A Special Achievement: Dilhani Sudeshika Receives the Blue All Round Cord Award

Dilhani Sudeshika, a student of the Merrill J Fernando Charitable Foundation’s Rainbow Horizons programme, for children with special needs and disabilities, was recently awarded the prestigious Blue All Round Cord Award, one of the highest achievements in the Sri Lanka Girl Guides Association (SLGGA).

When Dilhani first walked into the Rainbow Centre, she was a quiet, shy young girl. On 20 September 2026, at Temple Trees, she stood before the Prime Minister of Sri Lanka, Dr. Harini Amarasuriya, to receive the Award, which recognises a Girl Guide who has grown across every area of Guiding: leadership and responsibility, commitment, community service, personal development, practical life skills, and living out the values and spirit of Guiding. Dilhani earned the Blue All Round Cord Award by completing every required stage of her training.

Her story is proof of a simple truth: when opportunity meets support, possibility grows.

Dilhani joined the Rainbow Programme in 2015. Someone opened the door, and she walked through it. From that first day, she took part in Guiding activities with commitment, enthusiasm and dedication, showing up, learning and growing at every step.

Too often, children with special needs are protected from challenges rather than invited into them. Dilhani’s journey shows what can happen when a child is given the chance to try, to be stretched, and to be believed in.

Opportunity alone does not carry a child to the finish line. Behind every stage Dilhani completed stood a circle of people who would not let her walk alone: her family, the MJFCF special education teachers and therapists, and a Guiding community that made room for her.

“The support and encouragement I received throughout my Girl Guide journey gave me the confidence to continue and reach this achievement,”

said Dilhani. “Receiving the Blue All Round Cord Award is a very special and proud moment for me and my family. I am very happy that I was able to complete all the required training and successfully achieve the final step of this journey. My family is also very happy and proud of me.”

Special Needs children trained as chefs by Rainbow Program

Her Girl Guide teacher, Wathsala Narandeniya, watched that confidence take shape. “It has been a great privilege to witness her journey as a Girl Guide. She participated actively in the training and activities and showed dedication, commitment and determination throughout the process. Completing all the required stages and achieving the Blue All Round Cord is a wonderful accomplishment. We are extremely proud of her progress and the confidence she has developed along the way.”

Support opens the path, but Dilhani walked it herself. Every stage of training, every activity and every challenge was hers to complete, and she did, with determination.

Special Needs Children under MJF Rainbow Program

For the Rainbow Centre team, that combination is what makes her story so powerful. “Dilhani’s growth has been a team effort, which includes her family and the MJFCF special education teachers and therapists who worked together over the years to harness her capabilities and support and guide her to reach her potential, from when she first joined the Rainbow Centre as a young, shy girl,” said Rehana Wettasinghe, Manager, MJFCF Centres. “Her 11 years of growth and achievement are a reminder that with the right opportunities and encouragement, anything is possible.”

Dilhani’s achievement is part of a longer story. The MJFCF Moratuwa centre started its Girl Guide programme in 2012. Since then, the centre has taken part in, hosted and collaborated on Girl Guide programmes and events, so that its Guides can be part of as many experiences as possible.

Many of these have been outdoors. The centre’s Guides have joined outdoor games and team challenges, hiking and nature walks, and camping and campfire activities, learning basic outdoor skills along the way. They have also taken part in environmental awareness programmes and clean-up campaigns, and learned the importance of protecting nature.

The Guides have also given back to their community. They have supported children and older people and visited community organisations, learning that they have something to give as well as to receive. Alongside this, the centre has made sure its Guides learn practical life skills, including first aid and personal safety, cooking and food preparation, personal hygiene and healthy living, and money management and budgeting.

Beyond training and service, the centre’s Guides have celebrated World Thinking Day, enjoyed arts, crafts and creative activities, and taken part in national and international Girl Guiding events. They have performed at cultural programmes and talent shows, gone on educational visits and excursions, and built friendships with other Guide units. For girls like Dilhani, each of these experiences added another step on the way to the Blue All Round Cord.

