• About

Rajiva Wijesinha – Creative Writing

~ Just another WordPress.com site

Rajiva Wijesinha – Creative Writing

Tag Archives: Esme Goonewardene

Travels with Ena: 1983 and its Impact – Part 1

11 Sunday Aug 2013

Posted by rajivawijesinha in The Moonemalle Inheritance, Uncategorized

≈ Comments Off on Travels with Ena: 1983 and its Impact – Part 1

Tags

Aelian Kannangara, Aluwihare, Bandaranaike, Cyril Wickremesinghe, Ena de Silva, Esme Goonewardene, John Kotelawala, Richard Aluwihare, SLFP, UNP

Half a life ago I got to know Ena de Silva well. Having heard about my adventures at S.Thomas’, she decided that there was another unorthodox person in the family, and invited me to stay with her at Aluwihare. This was her ancestral village, to which she had retired at the end of 1981. It was eighteen months later, in May 1983, that I made the first of what were to be frequent visits there over the next 29 years, half of my life.

Ena was not an especially close relation. Her mother Lucille was a Moonemalle, whose father’s sister was the mother of my maternal grandmother, Esme Goonewardene. But the two cousins, both born in the last year of the 19th century, remained close, perhaps because they both married Civil Servants who were senior administrators in the last years of British rule.

Continue reading →

The Moonemalle Inheritance: Part One – Old Place – Ada and Theodore Moonemalle and their children

27 Thursday Jun 2013

Posted by rajivawijesinha in The Moonemalle Inheritance

≈ Comments Off on The Moonemalle Inheritance: Part One – Old Place – Ada and Theodore Moonemalle and their children

Tags

Anuradhapura New Town, Bishop Lakshman, Cyril Wickremesinghe, D. S. Senanayake, Esme Goonewardene, Eva Goonewardena, Ida Goonewardena, Mitford House, Old Place, Order of St Michael and St George, Richard Aluwihare, Theodore Barcroft Lewis Moonemalle, Trinity College

Theodore Barcroft Lewis Moonemalle married long after his sister did, and his eldest daughter Lucille was exactly the same age as her youngest cousin, except for Brian, who was born in 2003 and died early in 2009. Lucille was born in 1900, as was my grandmother Esme. They both married Civil Servants, the latter Cyril Wickremesinghe, born in 1890, who was the first Sri Lankan Government Agent in what before him had been the exclusive preserve of Britishers. Lucille married Richard Aluwihare, who was five years younger than Cyril and who fought in the trenches during the First World War.

His name still adorns, at the very top of the list, the plaque in Trinity College that commemorates the several Trinitians who fought for the Empire. Many of them died, though Sir Richard, as he later became, was one of the fortunate ones, and was able to tell stories in later life of the horrors of mud and blood and gas and shells he had experienced as a raw youngster.

Cyril did not go to the War, though he had shone as a cadet at Royal. We still have a beautiful picture of his platoon, and I have often wondered whether any of that valiant group of innocents also went to war, and if any of them died. Cyril himself joined the Civil Service when he was just 21, and served in Kurunagala during the war, which is when I presume he met my grandmother. His mother, who had known her father in Galle, doubtless arranged things, though my grandmother never doubted that theirs was a wholly romantic affair.

Continue reading →

Lakmahal 4 – Making a Match: A Time of Promise

22 Saturday Oct 2011

Posted by rajivawijesinha in Lakmahal

≈ Comments Off on Lakmahal 4 – Making a Match: A Time of Promise

Tags

Cyril Wickremesinghe, Esme Goonewardene, Lakmahal

Cyril and Esme Wickremesinghe when he served in Puttlam

Cyril Wickremesinghe and Esme Goonewardene married in 1919, and were stationed in various places in the country over the next seventeen years, before finally settling down in Lakmahal at the beginning of 1937. Their eldest son, Cyril Esmond Lucien, was born in 1920. Interestingly, they moved thereafter to Ceylonese names, Tissa in 1923, Lakshman in 1927, and in between their only daughter Mukta, named in memory of the pearl fisheries Cyril had supervised when he was stationed in Puttalam.

He had risen rapidly in the service, becoming the first Ceylonese Government Agent in 1930. This was in Sabaragamuwa, and there is a wonderful portrait of him and his wife seated in state along with the Sabaragamuwa chiefs in their traditional costumes, headed by old Maduwanwala Dissawa with his flowing white beard. But even more evocative for me of that bygone age is a photograph of a much younger couple, stunningly attractive both of them, taken it seems in Puttalam, which would make it the early twenties. They are surrounded by young men in studiedly casual European sports clothes. The womenfolk are much more formal, staid almost, with my grandmother looking almost ethereal in the middle.

Continue reading →

Pages

  • About

Categories

  • A Final Educational Fling
  • A Time of Gifts
  • Acts of Faith
  • Book Reviews
  • Bridging Connections
  • Colombo Changes
  • Interviews
  • Lakmahal
  • Mirrored Images
  • New Horizons
  • Poets and their visions
  • Post-Colonial Perspectives
  • The Moonemalle Inheritance
  • Uncategorized
December 2019
M T W T F S S
« Dec    
 1
2345678
9101112131415
16171819202122
23242526272829
3031  

Archives

  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • November 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • May 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012
  • April 2012
  • March 2012
  • February 2012
  • January 2012
  • December 2011
  • November 2011
  • October 2011
  • September 2011
  • August 2011

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 294 other followers

Blog at WordPress.com.

Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy