Accordingly, Hilda began teaching temple art and native art forms to her pupils. Mother began the teaching of Buddhism as a subject, and encouraged her Visakhians to look to their own culture for inspiration.

Chitra Malalasekera

All these ladies had been brought up with rather iconoclastic views by their own parents who had questioning and insightful minds. All four of them were pioneers of the Rotherfield Society – the first of its kind – founded by Dr. Ratnavale, the well-known psychiatrist. All four were members of the Theosophical Society and this is perhaps a good place to mention again that when India gained Independence, most of Nehru’s first Cabinet were likewise members of the Theosophical Society and had been influenced by that great Englishwoman, Annie Besant.

There was another aspect of this blend of East and West that is rarely highlighted. Much of their student life and some of the working life of these eight people had been spent abroad. Ergo, their contacts abroad were also many. Their personal friends are now regarded as being among the world’s greatest personalities.

Mahatma Gandhi, a friend of Doreen and her husband, gave Suriya a cotton sari that he had woven. The sage, Jiddu Krishnamurti, often had dinner in our home as we were one of the rare vegetarian families in Colombo. Krishna Menon, India’s great Foreign Minister, had been Doreen’s teacher and she kept up her ties with him. Harold Laski, the renowned political scientist, had been my father’s professor briefly at Yale.

Rukmani Arundale, the Minister of India’s Cultural Affairs and the founder of Kalashetra Dance School, was a family friend. Beautiful Rukmani taught me how to wear the sari when I was 11-years old ! J. B. Priestley was yet another literary acquaintance. The famous Indian dancer Uday Shankar was a guest in our home, as was Rabindranath Tagore in Suriya’s.

He visited Sri Lanka, and spoke at Ananda Balika when Doreen was its Principal. Doctors A.P de Zoysa and S.A. Wickremesinghe were members of the Buddhist Union in England, and were friends of Anagarika Dharmapala whom they worked with in London.

In the USA, Father had met Pearl Buck, the Nobel Prize winner in Literature. She autographed a set of her books for him, which he donated along with an entire library to the University of Colombo. They must be still there if anyone cares to trace them.

Through the Theosophical Society, Father was introduced to Henry Wallace, the Vice President of America during the Roosevelt administration. Wallace’s interest in Theosophy and Buddhism was well known, and the writer Gore Vidal makes mention of this incident in his book The Golden Years.

George Santayana, the philosopher, was yet another acquaintance with whom Father corresponded for much of his life, as was the famous author and co-Theosophist, Aldous Huxley.

Encouraged and supported by their husbands, the four ladies not only had significant roles to play in the emerging Sri Lanka but also left an indelible mark on the island. Writing an article titled “Heroes Day – Here are the Heroines” in 1977, the well-known journalist and Gratiaen Prize-winner, Vijitha Fernando, included Mother and Doreen in her round up of the island’s outstanding women.

Eleanor de Zoysa came from a family that had been socialist in their views for four generations. Small wonder, then, that Kumari followed suit. Suriya was Head of Amnesty International for five years (the only Sri Lankan to have had this honour) and during her tenure of office has had occasion to accept awards and citations in various countries for her work. Maya has just retired after leaving her mark on Sri Lanka’s Police Department, where as the wife of the IGP, she headed the Seva Vanitha.

She also founded and ran a handicraft village which was a showpiece for visitors who wanted a quick glimpse into the culture of the land. And I, trailing behind the headline-grabbing careers of my ‘sisters’ – I run the Asian International School in Colombo – the only one of the four of us to continue the educational careers of our mothers.

As could be expected, these four mothers had a very liberal outlook; an outlook that today would be positively dangerous. Kumari was allowed to explore Colombo freely, and she swept Suriya along in her wake as she wandered at will. The two girls would picnic (alone) on the beaches of Modera, cycle along unfrequented pathways and examine whatever took Kumari’s interest.

Assuming all was well, Doreen never asked where Suriya had been. She trusted that Kumari was doing her duty, and looking after the younger girl. In actual fact they were travelling by bus, and doing the sort of things girls from more traditional families rarely did. But our families were-not traditional, and Colombo was an unusually safe city. We were so lucky. This unorthodox upbringing has made us self reliant, independent and confident, and well able to handle our world.