Dilhani’s story is a message to families and communities across Sri Lanka: children with special needs are capable of far more than the world often expects of them. What they need is a family

that lets them try, a community that makes room for them, and the patience and encouragement to keep going.

Give a child the opportunity. Surround her with support. Then watch what grows.

Sir Cyril de Zoysa: The Philanthropist Who Opened New Pathways for Buddhist Revival Through the Kalutara Bodhi

The recent elections in Brazil, Serbia and Isreal, with the mother of all elections – the US midterm elections during a Trump presidency – due next Tuesday, are symptomatic of both national choices as well as their global constraints and implications. In addition, the selection of the next UN Secretary General has taken a new turn in New York, further underscoring the shifting sands of geopolitics. In the era of Trump there is only room for cynical transactionalism and dystopic dysfunctionality. Sweeping revolutionary optimism or the mendicant grandeur of non-alignment have turned out to be 20th century ephemerals. There is no credible champion for them in the 21st century.

Even though Trump’s executive powers may become increasingly checked by a new Congress under Democrats’ control after the midterm elections and will be terminated by the end of his presidency in January 2029, the havocs that he has whipped up will ripple through many polities and economies for much longer. There is really nothing that any Sri Lankan government can do to influence geopolitical currents even close its territorial waters. The global context and Sri Lanka’s situation are not conducive to pulling a foreign policy diversion to escape domestic crises.

The task for the NPP government is to navigate through a cynically transactional world and address Sri Lanka’s old and new problems. The NPP’s detractors are literally left, right and centre. All of them keep hammering it for betraying its socialist pre-history and for taking the IMF road to economic stability. They accuse the NPP for both abandoning the path of state-corporation socialism at home and non-alignment abroad. They blame it for being too pliant in foreign policy while insisting that our export and job markets overseas are protected by any and all means.

The saving grace for the government is that its main detractors and opposition parties have not been able to land a single palpable blow to hurt the government. It is the government that has been hurting itself by self-inflicted body blows. The government must save itself from its own goals and prioritize the task that it must fulfill before the next elections. A pertinent question would be which elections and when – provincial, parliamentary or even presidential? As for challenges – there is El Niño, either turning up the heat or turning on the tap; there is energy and electricity; there is education; and most of all the livelihood of with people having to live with diminishing incomes and rising prices.

Donald Trump has been looming large over the presidential election in Brazil. Trump’s right wing pals in Latin America have been winning a string of presidential elections – seven in one year. Brazil would have been the eighth. But incumbent President Lula da Silva pulled off a stunning come-from-behind victory to keep Brazil leaning Left. Brazil and Mexico are the only large countries with non-Trump presidencies in Latin America. The pendulum will of course swing back, but leaders of the left and centre-left parties will have redraw their roadmaps to facilitate the swing.

Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio revealed their design for Latin America when they allowed the defeated candidate Flavio Bolsanaro to enter the US with his family on a special US visa after fleeing Brazil via Argentina and Ecuador. He fled to escape investigations for corruption, money laundering and tax evasion. He is now in Florida where the majority of Brazilian Americans, including his younger brother, live. His father, former President Jair Bolsonaro, is serving a 27-year jail term in Brazil after being convicted on charges corruption and for attempting to overturn the results of the 2022 presidential that he lost to Lula da Silva.

Flavio Bolsanaro is a Brazilian Senator and as presidential candidate this year secured the largest number of votes in the first round raising hopes of another right wing turn in Brazil. But in the second round runoff Lula da Silva turned the tables on his opponent with a vigorous campaign and strong voter mobilization, capturing 52% of the vote and polling four million votes than his opponent and more than what he polled in 2022. This would be da Silva’s fourth term (after two terms from 2003 to 2011, and the current term since 2023) as President and it may very well be more challenging than the previous three.

At 81, da Silva needs to find a competent successor to lead a highly divided country. The north voted mostly for Lula da Silva while the south sided with Bolsanaro. While his supporters have been uproarious in their celebrations, the markets have not been kind to da Silva’s victory. They reversed their rally after Bolsonaro’s first round victory. The attention is now on the selection of the new cabinet and the next Finance Minister in particular – to calm the markets and reassure investor confidence. The re-elected president can also expect long distance meddling from Washington that could get worse after next week’s midterm elections before it tapers off.

