Simply Nahil- A life story

Simply Nahil- A life story

Simply Nahil

Source:Nahil

Preface

2021. The years have rushed by. Right now the world is a mess with COVID – 19 rampant and not slowing down. The kids have ‘flown the coop’while Nahil, an ‘empty nester,’lives alone in his bachelor’s pad at Crescat Residencies. It’s been seven years since Vajira married Tharushi, five years since Vijitha and Chantal married and migrated to settle down in Boston. While Chantal works on her MBA at Harvard, Vijitha is still contemplating his career path. In the mix, Anika, his only girl and the youngest, married Rehaan, a budding young politician, four years ago, gifting Nahil with two grand sons.

As we sit sipping an excellent cup of coffee rustled up by his elderly housekeeper Tikiri Manike on the 24th floor of the condominium he calls home, the lights of Colombo city flickering around us set up an awesome ambiance. What strikes me most in my deep-ended curiosity of this unassuming, kind and humble man is his analysis of life. He is able to perceive the simple looking through the lens of life that shows up macro cosmic. His analysis of contemporary concerns and larger-than-life situations has never seemed to faze him, given his brilliant mind. He recalls, with a chuckle, that even as a child he saw the world in technicolour. For him, the blacks and whites of reality were juxtaposed with the richness and vibrancy of the reds, yellows and blues of his imagination.

The Beginning
The year he was born, moreover, the day he was born, was significant in the history of the world. It was the day WWII officially ended. The allies had won and he came bawling into the world on the morning of 8th May 1945 – Victory in Europe Day – at the Rutnam Nursing Home in Colombo 02

Agnes De Silva Malalgoda – Amma

Agnes De Silva Malalgoda – Amma

As he recalls incidents and anecdotes of growing up in Kandy with his family of five, his tone softens discussing his parents and siblings, of whom he says with pride, “In their lives and careers they have made a mark and left a legacy for their generations to follow .” His dad Gratian Wijesuriya, a native of Udugampola Gampaha, was a civil engineer – “A very smart man, who always thought out of the box and was ahead of his time.” His father was responsible for designing and building many beautiful homes in and around Kandy. Though built in the seventies, these houses are still very current in aesthetics and contemporary in style. An example would be his family home in Galkanda Road, Aniwatte, Kandy, which stands as a testament to his dad’s design genius.

He speaks with pride of his mother, who loved him dearly. She was Agnes De Silva Malalgoda, who hailed from Bentota, a student and later a teacher at Good Shepherd Convent, Kandy, Pushpadana Vidyalaya Kandy and a school in Minuwangoda, where she taught Home Science. When thinking up a name for him, she drew inspiration from the best student in her class, Nahil Samarakkody

He has had a few thumps on his head and books thrown at him while in college with the misconception that he couldn’t even spell his name properly! Interestingly, he tracked down Nahil Samarakkody the son of Edmund Samarakkody, a lawyer, trade unionist, politician and Member of Parliament for Dehiowita. Edmund was married to his first cousin Dagmar Samarakkody and had a daughter Chulanganee, and son Nahil, who was a Judge at the Mount Lavinia Courts. Nahil phoned him and said to him, “By the way, I’m so and so, I’d like to meet you. “Thanks to you being my mother’s favourite student, I got this awkward name.

Nahil S. says, “Great, that will be nice,” and hangs up after setting a date for a meet-up. The next day he heard the man had committed suicide. “Oh gosh!’’ he thought, “What a name!” He was unhappy that he didn’t get a chance to meet Nahil

His father decided to mark his birth with the ‘Victory in Europe Day’ a.k.a. VE Day, by inserting Jayantha to his name. Consequently his name was coined as Muthukuda Wijesuriya Arachchiage Don Jayantha Nahil Wijesuriya

Thaththa, Nahil, Mahes, Kanthi and Amma

He was the middle child, the thorn between two roses. His older sibling Maheswari and the younger Srikanthi were students of Girls’ High School Kandy and are now doctors, Mahes a Pathologist and Kanthi a Paediatrician. Mahes married Dr. Kumar De Silva whom she met at university and moved to London with their three children, Ranil, Amali and Nimali. Kanthi married Dr. Lakshman Karalliedde and settled in Kandy for a while, later moving to New Zealand and finally migrating to the UK with their sons, Janaka, Dhammika and Siddantha.

He spent a few hours discussing the beginning of his mesmerising life story. With much nostalgia, he recalls that his parents always made his sisters and him feel important and loved. Their children were their utmost priority. Nothing was too much work or trouble when it came to the three of them. At times, even though busy with work, it was fascinating in retrospect that they would put aside anything and everything just to be hands-on with the children.

Clamouring for their mother’s attention the three children would often ask her whom she loved the most. Her apt reply was: Akka since she is the eldest, Nangi since she is the youngest and Nahil since he is the only boy!

They were showered with love and encouraged to pursue their dreams, coaxed and guided through whatever project they took on to bring out each child’s potential and taught basic moral values; it was ingrained in the three young minds to always be truthful and guard their integrity, which they’d say would be of great value when they stepped out into the adult world.

They were a very closely-knit unit and still are. Even after their parents’ demise, the siblings, now all in their seventies and oceans apart, still look out for each other.

No. 4, Galkanda Road, Aniwatte, Kandy – L-R Chandrakanthi, Kanthi, Ratna, Mahes and the family pet dog, Hardy

Gratian Wijesuriya – Thaththa

Gratian Wijesuriya – Thaththa

Fondly talking about his late father, he remembers that as a child, that he looked up to dad as his hero. “We had a great father-son relationship. I loved pleasing him and he was always terrifically proud of my accomplishments.”

Even as an adult most times he would go to his dad for advice, taking whatever wisdom he imparted very seriously. Amazingly, after the untimely demise of his mother, his father, among other things, was responsible for setting up a marriage proposal for Nahil with Indrani, his first wife! “A versatile man of untiring determination – that was my dad!”

Being a Civil Engineer working for the Irrigation Department, his father was transferred multiple times all over the island, while the family remained in Kandy. Finally, when Nahil was around seven, to the family’s utter relief, his father decided to continue staying in the house they were living at 665, Peradeniya Road. Kandy, opposite Mohan Tennakoon’s father’s home, which is now ‘Suwa Sevana Hospital,’ Kandy.

Nahil’s earliest memory of their Peradeniya Road home was their German Shepherd, Wendy. She was very protective of the family and would on occasion terrorise their home help whenever she tried to serve a meal at the dining table, especially if the ménage was gathered there. Unfortunately one morning Wendy took her doggy duties too far by attacking the postman, leading to a tragic event following the incident. The home help called the Police, who shot the dog since an epidemic of rabies was going around. Even though Wendy’s test results for rabies turned out negative, the Police had no choice but to put the dog down, after which the postman and the entire Wijesuriya family were subject to rabies injections for 21 days each, which was a positively painful business. Regressing to the fate of the dog, Nahil says; “That was one sad, depressing incident in my life, the memory of which has stayed with me to date.”

Ranatunge Jayasekara Koralage Adeline – Achchi

He recalls the rickshaw driver Subramanium who would sit on the front steps of their home until it was time to take the siblings to school and the ‘Kiri Kos’ lady who was an absolute terror! If she stopped at your gate you had to buy, if not all hell broke loose…

While living in Peradeniya his father decided to retire from the Irrigation Department consequent to a Government directive that offered early retirement including all the usual perks for government servants who were dissatisfied. Thereafter he worked independently and took on Irrigation Department contracts. An amiable man, he continued to maintain friendships he had cultivated with his co-workers at the Irrigation Department. After the contracts tapered off, he concentrated on constructing and selling houses, starting with the house at Watarantenna, followed by Piachaud Gardens and Aniwatte. He was a great friend of Mrs. Piachaud, who, whenever she sold a block of land always offered him the best available site for his house constructions.

His father was the disciplinarian at home. He remembers one time how, as his dad gave him ‘six of the best,’ he tenaciously kept shouting, “beat me as much as you want, it does not hurt.” It probably hurt plenty, given that he can vividly recall the incident even now! One of 12 children, his father was a student at St. Joseph’s College, Colombo 10, where he captained the college volleyball team, the first non-Catholic to do so. He had a wide circle of friends in college; among them was a young Josephian, Mr. Hilary Marcelline of cricketing fame who remained friends with him until he passed away. Mr. Marcelline would frequently invite his dad to invigilate athletic meets since he was an excellent athlete who had even won a 400-metre sprint against Olympic Medalist Duncan White at a local athletics meet. His father was one of the longest living Joes at one time.

Seeya – Muthukuda Wijesuriya Arachchilage Appuhamy, Achchi – Ranatunge Jayasekara Koralage Adeline”

To celebrate his 90th birthday, the family and the East West staff dug out all his old scrapbooks and photographs, searched the college archives and compiled them into a revolving slide show which was played during a party they hosted for him at their family home on Galkanda Road, Aniwatte. Enthralled and in shock, he spent the evening engrossed watching the slide show, not paying much attention to the guests at the party!

His paternal grandmother lived until she was 108. Nahil humorously says he is depending on the ‘family longevity genes’ to do their bit in his lifetime too! After his mother passed away, Nahil’s grandma was keen that his father remarried but he refused. “Achchi would relentlessly nag dad in Sinhala saying, ‘I know how the Wijesuriyas are,” as she kept on insisting that he re-married while imparting to the siblings otherwise little-known snippets about their father and how difficult it was to control him as a young man, etc. She rebutted all his excuses, going on and on at him. Later on, his dad got involved with a girl much younger than him, who lived with him and took care of him, in fact almost until the time he passed away. Since all three children were living overseas, they were grateful that she did an excellent job of taking care of their father, even though none of them were sure of their civil status. That aside, the great job she was doing caring for their father was their only concern. Nahil thinks she was a student who used to attend his mother’s classes. Now, in her late sixties, she is still around, though none of the siblings keep in touch with her.
We drift on to the subject of his wonder years. He tells me how his dad, in the scheme of things, had a grandiose plan for the siblings’ futures in the area of academia. Putting his brilliant plan into action, he used reverse psychology on Nahil and his two siblings. Nahil was around eight years old at the time and was living at Katugastota. One afternoon, among the many soothsayers that came by, Mr. Karolis, a soothsayer of great repute – at least that’s what Nahil was told – turned up at their home for a consultation. It was an indisputable fact that this man Karolis had an amazing knack of making accurate predictions; according to his dad of course.

Karolis was there specifically to dish out the futures of the three siblings. The family sat around Karolis; his father, mother, Maheswari, Sri Kanthi and Nahil, his mouth agape, all ears, to find out what Karolis had to say. The consultation about their future lasted a mere five minutes. Karolis told Mahes and Kanthi it was written in the stars that their destiny was to be doctors and Nahil an engineer. “Oh yes, he was on point’’ says Nahil. Years later while the three of them were reminiscing at a family gathering, the conversation turned to that amazing prediction. That’s when his dad chipped in and debunked Karolis’ soothsaying abilities. Apparently, Karolis, including the rest of the visiting astrologers, had been tutored by Nahil’s father on what to say! Astounded they were. They have always been grateful that their father made sure this was their destiny by encouraging them.

Nahil at 8 years old – Watarantenna

Journey To Trinity – The Best School of All – ‘Respice Finem’

Trinity College

Nahil started his schooling at Girl’s High School Kandy from nursery up to grade two. Incidentally, it was a necessity due to the lack of space at Trinity College, the school in which his mother insisted he should receive his education. Later, as a seven-year-old, he transferred to Kingswood College for a year and thereafter to the ‘best school of all,

From what I know, he is a respected and loyal alumnus of Trinity College who has helped his Alma Mater for over 50 years. “I am a very proud Trinitian and a grateful old boy. I always felt that if I owed anyone anything, it was to my parents and the school,” says Nahil Recalling his many exciting escapades as a young adult, he vividly remembers his antics with the family car. He was around 16 years, living at Piachaud Gardens in Kandy, the anchor house built by his dad, followed by many more houses built by him. Subsequently, this house was bought by Jeevaka Attapathu’s family, who were all Trinitians.

His home was on a bend atop a hill and the family car which was an Opal Rekord, 3 Sri 2704, would normally be driven up this incline on second gear. But he was determined to challenge this norm, holding a bet with a buddy, given his ‘expertise,’ that this hill could be conquered on third gear if good speed could be mustered before the incline. The bet was placed. There he was, he says, virtually flying up Piachaud Gardens in his element on third. He missed negotiating the bend – obviously at that speed – and ended up hitting the side of the car on the gate of his house. Smashed car aside, he remembers reasoning with himself that if he hadn’t done this, he would have never known! The damaged car was just one problem, the major issue being how he would break the news to his dad. His expert driving had blindsided him! After much contemplation, he sheepishly confessed his folly to his dad. To his utter amazement, his dad was so amused that shortly after he bought him a Raleigh Humber sports push bike.

Even as a young adult Nahil had abounding energy and a fantastic sense of humour that he exudes even today. Perceived as a rascal by family and friends, he was a serial bully when it came to his sisters. He bullied his sisters so much that much later on – while living in Kandy – he was boarded at the college hostel – Collins House – even though the family lived at Wataranthenna in Katugastota, an easy 10-minute drive to school. During the three months, he spent in the hostel, the hostel food was so bad that his mother came by each day with food. “I’d sit in the car, eat, and go back to the hostel.” The punishment for being difficult and especially for bullying his sisters was for one term after which he was back in his home. He says, “The girls were very good. Whenever we had disagreements, I may have hit them or been mean, they’d cry and stop. However, when they heard the car turning into the driveway, it turned out to be a great drama, two feisty females pitted against lonesome me. They’d cry again as my parents walked into the house. My younger sister, gosh she was a great crier!”.

Managing to keep his grades above average was something he did not take lightly. He was always second in class, thanks to Vajira Wimalasena, son of the Member of Parliament at the time, for Kandy and later on our High Commissioner in London – the boy whom he could never beat to first place. Vajira was in first place throughout his college career. In fact, Nahil named his first son Vajira after him.

The Buultjens boys Johnny, Billy and Micky

In the third form he was very unpopular with his math teacher, Mr. Lekamge. Once, after the final exams, Mr. Lekamge was reading out the results to the class, sheet by sheet, ceremoniously handing over the examination sheets after correction to each boy, when he suddenly stopped the proceedings, observing five seconds of silence while staring at the sheet in his hands with an incredulous look on his face. He broke his silence announcing Nahil’s name. He had scored a perfect 100. In a thin and edgy voice, Lekamge declared, “Had I marked your paper, it would have been much less than 100.” Recalls Nahil: “I was smug as a bug!”

During the period they lived in Piachaud Gardens, a middle-aged couple, Mr. and Mrs. Philip Buultjens and their sons Tony, Jeffry, Michael, Johnny and Billy were their neighbours in whose garden the kids down the lane would gather to play. They owned a Fort Prefect. Soon the bike his father bought him became the bane of the Buultjens’ lives. Just for a lark, he made it a point to ride in circles around the moving car almost daily on his way to school. Trying to recall why they were his quarry, he says they were both teachers at college.
He was under their jurisdiction during school hours and they were on his ‘turf’ after. Annoying them was his way of making a statement, letting them know that he was in control outside school hours. He had pushed them to the limit until they were convinced he would get himself killed. Mrs. Buultjens snitched to his dad, requesting that the bike be taken away from him, foretelling imminent death if not disposed of immediately – meaning the bike, not him!

He says it still amazes him how his dad never missed a beat; on his 18th birthday, he received a gift of a car. He remembers thinking, it was not bad at all, from a push bike to a car. Ten days later he had his license though he never went for a driving test. The license was gifted to him by the Examiner, who happened to be a family friend and was well aware that Nahil had been driving for a few years before his legal age. Driving to school and back was the highlight of his day. He often got the ‘look’ from his peers who were being dropped off by their parents as he drove into the parking lot in his Renault Gordini sports car. He recalls there was much talk among his peers, relative to man and machine. He never figured out if they were in awe or envious. Whatever, he was the only student who drove his car to school!

In college, the ‘Thambi Kade’ situated next to the school was the hangout for Nahil and his gang, which included Mohan Sahayam, Gotabaya Dissanayake and Eardly Wadugodapitiya. Whenever they entered the ‘kade’ for a tea and cigarette, the owner would switch the dial on his Rediffusion radio and turn the dial to ‘Housewives’ choice’ on Radio Ceylon specially for the boys to listen to for half an hour on Friday from 2:30 to 3.00 p.m. This was a weekly ritual. Generally, they had lunch at Green Cabin, after which five or six of them would traverse to the bar upstairs for a smoke – according to him, they all smoked. One fine day, unfortunately for him, he got caught while enjoying a smoke on his own. This was reported to the Head Prefect who passed on the information to C.J. Orloff, the Principal. The usual letter was dispatched to his parents that read ‘your son is a bad influence,’ and should be removed from college and was followed by the set ritual – parents trotting in to see the Principal; the Principal gruffly reprimanding the son in the presence of parents; parents assuring this will never happen again; the student getting six of the best; and student back in class after a few days of suspension.

The college prefects were generally appointed based upon their good behaviour combined with academic excellence. These boys were liked by their teachers, who depended on their input when it came to matters of discipline. Nahil’s tale-bearer concerning his smoking was one of the Karunanayake brothers.

One morning they met by chance in the school corridor. Siezing the opportunity, he passionately called Karunanayake a bastard. Once again Karunanayake snitched on him to the Head Prefect, M.V. Mushin, who ordered an immediate apology from him to his accuser, to which he agreed. Thankfully, on this occasion, the Principal C.J. was not involved.

He hilariously recalls the scenario: The Class; Head Prefect occupying the teacher’s chair, the exit on his right; Nahil, standing between the Head Prefect and the exit; and Karunanayake sitting like a plum pudding opposite the HP.
Nahil: (asks aloud) “What am I to say?”
HP: “Say you are sorry, boy.”
Nahil: “Karunanayake, I’m very sorry you are a bastard” and he took off like lightning…

Nahil with buddies – Lakshman Wijetilake (M) and Luksri Gunawardena (R)

He recalls an interesting incident concerning Ishan Bahar of ‘Jetliners’ fame. While in Colombo staying with Srinath, they were keen to party at the Coconut Grove night club. Realising they were sans dancing partners for the evening, they called upon Ishan to help out. He was very forthcoming setting up his two sisters as their partners and with all arrangments in place they drove to Ishan’s home in Wattala around 8 p.m. that evening to pick up the girls who were ready and waiting for them. Once they piled into the car and were on their merry way, one of the girls requested Srinath who was driving, to stop to pick up a friend. He did. She introduced the guy to Nahil and Srinath as her boyfriend. A few more miles later down the road, they stopped once again to pick up another individual who happened to be the other sister’s boyfriend. Thoroughly miffed, Nahil and Srinath got to the venue, dropped off the couples at the entrance after which they proceeded to Galle Face Green so they could strategise their next move. Deciding to just hang out at the club with a couple of beers, they parked the car and made their way to the club, only to notice the two couples still standing at the entrance. Quite perplexed, wondering what was up, they subtly inquired from one of the guys as to why they were still at the entrance, only to be informed casually by him that they were waiting for Nahil or Srinath to pay the entrance fee to the club for the two couples!

The Importance Of Exams

General Certificate of Education

During this era getting into university was a highly-regarded achievement. The required results to qualify for sitting for the ‘A’ Level was five credits at the ‘O’ Level, with university entry requiring three ‘A’Level credits. He aced the ‘O’ levels with 5 credits, unfortunately, falling short by one credit at his ‘A’ Level, even though he scored credits in maths and physics. Looking back he is quite proud of his results and subjects, since none of his friends got five credits and given the fact that most of the leaders in industries are sans ‘A’level certification and in the extreme, the required five credits for their ‘O’level certification as well.

To him, his results at both exams were a ridiculously pleasant surprise, despite not having studied for these exams due to the many distractions, predominantly during his ALs. Still at college, with his car, he was attracting a legion of female attention. Never one to let an opportunity go by, he passionately pursued many.

Besides his passionate pursuits, to the complete and utter embarrassment of his sisters, his hunting ground was Girls’ High School Kandy. Raising the ire of the GHSK administration by driving through the ‘in’ and ‘out’ gates of the school, with a car full of schoolmates, honking the trucker’s call as they drove through. “That,” he says, “was wicked fun!” There were days they did this multiple times.

Nahil was quite the sportsman during his tenure in college. Besides cricket and athletics, he played 2nd XV rugby and was a member of the TCK 1st X1 cricket team in 1963. The most memorable moment in his cricketing career was a match played in Colombo against Royal College. Vijaya Malalasekera was the star batsman for RC. He had just commenced his batting, his score still in the low teens, when Vijaya hit the ball high in the air. Nahil, fielding at mid-off ran forward, managing to get a grip on the ball, only to let it slip through his fingers. Vijaya went on to score a century. Sadly, that was the (missed) catch that lost the match for Trinity. Needless to say, he was embarrassed and endlessly teased all of the season. “Hanging in and taking it all like a man was humbling.” As someone said ‘failure is not fatal and success is not final’! That was comforting. “My college days were remarkable and fun. Some of my teachers are responsible for moulding me into the man I am today.”

Nahil captained and played cricket for both Gibson and Garret Houses on three occasions. He remembers holding a bet with Sunil Perera, the Captain of Alison House that he would never be able to get him out during any match played between Gibson House and Alison House, a bet he maintained until he left college. Interestingly Sunil Perera went on to be Nahil’s best man at his wedding when he married Indrani De Silva. Ironically, Sunil being a family friend of the Silvas’, the family had requested him to vouch for Nahil’s character before he married their daughter.

Mohan Sahayam was the House President, Malin Goonetilake the Secretary and Nahil the Treasurer of Garret House, the ‘best’ house according to him. Garret House social evenings were held once in two months. Flushed with money collected from the members as subscription (subs), they served the best food and drink, played the most popular music and smoked the most expensive cigarettes available. He says, “Smoking was against the rules of the school, but as you are aware, rules are made to be broken.’’ The team saw to it that all house members invited to these socials had a blast. The subs to host these gala shindigs were a very important aspect, a chore Nahil took rather seriously. Maybe a tad too seriously, for failure by any member to pay the subs of 30 cents due at the end of each month was dealt with severely with ear-pulling and the occasional ‘toku’ meted out to defaulters.

The socials were held in the college hall and the guys who owned guitars brought them along while he contributed with the latest music tapes played on his Grundig TK34 tape recorder which he had purchased from the Grundig showroom on Peradeniya Road. Prathab Ramanujan, a bigwig at Central Bank was often a victim of Nahil’s ear-pulling. Now whenever they meet at gatherings, Ramanujan always says, “Nahil used to pull our ears. You all are the guys who made us men.’’ ‘‘I doubt our ear pulling made them men,’’ says Nahil. Rama is now enjoying his retirement.

Russell Tennakoon, a real prim and proper guy, due to a sudden shift in personality, joined in rioting with Nahil and his crazy gang, something which was totally out of sync from Russell’s normal behaviour. This change was observed by a famous teacher at Trinity, Mr. Sinnathamby. One afternoon Sinnathamby summoned Russell and said to him, “Aay Russel, you better not join this gang of hooligans. They will get themselves into and out of trouble while you will remain in trouble. Listen to my advice and refrain from joining these hooligans.” Nahil has invested quite a bit of his time trying to analyse Russell’s change of personality. Maybe he was so bored with being proper he took a chance letting his ‘hair down’ and being crazy and loved it!

After their ALs, some of Nahil’s peers were getting jobs in Colombo, and others, especially the non-academic guys, were taking up jobs as planters. His school-leaving certificate had a remark made by Principal C.J. Orloff, which read ‘‘Nahil has more than average intelligence and an aptitude for things mechanical.’’ Nahil had basically, been destroying everything that was in the house: clocks, radios and other mechanical stuff. Word may have got round that he was mechanically inclined, which set in motion his leaning towards engineering.

Taking his aptitude for mechanics into consideration, after much pondering, he felt an apprenticeship at Walkers, since they were famous, seemed like a good idea at the time. One of their tenants – his father had a few houses down the road given on rent – was John Loam, an Englishman who was the Leaf Director of Tobacco Company. He knew Johnny Walker, a third-generation Walker – based at the Colombo Office. John put in a word on Nahil’s behalf, enabling him to be recruited, kick-starting his Marine Engineering Special Apprenticeship at Walkers Dry Docks in 1964, based in Colombo.

Walkers, the seventh oldest company in Sri Lanka and a pioneer in the engineering and infrastucture industry, was founded in Kandy in 1854 as John Walker & Co. that designed and manufactured machinery for the once-dominant coffee industry.

After the Ceylon coffee estates were all but extinguished by the leaf blight in the early 1870s, the brand was renamed in 1881 as Walker Sons & Company. Walkers expanded to other areas of engineering and was successful in repairs and dry docking of mail steamers into the expanded artificial harbour in Colombo. Walkers’ engineering skills also branched out into training of apprentice Marine Engineers, the construction industry and the manufacture of machinery for tea factories. These machines are used by these factories to date.

He stayed at Jothy’s home for a few days till he left for Milapitiya Estate on an assignment for Walkers pertaining to the installation of a National generator that he was in charge of. The entire exercise was estimated to take around two weeks. By this time his father, who had heard of all the drama, advised him to stay on the estate until the completion of the installation. He also reassured Nahil that things would fizzle out once he returned to Colombo after the two weeks on the estate. Meanwhile, his father got word to the Minister that if he continued to get cops to handle this and anything should happen to Nahil, he would shoot each cop personally. The drama ended in an anti-climax.

On his way to Milapitiya Estate by bus, each time the bus rounded a bend, he noticed a man on the bus willfully leaning and pushing himself on to the shoulder of a woman standing next to him. It was obvious that the woman was bothered by this. Nahil locked eyes with the conductor who had also noticed this inference. On the next bend, the conductor looked towards the man and shouted, “Mahathaya, wanguwa iwarai” – (Sir, the bend is over!)

Pursuing an Engineering Degree in the UK

Walkers & Son Apprenticeship

During the period 1964-1967, in his third year at Walkers, he firmly believed the Walkers engineering qualification was world-class, with the bonus of working in engineering workshops and going on board ships, which he enjoyed.

This was much-needed exposure for him personally since part of the training was ‘onboard’ ship work which was very interesting. The apprentice used this opportunity to do a little bit of side business – buying cigarettes and scotch from the sailors on board at duty-free prices and selling them outside, which was a regular thing. During this period, he says, “I would see my peers who had concluded their apprenticeship just ahead of me still cycling to their jobs. I thought, darn this is not going to work for me.” He short-circuited the four-year course, doing it in three years, deciding to further his engineering studies in England. His thought was, there was no way he was going to be biking it to the office on completion of his apprenticeship even though he owned a Vespa (scooter), a mini, and the Willies Aerolark, which he remembers riding and driving in sequence.

Nahil made his way to the British High Commission, got hold of the Universities Central Council on Admissions (UCCA) books, found 15 addresses, wrote all the addresses down, bought 15 aerogrammes and persuaded the Walkers Secretary to type out the same letter on all and mail them off.

September was an amazing month for Nahil. He mailed the letters, on the 5th and by the 15th he received the first reply saying ‘you appear to be qualified – please send your official application through your High Commissioner in the UK.’ His friend Dayantha’s dad, Mr. Wilmot Liyanage, a very close friend of his father, was the Chief Accountant at Radio Ceylon during the time Livvy Wijemanne was Chairman. Since Mr. Liyanage knew many influential people in the Government, Nahil handed him the letter he had received from the College in the UK. With this letter, he got Nahil’s passage approved, exchange 45/- GBP a month and all the necessary documentation. By the 20th of September, he was in Leicester College, heading for his HND in Mechanical and Production Engineering studies.

As he recalls his time in the UK, he continues about his maiden voyage to the West. Before he left for the UK, he was sharing a room on a side lane off Bullers Road, Colombo 07, with his buddy, Premlal Gunasekera who captained St. Thomas’ College in cricket with his claim to fame being that under his captaincy they won the Royal-Thomian encounter which was the last time St. Thomas’ won, in a long time. An annex in the same building was occupied by Ms. Enid Handunge, sister of the Olympic medal-winning boxer, a Trinitian, Leslie Handunge. She treated Premlal and Nahil like her sons. When he dropped in to say goodbye to her before leaving for the airport, being a great fan of Trinity College Kandy, she was shocked that Nahil was not wearing his college tie. She pulled off his tie and insisted he wore the college tie in her possession. He is glad he took her advice.

Bags packed, he confidently set off. He was flying on a BOAC VC10 aircraft. Arriving in London, just as he got to the arrival gate, a gentleman who was welcoming some foreign dignitaries, recognising the tie came up to him, introduced himself as Jayantha Dhanapala and shook his hand, He was an old Trinitian, working as an Attaché at the Ceylon High Commission, who later went on to be a high official at the UN. Aunty Enid was right. To date, Jayantha shares this little story with those around, whenever they meet.

Leicester College England

Dayantha Liyanage

The year was late 1967 – Met on arrival at Heathrow by Dayantha Liyanage, Nahil was driven in his Mini on the highway to his family home at 48, Glenhill Close, Finchley. He remembers being overwhelmed at the speed on the highway, which made him earnestly request Dayantha to slow down. He stayed overnight, leaving for Leicester College the next day. An attack of food poisoning, probably due to something he ate on the flight, made his first night in the UK rather unpleasant. Dayantha’s mother was a wonderful lady, who made a fuss over him, going to the lengths of getting a doctor to the house to attend to him.
Setting aside his stomach issues, he had woken up early the following day and left to Leicester to start his HND in Mechanical and Production Engineering studies.