To this day, Kumari and Suriya are generally regarded as the brains of the quartet. Kumari is now Dr. Kumari Jayawardena, former Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Colombo and the author of a string of books on the role and position of women in this island. When her husband was appointed to a job in Helsinki, she had to retire as professor although she still keeps up lecturing engagements at the University on a freelance basis.

She has written in detail of the impact women, and especially Western women, have made on our society, and anything I might say here on the subject would be not only superfluous but rather banal.

And so Kumari, Suriya, Maya and I –sisters under the skin’ – the offspring of these wonderful parents, have remained friends all our lives. It has been one of the great plus points of our unorthodox heritage.


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Features

Ranking public services with AI — A roadmap to reviving institutions like SriLankan Airlines

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2 hours ago

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2026/03/13

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Efficacy measures an organisation’s capacity to achieve its mission and intended outcomes under planned or optimal conditions. It differs from efficiency, which focuses on achieving objectives with minimal resources, and effectiveness, which evaluates results in real-world conditions. Today, modern AI tools, using publicly available data, enable objective assessment of the efficacy of Sri Lanka’s government institutions.

Among key public bodies, the Supreme Court of Sri Lanka emerges as the most efficacious, outperforming the Department of Inland Revenue, Sri Lanka Customs, the Election Commission, and Parliament. In the financial and regulatory sector, the Central Bank of Sri Lanka (CBSL) ranks highest, ahead of the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Public Utilities Commission, the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission, the Insurance Regulatory Commission, and the Sri Lanka Standards Institution.

Among state-owned enterprises, the Sri Lanka Ports Authority (SLPA) leads in efficacy, followed by Bank of Ceylon and People’s Bank. Other institutions assessed included the State Pharmaceuticals Corporation, the National Water Supply and Drainage Board, the Ceylon Electricity Board, the Ceylon Petroleum Corporation, and the Sri Lanka Transport Board. At the lower end of the spectrum were Lanka Sathosa and Sri Lankan Airlines, highlighting a critical challenge for the national economy.

Sri Lankan Airlines, consistently ranked at the bottom, has long been a financial drain. Despite successive governments’ reform attempts, sustainable solutions remain elusive.

Globally, the most profitable airlines operate as highly integrated, technology-enabled ecosystems rather than as fragmented departments. Operations, finance, fleet management, route planning, engineering, marketing, and customer service are closely coordinated, sharing real-time data to maximise efficiency, safety, and profitability.

The challenge for Sri Lankan Airlines is structural. Its operations are fragmented, overly hierarchical, and poorly aligned. Simply replacing the CEO or senior leadership will not address these deep-seated weaknesses. What the airline needs is a cohesive, integrated organisational ecosystem that leverages technology for cross-functional planning and real-time decision-making.

The government must urgently consider restructuring Sri Lankan Airlines to encourage:

=Joint planning across operational divisions

=Data-driven, evidence-based decision-making

=Continuous cross-functional consultation

=Collaborative strategic decisions on route rationalisation, fleet renewal, partnerships, and cost management, rather than exclusive top-down mandates

Sustainable reform requires systemic change. Without modernised organisational structures, stronger accountability, and aligned incentives across divisions, financial recovery will remain out of reach. An integrated, performance-oriented model offers the most realistic path to operational efficiency and long-term viability.

Reforming loss-making institutions like Sri Lankan Airlines is not merely a matter of leadership change — it is a structural overhaul essential to ensuring these entities contribute productively to the national economy rather than remain perpetual burdens.

By Chula Goonasekera – Citizen Analyst

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Features

Why Pi Day?

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2 hours ago

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2026/03/13

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International Day of Mathematics falls tomorrow

The approximate value of Pi (π) is 3.14 in mathematics. Therefore, the day 14 March is celebrated as the Pi Day. In 2019, UNESCO proclaimed 14 March as the International Day of Mathematics.

Ancient Babylonians and Egyptians figured out that the circumference of a circle is slightly more than three times its diameter. But they could not come up with an exact value for this ratio although they knew that it is a constant. This constant was later named as π which is a letter in the Greek alphabet.