Unlike in Brazil, the Serbian elections were not under any American shadow. Yet the elections delivered a political earthquake. Serbian students who have been protesting a while longer than their counterparts in Europe and in India, contested Serbia’s parliamentary elections under the Student List banner and spectacularly defeated the Serbian Progressive Party (SNS) of President Aleksander Vucic and ended their 14-year hold on power. The Student List candidates, largely unknown and a rather motley collection of academics, actors and famers, won 140 out 250 seats in the Serbian parliament.

The student protest that culminated in the election shocker had begun two years ago after a railway station canopy in the city of Novi Sad collapsed and killed 16 train patrons. The canopy failure became a flashpoint for manifesting anger over corruption, cronyism and growing authoritarianism of the Vucic government. After staving off protests for two years, Vucic suddenly called a snap parliamentary election. He resigned as President and contested the parliamentary election hoping to be Prime Minister. His defeat now is comparable to the defeat of Viktor Orban in Hungary in May this year.

Aleksander Vucic has been a central figure in the building of post-Yugoslavian Serbia. He became the Minister of Information at age of 28, and already showed signs of a controlling disposition by restricting journalists and banning TV networks. He wielded power even before becoming Prime Minister in 2014 at 34 years of age. He was elected President in 2017. While criticized for his authoritarianism, Vucic is also credited for his economic stewardship fostering growth and diversification, based on a triangular foreign policy approach – simultaneously engaging the EU for trade and membership; China for investment, and Russia for natural gas and political reinforcement.

As for the victorious student movement, hard works awaits them after the euphoria of victory. Their nominal leader is Ilija Srdanovic, a Cardiologist and university Professor, but it is not clear whether he or someone else will head the new government as Prime Minister. He is from the city of Novi Sad where the protests began and has been a leading spokesperson for the student movement from the beginning. He advocates universal healthcare and considers Serbia’s “existential survival’ and not EU membership should be the priority for the Student List. The electoral agenda of the Student List has focused on eradicating graft and improving the school system.

Education has become the central theme in all the protests crisscrossing Europe. The ultimate political victory of the Student List in Serbia will have a range of demonstration effects in France, Italy, Spain and Albania among others. Spain will have a snap election in late November. It was called after student protests against affordable housing shortage. It has since been joined by protests over high speed rail crashes – partially attributed to introducing private trains to share with public train service the national pride of high speed rail roads that are newly built and are more extensive on a per capita basis than China. What forms protests and fallouts will take in other countries is too early to predict.

In Israel, Prime Minister Netanyahu has been badly bruised but not totally defeated. Netanyahu’s ultra-right coalition has been denied its majority (61 out of 120 seats) in the Knesset, but Likud Party is projected to hold the largest number of seats – 27 seats, five fewer than now48. The final tally is 53 seats for Netanyahu’s ultra right coalition – down from 68 in the outgoing parliament, and 48 seats for the centre-right and left opposition parties. There is no Left of consequence left in Israel. The entire country has moved to the right on national security and Palestinian statehood. A consequence of the October 2023 Hamas attack.

The surprise of the Israeli elections is the capture of 19 seats by the Israeli Palestinian parties, up from 10 seats – the more the larger Joint List group capturing 11 seats and the left-leaning Ra’am or the United Arab List group winning eight seats. The two Arab Parties are willing to join or support the opposition group to form the next government and prevent Netanyahu from becoming Prime Minister again. But there is fierce resistance within the opposition group to have any truck with the two Palestinian parties, which is reflective of the hostile sentiment among most of the Jews.