Though he had been requested by the College to apply through the Ceylon High Commission, he had short-circuited the request by going directly to the College. It so happened that the day he arrived at the college was the day registrations were taking place. The Registrar reviewed his papers and informed him that he should have submitted his application via the High Commission. Nahil then informed the gentleman that the letter he received from the College indicated that he appeared to be qualified, although the originals of the certificates had not been submitted. He presented the certified copies of the originals to the Registrar. Glancing through the certified copies that were presented to him, the Registrar said: “Welcome! Your student life in the UK has just begun.”

The start of University comprised exhilarating days. As a freshman and foreign student, he was given preference to stay at Glenfield, which was a part of the campus, for one year, after which he lived in a house shared by six students at Loughborough Road ‘‘Life was easy-going carefree and uncomplicated. As students, we lived it to the fullest. The Beatles were big and so was Elvis. Rock ‘n’ roll was in full swing and the flower power culture was taking over the youth in the West; life was good, the world our oyster,” says Nahil with a look of melancholy that speaks of good times, sad times and great memories.

Nahil was the only foreigner in his class and the lecturer inquired if he could call him John, to which he replied, ‘‘Sorry Sir, you call me Nahil or nothing at all,’’ after which the lecturer questioned him on his ability to speak English, saying, ‘‘Your English is not bad for a foreigner. Where did you study it?’’ Nahil replied, ‘‘on the Colombo/London flight, Sir!’’ With this remark, Nahil fit into the class very well.

While in college Nahil would drive down to London every weekend and spend time with his friends Lakshman Umagiliya and Sunil Perera who shared a fantastic apartment opposite the Royal Lancaster Hotel – 14, Westbourne Street. Number 15 next to it was the Marsh House Hotel. The apartment belonged to Dr. Umagiliya, Lakshman’s father, who had left for Libya on receiving a lucrative offer he couldn’t turn down, handing over the flat to Lakshman. The flat turned out to be ‘party central,’ a bachelor hangout and party place every weekend. To encourage more ladies to join the party they put up a poster on the notice board at the nurse’s quarters of St. Mary’s Paddington, which was round the corner of Westbourne Street, inviting the nurses to join the fun. To their amazement, 20 or more nurses made their way to the parties on weekends, with two of the nurses eventually marrying two of his friends!

Certificate in Mechanical Engineering

It was during this period that he invited his mother and younger sister on holiday to the UK, intending to take them around Europe. They flew into Frankfurt where a family friend’s son, Lakshman Jayasekera, was working at the airport. With his help, Nahil bought a VW, a nice old Beetle which was the equivalent of 80 GBP in DMs. They travelled from Frankfurt to Vienna, Florence, Rome, Venice and past Lake Como through Switzerland to Paris. Lake Como in Nothern Italy in the Lombardy region is an upscale resort area known for its dramatic scenery, set against the foothills of the Alps. The lake is shaped like an upside down ‘Y’ with three slender tributaries that meet at the resort town of Bellagio. At the bottom of the south west branch lies the city of Como, home to Renaissance architecture and a funicular (a vehicle which uses cable traction for movement on steeply-inclined slopes) that travels up to the mountain town of Brunate. It is said that one should visit Lake Como at least once in their lifetime. Once they got to Paris they were joined by Bridget, Lakshman’s wife, and enjoyed excellent food in Paris since Bridget’s father was a chef at the Paris Hilton. While in Paris they drank no water, only wine.

He remembers they had coffee at a sidewalk cafe on Des Champs elysees, surrounded by shops where the cost of a Jacket was more than the cost of his VW in which they had travelled a few thousand miles. En-route he realised that since it was summertime his mom and Kanthi had not seen any snow, therefore he took them to Austria that had a cable car going up into the mountains. Once they got up there they had a blast walking in the snow and messing around. Nahil recalls it was a great holiday, with lots of laughs, photographs and fun memories. In anticipation of his mother and sister’s visit, he had rented out an apartment in Earl’s Court for the duration of their stay in the UK. After their return from Europe, they spent a few more days sight seeing in and around London, before returning to Sri Lanka. Unfortunately, Mahes had just started at Medical College and couldn’t join them.

Leicester College, England – Amma and Kanthi

Incidentally, he did not pay duty for his VW Beetle since it had German export documents and number plates. He used the car for one year, paid the taxes of GBP 12 and sold it to his classmate, Ken Garner for GBP 80/-. Come the following summer, his father called him brimming with excitement, insisting he wanted to do the same tour around Europe his wife and daughter had done, the previous year. Father and son commenced their tour once again in Germany, this time buying a more expensive VW Variant hatchback, driving the same route as on the previous trip.

While in college Nahil worked at the Ceylon Students Centre and later at Wimpy, a burger fast-food chain, where he worked in the very hot and steamy basement loading the dishwasher and dryer. There was a Sri Lankan female working there, with whom he kept all conversation restricted to Sinhalese and commended her for her ability to speak English, to which she replied, that she must have done some ‘merit’ in a previous life for this ability. Later, during a visit to the student centre, she had heard him speaking to his friends in English. Aghast, with her hands on her hips, she had virtually screamed at him saying, ‘‘You are the type my mother warned me about…’’

He drove his VW Variant in the UK with the export plates intact, which was duty free. He says he never paid parking fines. Being lazy he used the windscreen wipers to flick the tickets off the screen. Finally, the parking wardens, by now wise to his little schemes, cello-taped the tickets to the side of his car, which he continued to ignore. His number was not traceable and to prosecute him they would have to trace his number in Germany, something that never happens. Loopholes like this were really abused by him. There used to be a parking meter close to Selfridges where he worked for a short time. One morning as he parked his car at this meter, on a hunch, he experimented by inserting an engineered paper clip into the parking meter and it worked out brilliantly. The system jammed, awarding him a full day of free parking each working day, throughout his tenure at Selfridges.

Thaththa Trafalgar Square

Ten years later Mithra Rodrigo and Nahil were passing by a similar meter and as a dare, he tried the trick again: Voila! It worked. The second VW Nahil bought in Germany was a left-hand drive car. After two years, just as he was about to leave the UK, he knew he would get much more value from the car if he converted it to a right-hand drive, which he did, outside on the street at 168 Holland park where they lived. This was the modus operandi. He had Sri Lankan friends working at the Swiss Cottage VW dealership. He got a list of parts from them and wherever there was a left-hand drive option, there was an asterisk that indicated the options of the parts and the date of manufacture. He got a list of about 18 items from pedals, to the gasoline tank with a different shape. Taking the list to a scrapyard, where many cars of this model had been scrapped, he picked up all the bits and pieces for a pittance.

The only thing he purchased from the dealer was the dashboard which had the meters. He cut it just under the windscreen lip and did not weld it but pop-riveted it, placed the rubber beading across it and spray painted it to get the same colour. New parts are normally grey, therefore getting the correct colour was important. He bought a can of aerosol paint, sprayed the new parts, changed the meters by putting miles instead of kilometers, and did a test drive on the motorway because the safety aspect was very important. He drove full speed and tested the brakes and found it to be very steady and ready for sale.

Ratnasiri de Silva (Jeeves) and Nahil

He advertized the car for sale, getting a positive response from an English guy and a Sri Lankan, who turned up simultaneously to check the vehicle out. Nahil was not too keen to sell it to the Sri Lankan – a minor fault and he would be at Nahil’s doorstep whining. The two buyers started arguing over who should get the car, till he cut them short advising both that the first to deposit the amount quoted into his account could have the car. The Sri Lankan offered him cash and the Englishman said, “Here’s my cheque. My cheque is as good as his cash.” Exasperated, Nahil tossed a coin, which fortunately the British guy won! It was a Friday and the guy wanted the car for the weekend, but Nahil was willing to hand over the car only when the cheque was cashed and the transaction finalised.

His friend Shantha de Silva, who was with him, took him to the Lloyds Bank on Lower Regents Street along with the Englishman who withdrew the amount in cash and paid him. They signed the transfer on the bonnet of the car. “As we were about to leave, he tells me the left-side view mirror of the car was missing. I had forgotten to fix it on the left,” says Nahil. He told him that’s the way it was when he got the car, followed by a quick “Sorry, I’ve got to go,” and took off, with Shantha driving him home. Even as a young student the affirmation of his entrepreneurship and money-making skills was evident. He recounts that this was the time when a large population of Indians arrived in the UK from East Africa due to Idi Amin’s idiosyncrasies. Most of the Indian students in his college had their homes in London. With all his friends based in London, he would drive the 100 miles to London and back every weekend. In response to an advertisement he had placed in the college bulletin, among the many Indian students living on campus, there were three who joined him to London each weekend, paying him one pound per person, per trip.

A gallon of petrol cost 33 pence and this sweet deal, thanks to the Indians, guaranteed him a freebie both ways every weekend. A few weekends into this enterprise, one of them, a smart ass, lamented that one pound per person was far too much. Nahil then challenged the Indian to buy a gallon of petrol, place the can on the highway, sit on it and wish hard that it would magically take him to London. That shut the guy up and he continued his weekend trips to London with Nahil.

Nahil and Friends

Tuula Rippati

One morning, climbing up the stairs with some groceries to Lakshman Umagiliya’s flat, he stopped dead in his tracks dazzled at the sight of a beautiful, busty blonde in a Cossack hat, making her way down. Gobsmacked, he left the groceries on the step to retrieve later to follow her. He just couldn’t get her off his mind. As fate would have it, there she was again a few days later. By now visibly smitten, he followed her to Lancaster Gate station, stood behind her in the queue and bought a ticket to her destination, Euston.

The VW Variant

Heading into the same carriage, he sat beside her, striking up a conversation and admitting that he had followed her there to talk to her. In Euston he lazed around untill she got back to the station and returned to Lancaster Gate with her, managing to get her name before she went up to the Marsh House Hotel next door.

On inquiring, she had given her name as Petruska, but when he called the hotel, he was informed that there was no one by that name. Determined, he rang again and this time around, described her to the receptionist as a beautiful lass from Finland. What he heard next was music to his ears. “Oh yes, that must be Tuula Rippati.” Excited he called her room, confessing that he was the guy she met on the tube. Without wasting time on small talk over the phone, he invited her for a coffee. She reluctantly agreed and they had coffee that evening at the Finnish Club in Sussex Gardens. After the coffee, since it was Tuula’s first visit to London, excited, he took her sightseeing to Trafalgar Square, Piccadilly Circus, London Bridge, Westminster and other places of interest around the city in his VW Beetle, ending the evening by taking her dancing to a club in the vicinity, after which they spent the night together. In his opinion, this was a major romantic conquest for him.

Their romance thrived. A few days later she confessed to him that he was the first non-white person she had ever been around, and by dating Nahil, she was ‘taking romance to a whole new level’. As things got emotionally serious between them, he helped to get her visa extended to stay in the UK as an ‘au pair,’ which allowed her to work at a school in Kent. A short time later they moved in together to 168, Holland Park Avenue in Notting Hill Gate. “Now I hope you are impressed by my chatterbility (sic) skills!”

Tuula, who initially was on vacation in London for two weeks, ended up staying with him for three years. They probably would have got married, he says, if not for his father, who after being introduced to Tuula remarked that culturally it would not work out for them.

During a recent chat with me about Tuula, he said he believed that if he had taken a stand and married Tuula, they probably would have still been together saving all three of his wives from heartache! “Que sera sera.’’

Amma’s Sudden Demise

Digging deeper into his life in the UK, he tells me that despite all the highs during the time he spent in London, easily the lowest would be the day he got a call from his brother-in-law Lakshman Karalliedde, urging him to make his way back to Sri Lanka immediately. “Lakshman informed me that my mother was sick and I needed to get back home fast.” He left the UK, secure in the fact that with doctors in the family she was in good hands. Unfortunately, once in Colombo, he was informed that she had passed away from a heart attack. He was about to turn 24 years and in shock. “Amma’s sudden death was by far the most devastating single incident in my life,” says Nahil. The only immediate solace he had were his dad and siblings who, though going through the same emotions, were a source of comfort. At the time of her passing his parents were living at No. 04 Galkanda Road, Aniwatte, which remains their family home to date and where his mother’s ashes were interred in the family burial grounds in the compound. His dad who lived to the ripe old age of 97 finally joined her in the same resting place in 2011.

After a moment’s pause, the conversation still centred on his mother’s death. “Amma was a diabetic, I am convinced that the German medication Rustinon, prescribed for controlling her sugar, somehow contributed to the onset of her heart attack.” This was an era where testing blood sugar and other tests were done in a Bunsen burner over a stove. His mother’s sugar was high when it was tested the Bunsen burner way at his home. Thankfully Rustinon manufactured by Hoertz was withdrawn from the market many years back. He returned to London a few days after her funeral.

Family grave site – Roshanne, Amma and Thaththa

5th Engineer, P&O Lines

Leicester College done and HND in Mechanical and Production Engineering in hand, he was contemplating returning to Sri Lanka, when fate played a different hand. He had extended his visa thrice due to Tuula. Besides he was wasting his father’s money hanging around in the UK. His options were either to find a job immediately in engineering to stay on or return to Sri Lanka.

As fate would have it, a day later, a friend, Ratnasiri de Silva, who was also an ex – Walkers apprentice, a willing victim of ‘Flower Power,’ who had just concluded his contract on a ship, requested Nahil who was very familiar with getting around in London to accompany him to a job interview he had with a shipping company in the East End, including visits to other shipping companies in the area.

Ratnasiri was the son of the former Member of Parliament for Habaraduwa, Mr. G.V.S. de Silva, a great economist who was the private secretary to Mr. Phillip Gunawardena, a founder of the Marxist movement in Sri Lanka, and Minister of Agriculture, Food and Cooperatives, in the cabinet of the late Mr. S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike. GVS was responsible for drafting the controversial Paddy Lands Act, which gave tenant cultivators some rights.

Following their visit to four shipping companies in the East End, they got to Leadenhall Street, where the impressive P&O office was located. Ratnasiri had an interview with P&O Lines. While Nahil sat around waiting for him, Ratnasiri got back from the interview looking dejected. He conveyed to Nahil that he felt his interview did not go well and he was sure he was not getting the job. Nahil asked Ratnasiri if he would mind him facing the interview, to which Ratnasiri agreed gracefully, requesting Nahil to go ahead. He met the interviewer, David Long, who was impressed with his qualifications. He aced the aptitude test which made David question whether he had done it before. Nahil told him, “No, it was just too easy.” Amazingly, he ended up with the job his friend was interviewed for! The post was for 5th Engineer on the ship MV ‘Chakdhara,’ a ship belonging to the British India Steam Navigational Company – P&O Shipping Lines. Nahil was told he could join any time and when he called dad with the exciting news his dad’s response was, ‘‘What on earth were you thinking accepting the job? How can you go to sea, you can’t even swim!’’

The British India Steam Navigation Company (BISNC) was formed in 1856 as the Calcutta and Burmah Steam Navigation Company formed out of Mackinnon Mackenzi & Co, a trading partnership of the Scots William Mackinnon and Robert Makenzie, to carry mail between Calcutta and Rangoon. The 3,035 tonne, MV Chakdara on which Nahil sailed as 5th Engineer was built in 1914, purchased by BISNC in 1933 and eventually sold to Scindia SN Co., in the 1970s renamed MV Burmenstan.

Shortly after Nahil got his job as a Marine Engineer, Tuula returned to Finland, subsequently settling down in Stockholm, Sweden. He says her absence in his life was painful, but he had to be rational in his decisions even at the cost of a broken heart. This was the period in history when the Suez Canal was closed and ships coming from the Atlantic had to go around the Cape of Good Hope to get to the Far East, a 54-day sail. He was missing her so much that he disembarked in Hong Kong, and immediately boarded a flight to Stockholm, on his way to see Tuula again. After spending two awesome weeks with her, and much tears and sadness, it was a ‘forever goodbye’.

Still at P&O Lines, in 1972 he had the opportunity of travelling to Europe to train on a Sulzer RND 1050 diesel engine at the main research centre in Winterthur, Switzerland, which was an excellent addition to his qualifications.

He knew the big guys at the Head Office were fond of him; this was confirmed to him later on. Being tenacious, he took full advantage of their affection to get transferred to different ships every three months, even though the standard rule was a few years per ship. His agenda was to get the opportunity to work on different, new engines, thereby gaining more experience. As he kept transferring to various vessels, expanding his knowledge and experience, he was able to work on five large engines manufactured in the UK, Germany and Holland.

He was able to work on a steam engine, which was an excellent, opportunity as his ultimate goal was to work on the best diesel engines in the world manufactured in Switzerland and when he sent in his request, it was granted. A few days later he jetted off to Switzerland for a month to experience and work on the best engines being developed there.

There was an Indian sailor named Mike Rozera, a Second Engineer on another ship owned by P&O, who was envious of Nahil, and was always trying to find ways and means to get at him.

As a 5th Engineer, part of Nahil’s job was to take the log of the first watch and enter the details in the proper logbook stored in the cabin of the Chief Officer. While attending to the job at hand, he noticed the personal files of the employees stacked on a shelf in the Chief’s cabin and decided to glance through his file. He found a letter of introduction that read ‘he is an exceptional eastern service recruit and we look forward to his progress,’ which had been forwarded from the Mackinnon office in Bombay, while requesting a report of his progress. Mike Rozera had read this file, hence his jealousy towards Nahil.

Crew on SS Nowshera – Nahil (L), Vasantha Gnanakone and buddies

2nd Engineer on ‘Lanka Kalyani’
On his return from training in Switzerland, he re-joined P&O Lines, sailed a few voyages and then resigned and returned to Sri Lanka, joining Ceylon Shipping Corporation as Second Engineer on the ship ‘Lanka Kalyani’ captained by Baba Virasinghe, the first Sri Lankan Captain, whose predecessors were all British

Training Course for Sulzer Marine Diesel Engines

Their first voyage together was to Rangoon via Singapore, their first port of call. Baba had made the news as the first local to captain a Sri Lankan ship. They had just taken the ship over from the Chinese with absolutely no prior knowledge of the functioning of the vessel – things like where exactly to trace the pipelines or any function in the area of engineering. They sailed two hours after taking over the ship, with Nahil leaving it to chance.
While they were sailing on a river in Rangoon that looked like a sea, a pilot had to guide them through a channel deep enough for the ship. “Suddenly,” says Nahil, “I heard the engine slowing down because the diesel tanks were running out of fuel.” He was in his cabin when he heard the engines slowing down and was flustered as he had had no time to trace the pipelines before leaving Singapore. He knocked the tanks to pump up by which time the generator was exhausted and the engines slowed down further. Finally, he messed around with the pipes to help the trapped air to escape and realised the tanks were filling up, which helped him prime the engines and get it started.

Without the engines, the ship drifts and it can’t be controlled with the rudder; controlling the vessel with the rudder is possible only when the engine is on full throttle. To his chagrin, the navigator was requesting full speed, unaware the engine was not functioning properly. Nahil took about five minutes to get it all sorted and thankfully they were on their way. This was when he told Baba, “First Sri Lankan Captain of a ship, but you could have also been the first Sri Lankan Captain to run the ship aground.” They are still great friends and famously contradict each other’s version of the incident. Sadly after a stroke a few months back, Baba passed away.

Nahil in his cabin on MV. Chakdhara

Towards the latter part of 1975, his father had heard about his dalliance with a divorcee with two kids, whom Nahil would shack up with whenever his ship came into Sri Lanka. As you can imagine, once his father heard about this through the ‘grapevine’ he was livid. One fine day, on being informed that Nahil was at the Wijemanne flats in Green Path with her, he made his way there and sent up a message to Nahil. “I came down to meet him and he says, ‘What you are doing is bloody disgraceful. If your mother was alive you would have never done something like this.’ Saying this, he started crying.’’ In a moment of self pity, Nahil blurted out, ‘‘It seems everything I do is wrong. Why don’t you find someone for me? If I can get on with 30 hairy seafarers for months on end on a ship, I can get on with anyone.”

Meeting Indrani

Nahil’s father had heard from a friend that a family he knew in Negombo was looking for a groom for their daughter. He took the initiative and gave Mrs. Senanayake – a family friend – the job of setting up the venue for Nahil to meet the young lady and her parents. He knew there was no easy way out and agreed to see her. Of course, like any sensible youth, he first wanted a glimpse of this lady before he committed himself to meeting her in person. The stage was set one Wednesday morning at Mrs. Senanayake’s batik shop, down Dickman’s Road. The plan was for the prospective bride to visit the shop with her mother, while father and son walked around looking at batiks. Things went as planned. They walked in. The rest, as they say, is history…

A few days later an official ‘face-to-face and meet the parents’ was set up at the Blue Lagoon Hotel in Negombo. Since his father was in Kandy, ‘aunty’ Senanayake accompanied him to the meeting.

He had the pleasure of driving ‘aunty’ to Negombo that evening in his MGTF, which had the hardest suspension. The poor lady did not find it pleasurable at all as she was thrown around and bumped along to Negombo. Her return trip to Colombo was less traumatic, thanks to his intended father-in-law who made arrangements to send her back in an alternate vehicle.

Hector De Silva was a landed proprietor and a coconut mill owner in Katana. Indrani was the only girl and the youngest in her family while her brothers, Ajith and Manik, were acquainted with Nahil since Manik studied at Trinity around the same time as Nahil.

Once they got to the venue and the introductions were made, Nahil found Hector to be a great conversationalist. They got talking to each other while having drinks, losing track of the real reason he was there. He had not spoken one word to the girl since he arrived, until Hector said, “Why don’t you and Indrani have a look around this place?” They did just that – walking around the garden and getting to know each other. For the next few days, he drove every day to see her at her home on Ave Maria Road, Negombo, until their wedding.

Ten days later, with the usual fanfare, they got married one sunny September day at the Capri Club in Kollupitiya. One distinct little thing he remembers of the wedding is the song ‘Kadalla’ sung by the wedding band. This was a song made popular by Mignonne Rutnam.

At the time of his marriage, he was the 2nd Engineer of the ‘Lanka Rani’ owned by the Ceylon Shipping Corporation and was scheduled to leave on a voyage a few days after the wedding. If Indrani was to join him as captains and engineers could take their wives along, she needed her passport in her married name. Fortunately, a guest at the wedding who happened to be the Commissioner of Immigration at the time, gifted them her passport at the wedding.

After their honeymoon at Bentota Beach Hotel, they set sail to the UK, going around Europe.

On their return to Colombo after a few voyages, they moved into a flat on Gower Street, one of four owned by Indrani’s dad, Hector De Silva. Hector and wife Indira occupied one flat, while the other three were written to the three children. Indrani’s was occupied by Denham Alwis, who was a Director at State Plantations. He owned two cars, his official car and a mini minor, which were parked in an unauthorised extension built by him down a little lane at the back of the flats.

He had always maintained to Hector that when Indrani got married he would move out, but three years had already gone by and he continued to stay. “Hector uncle himself was embarrassed since this flat was promised to Indrani – Not that I wanted to stay there in particular, as I had my accommodation. I told Hector, ‘I don’t think you’re going to make ‘project get Denham out’ successful, may I take the project over?” He gave Nahil the greenlight. After the go ahead, it was down to business the ‘Nahil’ way.

To facilitate his haulage business, he had bought a few hefty low- loaders that carry D9 bulldozers. As part of the refurbishment of the flat that Indrani and he occupied, he had sent one of the cast iron bathtubs in the flat for enamelling at the East West yard at Peliyagoda. When it was time to transport the bathtub back to the flat after refurbishing, Nahil instructed the manager to send it to the Gower Street flat on one of their huge low-loaders. “This huge thing arrived with this little bathtub on it.” Since he could drive these heavy vehicles, he took over the driving seat with the bath tub still atop the low-loader and reversed the machine right down the little lane, at the end of which the extended garage was, and deliberately crashed into it. He remembers the driver and cleaner being in their element shouting, ‘Sir, Sir,’ assuming he had made a mistake. He thrashed it till the roof came down on the Mini Minor that belonged to Denham, who was not in at the time. Later Nahil apologised saying, “Sorry about the accident. Being an unauthorised extension, I understand you were taking it down anyway, weren’t you?”

Nahil helped Denham take the shed down neatly, stacking all the material in the common area after which he dropped a note under Denham’s door apologising for the mishap requesting Denham to send his Mini Minor to the British Motor company for repair, and assuring him that the bill would be taken care of. The next day he got a call from Denham’s lawyers. The first statement being, “You know, harassing tenants… they can end up being the owners. That’s the law of the country.” Nahil replied, “No issue because they are paying only Rs. 500 rent, it’s as good as they own it.” After the opening line, they had wanted to know if the flat could be purchased by Denham. Nahil said, “Alright, here’s my price,” They agreed. The deal was done. According to Nahil, Once the money was paid, Indrani bought a lovely house on 20 perches in Dehiwala that belonged to Captain Ranjan Kumarasinghe, a guy with good design skills. He says, “It was a great investment.’’

It was the time when the Colombo Dockyard was booming. Nahil left Shipping Corporation and joined Dockyard, working under one of the best Marine Engineers, Ananda Diyabalanage. They had done their Chief Engineer Certification together at Poplar College in East London. Working at the Dockyard was akin to resigning from the ship. Therefore he applied for study leave from the Shipping Corporation and left to London with Indrani in tow, to complete his Chief Engineer exam.

While in the UK they lived at Hendrik Avenue off Nightingale Lane, where a petrol service station was located at the top of the lane. Whenever he met up with Indrani’s brother Manik, who had completed his exams in the UK and was on a quest for a part-time job, they would often discuss the prejudice and discrimination meted out towards most foreigners by prospective employers when looking for jobs. On the flip side, the jobs available at stores like Marks & Spencer and Sainsbury’s stuffing shelves, which were much easier to source, were also out of the equation. They would look at the applications and say, “You’re too qualified, once we train you, you’ll leave the job halfway through.” In these instances, qualifications went left field even when looking for an unskilled job.

Fortunately, one evening, walking home past the petrol station which was manned by a bunch of young Greeks, on a whim, Nahil inquired from one of them about the possibility of a job vacancy there. The Greek had seemed relieved and said, “Yes, there will be seven vacancies from next week.”

The guys were all going back to Greece and needed immediate replacement. Nahil met the owners whose only requirement was that he finds an entire team to man the shed. Nahil passed the word around and found six guys who were more than thrilled to join him. That was a great break for all of them. Taking this opportunity they also operated a car repair outlet in an abandoned warehouse behind the shed, taking on minor jobs like fixing brakes, clutch plates and other uncomplicated repairs.

The petrol station was owned by two brothers, David and Peter Britain, who drove two brand-new Jaguars. Whenever they came around during the weekends to get their cars detailed by the team, the guys battled between them to clean the car because it was the only chance they had of getting their hands on a fancy machine. He determines that as students, even cleaning the carpets in a Jaguar was a privilege for them.

It was the day of the annual fire inspection at the petrol station, an exercise where the Fire Department checks it for any risks and offers basic training. “They said, ‘Right, guys, what steps would you take in case of a fire?’ Nahil said, ‘Large ones, two at a time.’” He remembers that vividly. It went down so well with the fire crew that they all started laughing. That was the end of that safety check. He believes this petrol station is still manned by Sri Lankans.

While on study leave in the UK to facilitate his Chief Engineer certification, besides the three to four months of leave, a monthly allowance was paid to the students, which Nahil did not collect. Thankfully he had some savings which tided the couple over the period. Once he finished the exam, with his certificate in hand, he met David Soysa, the Shipping Corporation’s representative in London who looked after all the studies and payments, etc. This was just a created job with perks to enable David to hang around in London. Nahil had not been paid his allowance because he had not responded to the many messages David had sent him inquiring about his progress, or sent his progress reports, resulting in not being paid for three months.

Once he had finished his exam he requested David to settle the three-month backlog of his allowance. Nahil then informed David that before the exam, he had no way of checking his progress, after which Nahil showed him his certificate saying, “I passed, so I must have progressed.” David seemed to enjoy the little twist in the way Nahil worded his request and paid him immediately.

Indrani and Nahil wedding at the Capri Club, Colombo 03 Ms. Samarasinghe, Ajantha De Soysa, Nahil, Indrani, Sunil Perera and Mastr. Samarasinghe

Family Drama

A few days before Nahil sat for his Chief Engineer exam in London, Indrani dragged him into a serious argument over something trivial. Lying in bed, as she continued her tirade, he covered his head with a pillow to block out her incoherent ramblings. Just then he heard a loud thud. As he jumped out of bed, he realised that she, known for her bad temper, had harmed herself with a porcelain ashtray, hitting her head with it. This was a tricky situation; Nahil urgently called Doctor Leonard Kiriella, a doctor friend of Indrani’s family who lived about three miles away. He briefly explained the distressing scenario to the doctor, immediately driving her as fast as he possibly could to Leonard’s residence to get her examined and attended to.

In urgent need to cover all his bases, he called her father, Hector, and explained the entire incident, making sure that Hector and the rest of her family knew he would never touch Indrani aggressively. Nahil also explained to Hector that Indrani was attended to by a doctor friend of his. Meanwhile, on hearing the news, the family was distraught and making a huge commotion about it. Thankfully, it was just a superficial wound that needed a few stitches. However, it was important to him to have it on record that the injury was self-inflicted. Nahil realised this kind of behaviour was very alarming. Determined to find a way to resolve further disaster, the couple left the UK almost immediately after his exam was over. His worst fear was that she would attempt to or jump overboard in a temper. Back in Colombo, he sailed a few more voyages while Indrani opted to stay behind, living in one of her family-owned flats in Gower Street.

Thereafter, he sailed on MV Lanka Rani, Shanthi and Devi as a First Class Marine Engineer, qualified and certified by the Board of Trade UK to head any ship as Chief Engineer.

