Tags
Accelerated Mahaweli Scheme, Aluwihare, Armoured Corps, Days of Despair, Ena de Silva, Girandurukotte, Indo-Lankan Accord, JVP, Matale, Military Academy, Pallebadda, Wasgamuwa Park, Yala
Where Piyadasa and Suja stayed on for decades, Ena’ drivers changed over the years, as did her mode of transport. When I first went up to Alu, she had a Toyota double cab, driven by Sena, a portly old man with a shock of white hair that made him look immensely distinguished. In those days Ena drove around often, going into town to buy her groceries and whatever else took her fancy, and setting off every afternoon on an excursion into the hills and valleys surrounding Matale.
It was nothing in those days for us to set off after lunch to Wireless Kanda, as we called the highest point in the hills to the East, before the road dropped down to Pallebadda and then to the area around Girandurukotte where lands had been opened up for settlers under the Accelerated Mahaweli Scheme. That was the area too in which later the Wasgamuwa Park was set up, so the drive became familiar for quite another reason in the nineties. In the eighties however it was purely to loaf, getting up to the highest point before the mists rose, and then driving back as the sun set.