Netanyahu has already condemned any coalition with the Palestinians as treasonous, and has also accused the Palestinian parties of getting foreign funding support, apparently from Qatar. This is peeling a page straight off the Trump playbook but it may be more fruitful in Israel than in the US. Qatar and the Palestinians have vehemently denied the allegations. Trump who endorsed Netanyahu before the elections has since indicated his opposition to Netanyahu keeping the two ultra right parties in a new government. Netanyahu will likely ignore Trump on this, but he may not be able poach anyone from the opposition to join a new government without jettisoning the extremists. He will likely push for a ‘national government including the opposition, but without the two Palestinian parties and the two ultraright Jewish parties.

At the UN, the search for a new Secretary General to replace outgoing Antonio Guttress has become overtly political. Thanks to the Trump Administration getting interested having its say in the matter and breaking with the past tradition of quiet diplomacy. Brushing aside the compact of regional rotation and the desire for having the first female SG at the UN, the US publicly vetoed all the seven declared candidates, including the two leading candidates – both women and from the Latin American – Caribbean Region: former Costa Rican Vice President Rebecca Grynspan, and former Guyanese Foreign Minister Carolyn Rodriguess-Birket.

Then Trump proposed three names – two outlandish: the controversial FIFA President Gianni Infantino, and former H PM Viktor Orbán; and one self-serving: Bulgarian diplomat Nickolay Mladenov, who is also the head of the Trump-created Board of Peace for Gaza. He proposed Orbán as a joint American, Russian and Chinese candidate, with the apparent concurrence of both Russia and China. But Britain and France quietly demurred. That was the end of it and the start of a very public stalemate.

Now the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has stepped in to break the stalemate and capture the Secretary General seat at the UN. The UAE government has nominated its veteran diplomat Lana Zaki Nusseibeh as a new candidate with the consent of all five Permanent Members of the Security Council, against the wishes of the Latin American countries.

Lana Nusseibeh’s credentials are not in question. An experienced diplomat, fluent in Arabic, English, French and Hebrew, she could be the first woman UN Secretary General. At 48, and she is younger than either Rebecca Grynspan (70) and Carolyn Rodriguess-Birkett (53), and would be the second youngest SG in UN’s 81 year history. Ms. Nusseibeh is also Palestinian and a descendent of the notable Nusseibeh family of Jerusalem. Her father was born in 1946, in Jerusalem in the then British Mandatory Palestine.

All the Gulf States and the Palestinian government support her candidacy and that enhances her credibility as a potential bridge builder for peace in the Middle East. She has been both credited for facilitating relief operations in Gaza, as well as criticized for being closer to the Israeli government than suggested by official assertions to the contrary. Lanna Nusseibeh has now become the leading candidate with growing support. She is presenting herself as a generational change candidate with experience in facilitating consensus between conflicting parties, and promising “to pursue relentless diplomacy, strengthen global trust and address worsening conflicts, warning that the failure of international institutions to act carries an unacceptable human cost.”

The problem with her candidacy is the human rights record of the government she represents – both at home and abroad, especially in Sudan. Sudanese diplomats and human rights activists are outraged at her candidacy, and have accused her of being the “public face of the UAE’s denials that it was arming the murderous Rapid Support Forces” – RSF in Sudan. Yale University’s Nathaniel Raymond has described the Nusseibeh candidacy as representing “the capture of the UN by the UAE” and “a doubling down by the US and Britain in their Emirati relationship above international law.” It is not just Britain and the US, but practically every western country, all G7 members, as well as Russia and China who value their own Emirati relationship and are ready to support the UAE candidate for the highest office at the UN.

I took my final BA examination in December 1972, and left Peradeniya on the eve of 1973 with my friends. We were happy to go home after the hectic examination schedule. We left the University with good memories of the most enjoyable times in our lives. Through autograph albums, many exchanged their memories as if they wanted to preserve them forever. From bookshops in Kandy, students bought dozens of such albums.

Some were expensive, with silk cloth covers and scented papers with beautiful art on each page. I wanted to be different. I cut an exercise book in half and stapled the two halves together to make my autograph album. A young artist drew a lovely abstract design on the cover page. I wrote a poem in Sinhala on the first page, and I still remember its first stanza:

Women friends wrote more poignant poems. A close friend wrote: “No wish of yours should ever become only a dream.” Another wrote: “Although the spring [you have referred to] may never return, it has opened a door to find charming qualities of a loving heart.”