Starting up of East West Enterprises

Regarding his business empire East West, he explained how he decided on the name of the company. While he was working for P&O Lines based in London, he had been discussing with a friend how difficult it was to send goods from the West to the East.

Then in an eureka moment it dawned on him that the name ‘East West’ would be ideal for an import/export business. This was a time there were restrictions on importing certain items to Sri Lanka with some folks even going to the extent of sending things like Wilkinson blades in aerogrammes to the island.

Meanwhile, Vajira Wijewardena of Anglo Asian, fame was manufacturing blades at his Anglo Asian factory under the brand name ‘Sharp’ and helping fill the dearth in the market.

Nahil says of these blades ‘‘When you shave one side of your face you need a second blade to shave the other side!’’ He registered the name East West Enterprises UK, following which he started his business by buying a supply of Parker pens, which were in great demand, to export them to Sri Lanka for sale.

To cash in on the wholesale discount price, the buyers were required to submit a letter, written on a company letterhead to the wholesaler. In lieu, he printed a few letterheads that read ‘East West Enterprises United Kingdom’ to secure the discount.

Unfortunately, after all his trouble, the pen business did not turn out to be very lucrative for him, thanks to his friends. They took all his merchandise free of charge, before he could send the consignment to Colombo. That was the prelude to East West today, sans the pengrabbing friends!

A Great Business Partnership
When Nahil was working as the Technical Manager of the Ceylon Shipping Corporation in 1976, responsible for all the technical aspects of the fleet under his purview, Lester Weinman, a ship’s captain, was the Operations Manager looking after the port and commercial activities. Nahil instinctively felt that given their experience, together they should start up a shipping company. With the the advent of the open economy in Sri Lanka 1977, together they decided this was the opportune moment to operate a proper agency. The prime motivator in launching out was the lack of good shipping and cargo handling agents; something Nahil and Lester experienced first-hand as sailors in the various ports they would sail through, including Sri Lanka, the lack of good shipping and cargo handling agents. With the asvent of the open economy in Sri Lanka in 1977, Nahil, together with his friend Jothy Godage, launced East West in 1977, operating from Jothy’s home, No.10, Pereira Lane, Wellawatte, which was their first registered office. Subsequently, in 1978 they were joined by Capt. Lester Weinman and Mrs. Vinitha Jayasinghe, who were appointed to the Board by invitation. Mrs Jayasinghe was invited to join, since her husband, Mr. Upatissa Jayasinghe, who was the Commercial Manager of Ceylon Shippimg Cooparation, has planned to leave CSC with Nahil in order to join the Board of East West Enterprises but was unable to do so.

First Class Engineer

With Lester joining the company, they became the first and only seafarers to operate a shipping agency at the time. They needed financing to pay rent and fit out an office with essentials like a fax machine and furniture. Therefore they both decided to sell the brand new cars they owned which they had purchased with their foreign earnings. Nahil owned a Toyota Corolla Mark 11–2000, a fancy car. The only road trip in it was his honeymoon to Bentota with Indrani, his first wife. He sold it to Ceylon Tobacco Company, investing the proceeds in East West, buying himself a little Fiat 600 for his use. However Lester was dilly-dallying on whether he should sell his Peugeot 404 and as by this time the business was on an upward curve, Lester’s car was never sold.

At the onset, Lester suggested that they start up East West Enterprises on the first floor of his home on Alvis Terrace, Colombo 03, owned by F.X.R. Pereira. Their primary need was to obtain a post office box number for the new enterprise. On applying to the General Post Office (GPO) they were lucky to get a three-digit abandoned number, 678. Usually before the issuance of a P.O. Box number, an officer from the GPO visits the business premises for an inspection and a mandatory requirement was a proper signage of the business. Nahil rushed to Walkers, got the name East West engraved on a sheet of Formica, and fixed it on the balcony of Lester’s home so that everything was in place for the inspector’s visit and licensing.

To commence operations on a professional note, the letterheads and relevant documents had already been given for printing, when Nahil suddenly realised the next day that this space at Lester’s was not going to be adequate. Coincidentally, a few days later he met a gentleman, Mr. Hector Silva, a namesake and a good friend of his father-in-law who was an executive in the top rung of Ceylon Insurance Co., who had an office at Ceylinco House. Nahil mentioned to him that he was meeting with Mr. Pathmanathan, the person to approach at Ceylinco regarding rental of space. To his amazement Mr. Silva, who was a senior officer, informed him that he was retiring in six months, and therefore they could rent out the office he occupied at Ceylinco House and he was willing to sit outside the office till his retirement in a few months. Nahil took him up on his offer; a room on the fourth floor of Ceylinco House. That was how East West Enterprises, the parent company of the diverse portfolio of East West Group of Companies, came to fruition.

First Class Engineer Certificate

The company was registered towards the latter part of 1977, with Nahil and Jothy Godage as Directors, its principal business being ship handling and haulage. In a few years, they grew to be the largest shipping and haulage agents in the country. “All this was made possible with enthusiasm, hard work, focus, persistence and dedication in everything we did,” says Nahil.

There was a time during the initial stage of their shipping operations when they would drive to the airport with a typewriter, letterheads and seals in the boot of Lester’s car and, pretending to be clerks, they’d enter the Customs arrival area. It is a Customs requirement that a letter of discharge is furnished by the handling agents of a particular vessel to clear each sailor on arrival before assigning them on-board another ship. He says one of them would run to the car park, type out the letter, sign, set the seal and rushed it back to the Customs officers, who would always question as to how they were able to get the clearance letters so fast. They spun a little fib about a clerk who rushes to the office, collects the letter and rushes back, or some such story. Fast-tracking an otherwise time-consuming operation was one more little thing that contributed towards their success.

Towards the middle of September 1977, Indrani and Nahil were blessed with their son, Vajira. They were living in the Gower Street residence at the time of his birth. The first Wijesuriya of the third generation had arrived and Nahil was thrilled. After the initial excitement, things settled down and they got into a routine. Indrani was a stay-at-home mom. Vajira celebrated his 40th birthday a couple of years back. I marvel at how fast the years have rolled by.

Nahil and Lester with Anton Alwis – ETV opening

We reverted to our discussion on Nahil’s most endearing topic, his business empire – East West. It was the 1980s and the company at the time was on its way to ‘greater things’. As they expanded, diversifying into bunkering services, salvage and towage, a container freight station, haulage, a travel agency and a customs clearing house, each of these agencies, though singular in designated operations and with a three-way directorate, were steered through the shipping agency, their flagship company East West Enterprises.

In the years leading up to the present, when Nahil took over as Chairman of the Group, he diversified into other areas such as real estate, hospitality, media and information technology, among a host of other minor operations. With the real estate boom in the mid to late ’80s, he foresaw the long-term potential of the investment property market and divested most of the larger operations, going head on into real estate. Nahil is a citizen of Singapore and requires an annual visa to live in Sri Lanka.

In the sphere of business, like his dad, he has always thought out of the box, at most times looked at the big picture, been bullish in business, and is extremely forward-thinking. All of these attributes have contributed tremendously to his business acumen. Many people have told Nahil that he has been very ‘lucky’ in business, to which he vehemently protests saying that it’s utter nonsense. He says he has always been ready for a challenge and always looked at the downside in any venture, intelligently working through tough situations, thankfully ending up with excellent results. He is a major sceptic but believes it is divine intervention that has brought him to where he is today. ‘‘Deep down I know I am blessed,” says Nahil.

Donations to Trinity College Kandy
It was the time when Lakshman Karaliadda’s father’s funeral took place. As expected, many of their college mates were there and even though a very somber occasion, a mini college reunion was taking place. He recalls Nimal Maralanda and some of Lakshman’s good buddies were also present. As they sat around at the funeral, discussing college affairs in general, the state of the college cricket team which was in the doldrums due to the lack of a proper cricket coach came up. When it came to cricket coaches, the practice up to that point was to hire coaches from in and around Kandy to keep the cost down. Due to this, they were very poorly paid and not up to the expected standard. Taking this into consideration, each one of the old boys present at the funeral agreed to start a cricket fund, to enable the hiring of an effective coach, preferably from Colombo. The deposits were to be made into an account and the interest earned paid as a supplementary fee to the coach in addition to his monthly stipend. However, on the Monday that followed, he was the only one who had got the deposit ready. After a few reminders, the others followed suit. As agreed the cash was deposited into an account as a fixed deposit at Central Finance since the Chairman, Chandra Wijeynayake, a Trinitian, gave them an inflated interest rate of 18-20%, which was way above the going rate at the time. The sole purpose of this exercise as agreed upon earlier was that this interest earned would be an added source of remuneration for the coaches.

There was a story doing the rounds at the time, that the Principal didn’t take any notice or action to help out in any manner because he had heard that the new cricket coaches, once hired, would receive from this special fund remuneration higher than his income. As a result, nothing happened for a few years, by which time the interest had accumulated quite handsomely.

Nahil requested Kavan Rambukwelle, a senior school mate, very dedicated to the affairs of the college, to take over as the administrator of the cricket coaches. It was of paramount importance to choose the right guy with the best connections. Kavan fitted in perfectly. He was a Director at Bartleets and, being a part of a wide social circle, knew several influential people including a few efficient cricket coaches. Most importantly, he had the time to get fully involved in the business.

Kavan (Kavantissa Rambukwelle) was an exceptional human being. An all-rounder, educated at Trinity, he grew up under the care of his uncle, Sir Richard Aluvihare. In an appreciation featured in the Island Newspaper after Kavan’s demise, Jayantha Dhanapala says of him ‘on the rugby field he had the speed and grace of a panther, in the professional field he was a company director with the highest ethical norms, and as a citizen, he was fiercely independent, conscientious and caring.’

Kavan found two guys – Shaw Wilson, who played for Royal College, and C.T. Edwards, who opened for Sri Lanka – as coaches. All of this in place, as agreed by all the ‘cricket fund’ depositors; it was time to start paying the coaches from the interest of the FD. Nahil decided to check on the fixed deposit, only to find it had disappeared after many years from the books of Central Finance. Remarkably, all this was exposed during the investigation of a huge financial misappropriation scandal at Trinity, including the abuse of college funds by the administration.

In due course, he decided to check on the fate of the FDs that had disappeared during the tenure of a friend of his who was the Chairman of Central Finance. Though he had the precise date and time the deposits were made, which coincided with Lakshman’s father’s funeral, this was a futile exercise and as time went by depleted into a bygone incident.

While the college pool was under construction, whenever the contractor was short of cement or steel, Nahil would supply it free, making him the ‘go-to guy’ for this project. He also donated a computer centre to the school, set up by Sanjeewa Wickremanayake, the head of Ewis, who was a Director of East West Information Systems at the time. Nahil realised all these college projects were badly planned, even in little things like rugby. For instance, when a penalty is awarded or a try has been scored, the player who tries to kick the ball to goal makes a little mound of soil to assist in placing the ball vertically before kicking it over the goal post, an archaic and time-consuming practice. The college rugby coach, Quentin Israel, sometimes watching international rugby, had noticed the bigger rugby playing nations use a little rubber cone to position the ball upright, a simple little thing. Quentin requested Nahil who was living in the UK at the time to source the cones, which he did and had a bunch of these little cones flown in from the UK for use in their future matches. He set the trend, with all the rugby-playing schools and clubs following suit.

With the conviction that the cricket team’s performance could be enhanced even marginally, at the request of Shaw Wilson, who cited the lack of fast bowlers in the college team to practice against at a good bowling speed, Nahil, who was in London at the time, shipped out a ‘John Edrich’ bowling machine named after John Hugh Edrich, a former English first-class cricketer who, during a career that ran from 1956 to 1978, was considered one of the best batsmen of his generation. The machine was set up at the nets on the Asgiriya Grounds. Once again this was a first in Sri Lanka, even before the Sri Lanka Cricket Board installed its own bowling machine.

Even with the bowling machine in place, the Trinity team was still getting thrashed at cricket. Whenever the old boys met, there were many discussions on finding a solution to the cricket team’s pathetic performances. One evening a few club members came up with a brilliant suggestion, assumed as brilliant only by them, about purchasing a batting machine. This group’s thinking was that the college team practicing with both a bowling and batting machine would be the game-clincher in the future. They said, ‘‘Nahil, don’t you think it’s a great idea?’’ ‘‘Why don’t you help by getting down a batting machine for the team?”

Nahil patiently gave ear to this foolish suggestion and quite aptly replied that he already had the winning formula for the next match. The solution was simple. All they had to do at the next match was to send the batting and bowling machines on to the pitch instead of the team. The machines will win. Machines always do.

Gifting the Club House to the TCK – OBA
The Asgiriya Grounds was too small and a large-scale revamp of the grounds was necessary for future cricket and rugby matches played there and to accommodate a large number of spectators. Thankfully, Gamini Dissanayake, an old boy of Trinity and the Minister of Mahaweli Development, took over the project, directing the contractors to lower the level of the ground by five to six feet with their bulldozers, thereby making the ground bigger bringing it up to international standards. Unfortunately, this exercise destroyed the area where the Club House was situated. Haleem Deen, the President of the OBA at the time, says, “Nahil, look at this place, can you please build this for us?” This was 25 years ago. A few years ago Nahil got a plaque commemorating the 25th year opening of the Club House.

Rising up to the occasion, as usual, he offered to fund the club house project. The Club House was designed by an old boy, a chartered architect, Susil Wedikara, after which the OBA called for tenders for the building of the Club House. Some of the members informed him that the awarding of the tender was delayed due to some members accusing each other of having a proposed interest with the contractor. The President of the OBA, Haleem, looked for a way around this conundrum. He thought of Nahil’s father Gratian who was well-known for his construction prowess.

Gratian, who was retired by then, was requested to accept the task to build the Club House for the OBA. It was a smart move by Haleem. He could rest assured there wouldn’t be any infighting or arguments among the members as it was Nahil’s money, with his father in charge of building it. Nahil’s father took up the challenge, really going to town on the project, saying to him: “If I am to do a proper job, over budget, that’s your problem.” Subsequently, the new Old Trinitians Sports Club turned out to be a great gathering point for the members.

It is a tradition during the Kandy leg of the Bradby, that the TCK club bar is an ‘open bar’ for visiting Royalists untill one in the afternoon on match day. The dilapidated state of the Club House had always been an embarrassment to the old boys. With the new club in place, it was truly a pleasure hosting the RC supporters. Nahil says he too has had some good times at the club on many an occasion.

Due to his multifaceted involvement in college projects, somehow one thing led to another and suddenly he was referred to as a trustee of the college OBA. Rather bemused, he had asked them if they knew the first thing about appointing trustees. To be eligible as a trustee, there has got to be a trust deed, conditions of appointment, etc. He had prior knowledge of how this works since he went through the motions putting together his mother’s Memorial Trust, including the mechanics of how complex it is to be a trustee. “These college guys think that if you trust a person, he’s a trustee!” They put his photograph right on top; in Nahil’s opinion, as a reminder to call him whenever there was anything to be done. He still dips into the old pocket and does his bit for Trinity.

With the ‘trustee’ thing not working out, soon after they requisitioned him to join the Board of Governors and Nahil reiterated that he was not interested in positions that would reflect nicely on one’s CV. If there is a job to be done they should let him know, enabling him at the end of the year, together with the Board, to set up some targets for everybody. Whether he likes it or not as the President of the OBA, he automatically has a seat at the Board of Governors. He questioned the Board as to what targets should be achieved by the end of the year, so that they could prioritise, giving the urgent matters their immediate attention.

He found the lease on the Asgiriya Grounds was ending, took the matter over and got the lease not only extended but with a bit of lobbying they got Chandrika Kumaratunge to sign the freehold as well.

Next on the agenda was a website for the school; which was a simple matter but once again only talked about until he took it over. and the job was done. The next big project was to try and initiate an ISO 9000 rating certificate for the school which would rate the college performance, customer satisfaction, and everything that can be geared within that framework. It would also rate the management procedures and judge the management’s efficiency to enable the qualification and assessment of the management from the Principal downwards, which would be a first in Sri Lanka. They had the added advantage of having on board A.G. Ranasinghe, who was well versed in the setting up of ISO ratings, along with Mohan Samarakoone, who was based in Kandy. The British Principal Rod Gilbert, Nahil’s nemesis, was not happy since he would be monitored and under someone’s purview. Up to this time he only reported to the Bishop of Kurunegala, whereas with the ISO, his performance and that of the school would be assessed by a competent authority. He was up in arms, opposing the suggestion with a tantrum, demanding that Nahil should rein in since he had ‘never experienced this type of thing’ in his career. Nahil gleefully took this opportunity to inform the Board including Rod G., that taking into consideration they had never done so many things before, this was the time to do so. This led to really heated arguments with the Board. “I can’t say I did not enjoy going for the jugular of some of the members, especially the administration, each time we met.” The ISO never came to fruition.

Two or three years later it was found that Rs. 240 million of TCK funds could not be accounted for. While the inquiry into the misappropriation of the funds was underway, Nahil who had left the board by that time supported Nishantha De Alwis who, though he was not an old boy but his son was a Trinitian, had filed a case pertaining to the missing funds.

It was unfortunate that the other side of the legal battle was being sponsored by some old boys who were Nahil’s friends. The courts ordered a forensic audit, not for just balancing the accounts, but to delve deeply into each transaction, without taking any document at face value, while questioning each of the documents. Consequently, the audit exposed discrepancies, showing many of these members were involved in a major controversy.

Old Trinitians Sports Club – 25 years

Bunker 1 – The 37,000 Tonne Dead Weight Tanker

The Emerald Sea – Re-named Bunker 1

As East West continued its upward trend in business, it enjoyed a series of ‘firsts’ in diverse areas of its shipping business, the first major investment being a bunkering service. Bunkering means supplying to the fuel containers of a ship or refuelling of a ship. The company owned and operated the largest ship in Sri Lanka, the 37,000 DWT (Dead Weight Tanker) MT ‘Bunker 1’ – previously known as the Emerald Sea – together with the feeder tankers and salvage and towage tugs, the MT ‘Rangiri’ and the MT ‘Ranveli’. This operation was through East West Bunker Services Pvt. Ltd., which carried out bunkering services offshore, headed by Captain Ranjith Weerasinghe. Chatting to him on how the operation worked, he says, the OPL (off port limit) position he selected as a shallow patch was anchoring in the deep Indian Ocean – 6 56N, 079 40E – initially to get away from the 12-mile territory rule during the time the Ceylon Shipping Corporation monopoly was in place. Even though the outside port limit is 6-7 miles, the Sri Lanka Ports Authority and other authorities still consider the OPL position to be outside the 12-mile territory. Now with the liberalisation, it is possible to bunker anywhere. He says that he has been trying to get through to those concerned that the OPL is off port and not off territory. Unfortunately to his chagrin, his endless communication seems to be falling on deaf ears!

The Emerald Sea – Re-named Bunker 1

OSMS also operated salvage and towage tugs – the MT ‘Nilgiri’ and MT ‘Sigiri,’ supply vessels ‘OMS1’ and ‘OMS2,’ through Offshore Marine Services Ltd.

Always one step ahead in business, it was around 1978 that 20 feet and 40 feet containers were being used in shipping into and out of Sri Lanka, although the infrastructure for the business of containers, especially in the areas of storage, etc. were not in place. Nahil, recognising the deficit and seizing the opportunity, launched East West Containers (Pvt) Limited, owning and operating the first off-port container freight station in Peliyagoda. This was the only container storage facility and yard on the island at the time, headed by Capt. Ryle Mendis, an ex-Shipping Corporation Captain.

EWC had just launched operations when Iraq invaded Kuwait, followed by the Iran/Iraq war. EWC was stowing around 200 Iraq line containers in their yard. After the war, Iraq lines were no more. With the storage cost for these containers building up till the cut-off point a year and a half later, they obtained automatic ownership. Once the containers riveted to EWC, to do with the lot as they wish, they sold the empty containers making a substantial income.

Salvaging of the ‘Ravidas’
Marine Salvage in layman terms is the process of recovering a ship and its cargo after a shipwreck or any other maritime casualty. Salvage may encompass towing, re-floating a vessel, effecting repairs to a ship or recovering a vessel that is in trouble. The increasingly complex nature of salvage operations requires multidisciplinary, experienced teams.

Off Shore Marine Services, an East West company would take advantage of the dry salvage season by using its large feeder tugs to deliver oil to ships out of the harbour. This operation generated a sizeable income to cover its overheads, which otherwise would have been a loss-making enterprise.

At the time, Off Shore Marine Services (OSMS) along with Master Divers, which was owned and operated by Wicky Wickramanayake, was at the top of the salvage and tug operation in Sri Lanka. Up until then, it was a Dutch company, SMIT Salvage, that hovered around with a tug waiting for an exigency that would earn them some serious bucks. SMIT Salvage is one of the largest salvage companies in the world. The SMIT name is synonymous with many of the most challenging and complex salvage operations that have taken place over the last century. The company maintains specialised equipment and expert personnel in a state of round-the-clock readiness to respond to incidents. Just one ship’s calamity could keep them afloat for a good few years. SMIT’s term in Sri Lanka ended with the emergence of the two local companies, Off Shore Marine Services and Master Divers.

The first ship salvaged by OSMS was the ‘Ravidas’ owned by an Indian company and handled by East West. How this operation works is, when a ship is in trouble, the captain sends an SOS, obtaining a partial nod from the operator’s senior management. He then signs what is called a ‘Lloyd’s Open Form’, commonly known as LOF, determining the amount of remuneration to be awarded to salvors in a proposed marine salvage operation governed by Lloyds London, a practice that has been around the past 150 years or so. What the captain means by this declaration is that it is an open contract because no amount of money is being stipulated for the salvage job. The 1910 Brussels Convention had established the principle known as ‘‘no cure, no pay,’’ meaning that a salvor is rewarded only if the salvage operation successfully rescues the ship or its cargo. If the operation goes south, ‘no marks, no bucks!’ Not for the lack of trying, the dividend on sweat equity and effort ride south too. On the flip side, if the ship is saved, depending on the effort and sweat equity invested, the service provider gets 15-25% of the salvaged value of the ship and cargo. The math is decided by Lloyds and some arbitrators in the UK once an explanation is given regarding the circumstances of the dilemma. Generally, the salvage operator consults a law firm in London and briefs the legal team which argues the case on their behalf, while the operator’s insurers get their lawyers to downplay the situation, in a bid to cut down the pay-out. This goes back and forth while the arbitrators are caught in the middle, forced to look at the situation and the effort that has gone into the entire operation, before deciding what percentage the operator should be paid.

The salvage and towing of ‘Ravidas,’ a ship that was in trouble in the high seas just off Galle, is interesting. OSMS was called upon to handle the ‘Ravidas’ operation since the Dutch salvage was unavailable. Vicky from Master Divers also sent his tugs and requested help from OSMS to provide its tugs for the operation, since they were the only local companies that did salvage work.

This operation was about to be Nahil’s first big hands-on salvage and tug operation. Excited and very eger to join in, sadly, according to him, he was ‘tactfully turned down’ due to the fierce weather conditions… He did the next best thing, he moved into the Closenberg Hotel in Galle to be in communication with the action by wireless radio, with his camera also in tow. Nahil sat listening to all the goings-on while sipping a beer. He could hear the panic on site, since the Captain, Chief Engineer and their wives were still on board. The Captain was agitated and keen to get them ashore, adding to the pressure of the chaotic situation. Thankfully the Salvage Master brought them ashore on a launch, and subsequently, the salvage and tug rescue exercise was a successful operation. A few months later it was arbitration time in London with the arbitrators questioning the OSMS invoice –why were they charging so much?

Around the same time, for some reason, Nahil had taken his camera out to do some recording, when he realised there was a video recording that showed a continuous picture of a beer bottle on film – the beer he had at the Closenberg.

His camera had accidentally been on, recording the beer bottle on the table, while the conversations of the rescue operation were caught on the camera audio from the wireless radio. He sent the recording along with a transcription of this unique piece of audio to London. Their lawyers played this back to the arbitrators. No further questions were asked and the case was closed and the entire amount they had invoiced for was paid. No doubt it was one more blessing.

Electromotion was the largest trader in used machine tools based in Nahil’s college turf in Leicestershire, an area which he was familiar with. He would visit Electromotion quite frequently to inspect machines like lathes, milling and drilling machines and such, buy the lot, put them into a container and get it shipped to Colombo. Once the machines reached their workshop, he refurbish the machines to be retailed in the open market. One incident he vividly remembers is the time he shipped three containers aboard a Ceylon Shipping Corporation vessel that carried general cargo. Container ships were not around at the time; therefore everything shipped into the country was on general cargo ships like this.

Due to an oversight, the crew had stacked these containers on the deck in a lackadaisical manner, causing the binds to come apart, during a spell of bad weather en-route to Colombo. With the securing loosened, the containers were moving around the deck in slow motion while the crew looked on helplessly at the unfolding scene. After a few minutes, the doors of the containers opened up with a bang and all the tools were thrown all over the deck, causing terrible wreckage. Once the ship docked, the deck was found to be shining like stainless steel due to the movement of the three containers. Sadly, where the cargo was concerned it was a total loss. The immediate plan of action was to get the insurance sorted out. Ceylinco Insurance was the local representative for their insurers in the UK and the claim was settled in a week. It was at that moment that Nahil promised himself that he would pay more personal attention to minor details in the future which was most important. If not for the insurance, they would have gone from being heroes to zeros. This was a lesson learned the hard way and from then on his personal mantra was ‘‘Always see things to the end.”

Single Point Mooring Buoy – Colombo Port
While operating the tugs ‘MT Sigiri’ and ‘MT Nilgiri’ through Off Shore Marine Services – an East West subsidiary, – a Single Point Mooring Buoy or SPMB was installed at the Colombo Port, off shore. A SPMB consists of a buoy that is permanently moored to the seabed by utilising multiple mooring lines/anchors/chains allowing cargo transfer of liquid petroleum products. An SPM contains a bearing system that allows a part of it to rotate around the moored geostatic subsea manifold connections and weathervaning tankers. SPMs are capable of handling ships of any tonnage, including the very large crude oil carriers, when no alternative facility is available. In shallow water, SPMs are used to load and unload crude oil and refined products from onshore and offshore oilfields or refineries, usually through some kind of storage facility. These buoys are usually suitable for use by all types of oil tanker, and the moorings usually supply to dedicated tankers which can moor without assistance.

Whenever a tanker brings crude oil into Colombo, she is anchored off the edge of the port and a flexible hose goes down connecting to one of the stationary pipes on the peer. In order to secure the ship from drifting away, or the connected hose being damaged during bad weather, a tug is in attendance to keep the ship in place. Ever since the SPBM was installed by the Hong Kong-based Swire Group – owners of Cathay Pacific Airways, a tug on a renewable charter was also provided by them. This was a lucrative business that was hijacked by the Swire Group, thereby every tender forwarded by the Petroleum Corporation carried the exact specifications of the Swire Group’s tug on charter, thus stalling everyone else from getting the business. This tug was painted red.

When Nahil realised that local service providers were being sidelined by the contractor, with their focus on the Swire Group tug, he advised those from Petroleum Corp involved in this project, since they were so specific, to include the Swire Group name by painting it on the back of the tug.

Ana Malalgoda

Beautiful Arches at the Chiang Mai Hotel

Ana had a heart issue and needed funds to go in for a heart bypass. In need to raise money for the operation, he wanted to know if Nahil would be interested in buying a block of land he owned in Nuwara Eliya behind the Grand Hotel. “I was enthusiastic. Besides helping Ana, the location of the land seemed great. I said to Ana ‘let’s go take a look at it.’” Once they got there, sitting inside the car, he requested Ana to point out the boundaries of his property. Ana just waved his hands around and said, “Somewhere there, machang.”

Noting the potential, he agreed to buy the land. After settling Ana, he developed the land, paved a new road right up the hill bordering one side of the land, opened the by-pass, blocked the land out and sold it all off within weeks of developing the site.

Driving pass the land recently, he says, ‘‘It’s heartening to see some nice hotels built on this site after the road was paved. Interesting stuff.’’ He then fondly recalls a trip he made to Thailand, with Ana, Nawaz Rajabdeen, and customs lawyer M.L.M. Ameen.

Back on the subject of his business, it was by now a fully-fledged company with an excellent infrastructure in place geared to handle all aspects of shipping and road haulage. It was well-equipped and had the necessary haulage equipment to transport containers and heavy machinery throughout the island. The heavy vehicles and equipment were parked at their container yard, down Dutugemunu Mawatha, Peliyagoda.

East West Haulage
It was during this era that under the accelerated Mahaweli development programme the Victoria Dam project which was originally proposed in 1961, was speeded up by the newly-elected J.R. Jayewardene Government in 1977 prepared with the assistance of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), after a study of the project. The purpose of the proposed project was to ease economic difficulties within the country. The project was under the purview of the UNP Government’s Minister of Mahaweli Development, Mr. Gamini Dissanayake. The plan was implemented to irrigate 365,000ha of land and provide 470 MW of electricity. The construction of the project was inaugurated in 1978, with the implementation of the main structure in 1980 and completed in 1985 The construction of the dam tunnel was a joint venture between two British firms, Balfour Beatty and Edmund Nuttall, while the Constain group, a British technology based construction and engineering company carried out the construction of the power stations.

After the project was sanctioned there was a fleet of local haulage companies, including East West Haulage, Cargo Boat Dispatch co, Renuka Transport and D.P. Jayasinghe – to name a few – with their sights set on clinching the transport for this project including similar projects being developed simultaneously. During this era, there were no 40 foot trailers available for road transport, with the only available trailer working inside the port maintained by Colombo Dockyard. The Kotmale project was being handled by a Swedish firm, Skanska.

Transporting

It must be pointed out and highlighted that Mr. Gamini Dissanayake maintained a very professional approach to awarding the transport contracts. There was no way he could be influenced or pressured into channelling any of the contracts to family or friends in the business. The contracts were awarded strictly based on how well equipped and experienced the contractor was. East West Haulage was very well equipped, owning a fleet of sophisticated haulage equipment they had invested in, thus enabling it to clinch a good part of the Victoria Dam haulage, which eventually extended to Kotmale, Randenigala, Madhuru Oya and Kelanitissa. These were purpose-built haulers designed by East West. It was obvious to all that East West Haulage was transporting really large and difficult cargo to the dam sites, while the other contractors were hauling stuff like cement bags and steel reinforcement beams, among a host of other simple cargo. “It seemed that all the complicated cargo was directed for haulage only by us,” says Nahil.

Among the ‘melting pot’ of foreign nationals involved in these projects was a German, Mr. Koslowski, a freight forwarder, representing the German shipper to whom East West Haulage was a subcontractor, responsible for hauling its freight from the Colombo Port to the dam site.

Working directly for the German freight forwarder and not the locally-based contractor was an important advantage. Usually before a large piece of machinery was transported, the size of it in a box – length, breadth, height and a ‘3D’ image, pointing to the centre of gravity is sent with the pre-shipment details, for the hauler to plan out the transport accordingly.

On receiving the specifications of a particularly large package, to which a quotation was forwarded according to the specifications received by East West, including the transport cost based on transporting the package along the shortest route to Kotmale, which was via Gampola. To their dismay the package, once it arrived posed a problem as it was a Swedish Koni Gantry crane which was a foot wider than the Gampola steel bridge. The hindrance was the catwalk on the gantry. Sourcing further route options they found the road via Wellawaya to be the next best option, though it was a major circuitous and dangerous route. A quote was forwarded to the shipper based accordingly, which ran into a colossal amount of money.

The gantry crane is built like a trolley that moves vertically and functions as a lift for the turbines of the powerhouse during maintenance. Nahil suggested to Mr. Koslowski that they should cut off the catwalk on the crane, enabling it to be hauled on the original route, via Gampola. Immediately Kos wanted the price quoted to be reduced but Nahil insisted the price remains the same but if it made him happy, they could haul it along the circuitous route. Then Kos insisted the price should be reduced since they were going to cut off the catwalk of the crane. Nahil refused to reduce the price, requesting a letter from Kos to the effect that, if anything should happen to the equipment in transit since he insisted they take the circuitous route, even though a workable solution had been found, he would be responsible. Kos caved in and acceded to plan B, requesting that they weld the catwalk back by X-ray super first class welding. Nahil agreed to the request saying, “No worries!” He made a huge profit, considering the welder signed up to do the job was a former welder from Colombo Dockyard, who did it at no charge.

It seemed that Mr. Koslowski a.k.a. Kos was a mini legend at EW. He had nothing to do with his time, thus wasting Nahil’s time as well by being a regular visitor to the East West office, while they were operating from the Cargills building in Fort. Whenever Nahil came up with a good idea, he’d say ‘Hey Nahil that’s a great idea,’and then he would return a couple of days later trying to sell Nahil’s idea back to him until Nahil would gently remind him that it was his idea to begin with. Subsequently, ‘doing a Koslowski’ was a term used at East West on anyone trying the same lark.

As the Victoria project was coming to a close, they bought a 56- wheel trailer from Costain. This trailer was used to transport the penstock, a structure of big steel tubes that take the water down. This is the biggest trailer available on the island. The trailer is an all-wheel steer and the bed can be lifted about two feet off the ground. This trailer was used by East West Haulage for the Kelanitissa turbines since there were no cranes at the time capable of lifting these machines. The heavy load is put down by the ship which has the gear to load it on to this trailer, after which they would drive over the foundation, put bars across and lower the trailer. Once the turbines are placed on the steel bars, the trailer moves off. The turbine is lowered into the foundation using pneumatic jacks. Nahil found this extremely thrilling. He loved handling these operations personally, never letting anyone steal his joy. In retrospect, he says, ‘‘this was really simple stuff.’’

Dan Mukundan

Six months into their haulage business, a young man, Mukundan, working as a clearing agent at Jones Carriers, the freight forwarding arm of the Maharaja organisation, walked into the East West office, requesting a quotation for the transport of some cargo. At the time Jones were the big guys in cargo clearing and East West the transport heavyweights. Mukundan was referred to by everyone by the moniker “Muksi’’ which Nahil changed to Dan, a better alternative, coined from the Dan in Mukundan. Dan suggested to Nahil if he would agree to him joining East West to set up and manage a clearing and forwarding section, that would tie in with their transport business. Nahil suggested instead of managing the clearing and forwarding section, Dan could join the firm as an equal partner along with Lester and himself. After a bit of back and forth on how much to invest, etc.,

Dan had a motorcycle which was his only asset which he sold and invested the proceed into East West Clearing & Forwarding, registered at Rs.10/- per share, with Lester, Dan and Nahil as equal partners. Dan with his ‘star’ wharf clerks (two guys) initially housed on the fourth floor made Rs.300,000/- even before leaving Jones carriers. In a few weeks, as things started looking up, he moved his office to the fifth floor of Ceylinco House.

Nahil and Avril
It was July 1980. Dan who had recently joined East West, was in the throes of setting up East West Clearing and Forwarding. After a night out one Friday evening, he had by chance met up with a young lady at a private function held at the Taj Samudra Hotel. So taken up by her, he mentioned to Nahil the next day that he had met this amazing girl who worked as a trainee at a foreign mission and was keen for Nahil to meet her. By now Nahil had separated from his first wife Indrani and was living in Rienzi Perera’s garage extension off Havelock Road, while his son Vajira, now three years old, lived with his mother, occasionally spending a few days with him. “The following Monday, Dan tells me that he is trying to get this girl to come for an interview as his secretary!” He was quite intrigued and reluctantly admits, a tad excited to meet her. “After all the anticipation she turned up and boy oh boy, I was really impressed. My initial thought was, ‘Hey now it’s obvious why Dan was so persistent about hiring her as his secretary.’ This young girl was Avril, who became Nahil’s second wife. “I interviewed her; the interview was a total disaster, her shorthand was bad and typing worse!” Even so, he hired her on the spot and her job at East West Clearing & Forwarding commenced the following Monday.

The weekend before taking up this new appointment was the Bradby weekend, the second leg of the Bradby. Nahil was at Nittawela for the match, after which he attended the Bradby dance at the Queens Hotel, only to bump into Avril; she was at the match and the dance with a group of young friends. “As soon as I set eyes on her, I was most curious to know who she was dancing with, making it a point to say ‘hello’ to her, while my eyes roamed around her group, trying to get some insight,” says Nahil. Avril introduced Nahil to her buddies as her new boss, after which he introduced her to his sister Kanthi as his new employee.

Avril started work at the East West Clearing & Forwarding office on the fifth floor of Ceylinco House, as a part of a staff of three, plus Dan the boss. The following weekend, Dan arranged a night out at the Blue Leopard Night Club, the most happening club at the time, to celebrate the launch of EWCF. It was a party of four, comprising Dan, Sharma (a close friend of Avril’s), Nahil and Avril. As the night proceeded Nahil and Avril danced only with each other. The rest is history. After a whirlwind romance, she moved in with him, later on, they got married once his divorce from Indrani, his first wife, was finalized. On the advice of Minoli, Lester’s then-wife, Avril resigned from EWCF, three weeks into her job, thus ditching Dan who was out of Colombo on work during that weekend, only to get back on Monday and find out he was without a secretary.

Dan’s operation that started with two wharf clerks and a secretary – an ungrateful girl who bailed out on him after two weeks on the job – operated with over 200 wharf clerks from an office at the Cargills building in Fort five years later.

While their business East West Enterprises was at the peak, Lester with his expertise was excellent in shipping. Brian Ratnayake, who was in the Baltic Exchange, was the EW representative and go-to guy in the UK for ship brokering while charters were managed by Lester. In the first year of their operation, all Shipping Corporation charter requirements were met by Lester and Brian, generating a solid income for Sri Lanka Shipping. However, even though Brian was a great shipbroker, sadly, he had zero business comprehension. Lloyds List London, a shipping-related newspaper, featured Aitken Spence Shipping in their supplement on Sri Lanka. Brian, who managed Sri Lanka Shipping Co., in the UK, posted an advertisement in this newspaper pertaining to ship brokering.

Starting with ‘Our agents in Sri Lanka, East West Enterprises, handling ship brokering, etc.,’ to their utter chagrin, it ended with “We also sell Sri Lankan curry powder” at the bottom of the advertisement. Of course, he heard an earful of profanity from Nahil, while Lester, always the diplomat, was speechless.

Brian’s excuse was Indrani, Nahil’s wife was exporting tinned curry powder to Brian’s wife Gladys to be sold mostly among the Sri Lankan expats in the UK and he had assumed that advertising the ‘curry powder’ in a shipping newspaper was a good idea at the time. Nahil told Brian he was a Peterite with amazing business acumen. “Brian is one of those guys who would tell a story with a punch-line that takes forever. His jokes are no laughing matter,” says Nahil.

Meeting Tuula in Sweden
There was a scholarship being offered to Stockholm, Sweden for Maintenance Management, a course carried out by Idharmar Consult, Sweden, offered through the Chamber of Commerce Sri Lanka. On a whim, Nahil’s Secretary, Yasmin, since Nahil was handling haulage work and very much into maintenance management, filled the form and submitted it. To his suprise being a senior director of a company, he was awarded the scholarship and headed to Sweden, driving from London to Stockholm over 2000 km which included three ferry crossings and took three days by himself to get there driving a Porsche 924.

Settling down to one month in Sweden, he started on the maintenance course that included 45 individuals from different parts of the world. Two weeks into the training, now utterly bored with this ‘maintenance’ thing, he thought of meeting up with Tuula, his Finnish ex-girlfriend. He had lost track of her over the years, bur remembered that she had an uncle, Koskinnens, living in a village known as Kellakoski, close to Helsinki with whom Nahil had shared a meal, on his visit to see Tuula about 20 years prior. He drove straight to the post office that had all the Scandinavian telephone directories. Glancing through, he found four Koskinnens. Taking all four numbers down, he got back to the hotel intending to call all four numbers with the help of a Finnish-speaking guest at the hotel. He made a strike on the third attempt, getting through to Tuula’s uncle. Introducing himself, he requested information on her whereabouts. He remembered Nahil and obliged by informing him that she was working in Stockholm for the Moskvitch car company as a secretary. That afternoon when he drove to her workplace she was visibly astounded to see him driving in a Porsche to visit her. After a bit of catching up as 20 years had gone by and she was involved with a Swedish guy, she invited him to join her for dinner at her sister Anja’s home where she was living at the time. During his visit, he noticed on the mantelpiece the old Castanets and photographs that Tuula and he had taken together in Spain while driving around Europe two decades ago.

Porche 924 used in Sweden

Since that meeting, he has tried to get in contact with her on numerous occasions, but it has been a rather futile effort. A few weeks ago, after spending a few hours searching for her on social media he thought his attempt was successful, only to find that it was a different female with the identical name. Now in her seventies, he often wonders what she looks like.

He recalls, during the time he was living with Tuula in the UK, they, together with Thomian Thirikumar Ratnabalasuriya, toured the continent in his VW Variant, visiting Barcelona, Spain. The three of them were so drunk on cheap Spanish wine that once, while at a bullfight, to the amazement of the other spectators, they were cheering the bull instead of the matador! Before returning to London they drove to Finland, youth hostelling on the way till they got to the home of Tuula’s uncle Koskinnens. She was not too keen to take him along to visit her village high up in the north. This was during the late 60s, obviously, her ‘dark-skinned’ boyfriend would have caused a proper rumble…

Nahil returned to Colombo in three weeks, from what was supposed to be one month’s training in Sweden. Avril’s mom was not happy with the two of them. In her words they were ‘living in sin,’ embarrassing the family, etc. Her concerns, including a few other challenges, spurred them to make the relationship legal and they got married on the 10th of June that year. The signatories were Sonia Virasinghe for Avril and Lester Weinman for Nahil.

The marriage was registered with a civil ceremony at their residence, followed by a ‘rocking’ celebration at The Ceylon Intercontinental Hotel that evening. “The party was fantastic,” says Nahil. ‘‘All our family and close friends were there to celebrate with us.’’ He remembers that almost all of the guys at the party were pretty boozed up by the end of the evening.

L-R: Bandula Molligoda, Thirikumar Rathnabalasuriya, Kume, Lokika Soyza, Premlal Galagoda, Pancha Gunaratne and Nandalal Molligoda

During this period they were living in a rented home on 16th Lane in Colombo 03, after which they bought a beautiful house on Flower Road, No.33, from Bunchy and Goolbai Gunasekara, re-modelled the house and moved in. Unfortunately, the noise pollution factor was overlooked when the house was purchased and they sold it as fast as they bought it, moving into an apartment at 121/1 Turret Road, owned by the Thahas, after a few months there they finally settled down at 128, Reid Avenue in a beautiful house that underwent a major renovation before they moved in. During this time they travelled to London quite frequently and subsequently bought a mews house in the heart of London, No.2, London Mews, London Street, London W2. Since Avril dabbles in interior designing, she decided to stay back and re-furbish the house while Nahil travelled between the two cities every few weeks.

After getting the house in order, Mahen who was ‘fresh off the boat’ literally, to the UK, to pursue his degree at University of London, moved into the mews and Avril returned to Colombo. Life went on.

While they lived down Reid Avenue which was at the Lauries Road end, their opposite house neighbour was A.J. Ranasinghe of ‘Sapaththu soup’ fame, a great friend of President Premadasa.

Although Nahil had acknowledged the guy a few times with a nod of his head on his way to office and back, he had never had an opportunity to speak with him. One evening returning home after work he noticed a line of vehicles parked outside AJ’s premises. As Nahil got home, Avril informed him that AJ had personally invited them for dinner at his home that evening. Now, this was an event he did not wish to miss. They went all dressed up. Curious to know of the occasion being celebrated, Nahil inquired about it from AJ and he answered back saying, “Don’t you know, I am going to Canada to join the High Commission of Sri Lanka.” or something to that effect. “Wow!” thought Nahil. AJ was the manager of the Tower Hall at the time when he had a heart attack. Mr. Premadasa was responsible for calling an ambulance to take him to hospital after which he made arrangements to fly AJ overseas where a heart by-pass surgery was performed on him by Dr. Don Michael.

Nahil and vril wedding: L-R standing: Ken, Dan, Vishu, Nahil, Faleel, Mark. Seated L-R: Ranjan Kum, Minoli, Baba and Sonia

As the evening went by, getting merrily high on premium whiskey, Nahil cheekily asked him what his function in Canada would be. ‘‘I need to get my heart by-pass checked every month and also my sons are studying in the USA, I can go to see them” was the answer. Nahil thought AJ had misunderstood him and repeated his question, to which he got the same answer. He was thinking that he was ‘taking the mickey’ of AJ and realized later that AJ was doing the same to him. They had a good time boozing that evening.

Still at Reid Avenue, Nahil recalls driving home one evening to find a line of yellow barricades and security at both ends of Reid Avenue. Questioning the security he was informed that the barricades were up, on the instructions of AJ. He called AJ the next morning and conveyed to him that their neighbours, the Lalvanis, and he did not have any security problems. AJ had his reply ready: “Okkoma hithenawa mē pare harima important aya innawa kiyala” (everyone thinks there are very important residents living down this road). By now Nahil figured this guy was honest and forthright; he counted Nahil among the ‘very important’ too.

The IBM Building

Nawam Mawatha prior to development

In the mid-eighties, Lester and Nahil were looking for land to construct the East West office building and the only suitable area available was at Wekanda, Colombo 2. It was three acres owned by George Stuarts where their warehouses with tin roofs were clumped together in the middle of the city. How George Stuarts came to own this land is an interesting story.

Among the enterprising British settlers who bought land in and around Colombo in the year 1818, the land at Wekanda was bought by Mr. James Stuart, Captain of a ship and a Master Mariner. On arrival in Ceylon in 1818, he set himself up as a Merchant Banker and went on to buy an extensive acreage of land on the shores of the Beira Lake off Wekanda and the shores of Polwatte. Here he set up his business and lent his name to ‘Stuart Place’ that section of Galle Road which runs through his former property. James Stuart secured the business to his brother George in 1835 and named the firm after George. This was done because James held a substantive position at the time as Master Attendant of the Colombo Port, which precluded him from engaging in any other trade. In the 1980s these warehouses were used to store their produce of tea.

At the time East West was in the process of procuring land for an office building, George Stuarts was headed by two European gentleman. Despite advertising this large area of land for sale for many months, they were unable to attract buyers due to not having a proper entrance to the site except through a dirt road which ran parallel to the canal off Justice Akbar Mawatha, opposite Elephant House, Slave Island.

By this time they had let go the idea of buying land here since Navam Mawatha was not completed, nor were there signs of a bridge being built, though there was talk that a bridge spanning the Beira between R.A. De Mel Mawatha and Navam Mawatha, was in the pipeline. A few weeks later there were new developments. They heard from a friend of Nahil’s, Madhan Coomaraswamy of ‘Coomsco,’ that the bridge project was confirmed because he had been awarded the contract from the UDA to build it. They had also heard through the grapevine that Podi Hamadhuruwo of the Gangaramaya Temple had informed Mr.Premadasa that he would like to have the annual perahera go around the lake instead of up and down Perahera Mawatha.

This was exciting news. The land had been advertised for around Rupees 125,000 a perch. This price was negotiated and reduced to Rupees 110,000 per perch, assuring George Stuarts that once their building project was initiated; there would be many others who would follow suit.

Getting started on the pre-sale, they found out that one of the European gents had a full blocking-out plan of the land which helped with their decision. They bought the prime block right in front – eighty perches – after which they met the sellers (first meeting with them) and told them, “We have to do a soil test the next day.”

Though it was their initial meeting with the sellers, Nahil had already called the soil test guys beforehand and made arrangements for the soil test to be conducted as scheduled the next day. That’s how fast they proceeded from that point on, up to the completion of the building, including settling of all bank loans to the lenders within a period of eighteen months from inception. This was record breaking. The project was helped along by friends and family too.

Mahen Thambiah’s father was the Country Manager of HSBC. East West, besides being on good terms with the bank, produced a letter issued by IBM confirming their intended lease of the first and ground floor of the proposed building, which added extra leverage with the bank.

Nahil, would occasionally have a drink with Mr. Thambiah, put in a word on behalf of East West regarding their loan, which was granted to East West in record time.

They were delighted to find out that HSBC had never given any property development loans to anyone since it only dealt with trading. This first was quite uplifting for East West because it spoke volumes concerning their credibility. To top it all, the loan to East West by HSBC had created a ‘buzz’ in the corporate sector. They settled the loan in eighteen months as an appreciation of the bank’s confidence in East West, in granting the loan and making it a first for property development. The payback within this time frame was also possible due to IBM paying them the first year lease rental in advance.

Many others helped in small ways to make this building a reality. Avril had a part to play too. She was in London at the time and bought a suitcase full of aluminum window locks for the building, which were not available in Sri Lanka. On her trip back to Colombo, she nearly fainted at the baggage carousel trying to unload the huge bag onto a malfunctioning trolley.

Once the construction of the IBM building was sanctioned, Madhan Coomaraswamy who was an award-winning design engineer who was also assigned to construct the Navam Mawatha Bridge was contracted to design and supervise the construction of the IBM building.

Nahil expected Madhan to be on the site supervising his workers for at least 28 hours (sic) a day. Not noticing Madhan on the site Nahil questioned his supervisor who informed him that Madhan hadn’t turned up in weeks to the site though his advertising hoarding was secured at a vantage point overlooking R.A. De Mel Mawatha on the side of the lake “I phoned Madhan,” says Nahil, “And asked him ‘What’s up? You are supposed to be supervising the construction on-site and you are out of sight.’’ Madhan’s initial explanation was that due to Nahil travelling to the UK every few weeks throughout the year he obviously would not be aware if Madan was on site or not, after which he comes up with this award-winning excuse. “As I drive on R.A. De Mel Mawatha I can see the building coming up nicely, so I don’t need to be there.” Nahil pitched into him, threatening to dig out his hoarding and throw it into the lake. He did follow up on his promise and the hoarding was floating on the lake a few minutes after the call.

Finally, Madhan turned up; he was there every day supervising the construction to a finish. It was then that Nahil realised that he had travelled to UK and back eleven times within a period of nine months to see Roshanne. Madhan eventually migrated to the UK. As long as his company ‘Coomsco’ was in operation in Sri Lanka, his advertisement in the yellow pages was a picture of the IBM building.

IBM/East West Building – at present

Nahil expected Madhan to be on the site supervising his workers for at least 28 hours (sic) a day. Not noticing Madhan on the site Nahil questioned his supervisor who informed him that Madhan hadn’t turned up in weeks to the site though his advertising hoarding was secured at a vantage point overlooking R.A. De Mel Mawatha on the side of the lake “I phoned Madhan,” says Nahil, “And asked him ‘What’s up? You are supposed to be supervising the construction on-site and you are out of sight.’’ Madhan’s initial explanation was that due to Nahil travelling to the UK every few weeks throughout the year he obviously would not be aware if Madan was on site or not, after which he comes up with this award-winning excuse. “As I drive on R.A. De Mel Mawatha I can see the building coming up nicely, so I don’t need to be there.” Nahil pitched into him, threatening to dig out his hoarding and throw it into the lake. He did follow up on his promise and the hoarding was floating on the lake a few minutes after the call.

Finally, Madhan turned up; he was there every day supervising the construction to a finish. It was then that Nahil realised that he had travelled to UK and back eleven times within a period of nine months to see Roshanne. Madhan eventually migrated to the UK. As long as his company ‘Coomsco’ was in operation in Sri Lanka, his advertisement in the yellow pages was a picture of the IBM building.

Parakrama Jayasekera and Family

wife May and daughter Roshanne had returned to Colombo ready to settle down long term in Sri Lanka. They invested all their savings brought along with them from the UK in Rukman Senanayake’s transport business in Sri Lanka, which crashed, causing Para and May to lose all their capital bringing an unfortunate struggle to the family. Parakrama a Royalist, who was a part of Nahil’s gang of Colombo buddies while schooling, would come by frequently for a drink with Nahil, accompanied occasionally by May and Roshanne, usually after Roshanne’s athletics training at the Colombo University Grounds.

Nahils first site of Roshanne was at the Cr&FC grounds. One evening while having a beer with Para he noticed a good looking girl training on the groundsm the track which was used by school children. After a few rounds Roshanne came towards them at which point Nahil nudged Para and said “look at that beauty’’ to which Para answered ‘‘Thats my daughter’’.

Empathizing with their situation, Avril suggested to Nahil that they offer Para and family a chance to get their life together once again in the UK, by paying for their flights and giving them lodging at their Mews house in London. The Jayasekeras were grateful and accepted the offer. May and Roshanne were to leave first and Para to follow after he received a judgment on an ongoing court case.

Retrogress to the mews; the front wall of the mews was painted cobalt blue that gave the mews a dated look which they decided to update by painting it entirely in white. It was during this time that BBC Scotland approached them, seeking the possibility of using the house in a film, based on Gavin Lyall’s book ‘The Secret Servant,’ since the mews flat in its original state is described in the book. Lyall originally wrote The Secret Servant as the pilot episode of a proposed BBC TV series. The series was directed by Alistair Reid, with a screenplay by Brian Clemens. The role of Harry Maxim was played by Charles Dance, with Jill Meager as Agnes and Harvy Ashby as George Harbinger. They gave it some thought, finally making a deal with the BBC representative .Instead of cash for the filming, they opted for white paint for the exterior wall of the Mews to be supplied by BBC. Considering this was quite an expanse of wall, it was a sweet deal. BBC made good on its promise once the movie was a wrap.

More than happy with the deal, BBC Scotland started filming almost immediately, with Mahen Thambiah installed in the mews house as the overseer. They were quite aware of the mess the house would be in while filming was going on since they had previous experience of the mess created by a crew when a commercial was shot at their home on Flower Road, therefore they got back to Colombo before the circus commenced. A fortnight later Avril set off to London to settle in May and Roshanne who had just arrived there. Charles Dance, (Harry Maxim) in the movie, had made his presence felt by plastering stickers with his name all over the mews. Yes, he was a kind of narcissist!

May and Roshanne settled in, with May getting a job almost immediately while Roshanne started French classes. Avril decided to stay in London since there was nothing much to keep her occupied in Colombo, while Nahil travelled into London quite frequently.

A few months into Roshanne and May’s stay, while Avril was still living in London, as usual Nahil had arrived in the UK. It seems that within a few weeks into his stay in London. he got emotionally involved with Roshanne who was still living at the mews with them. Driving mother and daughter to North London since he was on his way there, Roshanne who was cramped up at the back of the two seater had spontaneously started feeling Nahil’s side. Not one to let go, he took the cue and it all started at that point. By this time May had moved to a flat in Sussex Gardens which was round the corner to the mews. Avril was oblivious to the going ons between Roshanne and Nahil, with all of them living in harmony at the mews. Not wanting to rock the boat too much, Nahil returned to Colombo two weeks later. As expected he would telephone Avril, followed by a chat with Roshanne if she was around. Avril says she often wondered why he played the record by Tammy W, titled ‘Stand by Your Man’ and got her to listen to it!

Returning to the UK a few weeks later, he noticed Roshanne had put on weight and didn’t seem right, but there was no drama. “I just kept the juggling act going between my wife and the lass, says Nahil.”

A few weeks later, Avril phoned Nahil desperately – with the news that she had taken Roshanne for a medical examination to their family GP, Dr. Narada Jayatilake after Roshanne had complained of a female problem. After examining her, Narada was positive that Roshanne was pregnant. It was then that it struck Nahil about her physical appearance on his previous visit, especially the bloated lips.

What followed was stressful, sad and joyful at the same time. Stressful and sad that he had hurt Avril so much and joyful that his second son Vijitha was born. Roshanne and he, walked to the hospital since the mews was just around the corner to St. Mary’s Paddington, and Vijitha Jayantha was born to Roshanne who was 18 years and 05 months old at the time of his birth on October 10th 1985 in the ward next to the famous ‘Lindo Wing.”

Though they thought through some workable options to save their marriage, with a baby in the mix, the hurt went deeper than imagined on all fronts. Nahil and Avril went in for an amicable divorce with him marrying Roshanne in July that year.’’

When all this blew up, before Vijitha’s birth, Para (Parakrama) had made his way to the UK. Embarrassed and angry, he was hunting around London in search of Nahil to get ‘even’ for his folly with his daughter, while Nahil with a heavily-pregnant Roshanne kept moving from one friend’s home to another, until Gamini D requested him to return to Colombo and take refuge at his home, which he did, along with Roshanne. Eventually Para backed off after being advised by many, ironically including Avril, to let go, clearing the way for the two of them to move back to London. Vijitha was born shortly after.

Nahil and Roshanne returned with Vijitha, now four months old, to Colombo amidst the scandal – his friend’s daughter pregnant by him, now with the child in tow. His brother-in-law Vasantha Karaliedde, Dr. Lakshman’s brother, knew the extent of the scandal and wrote him a letter empathising with his situation, quoting Oscar Wilde – ‘the only thing worse than being spoken of, is not being spoken of,’ – encouraging him to take all this in his stride and not be embarrassed.”

He stayed the first few days with Gamini, subsequently moving into a flat owned by Kili, free of charge, right behind the Presidential Secretariat, above Rumors Salon, living there for just over a year. With the passage of time and more scandalous events happening in Colombo, his indiscretion was pushed to the backburner. Nahil bought a house in Green Path and lived there in peace until his next adventure – the ‘JVP’in 1989!

Vasantha, who was an eminent lawyer with an excellent command of the English language, worked as a legal draftsman in the UK. Sadly he passed away under tragic circumstances.

Nahil and Roshanne got married straight after Avril divorced Nahil and a year later his daughter, Anika was born 20th October 1986.

IBM Sri Lanka

In the 1880s technologies emerged that would ultimately form the core of International Business Machines (IBM). Julius Pitrap patented the computing scale in 1885; Alexander Dey invented the Dial Recorder, Herman Hollerith patented the Electric Tabulating Machine and Willard Bundy invented the time clock to record worker’s arrival and departure.

These four companies were amalgamated in New York on June 16th, 1911 by Charles Ranlett Flint, forming a fifth company – The Computing – Tabulating – Recording (C-T-R) Company located in Endicott New York. The five companies employed 1,300 people with their offices spread around New York, Dayton Ohio, Detroit Michigan, Washington DC and Toronto Canada.

They manufactured machinery for sale and lease, ranging from commercial scales and industrial time recorders, meat and cheese slicers to tabulators and punch cards. Thomas Watson Sr., who was fired from the National Cash Registry Company (NCR) by John Henry Patterson, called on Flint looking for a position at C-T-R. Watson joined C-T-R as General Manager and eleven months later he was made President of C-T-R once his court case relating to his time at NCR was resolved. Watson proceeded to put the stamp of NCR into C-T-R companies, having caught on to Patterson’s pioneering business practices. He implemented sales conventions, “generous sales incentives, a focus on customer service and insisted on well-groomed, dark-suited salesmen.

