Lover of Victoria lies gently on her breast
It was a sheer mira- cle of efficiency that
the OPD of the Kandy General Hospital displayed when this columnist's schoolmate,
Nihal Weeratunge collapsed on Wednesday, June 24. Dr. Nihal Karunaratne
told me that with amazing speed and total sense of urgency, the stricken
man was in Intensive Care although with scant hope to hang on to. A massive
brain haemorrhage squashed every chance of survival. He passed away, peacefully
enough on the 30th, and there wasn't a dry eye around. His Irish wife,
Jannine covered all those mourning friends and family with that special
love than can only flow from an anguished heart. Nihal was an able ruggerite
at Royal and excelled in track and field. Retired, he made his home at
Teldeniya, his "Rukgala" adjoining Victoria which he loved with
a rare passion, spending long happy hours boating on its tourmaline waters.
A special sense of peace lies in the morning mist that touches the waters
with soft lips, for his ashes were scattered in the dam that "he lie
f'orever with this second greatest love of his life. Who then can forget''.
A "major" harassment
What does an army officer, presently based
in Anuradhapura, do when her land at Handessa is under threat? You note,
I said 'her" because this officer is a Major in the Women's Corps
and has earned quite a reputation for doing her work well. She's been in
Vavuniya and Trincomalee and Jaffna and not counted the cost or risk. She
keeps telling her widowed mother that she has no time to sort out her own
personal problems, problems such as the land. Her husband, too, is a Squadron
Leader with the Air Force. Both giving of their best for the country.
The land the Major owns is in Angulawala in the Handessa area. On one
side it borders a four-foot path which runs outside the boundary, and this
path serves an extent of land which has been recently bought by an individual
who broke it up into smaller lots for quick sale. He disposed of this land
for Rs. 5000 a perch but told his buyers that with a motorable road soon
to be built, the land value should double!
What motorable road? There's this four-foot path running outside our
Major's land. On the other side of the path is a temple and temple land.
Our Major has her property surveyed and fenced and it now seems that the
owners of the land beyond the temple are demanding that she give up part
of her land for this motorable road! Naturally, she will not. Why should
she? And who sold the land to people with the promise of such a road?
Now, things have turned nasty and even the temple has got into the act.
Every boundary tree facing the footpath on our Major's land has been cut
and at night, fences are being torn down, fence posts removed. The harassment
is fearful, and a widow has to face this all with no males to help.
With the destruction of the fences the police have come on the scene
but it seems that according to the perverted thinking of these parts, the
Major has no right to hold onto her land and MUST give a slice of it so
that other landowners have their motorable road. Of course, there is no
earthly chance that the temple on the other side of the footpath will oblige
even though the land sold beyond the temple was once temple land.
A most obnoxious state of affairs on the one hand, we have this desire
of the State to honour our fighting men and women with land and houses.
Our Air Force Squadron Leader and his Army Major wife will not expect such
reward. They have this land - just half an acre - and one day, when all
this is over, they hope to build on it.
Suddenly, their land is threatened, their fences destroyed, their trees
cut, their every right to their own property questioned. Seems like village
thugs still rule and nobody has enough sound in their craw to interfere
and stop this rot.
As I write, I am told that the victims are making an appeal to General
Ratwatte. What a shabby, uncivilised, rotten state of affairs, to be sure!
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