I made about 100 entries in my album with amusing short notes and poems. My 80-page autograph book was full by the time I left the campus. A friend became well known for the poetry he wrote on women’s autographs. He began each poem with the word ‘dahasak’ (thousand). Women called him ‘dahasak Kumara ’.

On December 31, 1972, the university-leaving students got into the train that departed from Sarasavi Uyana (University Park) railway station at 6:30 am. We bid farewell to the University as the university slowly disappeared behind the hills. Suddenly, we all felt sad, vulnerable, and aimless. The train stopped at three or four major railway stations on the way down to Colombo. At each station, a few friends got down with their belongings. They waited on the platform waving at us. I sadly watched them as if I would never see them again.

I came home by bus from Colombo and felt like a stranger. I forgot where the well and toilet were. The only cupboard in the front room was full of clothes and electrical items. I emptied my suitcase and placed my few items of clothing in the closet. On the train, a friend gave me a pillow to take home, with a few drops of fresh tears on the pillowcase. She told me to visit her at her home in Gampaha to return the pillow, if I wanted.

The anxiety, loneliness, and aimlessness overpowered me. I felt I hadn’t used all the opportunities the University and its vibrant community offered me during those four years. I was sad not to have a committed relationship with a female student. I realized I now had to restart my whole life alone from an unknown point.

I told my mother that I had completed my studies at Peradeniya. She was happy to have me at home after four years. She hinted that I should get ready to look for possible brides with the assistance and advice of Eusabius Uncle. She wanted to know whether I had a girlfriend at the University. When I told her I wanted to wait a while before thinking about marriage, she laughed. She was happy and relieved to guess that I had remained uncommitted to any woman.

On the second day back home, two friends visited me. They confessed they felt lonely and missed their girlfriends. One of them suggested visiting a few friends in Gampaha. I agreed happily, as the woman who gave me a pillow was from Gampaha. I told my mother that I was going with my friends to visit some other university friends. When she saw the pillow in my hand, she wanted to know why I had brought a pillow that belonged to a woman. I tried to convince her I had picked up the pillow by mistake. She didn’t believe me, but she smiled.

Our friends in Gampaha were first shocked and then elated to see us. They looked tired and heavy-hearted. Their usual enthusiasm for chatting, sharing jokes, and gossip seemed to have already waned. One complained about her mother, who had begun to control her visits to relatives and friends. I returned the pillow to my friend at her home. She told me her trick had worked—to bring me to her. Her mother, a kind-hearted woman in her 50s, was a schoolteacher. Her husband died many years ago, and she raised my friend and her sister with her meager salary.

We had ‘high tea’ at my friend’s place. She served us hot kavum, welithalapa, and fish cutlets with ginger tea. Her mother too invited me to visit them again. I felt happy, and we all talked about our memories at Peradeniya. On my way back home, I thought about my life and who I was going to share it with. No specific person came to my mind.

Two days later, I received a letter from the Central Bank asking me to come for a job interview, based on my GCE (Ordinary Level) results, which I passed in 1965. The job offered a monthly salary higher than what Eusabius Uncle gave us.

I visited Eusebius Uncle and told him that I had completed my undergraduate studies. I thanked him for his support, kindness, and love. I told him about the job at the Central Bank. He had tears in his eyes, and I do not know why he cried – perhaps he was happy to see that our family was nearing a better phase in life.

My mother cooked kiribath for breakfast the day I first went to the Central Bank. At the Bank, I was assigned to the Audit Department. The Director of the Department called me to his office and asked me about my school, the subjects I had studied at the University, and about my parents. I told him that I had just sat for a BA in Sociology degree at Peradeniya and was waiting for the results. He looked at me and said, “You will leave us when the results are out. But you can apply for a staff position at the Bank.”