He had fervor for instilling company pride and loyalty in every worker. His favourite slogan – THINK – became a mantra for each company’s employees. During his initial four years, the company’s revenue reached US$9 million with the company’s operations expanding to Europe, Asia, South America and Australia. He was not in favour of the hyphenated company name and on February 14th, 1924, chose to replace it with a more expansive title – International Business Machines – IBM which is today an American Multinational Information Technology company, with its headquarters in Armonk, New York, with operations in over 170 countries including Sri Lanka.

The head of IBM Sri Lanka, Harish Vohra – the Country Manager and his team at IBM were housed at the ICC building. Meeting him at a function, Nahil suggested to him that a company like IBM should be in a better location than the present, citing the East West building which was under construction, as a superior alternative. Vohra, without hesitation, readily agreed to give a ‘Letter of Intent’ to rent out the EW building once it was completed. Before their move into the second floor of the new East West building, IBM sent their property expert from Hong Kong to finalise the move. After the negotiations he wanted to know what the rental premium would be if they were to ask for the naming rights of the building as the ‘IBM Building,’ this was quite normal in the high end building rentals. Nahil conveyed to him they were not interested in a premium for -’naming rights’ and he was shocked. Later on, in a lighter moment, the IBM property expert expressed his surprise to which Nahil replied ‘‘I’d rather be known as the owner of the IBM building than the East West building!’’ Nahil and Vohra got on very well. A few months later he informed Nahil, he was looking for a house to rent, his eye on the house Nahil and Avril were living in on Reid Avenue. He said, “Aah, I’ll take that.” “This worked out well for us too,” says Nahil. He leased the house to Vohra fully furnished and moved with her into a room at the Hotel Lanka Oberoi (now Cinnamon Grand) for two months. The room had a great view of the building site, so he could overlook the construction of the building 24×7. By now Vohra had his office and his house. Then he says, “Nahil you have a Volvo car, can I rent that too?”

This was the typewriter era and sadly, by default, Harish Vohra knew nothing about computers. IBM usually has an Annual General Meeting in the Asia Pacific region. This particular year the AGM was in Australia and the slogan of the meeting was that every IBM executive must have a PC on his desk.

When Vohra got back, Nahil dropped in for a chat with Vohra when he noticed a PC on his table. He knew Vohra didn’t have a clue about a ‘PC from an A/C’. Whilst sitting across from him, Vohra stands up and says, “Nahil, can you please tell me how this bloody thing works?” “He had just unpacked the PC and in there was a disc ‘learn your PC’. I inserted the disc and the display said ‘press letter A’ – the letter A comes on the screen.”

Vohra’s job was to sell computer hardware and software, something which he excelled in, notably never defaulted on any payments. Nahil recalls how Vohra would embarrass Vajira Wijewardena, who never paid his bills on time. Whenever he met Vajira at a public place, he would shout across the room, “Hey Vajira, you haven’t settled my bill yet.” Quite a personality!

With the ground and first floors of the building already leased out to IBM, Lester and Nahil were occupying the top floor with a view. They had their desks and cubicles there; the entire floor fitted out with high-end office furniture.

One morning, a few guys from Mitsubishi visited the IBM building intending to request Nahil to rent the top floor of the building to Mitsubishi. He was quite exasperated since this space was outfitted especially for Lester and himself. Hoping to turn the representatives from Mitsubishi off, he said alright and quoted an exceptionally high rent. They said, “That’s fine, we will take it.” Trying to put them off he requested three months’ rent in advance. They countered by offering one year’s advance if he could discount the rent. This was a smashing deal. Working out numbers in his head, he went with his head and agreed. Interest rates were very low and this was a winner. Later he called Lester and worked out the math for him. “I told him this was a great deal and we could easily pay off our bank loans without hanging around on the top floor looking at the view. Do we really need a view?!”

After Harish Vohra was transferred out of Sri Lanka, the newly appointed Head of IBM was a dear friend of Nahil’s, Lakshman Hettiarachchi. Amazingly Lakshman had a penchant for associations. Name an association and he was a part of it. One evening, as they met for a drink, Nahil was in a mood to pull his leg and said to him, “Lakshman, you are holding all these responsible positions; there is this new association, The Association of Professional Office Bearers’.” Lakshman replies, “ Really Nahil’’? ‘‘Appreciate if you can send me their contact.” Nahil had made up all this stuff just for a laugh. He felt ragging his buddy a bit was allowed since their friendship went way back to his time in the UK when Nahil shared a room with him at Sunil Perera’s and Laksman Umagiliya’s, in Dr. Umagiliya’s flat at No.14 Westbourne Terrace. Due to lack of space they had slept on the floor in sleeping bags. Sadly he is not in the best of health now.

The Navam Mawatha Business Complex

There were two ‘petti kades’ operating inside the Navam Mawatha Business Complex. The two ‘kade’ operators,’ though offered an attractive incentive to move, were refusing to do so. Business was very good for the two since there was no place in the vicinity other than the petti kades to buy even a cup of tea. After a while, one guy relented, accepted a pay-out and left while the other operated his kade under a jam tree in the car park belonging to Carsons. Nahil decided to cut the jam tree as a way to deter him and get him to move. It was an epic fail. The guy still operated unscathed, in the boiling hot sun, because his business was booming. Nahil decided to make a deal with him and told him, “Sir, please move from here. Hanging out here won’t work for you,” offering him a brand-new three-wheeler as part of the deal. He did not budge.Thinking of a way to get around this, he finally came up with an idea that he had a gut feeling would work. Nihal was a peon working in the East West office who had previously worked at a food outlet. Nahil set up a little kiosk at the corner of the IBM car park, opposite Forbes, with a bar counter and stools, a fridge and tea boiler with Nihal in charge. The kiosk became a hangout for many office workers during their tea and lunch breaks, with further demand after a TV set was installed inside the kiosk during the Cricket World Cup.

Suddenly it seemed the ‘petti kade’ mudalali was feeling the pinch, with a majority of his clients leaving chits and moving to ‘Nihal’s Kade.’ Poor guy, no one had settled their bills and he was in a bad way. He came to Nahil and agreed to leave. He was given a new three-wheeler and some cash. He was actually happy to move away.

The East West building was the first at Navam Mawatha. Nahil is a perfectionist and the curb appeal of property really mattered to him. He literally went to town by getting the roads inside the complex paved with pre-mixed concrete, new drains built and the road marked with pedestrian crossings, etc., because he firmly believes this enhances the value of their property and also helps their neighbours’ property look good.

The NMBC was his own little empire. He banned three-wheelers from parking inside and all sweep sellers had to turn off their music and megaphones inside the complex, making sure to introduce some discipline before things got out of hand.

Mohan Sahayam

Nahil and Mohan Sahayam

During the period his closest buddy Mohan Sahayam was the Manager of Maritime Agencies, which was a part of Hayleys, many years ago, Mohan Pandithage, the present Chairman of Hayleys, worked under him. Mohan Pandithage’s father was quite a guy who, with his influence at Hayleys, sent Mohan P. to work there as a trainee, under Mohan S., in the shipping business without pay and perks. Notwithstanding his circumstances, Mohan P. had his own car and would drive to the port visiting ships. The guy though very enthusiastic, had a set back in communicating in English, especially with the ships’ crew, which was a hindrance to his progress. Thus Mohan S, in consultation with the Chairman of Hayleys, L. Jayasundara, decided to reward Mohan P. by sending him for English Language classes to the Wendy Whatmore Academy, thereby helping him to sharpen his English language communication skills. After a while, Mohan S, feeling sorry for the guy, put him on a monthly stipend. One thing led to the other and M.Pandithage got a firm foot into Hayleys. “I remember telling Mohan Sahayam’s wife, Penny, ‘‘If you hadn’t taken this guy to PNG and then to Australia, away from Hayleys, he would have been Chairman.’’ Being a smart lady, she averred, ‘‘If he remained in Sri Lanka, he would have died of cyrosiss, because he was clubbing so much.’’ No argument – guess she is right.”

While in college, Mohan’s dad, Mr. Sahayam, the Vice Principal of Trinity College, was one of the best maths teachers at Trinity. During his senior year, Nahil felt he required maths tutoring and approached Mr. Sahayam, to discuss the possibility of after school maths classes, which he readily agreed to. He generously offered free tuition to him, on condition he brought Mohan along for the classes, which he did…

East West Properties

East West Properties – Peliyagoda

A college buddy of Nahil’s, Vishu, short for Vishwanathan, who passed away some years ago, was the auditor at East West.

The tax laws of the country provided for all capital expenditure to be written off as deductible expenditure in the year of expenditure, known as LSD. Suddenly the Inland Revenue Department (IRD) says, “Alright guys, it is time to pay your taxes.”

Since they now had to pay their taxes, with all their holdings under East-West Enterprises, they formed a company named East-West Properties, considering tax exemptions were been given by the Urban Development Authority for property development approved under the UDA scheme. The Peliyagoda area was undeveloped and the UDA offered the incentive of a tax holiday to anyone who invested and developed this land giving an assurance to undertake to build up the infrastructure like roads sixty feet wide, drains, water supply and power lines.

They bought the Peliyagoda land and were happily carrying on business in haulage and clearing, with their vehicles, presumed parked there, while they paid a monthly rental into this tax-free company, East West Properties. The storage of vehicles and other activities was just an eyewash – since the marshy land was not reclaimed yet, though according to their books they were paying a rental because it was deductible in the earning company and tax-free in the receiving company. In reality, they were paying rent to work and park in a marsh. After a few years, they developed the site and this was the beginnings of East West Properties.

168 Blomendhal Road

Before the Peliyagoda development was initiated, the original project started by East West was at 168, Bloemendhal Road, – a Dutch name that means ‘‘ Valley of Flowers”. The third guy in their business was an old Royal College buddy of Nahil’s, Jothy Godage. At the time, EWE was operated from the Ceylinco building and Jothy worked for EWE as an accountant, though not qualified as one. “He was the ultimate party guy with zero business acumen or anything of consequence,” says Nahil. There was a property on Bloemendhal Road, owned by Jothy, which he invested in East West. Nahil, being the go-to guy when it concerned a challenge, took it upon himself to clear out and relocate the 40-odd shanty dwellers occupying this land.

Gathering them all for a meeting, he informed them that each family would be paid a sum of Rs. 75,000, which will be paid after they find a place and move out lock, stock and barrel. Part of the deal was for each family to dismantle their dwelling, pack it up and take it with them, and letting Nahil know where they were moving to, so he could provide transport to move the bits and pieces. In this manner he moved away 40 dwellers very peacefully.

Indubitably in these situations, there is always a bad apple: this time it was a man named Marshall known as ‘Well Kārayā’ who occupied a stretch on the front edge of the land that had a well, which was quite a large section.

The guy pumped water from a road side well and sold it to people in the area, at 25 cents a bath, making good money. He also carried out a roadside car wash in the vicinity of the well. It was mentioned to Nahil that Marshall was a thug in the area. “I think I was the bigger thug of the two, perhaps a ‘peaceful thug,’ if there’s anything like that,” says Nahil. Doing something like this takes courage because it is not necessarily the accepted, safe or practical thing anyone will do. His intrinsic belief in his ability motivated him. He said to Marshal –“Balanna api methana develop karanne, anith kattiya okkama giya oya witharai othana inne” – (“we are developing this land, everyone has vacated, you are the only person staying on”). He says, “Hungak kal indala, kohe yannada?” – (“I’ve lived here so long, where do I go?”) Nahil offered to buy Marshall two or three three-wheelers worth around hundred thousand rupees each, also relating to him an interesting tale, that he was in the process of donating this land to the Municipality, to provide free bathing and toilet facilities to the public. To make it sound more dramatic, Nahil had mentioned to him that he’d already spoken to the area Municipal Council member, who besides taking credit for all this, was elated with this gesture and had instructed the council to dismantle all the unauthorised structures. Two weeks later Marshall says, “Ah ehenang Sir, mung yannang” – (“Ah then Sir, I will leave.”)

Finally, they paid him off and he moved. Next to the ‘Well Kārayā’ further down the road, on the same stretch of land, was a motor repair shop owned by Mr. Vythiyalingam, a humble gent, who was also paid off and moved away at their request.
Jothy Godage

Nahil was very familiar with this area since this was an ancestral property that had previously belonged to Jothy’s grandmother. As students, Nahil along with his buddies, Jothy, Dushantha Abeysingha, Shantha De Silva, ‘Wal’ Samarasinghe, and a few other friends from Royal College and St. Thomas College, made up a wild group of guys, who together loafed around this area with Jothy, as he collected five to ten rupees’ rent from his grandmother’s tenants living on her land. They would use the cash to buy a bottle of booze, getting smashing drunk on those evenings!

East West Properties was the owning company of the Peliyagoda development while the Bloemendhal project was different and amusing. They had a survey plan drawn that showed the canal at the back as one boundary of the land. They thought it was marshland with a canal running through it. However they realized after filling it that the boundaries had moved, thus gaining 20 perches more. During the filling, the canal had moved when the bulldozers packed the soil into the existing canal, which was deep and nearly sank the bulldozers.

After developing the land they sold the land to Suby Tea, who built it up, and their offices are there, to date.

During all this excitement, Godage bailed out from the project lamenting that this was ‘too stressful’ for him. Nahil decided to settle him off and worked out the figures taking into account the development cost and the investment made valuing the company three ways.

Jothy was quite happy with the deal although he wasted all his money, clubbing every night and getting drunk, till he coughed some blood one evening, and was tested and declared positive for cancer. The guy was forty-five and partied hard like he was going to die (pun intended) He was out of control, spiraling downwards, worse than before the diagnosis.

With his illness diagnosed as terminal, Jothy blew all his money and Nahil felt an intervention was in order. Jothy knew the rest of Nahil’s family quite well and Nahil’s elder sister Dr. Mahes and her hubby Dr.Kumar.

They met for dinner, when Kumar said to him, “I don’t know about your bloody tests, but you don’t look ill at all” Both being doctors, they should know, they said “Come to the UK and get another opinion.” Jothy was broke and had no money even for the flight, which Nahil paid for. He got to London and got himself checked out; there was no cancer. Sadly it was a total misdiagnosis by his local oncologist. After all this, he bounced back strong and confident, and lived for a good twenty years or more, passing away about five years ago.

Just a little thing about Jothy – since going broke he would borrow money from other mates, telling them that he would pay them back once “Nahil settles what he owes me for my land,” even though he had already been settled in full, over and above! His friends believed they would get their cash back and gave freely, though nothing was paid back. Whenever they complained to Nahil, he squared them up because Jothy was his friend, using company money to settle everyone, until he realised he couldn’t go on doing this. Vishu, by now absolutely flustered, drew up an agreement to the effect that this was the “final payment,” Jothy assured and guaranteed that there was nothing more due to him, nor more claims to be made. Three months later he turns up again. Nahil says, “Look here Jothy, you signed this waiver,” to which he says, “But Nahil if I didn’t sign it, you wouldn’t have given me the money that day.” I guess all this is a part of being friends.

In time Jothy met and married someone who took good care of him as he happily moved on with his life.

Sri Lanka Shipping – Robert Senanayake Building

The IBM building was almost complete when EWE started construction on the Sri Lanka Shipping building at the back of IBM. They had made an amazing sum of money through Sri Lanka Shipping; the first company to own ships even before the Ceylon Shipping Corporation.

This was during the time Freudenberg’s owned by Robert Senanayake was going into liquidation and since the Senanayakes were family friends, Robert gave Lester and Nahil first refusal to buy shares in his company, which they did, purchasing 45% of the shares at a dismal cost.

While the share transfer was going on, Freudenberg’s had a 4,000-tonne ship on charter called the St. George. Lester and Nahil, not happy to charter, instead opted to buy the ship outright. The Greek owners of the ship were well known to the Senanayakes, which would help the transaction to go through without a hitch. Then came the question of how they would finance the purchase. It so happened that Nihal Sri Amarasekera, the EWE Public Interest Litigator, was married into the Robert Senanayake family. In fact Ranjith and Nihal were married to two sisters. Nihal was determined to help both parties, trying to source a loan of nine million rupees to purchase the ship. Though the company had no proper audited accounts for five years, using his tenacity, Nihal Sri sourced the loan through Grindlays Bank.

Nahil and Lester were able to settle the loan in one year, a record time because the ship made big bucks for them. At the time they had lump-sum depreciation since there were no taxes and the equipment could be written off at the end of that year.

In the following years, Sri Lanka Shipping was managed by Ranjith Senanayake – father of Wasantha – whose family were the majority shareholders. They were also agents for Hapag-Lloyd and a few other agencies. Lester and Nahil found out that Ranjith was running huge overheads at Sri Lanka Shipping and as shareholders, they couldn’t let this happen. Deciding to take over the management, they shifted the operation to their office at Navam Mawatha, at no management cost.

It was during this era that Ranjith wanted them to buy him out, though Devinda Senanayake was the face of the agency in the public eye. The shareholders, some of whom were friends and family of the Senanayakes, were willing to sell in totality if Devinda agreed to it.

Initially, East West Enterprises bought the majority of the shares and finally 100%. It was after this acquisition that they constructed the Sri Lanka Shipping building behind IBM. As an act of appreciation to Robert Senanayake, for giving them a start into big-league shipping, they named the building ‘The Robert Senanayake Building.’

Simultaneous to the construction of the Robert Senanayake building, the four-story Forbes and Walker building being built by Ajith Jayaratne, the Chairman of Forbes & Walker – was progressing quite smoothly opposite the IBM building. Nahil would sometimes meet Ajith Jayaratne, during site visits where they would casually acknowledge each other.

One morning Nahil noticed construction had stopped on the third floor of the F&W building, with the scaffolding being taken down by the workers. On inquiring, the reason cited by Ajith for the abrupt secession of work was a shortage of cash and there was no immediate requirement for an extra floor. He maintained that they would probably build the extra floor in five years when the need arose. Here is an edited recap of the conversation:

Nahil: “Hey Ajith, look at all the masonry scattered around; bricks, planks, etc. In five years, building the extension will be difficult and hazardous, once the area is developed. Just do it now.”

Ajith: “No money.”

Nahil: “Alright, you need it in five years right?”

Ajith: “Yes, five years.”

Nahil: “Okay, I will build it for you on the condition that I can occupy the floor rent-free for the next five years.”

Ajith: ‘That’s a fantastic idea.”

This conversation took place while standing on the road opposite the building site.

F&W had an impressive Legal Department. Therefore Nahil requested Ajith to get his Legal Department to draw up an agreement. The request included that all that was discussed would be noted down on paper anticipating that action would be taken without delay on the discussed plan. During this period the Attorney General’s wife Priyanthi also worked for Ajith at F&W.

A month or two later, all his construction bills were being settled by Nahil, the scaffolding was back on and the building was progressing but still, no agreement had been handed over. By this time Nahil was rather irked with him, drawing his attention to their conversation on the subject and his excuse of being short of cash to continue the building. Nahil reminded Ajith that he had found him a favourable solution and kept his side of the bargain, whereas Ajith had not drafted the requested agreement. Nahil wanted to know what was going on. He gave Ajith the option of completing the building himself, which he accepted with delight saying something on the lines of “would you mind?” Nahil was all for it, telling him that he could now shout it out from the rooftop that he pushed Ajith to complete the building. He was settling Ajith’s contractor’s bills and eventually, Ajith settled Nahil in full. All this happened on the site. The operation was successful. Nahil had his curb appeal, while Ajith got his fourth floor.

East West Enterprises owned a few tugs, one of which was around four years old that sank off the coast of Panadura. A tug is a small powerful boat used for towing larger boats and ships, especially in harbour. It functions as a vessel that maneuvers other vessels by pushing or pulling them either by direct contact or by means of a tow line. Thankfully, though the weather was bad, they sent another pick-up, avoiding the loss of lives. Right after this, they were faced with a tax issue. Their books showed zero, due to a 30% depreciation across three years and the insurance claim they received was 30-40% taxable unless it was replaced by an asset of higher value. The case in point was that this way they did not have to pay their capital gains on the insurance payout. They were contemplating on this route.

Nahil was in India visiting a major petroleum and offshore drilling company managed by a few old seafarers. The company was winding down their operations and selling off two huge barges similar to the East West barges, since the Inland Revenue expected a similar asset or more expensive ones to replace their barges. He replaced their tug with these two barges, with the Indian company extending a loan to East West for the purchase of the two barges, which EW leased to them as a charter with a monthly charter fee where the monthly payment was the same as the charter hire. EW was given the registration certificates to authenticate the sale. There was no cash flow since EW’s monthly repayment for the loan was the same as the charter hire for the two barges. Technically there was no money changing hands, though it appeared so in their books. Each month the Indian company would send East West an invoice for the loan repayment and EW would send them an invoice for the charter hire.

This rhythm was kept going by both parties, with the Inland Revenue guys up in arms aware of this brilliant concept but unable to fix them since they were within the law, which Nahil used to appropriate the EW end of the deal. At the end of the three-year charter, the Inland Revenue Department requested the barges to be brought to Sri Lanka. By this time though the Indian guys had scrapped it and there were no barges.

Needing some kind of excuse for the Tax Department, he opened up a file and started writing letters to the Indian shipping agent, with no reply from them. This practice continued for several months after which they wrote to the Registrar of Companies India, who informed them that the company in question had gone into liquidation. He knew well in advance about the liquidation. Notwithstanding Nahil sent a letter to the Registrar so that they’d have an authentic document from the Registrar of Companies India, confirming the same. Nahil asks ‘‘can any tax consultant ever come up with a custom-made solution like this?”

Lanka Marine Services – Nahil Takes On JKH

LMS was a Government-owned monopoly selling oil to ships with a staff of 170 plus people. Their main asset was a 35,000-tonne petroleum storage unit situated in Bloemendhal Road with a pipeline running from the storage facility to the port to distribute the oil, fill the tanks, get back and pump it to the ships. The privatisation of LMS was spearheaded by PERC – Public Enterprise Reform Commission – under the purview of P.B. Jayasundera.

Nahil attended a ‘pre-bid’ buyers meeting consisting of a few foreign companies and four local companies, bidding for LMS. The floor price was one billion rupees. Nahil always messed these meetings up by saying things like, “When this is privatized the monopoly that you currently sustain will be diluted by other companies selling bunker services. Therefore the only items you are selling off are the tanks on Bloemendhal Road and the pipeline sans the monopoly. Who in their right mind will bid on and pay a floor price of one billion rupees for a rusty tank?”

It was the year 2002, and a billion rupees was a huge amount of money. Nahil’s point drove home, compelling all the other bidders to give up, realizing they could dock a similar size thing offshore, bunkering and selling oil to ships in and out of the port. The one billion was PERC’s idea of how much the thing was worth. Most importantly there was a draft agreement given to all the bidders, a document that the winner would have to sign so that each bidder would be aware of what they were getting into.

This was a four-way agreement – the Government, Petroleum, Ports Authority and the winning bid. John Keells bid one billion and paid one billion winning the bid.

As he had formerly deliberated at the meetings, that someone could easily operate a tanker, Nahil operated a tanker that was larger than the entire fleet of tanks in the port – a 37,000-ton ‘stunner’ – previously the Emerald, now re-named Bunker 1. He bought it from Singapore, with a Russian crew on board and took delivery of it in Fujairah.

Remember how Nahil had stated that someone could bust the monopoly? Here he was, ‘walking the talk!’ Just after he bought and took delivery of the ship, he had an agreement with a Maldivian, Ahamed Manikku of Universal Enterprises, and Kenneth Pendegrast, his local partner, who promised to buy the oil and pump it on board the ship so that it sailed into Colombo Port with a cargo of oil. They were dilly-dallying while Nahil was losing money – delays in this business cost big money…

By then he was running low on cash and approached the Bank of Ceylon management to negotiate a loan, with the affirmation that it would be paid back once he sold the oil. The bank officials handling his request were seeking some kind of collateral from Nahil; just then Sumi Munasinghe met him in the corridor and inquired as to what he was doing there. He gave her a brief account of his situation with the ship and the delays. She says, “Wait a minute” and heads off to speak to the officers. Sumi was the Chairman. She arranged four million dollars with no collateral, which he paid back, once again in record time.

He started the bunker operation, steadily picking up his market share off John Keells, with two smaller bunkers also operating inside the port. As he happily motored on, he got a letter from the Ports Authority, signed by Parakrama Dissanayake, well known for heading the container scene in Sri Lanka and also the head of the port – informing him that according to the agreement, all bunkering has to go through the common user facility – the line from the quay to Bloemendhal. Nahil was in a slight conundrum wondering how he could sell through this medium, which would never happen. He produced a copy of the draft agreement he was given by LMS at the last potential buyers’ meeting and questioned as to where on the agreement was such a clause found and requested for a copy. It transpired that John Keells, had supposedly signed the draft agreement that had this clause, though none of the others who received the draft agreement, including Nahil, found a clause to the effect in their copies. John Keells had inserted a paragraph into the original letter. He managed to obtain a copy of the agreement that JK had signed from the Parliament Library. The copy that all the bidders had, proved what JK had signed was different from theirs.

Nahil promptly took both agreements to De Sarams, the lawyers, and filed a case against John Keells for fraudulently inserting the clause in question. The JK anchor lawyer was Romesh De Silva, who given a chance would drag a case on for ages, maybe till kingdom comes. These delays well suited John Keells as most of the Directors were not shareholders and thus were not affected. With the case dragging on, Nahil had to pay the Russian crew for doing sweet nothing, still unable to sell his quantity of oil. As per the letter from the Ports Authority, the oil owned by him had to go through the common user facility which Nahil thought was crazy. He was out on a limb looking for a solution. On a whim, he checked the scrap price of tankers. He had bought Bunker 1 at its scrap price because it was a lovely machine though not a double hull. Generally, to operate in the USA a double hull is needed, the lack of which is why he got Bunker 1 so cheap. He believes a double hull gives extra protection. The scrap price had leaped up and just then he got an offer from Bangladesh.

Bunker 1 was hanging around doing nothing for around three months with 6,000 tonnes of oil in store and the Bangladeshis wanted the tank free of oil since the oil hinders the scrapping process that becomes a major issue. Looking for a solution he called Susantha Ratnayake – the President of John Keells at the time. Nahil said to him ‘‘Susantha why don’t you buy my oil and I’ll drop the case.’’Amazingly everything happened speedily from thereon. The oil was bought, the machine sold and the case was withdrawn. It was a cakewalk.

As Nahil’s friend Anthony (Baba) Page would say, “A bad settlement is better than a good judgment. Hanging around in courts is a waste of time.” This was an open-and-shut case where something was obtained after furnishing fraudulent documents. Once Nahil closed his case against JK, he handed over the documents to a prominent lawyer. Digging deep, his team found other discrepancies besides the fraud in the deal, and JK met its LMS Waterloo.

John Keells had to return Lanka Marine Services to the Government. One billion rupees down the bilges. That’s why Ajith Gunawardene and John Keells love Nahil!

The IBM Agency

Regressing to the Indian gentleman, Harish Vohra – the then Head of IBM Sri Lanka, who had leased out the ground and first floor of the East West-owned IBM building at Navam Mawatha and Nahil’s house – over a short period of time became a great friend of Nahil’s. In fact he considered Nahil his best friend.

One day he says, “Nahil, you know, we are in the throes of outsourcing our PC business to companies like Hayleys and others interested in Information Technology.” Nahil played it down showing no interest. Then Vohra suddenly mentioned that a Mr. Cunningham, from IBM, was due in Colombo the following week to carry out interviews for the awarding of the IBM agency and requested Nahil to make a bid for it.

Just after this conversation with Vohra, Nahil was stepping out of the office when he ran into Peter D’Almeida. Nahil asked him if he knew any good software people. He informed Nahil that he knew Ajith Ayer, an excellent software guy who was a good buddy of his. Nahil contacted Ajith, briefed him and requested him to make a comprehensive and convincing presentation to Cunningham, to help East West win the IBM agency.

Nahil thinks it was a foregone conclusion in the local business scene that EW would be awarded the agency. It was perceived by the competition that this was all eyewash by Cunningham, going through the motions of interviews and perusing the proposals from other companies seemingly doing what was ‘politically correct’ in the circumstances.

Finally, Cunningham arrived in Colombo. At the meeting, a slide presentation was made showing how Ajith’s software would drive up hardware sales. Ajith, though not employed by EW, was brought in just for this special purpose.

EW was awarded the agency which culminated in a celebratory dinner that evening. At dinner, Cunningham tells Ajith, “The presentation was excellent but you can never get it right using your software, it will only create enemies. Please use our existing software.” Point taken.

The agency came under the purview of East-West Information Systems, now E-Wis, which Nahil later sold to Sanjeeva Wickremanayake.

From that point on, their computer business was on an upswing. EWIS launched off with an office on 13th Lane, distributing IBM machines. At the time they had something called IBM compatibles. With everyone eager to own a PC, MS-dos and PC-dos, they manufactured the PC-dos for their clientele, selling all this through a new company they launched named ‘Computer Land,’ a subsidiary of EWIS, to handle the compatibles made in Korea, leaving the import of high-end IBM machines to East West Information Systems. Selling the compatibles through Computer Land helped them capture a substantial part of the local IT market.

The multi-story carpark at the IBM building has a bit of history. While the World Trade Centre was under construction, the owning company, Overseas Realty, was looking for prestigious clients like IBM to benchmark their tenancy. Nahil had an inclination that IBM was being tapped by Overseas Realty as a potential tenant and decided to go one better by offering IBM unlimited parking along with a valet parking service. This advantage, to his knowledge, was not a possibility at the WTC.