Archimedes

It was the Greek mathematician Archimedes (250 BC) who was able to find an upper bound and a lower bound for this constant. He drew a circle of diameter one unit and drew hexagons inside and outside the circle such that the sides of each hexagon touch the sides of the circle. In mathematics the circle passing through all vertices of a polygon is called a ‘circumcircle’ and the largest circle that fits inside a polygon tangent to all its sides is called an ‘incircle’. The total length of the smaller hexagon then becomes the lower bound of π and the length of the hexagon outside the circle is the upper bound. He realised that by increasing the number of sides of the polygon can make the bounds get closer to the value of Pi and increased the number of sides to 12,24,48 and 60. He argued that by increasing the number of sides will ultimately result in obtaining the original circle, thereby laying the foundation for the theory of limits. He ended up with the lower bound as 22/7 and the upper bound 223/71. He could not continue his research as his hometown Syracuse was invaded by Romans and was killed by one of the soldiers. His last words were ‘do not disturb my circles’, perhaps a reference to his continuing efforts to find the value of π to a greater accuracy.

Archimedes can be considered as the father of geometry. His contributions revolutionised geometry and his methods anticipated integral calculus. He invented the pulley and the hydraulic screw for drawing water from a well. He also discovered the law of hydrostatics. He formulated the law of levers which states that a smaller weight placed farther from a pivot can balance a much heavier weight closer to it. He famously said “Give me a lever long enough and a place to stand and I will move the earth”.

Mathematicians have found many expressions for π as a sum of infinite series that converge to its value. One such famous series is the Leibniz Series found in 1674 by the German mathematician Gottfried Leibniz, which is given below.

π = 4 ( 1 – 1/3 + 1/5 – 1/7 + 1/9 – ………….)

The Indian mathematical genius Ramanujan came up with a magnificent formula in 1910. The short form of the formula is as follows.

π = 9801/(1103 √8)

For practical applications an approximation is sufficient. Even NASA uses only the approximation 3.141592653589793 for its interplanetary navigation calculations.

It is not just an interesting and curious number. It is used for calculations in navigation, encryption, space exploration, video game development and even in medicine. As π is fundamental to spherical geometry, it is at the heart of positioning systems in GPS navigations. It also contributes significantly to cybersecurity. As it is an irrational number it is an excellent foundation for generating randomness required in encryption and securing communications. In the medical field, it helps to calculate blood flow rates and pressure differentials. In diagnostic tools such as CT scans and MRI, pi is an important component in mathematical algorithms and signal processing techniques.

This elegant, never-ending number demonstrates how mathematics transforms into practical applications that shape our world. The possibilities of what it can do are infinite as the number itself. It has become a symbol of beauty and complexity in mathematics. “It matters little who first arrives at an idea, rather what is significant is how far that idea can go.” said Sophie Germain.

Mathematics fans are intrigued by this irrational number and attempt to calculate it as far as they can. In March 2022, Emma Haruka Iwao of Japan calculated it to 100 trillion decimal places in Google Cloud. It had taken 157 days. The Guinness World Record for reciting the number from memory is held by Rajveer Meena of India for 70000 decimal places over 10 hours.

Happy Pi Day!

The author is a senior examiner of the International Baccalaureate in the UK and an educational consultant at the Overseas School of Colombo.

by R N A de Silva

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Features

Sheer rise of Realpolitik making the world see the brink

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1 day ago

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2026/03/12

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A combined US-Israel attack on Iran.(BBC)

The recent humanly costly torpedoing of an Iranian naval vessel in Sri Lanka’s Exclusive Economic Zone by a US submarine has raised a number of issues of great importance to international political discourse and law that call for elucidation. It is best that enlightened commentary is brought to bear in such discussions because at present misleading and uninformed speculation on questions arising from the incident are being aired by particularly jingoistic politicians of Sri Lanka’s South which could prove deleterious.

As matters stand, there seems to be no credible evidence that the Indian state was aware of the impending torpedoing of the Iranian vessel but these acerbic-tongued politicians of Sri Lanka’s South would have the local public believe that the tragedy was triggered with India’s connivance. Likewise, India is accused of ‘embroiling’ Sri Lanka in the incident on account of seemingly having prior knowledge of it and not warning Sri Lanka about the impending disaster.