Then, a ‘tea boy’ brought tea. I hesitated to stay in his big room to drink tea with him. But he told me to sit down and enjoy a good cup of tea. After tea, he told me to visit the Public Debt Department. He said that the Department needed someone who could read tender applications and sinking fund-related documents in English. I felt happy because of his kindness and encouragement.

I met the Director of the Department of Public Debt in his office. He was an intelligent, dashing, handsome man in his late fifties. He welcomed me, and after a brief conversation, he instructed me to go to Mr. Perera’s Audit Unit in the middle of the floor. Mr. Perera had two assistants, and I was the third in his Unit. Perera was an unassuming man, about to retire from the Bank after 35 years of service. He too asked me about my family, education, and plans.

He was delighted to know I was originally from Paiyagala, where he lived. He knew my grandmother and Antoney Mama. The senior Assistant at the Unit was a Tamil man who looked distressed and unhappy. He gave me a purple ink pen and told me that internal auditors use purple pens to write on documents, especially to highlight issues for discussion. I almost told him that I was colorblind, but I didn’t because I didn’t know how he would respond.

He did not waste time talking to me. He took out five fat files from a steel cabinet and asked me to study them thoroughly. I had to ‘audit’ reports and send memos to the Public Debt Department through the Senior Assistant and Mr. Perera. I felt proud to examine official documents and write short memos for my boss’s review.

The second Assistant was a jovial fellow with plenty of gossip to share with his boss. He took me to the Central Bank’s cafeteria for lunch and introduced me to his friends. One of his friends was one of my father’s students. The cafeteria reminded me of the dining room at Marcus Fernando Hall. I suddenly started missing the University.

In the afternoon, I received a rude telephone call from a man called Christie. He introduced himself as the President of the Bank’s trade union. He said that he had expected a before-lunch courtesy call from me. I apologized and asked him whether I should visit him right away. He sternly said, ‘Yes. ‘

Christie wore the national dress – a long white top and a white sarong, accompanied by a pair of old leather sandals. His shirt was dirty and crumpled, his long hair unkempt, and because of his blue eyes I thought he was a Burgher. I knew he was a Christian because of his name – Christie. He told me that many brash fellows like me joined the Bank and had to leave because they did not learn the ‘survival culture’ there. I thought it was a threat.

When I tried to talk to him, he told me, “You listen to me first.” He advised me to join the Union. The parting shot was that I should ‘faithfully’ do overtime every weekend. He said that unless I worked 20 hours during each weekend, others in my Unit could not justify their overtime claims.

From my boss, I learned how to write ‘effective’ memos. He advised me to discuss the draft memo with the recipient before sending it, especially if the recipient is a senior official, because I should not ‘shock’ or ‘challenge’ anyone with memos. Reading files on sinking funds, debentures, and stock and share documents helped me broaden my knowledge of economics.

On Christie’s advice, I clocked twenty hours of overtime every weekend. The extra payment was reasonable. I enjoyed working with colleagues in an informal weekend atmosphere. We dressed casually and brought sweets from home to share. We took a two-hour lunch break instead of a one-hour break on weekends. A senior clerk bought several kilograms of tempered dhal from a shop near St. Anthony’s Church at Kochchikade and sold small parcels to overtime workers at the bank, keeping a small profit for himself. He did not do any office work as he was busy with dhal business.

At the end of January, I received my first salary. I left the bank and had lunch alone at a restaurant for the first time. When I returned to my desk, my boss asked me to come out into the corridor and told me, “Please give me hundred rupees on loan. I will return your money at the end of next month.” I told him, “If I give you Rs 100, then I will take home less than Rs. 200. That was not enough for five members of my family to live a month.”

He smiled with guilt. Then he demanded Rs. 100 again, and I immediately handed him ten 10-rupee notes. I couldn’t do any work that afternoon. I told my mother what had happened to me at the bank. She consoled me by saying the boss would surely return the money. He returned the loan after two months.

In my semi-annual performance assessment at the Bank, conducted in July, the Bank awarded me an A+ (“Excellent, outstanding record”). The award generated more animosity than recognition for me at the Bank. The two staff assistants in our Unit received the grade ‘B’ (Satisfactory). They were unhappy to see A+ on my report.