As promised he delivered in three months, initially giving them a multi-story carpark beside the IBM building on 15 perches with a car lift where the cars were valet parked, and a further 60 perches of parking right in the middle of Navam Mawatha. This land, owned by the Selvanayagam’s of Carsons, looked like a rubbish tip and really disgraceful. He requested them to develop it or sell it to him. They went for the latter option, hence the car park. With the purchase of the land, there was plenty of parking. Right after that, he converted the multi-story carpark into office spaces, exchanging the car lift for two regular passenger lifts and installed the car lift for the conveyance of cargo at his multi-storey warehouse in Peliyagoda.

In the early days, just for a lark, Nahil and Jothy would visit Customs auctions together, picking out random stuff at very low prices. Nahil says he learned something from these auctions. As an example, if a car is ceased or impounded, a few days before the auction, the Customs guys remove an engine or some other vital part from the vehicle and leaves it in a warehouse, to be sold separately, while the car with a part missing is also placed in the same warehouse. There is an established pack of traders who are present at every auction. Whoever is bidding on the car knows it is minus an engine or whatever part that’s taken off, thus they bid for the vehicle and the missing part separately. The warehouse is usually open two days before the auction to the public for inspection of the items. Finally, the buyer gets a partless car at a very low price, and the missing part at a pittance, which is eventually assembled and viola! There is a fully functioning car. It was then that Nahil realized that if the need arose, the system could be manipulated in a million ways. This was no doubt a learning experience for him.

South African Marine

Aliti Traders in South Africa had set up a factory to manufacture VW cars for the African market that predominantly manufactured right-hand drive Volkswagen cars. East West imported around fifty cars and sold them in Sri Lanka through East West Enterprises.

What is significant here is, the shipping agency, EWE was growing very fast, rising to be the largest operation just three years from its launch, with considerable turnover. This was Lester’s forte and he excelled in it.

Unicorn Shipping was a company that was launched in 1966 when African Coasters merged with Thesen’s Steamship Company to form Unicorn Shipping. They started by operating 13 owned and long term chartered medium-range small product tankers with one medium tanker on order. In 2001 the company changed its name to Grindrod Limited.

Unicorn Shipping was operating a subsidiary, Unicorn Shipping Lines, which handled coastal shipping. Mandela was in jail at the time and due to apartheid, there was an embargo stopping Unicorn Shipping Lines from sailing to Pakistan, India and a few other countries.

Lion Shipping partnered by Malin Abeyratne was the agent for this line only on paper, not having handled any of the Unicorn ships or promoted any other business in Colombo up to that time.

Lester forwarded a proposal to Unicorn Shipping with a feasibility report requesting to act as their agents in Sri Lanka. Once they accepted the proposal they did some media marketing in South Africa where they outlined East West as their SL agents. This was in the ’80s. “With our appointment, there was fresh excitement every day,” says Nahil.

When Lion Shipping was informed by Unicorn Shipping regarding the change of agents, Malin protested saying, “Sorry, you can’t change agencies without Government approval”. This is something that goes on all the time in Colombo. The ship left South Africa without an agent being appointed. With Malin’s protest, though the then Minister of Shipping was lobbying for the line to be given to Lion Shipping since he was Malin’s friend. East West was adamant that the Unicorn Shipping Agency should not go to Lion Shipping but to Ceylon Shipping Corporation, where they, Lester and Nahil, had their roots.

Unicorn Shipping appointed EWE as owners’ representatives. After playing their role as owners reps for Unicorn Shipping, after a few voyages, they informed Unicorn Shipping that they were not in a position to serve their interest adequately and gracefully bowed out.“Our office was like the South African Embassy with people visiting, requesting the recommendation of trade partners, etc., in South Africa.”

The Kirula Road Yard – Now Asiri Medical

After developing and selling the land at Bloemendhal Road, they were in desperate need of a yard to park their heavy vehicles. As they looked at a map of Colombo, hypothetically if the land was priced at Rs. 5,000 a perch in Colombo 7, as you come out radially towards Colombo 5, in the Jawatte Road area, there is a marked drop in price though the two areas are almost physically adjacent. After driving around the area, a large lot on Kirula Road proved satisfactory.

This large lot was owned by Tudawe Brothers, but unfortunately it was encroached by many shanties. Old Mr. Tudawe averred, “I will sell this lot to you but I doubt the shanty folk will ever leave. I have been negotiating with them for the past 10 years to no avail.” By now an expert in shanty clearance, Nahil took up the challenge declaring, “Let me try. The second time around should be peanuts!” Immediately on acquiring the land, Nahil summoned a meeting with all the tenants and offered cash to all the tenants to move. They were all in agreement of moving away, though the majority voiced their fear of being left bereft of their dues.

This was a catch 22 situation. Nahil’s question was what if he paid them and they didn’t leave. A quick decision had to be taken so he got hold of the ‘Godfather’ of the lot, Mr. Mahathung, who owned the illicit brewery setup at the rear end of the land. Trying to keep it simple, Nahil said to Mahathung, “If all of you agree to leave, we will pay you” – explaining to him the conditions of payment. He was happy and persuaded Nahil to have one drink in celebration –moonlight hooch. He found himself gradually getting high on this rubbish, made his excuses and left on a positive note. Lester was out of Colombo when Nahil executed the transaction with these folk. He assured Lester that he would clear the tenants in three months, but managed to do so in one month. Finally, the entire ‘wattha’ left, with Nahil making sure each family found places to re-locate to, and also helped to transport their bits and pieces.

He immediately got down one of their bulldozers and started filling the dip at the rear end of the land with truckloads of soil, with the dozer fortuitously knocking down fences in the compound, the little demarcations made by the occupants.

The occupants’ kids had fun with the dozer, riding on it and generally rioting. He turned a blind eye to all this since he had achieved his objective. Once everyone was relocated, they developed the land and made it their haulage yard.

Just two years later they developed the Peliyagoda property and moved the haulage yard to that location. Peliyagoda was more convenient, being close to the Colombo Port.

Once the yard was moved away from Kirula Road, the owners of Asiri Hospitals approached Nahil with a proposal to purchase the lot for the construction of a hospital, offering EWH shares in the hospital as an alternative to cash, citing the doctors in his family. Just to get some kind of direction before he made a decision, Nahil phoned his sisters, who let him know that they would not be settling in Sri Lanka. He opted for cash instead of shares which, if he had accepted, would have made him a substantial shareholder of Asiri Hospitals.

While the Maduru Oya freight was being transported from the port to the site, EWH was among the freight forwarders involved in the haulage of goods belonging to these contactors whom they worked with direct, avoiding involvement with subcontractors. One afternoon, the foreign contractors gathered at the port on a day the port was extremely busy, a buzz of activity going on with import of cranes, and other machinery, whilst nothing was branded or labeled. Nahil informed them that he was expecting a shipment on a particular day and requested all their equipment to be mustered in their facility to enable the efficient transport of the goods, once the ship arrived. He had some machines in his lot which did not belong to EWH, though at a glance, it gave the impression to his foreign visitors that this huge fleet of machines belonged to them. This showcased their competition, as physically depleted of goods. “Cheeky stuff,” says Nahil.

It was the final day of the Royal/Thomian encounter. Roshanne and Nahil were on their way home around 11 p.m., after dinner at the home of Priath and Christine Fernando. Nahil was driving a Mitsubishi Lancer wagon as they made their way home from Nawala to Flower Road. Stopping at a red light at Horton Place, he noticed a car pulling up alongside, with two young men revving their car engine, looking towards him.

Nahil immediately figured they were up for a race. Taking up the challenge, he shot off as the lights changed colour. As both cars approached the Alexandra Place roundabout, the other car cut into Nahil expecting to send him over the roundabout, when Nahil realizing what they were trying to do, intentionally whacked the right hand side of the other car. The car spun around twice and stopped 15-20feet in front of Nahil’s car.

By now Roshanne was hysterical. Two well-built young men got off their now wrecked car and came towards them, got hold of the front of the Lancer and started lifting the Lancer wagon up and down. Trying to avoid confrontation at any cost, Nahil engaged his vehicle into first gear and slowly nudged the car towards their knees after which they backed down and took off. When Nahil drove to the Colpetty Police Station to make an entry, they requested him to make an entry at the Cinnamon Gardens Police Station since the accident took place under their jurisdiction. The next morning, he sent someone to the Cinnamon Gardens Police station and found out the two lads were the sons of Atu Dadlani. Nahil called upon his former neighbour and friend, Mohan Lalvani, who in turn spoke to Atu. Finally, both parties decided to undertake to repair their vehicles and things were settled amicably.

At the height of the JVP insurgency, Nahil received a telephone call from the JVP demanding 100,000 rupees with a threat that failure to pay would result in a bomb in front of the IBM building. The man on the phone told him that he should take this very seriously, and continued to give instructions to leave the cash atop a dustbin opposite his home and stay indoors for four hours; with the usual “don’t talk about it to anyone, if you do…” He followed the instructions and the cash vanished. As instructed, Nahil stayed indoors for four hours aware that they were well known to hit the people they extorted money from, and eventually left for Singapore later on in the evening with the kids.

While in Singapore he formed a company named ‘SunLow’, with Saumya, Sanjeewa and Victor Lo suppliers of all the accessories for the IBM building. After spending a few weeks in Singapore, he returned to Colombo. Once he returned he had figured out that the JVP would once again try to hornswoggle him. Anticipating a re-occurrence, he wired his residence telephone system and borrowed a gun from Deva Corea, who was in charge of the President’s security, in readiness to take on the culprits.

As anticipated the JVP called once again, this time demanding 500,000 rupees, with the same ‘bin top’ drill. He got the JVP man to call him back multiple times, giving time for the call to be traced and recorded. Nahil took this recording to his office and played it back to his telephone operator, Aloma, hoping she would recognise the voice. Aloma was unable to recognise the voice but was very sure that the operator action was from a NEC telephone system, exactly like the one she had previously worked on.

He called Lokki Abhayaratne, a Director at Fentons, which is the GSA for NEC. His Sales Department confirmed they had sold around 40 units. One unit was sold to a call centre in the Colpetty area. When Nahil visited the call centre, the lady manning the booth was able to trace his number, vividly recalling the two perpetrators. Convinced they would call once again, he left the EWIS number with the booth operator as his contact and left. Nahil was in Kandy when he received a call that the two men were at the call centre.

Buying time, the smart call centre lady had instructed the two men to return in a few minutes to make their call, citing the phones were engaged as a means to stall them so that she had time to call EWIS. Nahil called Deva Corea who was in charge of the President’s security and he rushed with a backup to Liberty Plaza where the communication centre was located. The lady pointed out the two men who by peradventure were hanging around Liberty Plaza with the lady at the booth following them at a safe distance. Once Deva got there she was able to point them out, after which the two men were arrested and taken to the Colpetty Police Station where they were properly beaten up by the cops.

Thereafter, the cops informed Nahil that one of the men was his relative, his father’s brother’s, son-in-law, whom he had helped financially on a few occasions. The man had assaulted a judge in Kurunegala and the cops were after him. Besides that, he had no job and was helpless.

Nahil called Ashley Herath, a lawyer in Kurunegala who was a friend as well as the lawyer for the Judge, to find out whether he could do something to help sort this thing out. This was a volatile period when inevitably the cops would bump off anyone with a suspicion of being linked to the JVP. Nahil being aware of the fact was not in favour of the two men meeting the same fate.

The case dragged on for two-and-a-half years. The man had bought a motorcycle with the 100K, which he returned to Nahil. He withdrew the case and handed the bike over to Aloma as a reward for her intelligence and brilliant performance. Shortly after she moved overseas, gifting the bike to her brother. He never heard from his relative again.

Family Holiday to Egypt

Sheraton Alexandra, Egypt

Friends Indrani and Anarkali

Indrani Jayatilake, Anarkali’s mom, was originally a friend of Roshanne at the time Vijitha and Anika were studying at CIS. Anika and Anarkali were classmates. This was when they were seven or eight years old. Roshanne and Indrani would often meet at the school whilst picking up the kids, forging a friendship with each other since their little daughters were best friends.

Vijitha and Anika were in their early teens when Roshanne moved on with her life, living in her home off Dickmans Road. She still maintained her friendship with Indrani until she realised that Indrani was in a dalliance with Nahil.

Indrani and Anarkali would visit Anika often at Nahil’s apartment atop the IBM building. Indrani’s husband had moved to the UK, leaving Indrani and a young Anarkali behind due to family issues between him and Indrani, leaving mother and daughter living alone in the suburbs. When Nahil discovered the rather remote habitat, distraught, he immediately rented out a small first floor apartment that belonged to Sri Sagadevan’s family down Rosmead place and instated mother and daughter in the apartment where they lived in comparative safety thereafter for five years with Nahil taking care of the rent.

Subsequently, Roshanne found out about a dalliance between the two and was extremely annoyed, though she never brought the subject up with Nahil, instead, it was Anika who was angry and voiced her opinion in no uncertain terms saying, “This is ammi’s friend and you are in a relationship with her.” Very soon, Anarkali became Anika’s ‘enemy number one’.

A month into the dalliance, Indrani and Nahil mutually uncoupled, though he made it his mission to continue taking care of mother and daughter who were in dire straits at the time. He attended to things like school fees for Anarkali and other sundry requirements.

At the time Nahil purchased the Hotel Intercontinental, Anika was in the USA and Indrani and Anarkali moved into the General Manager’s apartment in the hotel. On completion of her studies in the US, Nahil requested Anika to return and get involved in the operation of the hotel which she did. However the deal was that Indrani and Anarkali should vacate the hotel before her arrival. All this was virtually overnight.

Feeling responsible for the mother and daughter, he bought them an apartment at the Iceland Building, where they settled down.

On a photo-shoot or something related to it in Los Angeles, Anarkali met her future husband, Dishan, son of Dr.Walter Jayasinghe. Dr. Jayasinghe was one of the wealthiest Sri Lankans in the USA, and also owned a few hospitals. Anarkali married Dishan and is now settled in Los Angeles, while Indrani lives in Colombo. It must be noted that the Jayasinghe family are ardent adherents of the Church of Scientology in Los Angeles, with Anarkali a willing follower. Nahil and Indrani meet occasionally and are still friends. “I am really pleased things turned around for the two of them,” says Nahil.

ETV – Extra Terrestrial Vision

Nahil says “I live for unique extraordinary challenges, certainly operating within the law, still operating on the fringes of yet untested challenges where most fear to tread.” Thus, when the powers that were, liberalised television licences, he made a bid and was awarded a fresh licence in order to operate a private TV station, being one among three, the other two being TNL owned by the Wickremesinghe family and MTV operated by Maharajas.

ETV launched shortly after, determined to be the best ‘new TV kids in town,’ broadcasting cable TV programmes on extra terrestrial channels just like the state TV stations, Rupavahini and ITN, free to the masses even though it was too many stations at the time. On the operations side, it was a choice between having your own studio or buying programmes since the software to run a TV station was far too expensive for these operators.

Nahil was determined to beat the foreign lot at their own game: Asia Sat had just started broadcasting Star TV out of Hong Kong to Asia, where they were big. The usual business model used by broadcasters in satellite television is to broadcast ‘free to air,’ for a period of time, thus getting everyone in any country in the region hooked. With the programmes being telecast ‘free to air,’ any person from any country in the region who owned a satellite dish could watch programmes at no charge, with India and China being Asia Sat’s target markets.

They would broadcast free into India, China and the rest of Asia, opening a corridor of opportunity to the ‘little mudalalis’ and the ‘ganang kārayās’ to put up a satellite dish, cable the streets, and broadcast these programmes to their clients collecting a monthly fee. Spreading this form of viewing was a sort of business model by Asia Sat, while some politicians and thugs made ‘summa’ money by just laying cables, with the plan to wire up the whole country so that people would get hooked on this. Asia Sat normally does this for around two years after which they start scrambling the programmes, which leads to no programmes. This way they start charging the distributors, assuring them by giving them a proper setup box to activate and deactivate from outside and charging them a monthly set fee with the distributors, in turn, charging their clients a monthly fee thus earning substantial profits from the venture. With this new twist, the business model changes from free to air to subscriptions.

Nahil’s mission was to make use of the two free years to download and broadcast the signal, free to the people on the normal extra-terrestrial lines similar to how Rupavahini and ITN broadcast their programmes. Here he was broadcasting good programming at no cost to ETV, while the public enjoyed free TV – a win-win situation.

Meanwhile Maharajas were irked by all this since they were paying premium rates, as much as US$ 50K, for a half hour of BBC, which they broadcast as ‘live’ to the public, though the programmes were in reality pre-recorded, their adverts inserted and broadcast what was live at 4 p.m. at 6 p.m., two hours behind. They made it their mission to look for ways to bungle Nahil and ETV. They did so by fabricating a fairy tale about him, which they passed on to Mr. Premadasa, who was the President at the time.

Mr. Lakshman Kadirgamar – His Mentor

Being an active old boy he would often meet Lakshman Kadirgamar, at the time he was President of the Trinity College Kandy Old Boys Association.

During the period Nahil was consulting Lakshman Kadirgamar, an expert on world Intellectual Property Rights and Copyright law, on ETV matters, he was invited by Lakshman to his residence to ‘discuss something very important’ that could be discussed only in the presence of his close friends. “I was elated,” says Nahil, “to be counted in his circle of close friends.” Sinha Ratnatunga was the junior lawyer in the ETV case, he and Suganthi Wijesooriya representing De Serams, were the only three people present at the meeting. LK told them that Chandrika had sent word through Barnes Ratwatte, requesting him to join the SLFP National List since it would be good PR for her to have a respectable Tamil on the list. He had been quite sarcastic while discussing the invitation, saying something to the effect “Is this all I’m good for? I hope she doesn’t expect me to put a pottu, dress in a verti and walk around Wellawatte!” Sinha and Suganthi were opposed to the request, citing that as President of the Bar Association, being a part of the Sri Lankan political framework was not the best for him. During the discussion Nahil somehow figured out by LK’s body language that he wanted to take up this challenge and encouraged him to do so, since this would be an effective platform to execute his thoughts and ideas using the full force of the government machinery to put forward his social reform and plans for the country. All this was impossible as the President of the Bar Association and the Trinity College Kandy Old Boys Association…

Nahil advised him not to be ‘made use of’ after the elections by making it a pre-condition that before he joins the party, he should be given the post of Minister of Foreign Affairs or Finance, and not to be relegated to a corner like the minister of Cultural Affairs. Lakshman wanted to know why Nahil being an UNPer – since his dad’s time – was supporting him in the opposition.’’

“I told him it’s always good to have civil people on the other side who will not in an argument pull a gun on me!” One of his major achievements was getting the LTTE banned in the UK and Europe, there by irking most of the Tamil diaspora.

He achieved international prominence as Foreign Minister due to his wide ranging condemnation of the LTTE (Tamil Tigers) and his effort to have them banned internationally. Following the victory of the UPFA in April 2004, he was nominated as a possible candidate for Prime Minister of Sri Lanka, but on April 6th President Kumaranatunge appointed Mahinda Rajapaksa to the post.

He was also an Honorary Master of the Inner Temple- one of the four Inns of Court in England. In 2004 he was elected as an Honorary Fellow of Balliol College, University of Oxford and the president of the Oxford Union in 1959. LK acquired a wide circle of friends during his time at Oxford University, one of whom was, Chris Patton, who lobbied for LK’s photograph to be included on the walls of the Oxford Union. The other Sri Lankans who served in the Oxford Union were Mr. Lalith Athulatmudali as President in 1958 and Mr. SWRD Bandaranayake as Secretary in 1923.

In Trinity, although he was much senior to Nahil, their paths would cross, meeting often at functions or homes of mutual friends. Nahil impressed by LK says that his speech was always articulate and eloquent, along with the endearing quality of being an avid listener, immersing himself in the moment, which gave him the advantage of comprehending any conversation to perfection. According to Nahil, this was one outstanding quality of Lakshman Kadirgamar.

At the time LK was the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Nahil’s TV station, ETV, was in full function. Nahil used their media advantage to give LK maximum coverage whenever possible. One event of significance was the outstanding speech he made at the UN in New York. Sinha Ratnatunga, the Editor of the Sunday Times newspaper, was part of LK’s media team. Nahil paid for Sinha’s travel to NY and back so he could get the recording of the speech and rush the recording back to ETV, an exercise that otherwise would have cost Nahil, in his words ‘an arm and a leg,’ if they tried broadcasting live, with the time zone difference also being a negative factor. Sinha returned with the tape a few days later and the speech was broadcast as a live event.

During this period, while the case was full on, Nahil would meet with LK on ETV matters. A part of LK’s team was Suganthi Wijesooriya (no relation of Nahil’s), his assistant and his girlfriend. Nahil first went to him for a legal opinion while LK was living in his residence at the Bullers road junction.

Star TV, instigated by the Maharajas sent Nahil a ‘cease and desist’ letter, accusing him of violating the copyright law by downloading their signal and transmitting through ETV. He told them to scramble the signal if it was such a big deal, fully aware that by doing so their business model would go for a six since their main concern was building up a healthy viewer base.

Star TV was clueless as to where Sri Lanka was on the map, if not for Maharajas winding them up, whinging that they were paying US$ 50,000 for half an hour of BBC, while ETV broadcast it 24×7 free. Nahil would randomly pick programmes like ‘The Bold and the Beautiful’ or ‘WWF,’ transmitting whatever that appealed to his viewers. His business model was to advertise 20-30 second advertisements in the same time slots as Star TV. Helping him along with this was his crew, who were by now experts at identifying the time slots, always ready with the tapes to insert the advertisements, overriding the Star TV adverts.

Nahil took the letter to Lakshman Kadirgamar, managing to convince him to look at it from his perspective. Star TV had no broadcasting rights into Sri Lanka, whereas Nahil had a valid license and therefore Star TV was the infringer, not him. If someone broadcast from a mountain top, the cops could get up there and pull the transmitter down, but they are not in a position to go up and pull down a satellite. LK accepted Nahil’s explanation on this. They went to courts, admonishing Star TV for writing threatening letters to ETV. After all, it was their accuser Star TV that was illegally broadcasting into our land without a license. The case was progressing quite well, virtually coming to decision time, when LK says, “Let’s go to the UK and meet up with my Oxford buddy Jeremy Laver, an expert in IP law and his assistant Heather Lawrence, for their opinion on this.” Laver communicated to Nahil that even if he had done this in the UK, it would have been legal. Nahil thinks this was also a little joy ride for LK and Suganthi.

With their judgment about to be given, he sent a copy of all this to the Court with a copy to Star TV. Shortly after, an Englishman from Hong Kong turned up with a prepared document from their legal department to settle the matter out of courts with the conditions outlined. The first condition was that ETV acts as the official broadcaster for Star TV for two years. The second condition was the withdrawal of the case against them. Amazingly, this unique bit of legislature has not been practiced in any country up to now, since copyright violation in satellite broadcasting from their footprint has never been tested. Star TV was weary of a precedent being created. If you give it some thought, how can a foreign TV station broadcast to another nation without a broadcasting license? However, as a conclusion they had a few beers where camaraderie and warm humour reigned.

That year, while ETV was advertising the upcoming screening of the Hong Kong Sevens, Nahil received a call from a British woman in Hong Kong, who, from her tone of voice, sounded miffed. She wanted to know if he was ‘so and so’ from ETV. He answered in the affirmative, enquiring what her problem was. She says, “I hear you are selling advertising space pertaining to the screening of the Hong Kong Sevens next week and it’s illegal.” Nahil wanted to know if she was from the Legal or Commercial Department of Star TV; she informed him she was from Sales. He then let her know that the Star TV broadcast could be viewed by anyone with a satellite dish and went on to tell her that ETV was broadcasting Star TV programmes to the poor masses by transmitting to them on the normal terrestrial channels as they were not in a position to afford a satellite dish. After hearing him out, she says to him, “So you are the Robin Hood of Sri Lanka?” He says, “No, I’m the Saradiyel of Sri Lanka.” “Who’s that?” she asks, to which he replies, “It’s a long story. Let’s meet for a coffee someday, and then I will dish it out to you.”

ETV had just obtained a broadcasting license and launched ETV. With all the equipment installed, they were in the throes of conducting test transmissions when unexpectedly, he got a message from a friend, Asoka Gunasekera, Secretary, Ministry of Telecommunication, during the time Mr.Premadasa was the President. He says, “Sorry Nahil, Mr. Premadasa wants your TV broadcasting stopped and your station sealed.” Taken by suprise, he immediately inquired from the Head of the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission (TRC), Manikavasagam, what all this drama was about. He says, “We haven’t been given a reason, but it’s a directive from the President.” The drill was to haul away all the equipment from the station and store it at the Telecom warehouses. Nahil told him this move would ruin the equipment since it needed to be kept in an air-conditioned environment and suggested they come and seal the entire building. With a bit of persuasion, they got the authorities to cut them some slack by sealing the equipment, which they did by covering it with brown paper. “It was about the size of a cabinet, tied up in twine and sealed with red sealing wax.” Nahil told them this was all wrong, comparing it to the equivalent of a rotor in a car (the distributor motor) which can be demobilized. He instructed them to take the main transmitter tube and keep it wherever they wanted, which they agreed to.

While trying to find out the reason for this sudden move by Mr. Premadasa, Nahil figured Maharajas, being competitors, had something to do with it. He was spot on. They spun a story to Premadasa who had just come out of his impeachment by Gamini Dissanayake saying, “Do you think a schoolmate of Gamini Dissanayake owning a TV station is a good idea? You need to terminate their broadcast immediately.” It was obvious that they were desperate to shut ETV down and successfully planted a seed of doubt in Mr. Premadasa.

This was a load of fabricated nonsense. Nahil tried to meet Mr. Premadasa to put things right, using various mutual connections. He happened to know Mr.Premadasa’s best friend, who was then the Chairman of the Building Materials Corporation (BMC) – Anton Alwis. Anton was appointed as a Director of ETV just to keep Mr.Premadasa happy, mainly because with Anton on board ETV he would not try to tarnish Mr.Premadasa in any way. Usually Nahil has an unorthodox approach to almost all things, but using his media outlet to mess with the President would have been disastrous and something he would never do. He says the word impeachment was foreign to him, until he read it in the newspapers.

Weeks had gone by and his effort to see Mr.Premadasa seemed futile until his brother-in-law, Dr. Lakshman Karaliedde on holiday from London, noticed the station was off the air and wanted to know what had happened. Nahil told him about their predicament and, among other things, about their futile effort to meet the President.

He suggested he’d speak to the Mahanayake of Malwatte who was a relative, to secure an appointment for Nahil with Mr.Premadasa. He was also the Mahanayake’s physician while living in Sri Lanka. The Mahanayake indicated to Lakshman that the TV station and other stuff were of no consequence to him and he was willing to set up an appointment solely on the basis that Nahil was a Sinhalese Buddhist from Kandy. The next day he got a call from Anton Alwis that Mr.Premadasa had wanted him to bring ‘Mr. Nahil’ to meet him. His first thought was ‘license OK, back to business as usual.’ He was there the next morning at the Prime Minister’s office on Flower Road at 9 a.m. with Anton and Vipula Soysa. They were kept hanging around till 11:30 – the last lot to be called in.

As they walked in, he says, “Mama enna kiwwe Malwatte kiyapu hinda” – (“I wanted you to come here because Malwatte asked me to.) I know you were involved in the impeachment.” Nahil was in a fluster wondering how to tell Mr.Premadasa that it was not so, patiently holding on for a moment to correct him. Nahil had no clue where to start, waiting for a break in the conversation to enlighten him. Finally, getting a word in, he said to him in the gentlest way possible, “Sir, I don’t think your information is quite right.” Mr.Premadasa in a flurry pushes his chair back and says, “Are you trying to tell me that I don’t know my job?” In other words, zip it up! This was a one-way exercise. “Apith ekka innawa kiyala monawa hari karala pennanna oney” – (“If you are with us, you should do something to prove it”). The final thing he said was, “Oneynam apith ekka happila balanna, dannawa ne Upali ta wechcha wade” – (“You know what will happen if you mess around with us – you know what happened to Upali”). Here he was trying to take credit for Upali’s disappearance, and threatening Nahil with the same fate.

Phew! After all this Nahil knew he needed to take the kids and leave to the UK, for their safety and his sanity, which he did. He left with the children to the UK the next day.

While Mr.Premadasa was pitching into Nahil, Sanath Gunathilake, the actor, was sitting outside in the corridor and as the door was open he had heard all the drama. On their way out he tells Nahil, “Hondata waduna neda?” – (“You got it bad, right?”). Later on, when Nahil met Sanath at a function he asked him how things went for him during his meeting with Mr. Premadasa. He says, “My meeting was funnier.”

A general election was coming up and Mr. Premadasa was trying to get Sanath to contest under the UNP banner. Sanath had told him, “Sir, api oya politics danne na neda, api actors la” – (“Sir, we don’t know politics, we are actors”) to which Premadasa had replied, “Eka thamai, api okkoma actors wela” (“That’s true, we are all actors now”). Nahil was amazed by Premadasa’s honesty! Here he is confessing the truth for the first time. All the shouting, anger and pushing back his chair during their meeting had been a drama; mere acting.

While in the UK after all the drama, weeks into his stay, Mr.Premadasa was assassinated on the 1st of May. Nimal, who was in London at the time, visited Nahil on his birthday, being the 8th of May, with a magnum of champagne and a shirt. The shirt was for Nahil and the bottle of bubbly for Mr.Premadasa. After Mr.Premadasa passed away, Nahil and the kids returned to Colombo.

A few weeks after Mr.Premadasa’s demise, D.B. Wijetunga took over as president. Dr. Darrell Mathew was Mr. Wijetunge’s physician at the time and was well known to Nahil. He volunteered to speak to DB regarding the ETV licence confiscated by Mr. Premadasa.