It is plain that a process is once again afoot to raise anti-India hysteria in Sri Lanka. An obligation is cast on the Sri Lankan government to ensure that incendiary speculation of the above kind is defeated and India-Sri Lanka relations are prevented from being in any way harmed. Proactive measures are needed by the Sri Lankan government and well meaning quarters to ensure that public discourse in such matters have a factual and rational basis. ‘Knowledge gaps’ could prove hazardous.

Meanwhile, there could be no doubt that Sri Lanka’s sovereignty was violated by the US because the sinking of the Iranian vessel took place in Sri Lanka’s Exclusive Economic Zone. While there is no international decrying of the incident, and this is to be regretted, Sri Lanka’s helplessness and small player status would enable the US to ‘get away with it’.

Could anything be done by the international community to hold the US to account over the act of lawlessness in question? None is the answer at present. This is because in the current ‘Global Disorder’ major powers could commit the gravest international irregularities with impunity. As the threadbare cliché declares, ‘Might is Right’….. or so it seems.

Unfortunately, the UN could only merely verbally denounce any violations of International Law by the world’s foremost powers. It cannot use countervailing force against violators of the law, for example, on account of the divided nature of the UN Security Council, whose permanent members have shown incapability of seeing eye-to-eye on grave matters relating to International Law and order over the decades.

The foregoing considerations could force the conclusion on uncritical sections that Political Realism or Realpolitik has won out in the end. A basic premise of the school of thought known as Political Realism is that power or force wielded by states and international actors determine the shape, direction and substance of international relations. This school stands in marked contrast to political idealists who essentially proclaim that moral norms and values determine the nature of local and international politics.

While, British political scientist Thomas Hobbes, for instance, was a proponent of Political Realism, political idealism has its roots in the teachings of Socrates, Plato and latterly Friedrich Hegel of Germany, to name just few such notables.

On the face of it, therefore, there is no getting way from the conclusion that coercive force is the deciding factor in international politics. If this were not so, US President Donald Trump in collaboration with Israeli Rightist Premier Benjamin Natanyahu could not have wielded the ‘big stick’, so to speak, on Iran, killed its Supreme Head of State, terrorized the Iranian public and gone ‘scot-free’. That is, currently, the US’ impunity seems to be limitless.

Moreover, the evidence is that the Western bloc is reuniting in the face of Iran’s threats to stymie the flow of oil from West Asia to the rest of the world. The recent G7 summit witnessed a coming together of the foremost powers of the global North to ensure that the West does not suffer grave negative consequences from any future blocking of western oil supplies.

Meanwhile, Israel is having a ‘free run’ of the Middle East, so to speak, picking out perceived adversarial powers, such as Lebanon, and militarily neutralizing them; once again with impunity. On the other hand, Iran has been bringing under assault, with no questions asked, Gulf states that are seen as allying with the US and Israel. West Asia is facing a compounded crisis and International Law seems to be helplessly silent.

Wittingly or unwittingly, matters at the heart of International Law and peace are being obfuscated by some pro-Trump administration commentators meanwhile. For example, retired US Navy Captain Brent Sadler has cited Article 51 of the UN Charter, which provides for the right to self or collective self-defence of UN member states in the face of armed attacks, as justifying the US sinking of the Iranian vessel (See page 2 of The Island of March 10, 2026). But the Article makes it clear that such measures could be resorted to by UN members only ‘ if an armed attack occurs’ against them and under no other circumstances. But no such thing happened in the incident in question and the US acted under a sheer threat perception.

Clearly, the US has violated the Article through its action and has once again demonstrated its tendency to arbitrarily use military might. The general drift of Sadler’s thinking is that in the face of pressing national priorities, obligations of a state under International Law could be side-stepped. This is a sure recipe for international anarchy because in such a policy environment states could pursue their national interests, irrespective of their merits, disregarding in the process their obligations towards the international community.

Moreover, Article 51 repeatedly reiterates the authority of the UN Security Council and the obligation of those states that act in self-defence to report to the Council and be guided by it. Sadler, therefore, could be said to have cited the Article very selectively, whereas, right along member states’ commitments to the UNSC are stressed.

However, it is beyond doubt that international anarchy has strengthened its grip over the world. While the US set destabilizing precedents after the crumbling of the Cold War that paved the way for the current anarchic situation, Russia further aggravated these degenerative trends through its invasion of Ukraine. Stepping back from anarchy has thus emerged as the prime challenge for the world community.

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