I expected to return to Peradeniya as a temporary assistant lecturer before August. Usually, the Sociology Department called one or two students who had done well in the final examination as temporary assistant lecturers. But the Department did not call anyone in 1973 to join the staff. I learned that the Department had been changing because of infighting among teachers. I heard that a lecturer had reduced marks offered by another lecturer. The latter told a student that her initial marks were sufficient to earn a First Class. But in the end, she got a Second Class (Lower Division) degree.

After the results were out, my principal teacher told me he had given me an ‘A’ for my general essay on the role of gossip and rumors as a form of social control. He hinted that I deserved a First. But he didn’t elaborate. Several years later, at the Department, I saw a copy of my results sheet. In three subjects, my scores were borderline. Scores from 67 to 69 were ‘borderline,’ and the Department could have upgraded the result to 70 (‘A’). If it did, I could have got a First as the upgrade of scores would have given me four ‘A’s, qualifying me for a First.

By the end of July 1973, I visited Peradeniya to meet my principal teacher. He explained to me that the Department was not a good place for a young man to join as an assistant lecturer. One lecturer in the Department was undermining the academic culture established by well-known scholars such as Bryce Ryan, Obeysekere, and Thambiah. He told me that he returned to Peradeniya after spending several years at Oxford University as one of its Rhodes Scholars to establish himself as a pioneer teacher who could teach in Sinhala and English.

He could have stayed in the UK and would have easily gotten a university teaching position. Several teachers had already left the Department because they could not withstand the political harassment and vicious slander of the nasty lecturer. Political connections became the primary criterion for appointing some lecturers.

The failed insurrection justified appointing loyal ruling party members as lecturers. My teacher told me he planned to migrate to New Zealand. I told him I had studied hard and hoped to join the University as a lecturer and that I was losing that chance. He sympathized with me and encouraged me to apply for Master’s scholarships in the UK and Australia so that I could join the Department later.

On my way home from the University, I thought about my future. The Central Bank was the only place where I could try to get a staff position. The shock and unhappiness I felt during the visit took several weeks to fade. A few days later, I met the Director of the Department of Statistics at the Bank, who had taught me Statistics. We discussed my plans. He encouraged me to apply for a staff position at the Bank when the BA results are known, and agreed to be a referee.

Potholes on Deveni Rajasinghe Mawatha have gone unrepaired for months. Far from a minor side street, it is one of Kandy’s busiest arterial roads, linking the city and serving school buses, office traffic, ambulances, thousands of daily commuters and tourists visiting the Commonwealth War Cemetery beside the Mahaweli.

Each day, drivers must swerve or brake sharply to avoid these long-standing craters, risking accidents. Why are these repairs so difficult to carry out?

Potholes damage tyres, rims and suspension systems. Motorcyclists and three-wheeler drivers face serious injury risks, particularly at night when rainwater conceals the holes. Traffic slows, causing long queues on an already congested road.

Rain fills the potholes, creating hazards for drivers and pedestrians. Because Kandy’s roads were not built for current traffic volumes, prompt maintenance is essential. Months of neglect on a main road point to a lack of accountability, not funding.

The Road Development Authority and Kandy Municipal Council must clarify who is responsible for inspecting and maintaining Deveni Rajasinghe Mawatha, and explain the lack of action.

A city that welcomes tourists and promotes its World Heritage status should not have roads resembling rain-soaked paddy fields.

As a 98-year-old Kandy resident who still drives along this road, I see young mothers carrying children on scooters, school vans filled with children and elderly pedestrians facing these hazards every day.

Patching these potholes takes resolve, not a major project. A few loads of asphalt, a roller and a day’s dedicated work would make the road safer for thousands. I respectfully call on the authorities to repair the potholes on Deveni Rajasinghe Mawatha without delay.

Publish a regular maintenance schedule for Kandy’s arterial roads Fix street lights along this stretch so hazards are visible at night Small things matter. After 2022, we learned that. Safe roads are not a luxury — they are a basic duty of governance.

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