Nahil was grateful for his help and agreed to a meeting that was set up almost immediately. At the meeting, following a brief overview of what happened, DB says, “Ah mata kiyanna oney na, mama dannawa wechcha wade” – (Ah You don’t have to tell me. I know exactly what happened.”) With that said, he places a call to the Minister of Cultural Affairs, who was in charge of licences, to return the ETV licence. All it took was a few minutes.

ETV was one station with two channels, airing concurrently as ETV1 and ETV2. Usually, when a licence is issued, two frequencies are included in the licensing. How this works is when your second transmitter overlaps – say there’s one here, and one in Galle or wherever, it’s the same signal you get, termed as ‘ghosting’ from the receiver, so you have two frequencies – either this or that. When Nahil’s licence was issued, there was no specification of the number of channels, it was a plain old broadcasting licence.

With many frequencies available for national coverage on the second frequency, he would usually choose a day when a special event was to be broadcast, for instance, an important cricket match, and insert a slide on ETV1 that read ‘the following match will be shown on ETV2’. He was only giving the frequency since ETV2 was non-existent at the time. The Secretary of the Ministry of Telecommunications K.S. Gunasekera, freaked out and called him to say, “Nahil, “What the hell are you talking about an ETV2? You don’t have a licence!” He calmly told K.S. to check his documentation where he will notice that there is no mention of the number of channels. K.S rants saying, “No, no, you are not authorized to do that.” Nahil immediately inserted a notice on ETV1 that read: “K.S. Gunasekara has informed us that we are not authorized to broadcast the match. You can call him on the following numbers,” and displayed K.S.’s home number and a few other numbers of the Ministry on the screen.

He telephoned Nahil the same day saying, I was having lunch at home and all these calls are a bloody nuisance. I think you are right about the second channel, please go ahead and show the cricket match.” Nahil, while thanking K.S. for permitting the broadcast on the second channel, took the opportunity to request for a document confirming the same faxed to him.

The next morning, what he received was not permission to show the match, but the full licence for a second channel. Nahil heard that K.S. had been inundated with calls during his lunch break after ETV displayed his telephone numbers on TV! In true ‘Nahil fashion,’ he set the pace with channel 2, with the other stations following suit.

Funnily, in the mix was a letter written and jointly signed by MTV, Rupavahini and ITN requesting that Nahil should be stopped from pirating since this practice was supposedly spoiling the image of the country. These people were behaving like a bunch of spoilt brats. They seem to forget that thanks to his maneuvering of the system they were able to obtain two channels, which continue even now.

Following his lead, all the local TV stations had received licences for channels 1 and 2. Nahil was broadcasting BBC news 24 hours a day at no cost while MTV was paying BBC US$ 50K for half an hour of broadcast each day, of which they were griping about as usual. Lakshman Kadirgamar wanted Nahil to join him for dinner that evening, to meet, a good friend of his, McDonald, Head of BBC, who was passing through Colombo. The meeting’s objective was for Nahil to discuss the situation with the man and sort something out. Soon they were on first name basis and he says, “Nahil, you know, you are taking on the might of the BBC,” to which he replied that what he was told was “very interesting,” outwardly he made a joke of it and laughed even though on the inside he resolved he would enjoy taking on the ‘might’ of the BBC. No one was going to browbeat him. Never!

In Memorium

Statue of Mr. Lakshman Kadirgamar

Sadly, as we all know, at the height of our civil war, LK was a victim of an LTTE sniper. Nahil was feeling guilty that he had encouraged LK to take up the National List offer and felt his redemption to a certain extent would be the erecting of a statue of LK in a prominent place in the city as a memorial to him. “We sourced around for a place and found the Liberty Circle. Lakshman Sirimanne, who was a Director of East West, ‘moved mountains’ to secure this site. Initially, when the idea was mooted it was suggested the statue be placed at the Parliament among the others there. Nahil vehemently refused. He did not want the statue of LK lined up in a rogue’s gallery.

At the start, Suganthi, LK’s second wife, insisted that they should not commission a Chinese sculptor since CBK was fully involved with the Chinese and all the sculptors commissioned to sculpt various statues inclined towards Chinese features. She insisted either a Greek or Russian be commissioned who would do a better job on the features of the sculpture her argument being that LK had sharp features like the Russians.

She informed Nahil that she knew someone at the Russian Embassy who promised to find the best sculptor in Russia. In the following weeks, a name was put forward along with a huge tab as an initial payment and final payment. Before the job was confirmed, Nahil visited the man’s website, all in Russian, which he got translated by a friend, Mr. Chandraguptha Wijetilaka, who had studied in Russia and spoke fluent Russian. According to the website, the sculptor’s father was the famous one, not him. The website stated that the son only restored statues and did not sculpt them. Nahil was freaking mad with Suganthi and pitched into her for the un-researched leads which would have ended up in disaster. She instantly became persona non grata to him, though he somehow managed to extract at least 50 photographs of LK from her before the communication shutdown between them.

The task at hand was to find a good sculptor. While inquiring around and making no headway, he suddenly remembered Gamini Dissanayake’s statue situated at Viharadevi park which was quite well sculpted. He called Srima, Gamini’s wife who gave him the contact of an excellent local sculptor, Mr. Kurullegama from Nugegoda.

Mr. Kurullegama was the gent Nahil commissioned to sculpt LK’s statue. Nahil worked alongside him, providing him with all the photographs and also helped by giving it a technical twist, editing LK’s side profile on camera and projecting the image onto the sculpture, thus helping Mr. Kurullegama tremendously in the task of achieving clear facial lines, which was an exciting project.

The predominant reason for the statue was to ensure that LK would not be forgotten. During his tenure as FM, he did much for the country, including getting the LTTE banned. This was a sure-fire way to keep his memory alive in the hearts of the nation and the generations to follow.

Mr. Kurullegama – The Sculptor

Come inauguration day, Nahil was keen to stage it as a college event with the Trinity College Kandy OBA saluting Lakshman Kadirgamar and not as a ‘political tamasha’. The Chief Justice Sarath Silva, a Trinitian was invited as Chief Guest. Among the invitees was Suganthi.

When Lakshman Sirimanne called Suganthi regarding a RSVP to the event, she intimated to him that she would not be attending. “I predicted her presence on the day since not attending would have been a disgrace to her and not to us” says Nahil. Two days before the event she informed Lakshman Sirimanne that she would be attending because of the Chief Justice.

The statue was draped in the Trinity flag of red, yellow and blue and unveiled by the Chief Justice. The event was concluded with a speech by Cabinet Minister, Champika Ranawaka.

Nahil pensively says, “LK never wanted a security detail, especially since they frisked all his friends when they visited him. I guess to him it was a necessary evil’’ The burning question for Nahil was ‘‘where were they when he was shot?”.

After Suganthi got married to Lakshman Kadirgamar, Nahil and LK would sometimes have a drink together at LK’s Wijerama home, as he quietly drifted away from socializing, preferring to be on his own. On one such visit, Suganthi informed Nahil that Charles Gnanakoon, his friend, the ship’s captain, known to be a LTTE sympathizer, had visited Lakshman. During his visit, after some small talk, Suganthi had retired upstairs, after which she had heard raised voices and fists banging on the table.

Being mariners, Charles Gnanakoon (Charly) and Nahil were casual friends. There were times in previous years in the shipping business when Nahil had had contact with Charles on matters related to shipping. In fact, many years ago it was while he was in Charles’ office at Robina House, Singapore, that Lester called Nahil to inform him that his first wife Indrani had left him!

Chief Guest Mr. Sarath Silva

Charles had visited Lakshman to find out where Karuna Amman was since Karuna had defected from the LTTE, letting Prabhakaran down by siding with the Government. It was then that Nahil realized she was trying to convey to him that his ‘friend’ Charly, a hard-core ‘LTTE bugger’ was giving LK a hard time.

Vinyagamoorthy Muralitharan alias Karuna Amman is a Sri Lankan politician who rose to prominence as the leader of the Tamil Makkal Viduthalai Pulikal, a breakaway faction of the LTTE. Born in 1966, he was a former militant fighter of the LTTE – Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam for over 20 years. Since 1983 he was the top Commander of the LTTE in the Eastern Province and the former bodyguard to the LTTE chief, Velupillai Prabhakaran. In 2004 he alleged the LTTE was ignoring the interest of the Eastern Tamil people and renounced violence, giving up arms to enter the political arena. This move by Karuna is claimed to be one of the major turning points that brought about the end of the two and a half decade conflict. He was appointed as a National List member of parliament for the ruling UPFA, and later sworn in as Minister of National Integration – March 9th, 2009 – after which he joined the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP).

Trying to defend himself in this instance, Lakshman denied ever meeting Karuna. He had the power to call his security and get Charles thrown out into a drain if he wanted to, something that, if ever it took place, would never have been an issue. All this was Suganthi and her drama. Just like everything in his work life – companies, hotels and machinery – he was bored with ETV. It was time to sell and move on to the next exciting project. About this time, his act was trailing off when the scrambling of the ETV signals commenced, prompting him to import descramblers from India, which he went to great lengths to source.

After much back and forth, he had managed to get through to a friend, Dr. Palitha Abeykoon who worked for the WHO, based in India, requesting him to apply for a de-scrambling unit for his home, because de-scramblers were sold only to those living in India. Palitha obliged, and air freighted the descrambler to Nahil. This mode of descrambling was not that effective in a manner since each de-scrambler has its own unique code that carries the serial number in the background. The decoder’s serial number is used as a means of blocking anyone who has not paid their subscription. Nahil found all this to be rather tedious and decided to sell ETV.

John Keells had got wind of his intention to sell and as a conglomerate, he believed a bit of media in the JK machine would not hurt. With that thought in mind, he approached Ken Balendra, who was the President of John Keells Group during that period.

Nahil visits John Keells Holdings

Ken was a family friend from his days as a planter in Ratnapura, during the period Nahil’s sisters were working as doctors, at the Ratnapura hospital. Being very straightforward with his offer, he wasn’t too bothered about a dialogue with Ken. Responding to Nahil’s offer, Ken says, “Nahil there are too many TV stations and all of you will go broke.” He indicated that they would be interested in ETV if there was a means of shutting down two or three of the existing TV stations.

Ken requested Nahil to join him at a discussion with the JK Board at their Glennie Street Head Office. On his arrival at Glennie Street, Nahil noticed that the entire Board, including six Directors not known to him, was present in the boardroom.

Peering down at them from the walls of the boardroom were photographs of a set of bearded men. Ken pointed to the photographs, informing Nahil that the men in the photographs were all in the produce trade, at loggerheads with each other, until one fine day they joined forces and majored the trade monopoly at the time. Uncontrollably laughing since the present Board was looking for monopolies like their predecessors did, Nahil asked Ken if he liked to play cricket without anyone bowling at him – “No competition,” he said jokingly, so no one was offended. They discussed many other matters, the most important which he vividly remembers is how they wanted all competition eliminated as a way to grow.

A few days later it was the opening of the first Pizza Hut at Union Place. He congratulated them while asking in jest if they intended getting all the ‘thosai kades’ in the vicinity to shut down in wake of the Pizza Hut opening!

ETV Sold!

LMD Magazine July 2002

John Keells never had an opportunity to make a bid for ETV, since the Edirisinghes had already expressed their interest. Nahil did extensive research into their business holdings and managed to procure an introduction to Jeevaka Edirisinghe through a lady working for East West, who knew him. EAP had a vast majority of ventures that included liquor licenses, gold trading, pawn brokering and finance; businesses that accumulated quite a bit of un-accountable cash. Using this as his trump card, he informed Jeevaka that he knew they had some unaccountable cash in their various companies. Since ETV was a BOI project which had a 10 year tax holiday, they couldchannel all their taxable income to ETV as an income tax free company. Printing and media businesses are tax-deductible accounts, therefore ETV as atax free company was un-tangible and could technically be his ‘laundry’, Jeevaka’s eyes lit up, and it was sold!”

Nahil remembers wishing he had started with a higher quote, although he decided to let it go and moved on to his next venture. In retrospect, thinking of the sale, the letter ‘E’ could have played a part in the deal too. ETV stood for Extra Terrestrial Vision while the EAP group wanted it to be called Edirisinghe TV.

One year into his clearing and forwarding operation, Dan married Kamini De Silva – a purser at Air Lanka. Ironically the wedding was at his residence down Davidson Road, Bambalapitiya, behind the St. Peter’s College Grounds. This house was previously occupied by Maharajah. Dan’s little physiological warfare with his ex-employers was fully on. After the ’83 riots, he went on to buy the Maharajah Building on Bankshall Street. This was a major achievement. He won his war.

Later on, around 1986, Lester and Nahil quit their partnership. By this time Nahil was fully involved in the property scene. He offered Dan a chance to buy the clearing and forwarding operation from them. This was all Dan had and as they were all getting old and the chances that the next generation would be interested in taking over the businesses were questionable. Still Dan did not seem to be confident enough and refused. Therefore Nahil came up with a strategy to give Dan a stepping stone.

It was decided to run the organization without a board or meetings. He was virtually thrown into the deep end and managing C&F all on his own and doing an extremely good job of it. He gained the confidence necessary and agreed to the sale. His only request was to continue to keep the name East West. This is the only company that was sold from the EW group that still carries the East West name, viz., East West Clearing & Forwarding. Dan’s clearing and forwarding business is located in proximity to the East West warehouse complex which Dan occasionally claims, to be a part of his operation.

Lester and Nahil End Their Partnership at East West

Consequent to the family drama, with Lester and Nahil’s business relationship on a downward spiral and things awkward between them, Nahil decided to end the partnership so that both parties could move on without too much bad blood between them. Incidentally, when Lester sold Sri Lanka Shipping to Hayleys, he called Nahil just to keep him in the loop. In cognisance of their successful business relationship over the years, they continue to keep things casual and cordial between each other, occasionally meeting up for a beer and chat.

Initially while going in for the legal separation of the company, Lester took Nahil to court. After the initial decision to part at 50-50 each down the line, Nahil realised he was handing it over without contention and shifted the majority shares to himself, increasing it by two shares so he could take the Chairmanship of the company. His strategy was to issue new shares and dilute Lester’s shares to the brink. Predictably they ended up with a day in court.

His buddy Anthony Page (Baba), Chairman of Cargills, was present each time he had a legal muddle in this case and he told Nahil, “A bad settlement is better than a good judgment. Just negotiate this muddle and settle the issue without wasting your time hanging around in court.” Adhering to his advice, he settled with Lester, handing him the shipping company while he took over the TV station, property and other businesses.

Amidst this entire hullabaloo, Sonya, Lester’s second wife, obviously shattered by Lester’s indiscretion, left him. Nahil was now a part of the injured party of two. Sonya was taking this betrayal rather badly when Nahil asked Sonya to put all this drama aside and get back to Lester, because she has passed her ‘best before date.)

Funnily, this was the second time Nahil had faced a similar situation with one of Lester’s wives. Years earlier, while Lester and Sonya were doing the ‘Me and Mrs. Jones’ thing with each other, she had journaled in detail all her trysts with Lester and left the journal somewhere conspicuous only for her husband to find it and…

Lester was married to Minoli, who was absolutely mad with both Sonya and Lester. Before this, all four spouses were close friends, travelling around the island and overseas together. Lester and Minoli lived in a nice house down Kynsey Road when this drama took place. Devastated, Minoli had requested Nahil to find her a place to stay. He advised her against moving out, insisting that she remains there and gets the house transferred in her name. Nahil says this was the best decision Minoli made, otherwise she may have ended up at an elders’ home or similar. In the days that followed, Baba and Minoli the victims, were comforting each other, thankfully ending up marrying each other. A few months later they bought Nahil’s house on Reid Avenue. They still live there and it all ended happily.

Nahil Moves to the UK

After all the drama, Nahil and the family moved to London and Nahil decided to continue staying in the UK, living at College Gardens in Dulwich. The children were 10 and 12 years old and the family enjoyed living here.

The real estate market in the UK was at an interesting paradigm. The regulations for rates were based on the square footage of a property with the taxable rate being any area above five feet. The basement areas under the regulated height were used for storage, considering this space was not taxable. Over the years the rules changed with taxes based on the regions, etc. Nahil took advantage of the changes in tax regulations, adding an extra floor by digging into the basement of his property up to foundation level, creating a seven-foot basement which was the regular height and space, equivalent to an extra floor thus adding more value to his property.

11, Hambeldon Place – Margaret Thatcher’s old house

He re-modeled and sold around 20+ gated properties, one of which belonged to Margaret Thatcher, who served as the Prime Minister of Britain from 1979 to 1990, situated at 11 Hambeldon Place, built by Barret Homes. This was an exclusive gated community, a one of its kind built by Barret Homes. The other property belonged to Samantha Fox, – an English singer, a song writer, actress and former glamour model -which he bought at a concessionary rate from Martin, a well-known property developer, during a slump in the market. On a sales trip to Hong Kong, Martin took his portfolio which included these two properties, selling both almost immediately upon his arrival to two parties in Hong Kong who snapped up the properties at a premium price.

Nahil lived in most of these houses before they were sold. The properties were scattered around London in areas like College Gardens,Coniston Place and Central London.

Plaza Estate in Marble Arch was the largest estate agency in Central London, headed by an extremely pleasant Jewish boy, Ethan Fox, through whom Nahil was buying and selling properties. Generally, as an exclusive agent, you get 1.5% of the sale value whereas a non-exclusive agent gets 2%. Nahil mentioned to Ethan that getting just 1.5% on sales was too low, he should take a look at his portfolio listings where there is always a 5-7-10 percent discount offered on the list price of a property. Nahil made a deal with him. He challenged Ethan that If he could convince a property owner to discount a further 10%, Ethan would receive 30% of that reduction. Here he had a conflict of interest, with the deal offered to him by Nahil stumping him. He is supposed to be looking after the interest of the seller, who expects a maximum price, driving up his 1.5% commission margin. Nahil was offering him a higher margin at a lower point of the sale price, basically generating a higher percentage at a lower price. This was a reverse incentive on the price.

This scheme was derived by Nahil only for Ethan and not the company he worked for. Nahil bought several properties through Ethan who followed his advice.

After a few deals, Nahil would ask him how things were, inviting him for a beer. While sipping on their beers, they never discussed the sale. After the beer, Nahil would leave a packet of cash for him on the bar counter, and leave, just like in the movies!

During his property development era in the UK, Vijitha attended Dulwich College and Anika St. James’s Public School. Three of the houses developed by him were next to Dulwich College. As he sold one, the family would move to his younger sister Kanthi’s home – she lived in the vicinity too.

While they were living in#11, Hambeldon Place, Roshanne’s mother May would stay with them periodically. One morning going through his mail, Nahil found a letter from a law firm enclosing an invoice for a consultation addressed to May, mailed to his address. Nahil opened the letter from Messers Pike, legal consultants forRoshanne, and found it pertained to Roshanne and May seeking advice on what rights she had to the custody of the kids and Nahil’s properties.

The first thing that crossed his mind was that the British Law was much tougher than Sri Lankan, especially in instances of child custody. With the alarm bells ringing in his head, he called his sister, gave her a brief overview pertaining to the seriousness of the situation and told her he was heading back home on the first available flight with Vijitha, since Anika had gone out of town with May and Roshanne. Owing to the urgency of the situation, his sister booked them on a business class flight due to the unavailability of economy class seats. He says, “This kind of behaviour in Roshanne was always instigated by May.”

Nahil was on his way to the airport with Vijitha, when he realized that he was in his Bata slippers worn because it was a hot summer day.That’s how fast he wanted to leave the UK. Once he boarded the flight, he found himself sitting next to Sarath Amunugama, a friend who was a fellow Trinitian, who spotted his Bata slippers and figured that he must have left in a hurry. He says, “Machang, what’s the hurry?”

Sarath had just been appointed Minister of Finance. As Nahil congratulated him on his recent appointment, he requested that Nahildrop in at his office the following day.

Nahil was there at 7.a.m. as requested not knowing that it was Sarath’s first day in office. They had a great chat relating funny stories, to each other and reminiscing about their college days at the ‘best school of all,’ when he realised he had spent over an hour-and-a-half chatting. As Nahil left Sarath’s office, he noticed people queued up, waiting to see Sarath. He was sure most of them would have assumedthat his meeting with Sarath was very productive, considering the time spent.

During the time Roshanne was pregnant by him and the saga was going on, – even though she was of the consenting age of 18, he was considered a lecher, in getting his friend’s daughter pregnant. Feeling guilty, at her request he bought May a house which she had viewed in Maida Vale, London, which she later rented out and then sold. The proceeds from the sale of the house was the cash she brought back to Sri Lanka, to make a fresh start considering she was broke when he helped the family get to the UK. She bought a house in Hantanne Kandy, and with the balance money, built up her capital. After he got back to Colombo from the UK, Roshanne and Anika stayed back in London for a brief period. Roshanne had a close friend in London named Jonathan Rix. Together they had purchased a flat somewhere in London and were renting it out.

Register with Roshanne’s details dated 19/12/1966

As a three months old infant Roshanne was handed over by her mother into the care of a Catholic childrens home in Gampola where she was cared for by Nuns from 1966 upto 1972, when her mother who was residing overseas, returned to Sri Lanka and took Roshanne back with her. Finally after six years Roshanne was re-united with her family.

In 2018, Nahil managed to trace the address of the childrens home which he visited on Roshannes birthday in order to make a donation in her memory. While there he was shown the register pertaining to the year 1966 which had details of Roshanne’s tenure at the home.

After Roshanne’s demise in 2002, Nahil had a great deal of correspondencewith Jonathan concerning the flat, which was now up for sale. This was to inquire from Jonathan how he intended splitting the proceeds from the sale between Nahil’s kids and himself. Finally, Nahil’s lawyer in Golders Green sorted out Roshannes part of the proceeds from the sale of the flat.

Crescat Residencies – John Keells Holdings

Mr. Perera, a great gentleman, who formerly worked for the UN, was the Chairman of the Crescat Council. During Mr. Perera’s tenure, as Chairperson, Nahil bought the entire eighth floor of Crescat Residencies. The apartments were bought by him as rental properties. A month later while being refurbished, right down to the new coffee cups, with advances already paid to various suppliers, he resold the apartments back to Crescat at a higher price. Initially, while the transfer process of the apartments to him was in progress, he wanted to know where the designated parking for each unit was located, only to be informed that it was in the Oberoi (now Cinnamon Grand) car park. He found this outrageous. In the condominium business, the apartment parking should be within the condominium footprint, according to him, in the same area he presently parks. There were six to eight parking slots here, apparently given to the penthouse owners. He was more than irked and got it conveyed to the condominium owners that he needed the parking within the building footprint. He was frustrated that they were so disorganized and unpredictable. The way it was all going, he was sure they would next tell him the parking spaces were in Galle!

Asia Hotels and Properties PLC, the developer, turned a blind eye, refusing to do anything about it, at which point, he got them to agree to buy back the entire floor at a rate which covered his unit upgrade expenses, plus 10%, including a fee for his sweat equity. The owners bought it all back. This was the beginning of his adventure with John Keells.

Prior to JK, Crescat was owned by Asian Hotels and Properties, a Sri Lankan based company engaged in hoteliering and property development/management. They were the owners of Lanka Oberoi (now Cinnamon Grand) at the time Daniel Roche, a French national was the GM. Besides the apartments he had resold, Nahil had invested in a few more apartments in the same building. His big concern was the Condominium Management Association, which was broke due to the tenants not paying their rates, leaving the association with hardly any money, even for maintenance of the building.

He learned that from the time the condominium was built, the developer owned 3,000sq feet of space on the ground floor.

This area was leased to Lanka Bell, used as its switching centre. Lanka Bell was paying one million rupees a month to AHP, for the use of the ground floor, which belonged to Crescat Residencies, with the roof used for the Lanka Bell antennas. By right, the ground floor should have been the car park allocated to the residents. He pitched into the owning company, telling them they had no business to be renting space to outsiders since the building once developed was owned by the association members who had bought the apartments. With that he told the developer/owner AHP, it was time for them to leave it all to the association members and get out! He berated the developer for renting out bits and pieces of space, making tons of cash while their association had hardly any cash even for maintenance. Amidst this rumpus, John Keells came into the picture as the new owners. Back to square one, he turned his attention to JK, airing his grievances with a tad more vehemence.

He remembers Ajith telling him, “We acquired the building like this. You have to take the rough with the smooth. We can take this to court and see what happens.” It seems that court cases are in their DNA. Experts at court cases, they file a case and drag the case on forever. Nahil obviously said, “Alright, let’s go to court.” He argued that at the point of the sale, all the perks of the complex were presented to the buyers in a brochure that mentioned the ground floor was set apart for public utilitiessuch as a mini-mart, laundry, etc., which never materialised. The previous owners had carved out three more apartments on the ground floor and had already sold two, which he let go, but the unsold apartment was being used by various people for their private practice. Together with the Crescat Association, he sent all the relevant documents to the Condominium Authority, a Government body, outlining their grievances and pointing out that JK was holding on to an apartment that belonged to the Crescat Condominium Association.

After the CA inspected the documents, they ordered JK to hand over the remaining space to the Crescat Condominium Association, the rightful owners of the space at the end of the corridor where the office is located. JK was ready to go to court again. Mickey Wickramasinghe, the Chairman of the council, was reluctant to upset JK because his biscuits were going onto the JK supermarket shelves. He held on to the letter for five to six weeks doing nothing about it and only spoke about filing a case.

Nahil informed Micky that in property matters, possession was 99% ownership, and therefore they should take possession of it, to which he reluctantly agreed, along with the rest of the council. Nahil excused himself from the meeting. Having already made arrangements for a carpenter and locksmith, together they opened the door of the apartment in question, changed the lock and emptied all the JK stuff into the basement, and then transferred some of his stuff into the apartment. He returned to the meeting informing Micky and the rest, “Possession taken – here are the keys.” As expected, by 6 o’clock that evening, the Colpetty Police were there accusing the council of breaking and entering. Before it all went south, he had to come up with something to water-down the situation, Viola! He asked the cops how they could even imagine that all the nice ladies in the council would stoop down to breaking and entering the apartment. He further stated that if the council had done something illegal, JK could take them to courts and repossess the apartment. Since delays were of no consequence, he put forward a timeframe that they agreed to, signing the space over to the Crescat Association. Finally, the association had physical possession of the disputed space, sanctioned by the Condominium Authority that the rightful owner of the apartment was the Crescat Association. Done!

The next challenge was the sixty million rupees JK had earned from Lanka Bell for five years. The Crescat Association explained the scenario to Lanka Bell and informed them that the association being the rightful owners the rental cash should be paid into the association account. He pointed out that they were paying the wrong guys, resulting in the association always being stuck due to the lack of funds. By this time Harry Jayawardena, owner of Lanka Bell, stepped in to help by deciding not to make any payments until the dispute was settled.

Finally, the car park was open but the apartment owners were still parking all over the Oberoi car park, since obstructing yellow barriers had been put in place by JK. Determined to do something about this and take possession, the CA photocopied a note informing the owners that a designated parking space within the condominium footprint was available to each apartment from the next day. They slipped the note under the door of each residence, progressing into a war on the barricades, along with the Brave Guard security guys; who took the chains and padlocks he had bought, bunched the barricades together, tied them with the chains and padlocked the chains, assuming if the cops turned up they would need wire cutters and other paraphernalia to dismantle the lot. That evening the JK security was embarrassed by their failure to avert the Brave Guard security guards from securing the barricades. They got drunk and tried challenging the Brave Guard guys who managed to calm them down. Later they said to the JK security guards “The car park had been open for a while but you still held on to the barricades. There’s no point in arguing or fighting.” They surrendered and that was that.The car park matter was done.

While the Emperor Residencies was being built, right next to Crescat, the workmen would go on working through the night, in spite of being aware of the general law concerning building sites and noise pollution. According to the law, it is mandatory that all building work has to shut down at 7.p.m. to 7.a.m. every day, a rule at the time, that was never adhered to by these construction workers. The working of the vibrator almost throughout the night had become a nightmare to all the residents of Crescat, compelling a team of residents to visit the building site, requesting the contractors to acknowledge the downtime rule, this included the cops.

They nonchalantly carried on until Nahil decided to intervene. Taking off the sun film on his bedroom window, he fixed a web camera facing the construction site, connected it to the internet with half the screen displaying the permit from 7.p.m -7.a.m and the other half a slogan that read JK was breaking the law in real-time and a web site named ‘otherside’ of JK.com’, created by him. There was an immediate cessation of construction at 7.p.m each evening. He had bought his present residence from the ex-Chairman of JK, Vivendra Lintotawela. He has no idea if the penthouse was built especially for Vivendra. At the time the purchase was finalised and the deed of the property was transferred to him, the deed clearly stated that Crescat was a joint development of three condominiums – Emperor, Monarch and Crescat – all three buildings with a maximum of 24 floors each. Despite this affirmation by the developer, the hoardings advertising the Emperor, situated opposite the construction site, displayed 30 floors. Nahil called Ajith Gunawardena to let him know they were violating the 24 levels affirmed on the deeds, and also letting him know that the number of floors was too high. He tried to challenge Nahil, who offered to send him acopy of the deed. Ajith was adamant it was not so and said, “What nonsense.” Nahil reckons Ajith tries to back off when he can’t stand his ground. Ajith says, “File a case,” and that’s exactly what he did. De Sarams, his lawyers, handled this. What Ajith did not know was that the Crescat Association had lodged this complaint in the land registry. Therefore this way whenever there was a buyer whose lawyers were doing a title search, they would come across this caution and advise their clients not to buy. A ‘caveat emptor’ had been set that stated all the apartments in the new building above the 24th floor were an issue. This jeopardised the sale of the floors above the 24th level since the lawyers and banks always check the deeds. This was not anything personal. Nahil was just strong-arming John Keells, using this as leverage to get JK to settle the 60 million owed to the Crescat Association. Eventually, John Keells relented.

Once the money was paid, Ajith wanted Nahil to visit him at his office, a room full of female lawyers. They placed a multitude of documents in front of him, which he signed without any questions, withdrawing the case and pulling down the website which was – ‘the other side of jk.com.’ The next day Ajith called him and wants to know why the website has not been taken down. He says, “I am standing in front of my computer and this site is still on,” to which Nahil replies: that he too is in front of his computer and the site has been taken down, enlightening Ajith that it’s in his computer’s cache memory, a problem that will immediately resolve with a re-boot of his machine.

Recently while Ajith and Nahil sat sipping a beer, Ajith told him, his wife and peers say that he should be Nahil’s No.1 enemy.

Nahil informed him that he takes pride in being a campaigner for the underdog which was nothing personal. He recalls inviting Ajith and his family to be his guests for a weekend at the time the Marriot hotel in Weligama, was owned by him.

No.44, Flower Road

He bought No.44 Flower Road, formerly known as Nelun Court, from the owner of ‘Glass House,’ a Trinitian, Dr. Willy Ratnavale. Willy had built this house for his two daughters, who were friends of Nahil’s sister Mahes, while studying at Ladies College in her senior year. During this period Nahil recalls visiting this house and what he remembers is a large structure built in two sections with two rooms as dispensaries for the girls who were aspiring to be doctors. However, within a few years, the entire family ended up moving to the USA, subsequently deciding to live there permanently.

Due to this move, Dr. Ratnavale converted the rooms in the house into 14 bedrooms with en-suite bathrooms, which were rented out to lodgers. After a short period, since none of the Ratnavale family intended to return to Colombo, the house was listed for sale. On the market for some time, though prime property, Dr. Ratnavale had made such a mess of the house, he was struggling to sell it, until Nahil intervened, and decided to buy it. He knew the house had good bones with the potential of being restored to something of significance since he had known what it was like before it was converted to Nelun Court. Nahil was confident that the house would look good after completion. Dr. Ratnavale shared a similar sentiment confident of Nahil’s capabilities that the house will look so good after the flip, and the Ratnavale sisters would be proud of their old home.

Once the sale was concluded, starting on the remodeling, he was slightly overwhelmed, finding the restoration of this house posing an interesting challenge to him.

Arches replicated at No. 44 Flower Road

Around the same time Ana Malalgoda, Nawaz Rajabdeen, M.L.M Amin and Nahil were on holiday in Chiang Mai, Thailand. He noticed the hotel they were staying in had beautiful arches. Convinced the design would look great for #44, he took photographs of the arches, sketched the designs on paper and replicated the design throughout the side and front of the house, working alongside the basses. The arches had a design like a ‘habarala’ leaf, with a light at the back that looked grand when lit up. While the house was being refurbished, Roshanne, Nahil and the kids moved to Guildford Crescent. It was during this time that May (Roshanne’s mother)went on a joy ride halfway round the world with Roshanne, his kids and his credit card.

While living at Guilford Crescent, one weekday afternoon when he got home for lunch he realized his two younger children, Vijitha and Anika, who were usually home from school before him, were still not home.Inquiring of the domestic where they were, she says “Lamai nang avilla na thama, mama monawath danne na, eth rata yana monawahari kiwwa” – (“The kids are not back yet, I don’t know anything, but there was talk about going abroad.”) Then he realised, according to the information he garnered from his credit card, air tickets were purchased for May – Roshanne’s mother –Roshanne, Vijitha and Anika, to Ravenna Italy,and they were on their way to the airport. Pondering and looking for a reason as to why Roshanne never told him she was taking the kids along with her to Italy, trying to narrow down the last two weeks, to remember wheather there were any incidents of any magnitude to spur her into taking such a drastic measure, he recalled there was nothing exceptional, except the usual arguments of no consequence, incidents present in any relationship. On the way to the airport he remembered Sonia’s father was a senior civil servant. Getting through to him, Nahil requested him to inform Immigration to stop Roshanne and the kids from proceeding further. Unfortunately, it was too late, they’d gotten past Immigration, leaving him with no possibility to stop them.

Investigating how they got a hold of his credit card which was liberally used for all their transactions, air tickets, etc., he found out that a few days prior, Roshanne and May had met his secretary managing to persuade her and extract his credit card and passport from her, fabricating a story about getting him a surprise birthday gift from the duty free at the airport. Vijitha and Annika’s details were on his passport which they got transferred on to Roshanne’s passport.

For Nahil, this was a serious breach of his rights as a parent, which forced him to raise an issue with the Department of Immigration for not bothering to seek his permission by consulting him before the children’s names were transferred. This incident led to a fresh legislation at the Department of Immigration. It was made mandatory that a single parent taking their child/children aged under-sixteen overseas should furnish a letter of consent from the other parent, for changes from one passport to another. Due to his predicament the regulations changed, which is in effect to date.

Once Roshanne got to Italy, he tried to track them down through May’s sisters who live there. Unfortunately, by the time he got through to one of her sisters, he was informed that they had left to the UK for a few days, subsequently travelling to Australia. He refrained from stopping transactions on his credit card to avoid depriving the two children, in case they needed anything.

On learning they were in Australia, he requested Maya, his ex-girlfriend whose father was the Sri Lankan High Commissioner to Australia, to make contact with Roshanne. Finally, Nahil managed to get a number in Australia and telephoned Roshanne. May answered the phone and pitched into him that he had not treated Roshanne properly and her future was not financially secure. She made a deal with him that she would bring the kids back on the promise that Roshanne would be paid a sum of Rs. 3 million. Meanwhile, May had got her lawyer in Sri Lanka to draw up an agreement to the effect that on their return to Colombo, Rs. 3 million would be transferred to Roshanne by Nahil, at the Colombo Airport Arrival Lounge.

As instructed by May, he arranged the cash, taking it along to the airport, with Vipula Soyza. Meeting her on arrival, as agreed he gaveMay the money. While driving back together from the airport to Colombo, Roshanne returned the cash to Nahil, telling him that this was May’s idea. That is when he told May ‘how dare you think the children’s value could be measured by a few million rupees.’ Nahil believes all this was orchestrated by May. He also mentioned going back in time, that he had always had a rocky relationship with May. Eventually, Roshanne and Nahil worked things out amicably, keeping in mind the welfare of their two children who were their highest priority.

Roshanne 1966-2002

Roshanne

It was the 29th of July 2002. Nahil received a call from Mahen at around 9:30 p.m. informing him that Roshanne had met with an accident while crossing the main road at Wattala after a party, and requested him to come to the Accident Service at the GHC. He rushed there with the kids assuming that it was nothing too serious, only to find out on arrival that the accident was really serious and even though a team of doctors had tried to resuscitate her, she had passed away at the hospital. This was another dark moment in his life. He was anxious for the two children, 14 and 15 at the time, absolutely empathising with their pain. His heart was broken for them since this was not an age to lose a mother in such a fashion, to see her lying on a hospital bed bleeding from her nose. The next few days were a whirlwind. Avril took charge of things, made all the funeral arrangements, and Roshanne was cremated two days later. Her ashes are interred in the family vault on the grounds of his family home in Galkanda road Aniwatte. He believes the Negambo road is like a motorway and the house where the party was held was down a lane on the seaside, whereas the car in which Roshanne intended to return to Colombo, was parked on the land side of the Negombo/Colombo road.

Kavan and Anne Rambukwella

Kavan Rambukwella was a dear friend of Nahil’s, in addition to being a faithful old boy who was highly involved in the affairs of the Trinity OBA.

Kavan and his wife Anne lived in a housing complex situated on the road that cuts across from Bullers Road, joining Thimbirigasaya Road, spanned by a small bridge over the canal halfway down the thoroughfare.

One evening due to an emergency the normal traffic on Bullers Road was diverted through this thoroughfare. Unfortunately, a truck was transporting a bulldozer which was over and above the rating of the bridge. While crossing, the bridge collapsed with the truck tilting the dozer into the water. The next morning the owners of the dozer lifted the dozer out of the canal and continued on their way with no thought of even volunteering to do something about the mangled bridge.

Once the Municipality was notified about the collapsed bridge, they unhesitatingly informed the community that it was not their problem, they said the bridge was the responsibility of the house owners’ community. The main management committee of the community, who,lived on the opposite side of the bridge at the Longden Place/Borella endwere elated with this situation, on account of the road instantly becoming a cul-de-sac with no traffic after the collapse of the bridge, They in typically selfish fashion, decided not to do anything about.

Unfortunately, Kavan and Anne lived on the Thimbirigasaya side. Usually, whenever Nahil visited Kavan he would approach their residence through the Bullers Road entrance; through habit, he continued to do so, only to be inconvenienced, turning back at the broken bridge, and driving full circle to enter through the Thimbirigasaya entrance.

After many more complaints, the Municipality realizing the inconvenience the folk living on Kavan’s side of the bridge were subject to, decided to reconstruct the bridge, only for the management committee to discourage the Municipality from doing so. One Friday morning, on a Poya day, Nahil visited Kavan and was exasperated to find the bridge still in disrepair, which made him inquire from Kavan regarding the current situation of the bridge. Consequent to the negative update, always being an advocate for the mistreated, especially a close friend, Nahil volunteered to repair the bridge.

The next day, he got the bridge measured, and got the steel and concrete framing in place at his own expense, making sure that by Monday the bridge would be back better and stronger than before. What Nahil felt was that his friends were being harassed and this was a challenge to take on and see it to an end. Kavan appealed to the management committee as to why Nahil had to pick up the tab on this repair which rightfully was the community’s responsibility. They relented and paid him for the steel and concrete although they made a last ditch attempt to hinder the progress by parking a 20’ container across the road after the bridge was repaired, which was unceremoniously dismissed by a majority of the good and unselfish folk living in the community. The road is still a thoroughfare

Dr.S.L. Gunasekera

Nahil has never been too involved in politics although if he hears about an individual, a leader of a political party, who makes positive sense with his or her aspirations for a better Sri Lanka, he has always tried to help. The ‘Sihala Urumaya’ which in Sinhala means inheritance or birthright of the Sinhala people, was launched by Champika Ranawaka with the late Mr. S.L. Gunasekera, as President of the party.He was a very sensible and upright person, a smart man, who Nahil says, never had a chance to work for the good of this country, due to a few over-zealous ‘Sihalayas”. Ironically the Sihala Urumaya was not a ‘Sinhala Buddhist’ party. It was a ‘Sinhala’ party that had many Catholics and Protestants who voted for the party in the General Elections held in October 2007.

They sidelined him for being a Christian, which was the main criticism of the party members . He was born a Christian, and as a young man he became an agnostic after the untimely death of his father and finally an atheist. It seemed that most of the Urumaya members defined SL by his ‘belief’ or more rightly said his un-belief. They overlooked his stand-out qualities and his exceptional code of ethics which guided his conduct in a manner that was patriotic, honest and socially committed among the other excellent characteristics of a good and upright human being.

Nahil has copies of the entire collection of books SL has written, faithfully attending every book launch.

The civil war was on when Nahil first met Punyakanthi nee De Soysa, who is married to Chanaka, a strong UNPer, who was the Chairman of Sri Lanka Insurance and Trans-Asia Hotel and also a relation of his sister’s husband’s family.

Punyakanthi telephoned Nahil requesting a meeting at her residence on Charles Drive. Also present was Champika Ranawaka. After the preliminary introductions and small talk, Champika remarked “Balanna may Colomba inna Demala okkoma LTTE ekata support karanawa. Koheda Sinhala businessman la ekkenekwath innawada apita udawwak karanna” – (“All the Tamil businessmen in Colombo support the LTTE, is there one Sinhala businessman around who can help us?”).

Punyakanthi was supporting the ‘Urumaya’ and wanted Nahil to hear this, virtually ‘straight from the source’. In the course of their conversation, noticing that there was no other vehicle parked outside Punyakanthi’s home, Nahil inquired from Champika how he commuted to Charles Drive. Champika divulged to Nahil that his vehicle had recently toppled over and had been condemned. That very day Nahil bought him a new vehicle. Since then whenever Champika requested financial assistance he would help him. He also helped with the Sihala Urumaya advertising, though he never got too involved with the ‘Urumaya’ members.

During this period, the ‘Urumaya’ ran a press advertisement depicting a weighing scale, with the minorities enjoying a more comfortable status than the majority, making the minorities behave like the majority. Nahil has been asked on many an occasion if he favoured any political party or individual. He says he does not, simply on the basis that all these political aspirants are very fluid. Looking at it from his perspective, today’s heroes can be tomorrow’s zeroes. A good example was SL. He was the only sensible person in the party but they got rid of him because of his religion. The burning issue was how to set about defeating the LTTE, not SL’s religious affiliations.

He was instantly irked with Champika and the Urumaya members over their petty behaviour and treatment of Dr. SL. This was ‘it’ for him as he uncoupled himself from the Urumaya almost overnight although he continued to support Champika who was giving his support to the Rajapaksa’s to defeat the LTTE.

About 12 years ago there was a severe typhoon that affected Myanmar, a Buddhist nation, that Champika was adamant they should help, disclosing to Nahil that the nation had been severely destroyed by the typhoon with the low-lying areas flooded and the people suffering. With compunction, Chris Dharmakirthi, Rathana Thero, and Nahil were on a flight to Myanmar to help this poor, underdeveloped country and its typhoon-hit, suffering masses.

Driving from the airport through the city, they witnessed heavy traffic and enormous buildings set in a throbbing metropolis and night life, so much so that Rathana Thero commented, “Egollanta puluwan apita udaw karanna” – (“They are in a position to help us”.) Nahil’s immediate thought was, ‘What are we doing here? They are far more developed than us.’ This was the city and they expected to see worse as they drove to the villages. Their assumptions were way off the mark. It was heartening to see how well-organised the Burmese were, with roofing sheets and other aid. He strongly believes that human beings are stubborn and resilient with a God-given ability to arise time and time again after a disaster of this nature. He spent two days of ‘rasthiadu’ – (‘wasted time’)and got back home.

Donating 15 M Rupees

One evening Nahil was invited to Ravi Karunanayake’s home, he was one of the few laymen present for drinks and dinner among a heap of UNP politicians. Also present was Lal Wickramatunge and his brother the late Lasantha Wickramatunga with Nahil in Ravi’s beautifully landscaped garden sipping on a drink. Whilst chatting they noticed there was a discussion taking place inside the house between the large number of politicans gathered inside. Thondaman was there with his posse, among whom was a guy named Yoga, an old Trinitian, whose father Mr. Ramiah was a friend of Nahil’s father, Gratian Wijesuriya. Yoga, much younger than Nahil, was the regular ‘ball picker’ whenever they played their Saturday cricket matches in their Kandy neighbourhood as teenagers. Those with Thondaman, including Yoga, were crossovers who had to be paid for their game of political ‘musical chairs’.

Just as they got down to their second beer, Ranil Wickremasinghe strolled into the garden and joined them. Looking around he says, “You know, I’ve given all these ‘buggers’ the ministries that they requested during the crossover and now they all want money.” He continues to say that just like CHAEBOL – the Korean Chamber of Commerce or similar business groups, the UNP was ready to support a few chosen private sector companies.

Just then Nahil knew a handout ‘dadayak’ from him was inevitable. Ranil avers, “These people are demanding Rs. 60 million by tomorrow afternoon, can you please help?” Three of those present, including Nahil, pledged 15 million each, the other two being Samson Silva and another businessman.

Once Nahil got the Rs.15 million ready, Ravi came by at his request to his apartment at the IBM building to take the cheque to Ranil, However, he insisted that Nahil should give it to the ‘Boss’ personally. They drove to Fifth Lane, meeting Ranil in the front room of his residence. After some small talk Nahil handed over the cheque to Ranil, who was so unsure of himself,he nearly dropped the cheque. In 2001 after all this Nahil’s only request to Ranil was that he gets all the pot holes on Dutugamunu Road, Paliyagoda where the East West warehouse complex is situated, a public road, filled, tarred and compacted . The request was never adhered to. The only response he got from Ranil was that he will speak to some person at the UDA and get the road paved, but he did not do so. Nahil believes this is a signature trait – that Ranil – forgets names, faces and favours. He also says that he could have carpeted Dutugamunu mawatha with that sum of money.

Nahil was at a dinner hosted by Tamara Kunanayakam, Sri Lanka Diplomat and former Permanent Representative to the UN, in her home at Rosmead Place. Besides him the other two guests present were Palitha Kohona, former Permanent Representative to the UN and Rajiva Wijesinghe, Political Analyst and cousin of Ranil Wickremasinghe. During the conversation Nahil, in lighter vein recalled his donation of Rs.15 million to Ranil, On hearing this Rajiva’s immediate reaction was that he would report the incident to the Bribery Commission the next day. Nahil requested him to hold back a few days until he checked with his Finance Director if the three cheques had been forwarded to him from his bank after the collection of the Rs.15M. ten years ago. Nahil says ‘‘I will standby my statement.’’ Once everything checked out Rajiva reported this to the Bribery Commission. A few months later Nahil was called by the bribery commission for an interview. He gave them the copies of the cheques and told the person who interviewed him the entire story. This person seemed to take great delight in Nahil’s story.

Anecdotes

Bunnis Race – A little story Nahil remembers about E.L. Senanayake. Old EL was a lousy athlete or no athlete at all. He was invited as Chief Guest to one of the Trinity College Junior Athletics meets. While giving his speech he says, “I never failed to participate in these meets and I always won the ‘bunnis’ race, because he ate the ‘bunnis’ the fastest.”

Typewriter – There was a teacher at Trinity, one Mr. Daniel, who was a legend, fondly referred to with a not-so-flattering name ‘Surppadaya Daniel’ by the students. Once he corrected a grammatical mistake of a colleague. The sentence read: ‘This man was a good typer,’ and was corrected by Daniel with much aplomb with his version “This man was a good typewriter…”

Most of the other teachers, especially in the Junior School, were females. One of whom he remembers well was Mrs. Weerasekera, whileCannon Ratnayake aka ‘Gabuwa Ratnayake’, was the Headmaster of the Junior School.

Letter Writing Skills – When Nahil was the Technical Director of the CSC, P.B. Karandawela, the Chairman of the Ceylon Shipping Corporation (CSC), once told Nahil that each time he wrote a letter to a ministry or any persons in authority requesting a decision on something, he would write a little note at the bottom of the letter that read, “If I don’t hear from you in ten days, I assume that you have no objection to me taking action on my request.” He hardly received any replies within ten days…

Game Fishing – Lester being very involved in fishing, bought a tournament fishing boat. To Nahil, this was a big deal, a roaring machine with a 250 horsepower engine imported from Australia. Its hull was made of Kevlar, a material used to make bullet proof garments. Each time Nahil took the boat into the harbour to dock it at the Walkers pier, it would cause a rumpus in its wake, causing the big ships to rock and hit the sides of the pier. By the time the station calls out on the VHS – ‘who is this idiot causing mayhem?’ he would dock the boat in their pier, lock up and leave before they came chasing after him. One sunny day he decided to go fishing with Lester and his cousin Phillip, a guy big into fishing himself, who together with Lester caught a huge fish. Generally as the rules of ‘game fishing’ go, the ethical thing to do is to put the fish back into the water, instead they got a pole and beat the fish to death. Nahil was so disgusted, he told them this was a disgraceful and nasty sport, categorically stating that he would never, ever join them to go ‘game’ fishing in the future. He says ‘‘no game at all – plain murder!

Thunder Boxes – At the time Rajan Kadirgamar, Lakshman’s brother, was the Navy Commander, and also the Chairman of Ceylon Shipping Corporation, due to the communal riots in Colombo, Mr. Amirthalingam requested him to provide ships to transport 2000 people from Colombo to Jaffna. Mr. Kadirgamar called for a meeting with all the heads of department of the Ceylon Shipping Co. requesting them to prepare the ships to transport the 2000 people to Jaffna, including making arrangements for their food, sleeping and toilets by the next day.

Ceylon Shipping Corp., had four ships loading and discharging cargo in the port when the management was ordered to prepare the ships to carry human cargo. The following day while the preparations were on, Nahil called Singapore to check the cost of chartering a 707 aircraft that could transport 200 persons per flight in an hour, since they had a fleet of aircrafts parked in Cebu ready for charters. On inquiring he found this to be a much cheaper option with minimum inconvenience to the people, also not disturbing the CSC cargo operations. When the powers in charge heard of this, they were shocked and embarrassed in particular, because they had failed to think of this option. To save face, they insisted it had to be ships and not aircrafts and their request was adhered to. The ships were outfitted with toilets known as ‘Thunder Boxes’ fixed outside the sides of the ships, suspended over the ocean along with the additions that included the plates, tumblers, mattresses and other paraphernalia needed to accommodate 2000 people, . If 200 persons per trip were transported by air, they could have completed their journey within one and a half days.As it was, they were subject to 26 hours of voyage by ship from Colombo to KKS a total of 430 nautical miles..

Fights and Surays – A short time before he was introduced to Indrani, his first wife, he was in a dalliance with a female, a divorcee, who lived in Green Path. Her father was a famous rugby referee who owned a snack bar and her brother was also a rugby player who played fullback for the STC rugby team. Together, they were devoted members of the CR&FC club. Nahil, also a member, attended a social held at the club after a Havies match, with the lass. He danced the first few tunes with her, later on moving to the bar with her for a drink. They were perched on high stools at the bar chatting to friends, when a Havies ‘man about town’ Suren Thuraisingham, walked up to Nahil, seeking his consent to dance with the lass. Nahil gave the go ahead. The girl told him that the man’s hands were all over her. Obviously feeling uncomfortable, she refused a second dance with him, came over to the bar and sat beside Nahil. Unable to handle the refusal, this man followed her, getting nasty and insulting her.

Nahil immediately jumped to her defense shouting at him saying, “How dare you?” and took one swipe at his jaw. The guy who was perched on a high bar stool lost his balance and crased to the floor, after which Nahil didn’t have to do anything. The whole of the CR&FC membership present thrashed the guy. He was from Havies and there was a bit of rivalry between the clubs, with tension building up on the grounds during the match. When this affray triggered off at the shindig, he suddenly became a spectator to the rumpus, until Percy advised him to take his daughter and head home, which they did.

While on their way to the car park, he heard footsteps behind him, only to glance over his shoulder and realize a man was rushing towards them. On impact, Nahil turned around and simultaneously both grabbed each other’s shirt with the other guy yelling. The yelling went on between them for thirty seconds, by which time the CR members came over and stopped the fight. Once he got home he realised the chain around his neck had snapped, displacing his valuable ‘suray’. The next morning he mentioned this to Percy who went to the car park at 6:30 a.m. in search of the chain and ‘suray,’ found it and returned it to him. Nahil maintains he has been blessed a couple of times by three priests. He still has two ‘surays’ round his neck and wonders which one works.

The Andares – While Nahil and Avril lived at Siripa Road, in 1981, there was a shortage of sugar in the market due to some bungling of shipments. Nahil, being the guy who thinks on his feet, got down bags of sugar from India on one of their ships and started to sell sugar to the public from their residence, lower than the market price. He bought two sealing machines and rolls of polythene, gathered a band of helpers, which included a young Jayantha who has remained his faithful driver for the past 48 years. There was also his sister Kanthi and her boys who were down on holiday from Kandy. The sugar was packeted and soldin one pound packets from a rear room window of their home, situated adjacent to a private road that served two houses at the back. He cut thewindow grill and made a little hatch to serve the long queue of customers. The house, dog and all present were covered in sugar for days. Imagine the scenario of ‘Andare…’

The Happy Million $ Note – During the privatisation of tea estates, Elkaduwa plantation in the Matale District was up for sale. Nahil’s buddy N.U.G. Silva, a planter, was anxious to make a bid for Elkaduwa Plantations along with a foreign partner. To put up the bid, a bid bond of ten million rupees had to be furnished to the Government and NUG appealed to Nahil for a loan of this amount, to be replaced once the foreign investor came in with his funds. Time passed by and there was no sign of N.U.G.’s foreign investor. The date of the privatisation was drawing close and failure to make a bid would be a loss of ten million. In the meanwhile Mr. Handunnetti of the JVP, quite vocal against privatisation of these plantations, was seen on TV slandering the Government’s policy of privatisation, using Elkaduwa plantation as an example, while waving a copy of the bid in front of the TV camera with Nahil’s name prominently displayed on it.

Shortly after, the Government changed, with the JVP being allied to the new Government.

A few days later, N.U.G. informed him by telephone from Queen’s Hotel Kandy that he had found a buyer with US$ 1 million in cash to which Nahil said, “Okay, cash is fine; see you in Colombo.” At the end of the conversation, he heard N.U.G. say something to the effect that he would “send a photocopy of the cash,” which did not register with Nahil at the time, as he was busy and rushing through the call. NUG turned up the next day as promised at the East West World Trade Centre office. Nahil was expecting to see a box of currency, but instead was shown a US$ 1 million note which was about 18’’ long. He was flabbergasted, not knowing where to start. Nahil was itching to take a photograph of N.U.G holding the note, but since he pleaded with him, he refained from doing so. There have never been US$ 1 million notes in circulation, which he proved to N.U.G. by showing this to him on the internet.

On a closer examination of the note, he found that it was a ‘Happy Million Dollar’ note, issued at random to kids visiting Disneyland! It was then that N.U.G. realised it was a joke. Nahil was yearning to take a picture of him holding the note. Unfortunately it never happened.

Nahil’s immediate quest was to recover his ten million rupees. He contacted the Treasury Secretary and told him that, at the time the bid was made, privatisation was accepted, and asked the Treasury Secretary whether, given the JVP’s anti-privatisation stance, there was a possibility he could return the cheque to him. The Treasury Secretary informed him that he was not in a position to return it to him directly, but he would let the bid bond lapse, thus ensuring the validity of the cheque emerging as null and void. Thankfully the 10 million was salvaged.

Ex-Wives Club – The divorce case of Indrani and Nahil was heard at the Family Courts in Bambalapitiya. On the advice of his sister, and other family members, he gave up all his rights: legal and physical custody of his son Vajira to Indrani since the child was three years old and should be with his mother, even though she had left Nahil for someone else. In hindsight, he says his decision on the child’s custody was a big mistake.

The divorce case had just commenced. That morning as he got to the office, his secretary had reminded him the previous day that his case hearing was on at 9 a.m. that morning. He rushed to the courts, though late, and was relieved to find the Judge himself had not arrived yet.

Gathered there were Indrani’s lawyer, Mr. Wickremanayake, Haritha’s father, in suit and tie, her brother Manik who had been Nahil’s college mate and her whole team, all dressed up in suits. Nahil who was in his work clothes kept apologizing for getting late even though the Judge hadn’t turned up. . He was given a proxy form; a document that relieves him from hanging around on court dates in the hearings to follow. On receipt, he realised he had to make a payment for stamps and had no cash to do so since he had left his wallet in office. Noticing Nahil in a fluster, Indrani’s lawyer’s assistant opened up an envelope and pulled out his stamps worth 200 rupees, which he gave Nahil for the proxy form. While waiting for the Judge, he recalls Mrs. Gamage who sat at a desk in a corner of the courtroom, was retained to look after Nahil’s interest and she was not going to her seat since she had to be paid. This payment too was forked out by Indrani’s Lawyers assistant He left the courts embarrassed, mumbling a thank you, promising to reimburse the Rs. 400 to her lawyer.

After a few more hearings, before the ‘decree nisi’ was granted, the Court took a final shot at the possibility of reconciliation between the two parties. Indrani and Avril were getting on very well and she was there sitting on Indrani’s side. The Judge questions: “Indrani, is there a possibility for you and Nahil to reconcile, or are you in a relationship with someone else?” She affirms, “Yes, I am involved with so and so,”. Thereafter the judge posed the same question to Nahil, which he affirmed with a “Yes, I am involved too.” The Judge wanted to know if she was present. He pointed out to Avril and said, “She is the one.” “Here was my girl sitting with Indrani and the opposition,” recalls Nahil. The Judge was so taken aback he says, “Normally they are trying to kill each other and here is something new.” He was so confused, he voiced his frustration with “I don’t know what’s happening here,” pushed back his chair and left. Case closed, divorce granted!

Uncle Norman – Nahil’s uncle Norman, his mother’s brother, was very dear to their family and lived with them for a while at their home in Watarantanne. He was in the Postal service and went on to be the Postal Suprintendant of Kandy. He had a wide circle of friends and enjoyed meeting with his buddies with whom he had an occasional shot or two. He owned a Morris Minor and set off one evening in the car to meet up with his buddies after which he got back home quite late that night sans his car. He explained to the family that the car had broken down due to the clutch plate giving away.

The next morning when they went along with him to tow the car to a garage, what they saw was that his car had climbed atop a mound of gravel by the roadside with all four wheels suspended in the air. Being sufficiently intoxicated he had thought his clutch plate had given away!

Half a name – When Nahil took up citizenship in Singapore, the immigration office at their discretion shortened his name to Muthukuda Nahil Wijesuriya informing him that the system could not handle his full name. He says ‘’I was quite taken aback when I saw my name halved in my new passport. Unfortunately, I am addressed as Muthukuda in Singapore, which is now my first name according to my passport!’

Neither here nor there – Once they obtained their British Passports, Nahil’s brother-in-law, Lakshman, applied for dual citizenship. On receipt of the five passports with dual citizenship, he proudly laid them all down on the dining table and announced‘‘we got our dual citizenship’’. Nahil who happened to be there at that moment said to Lakshman, ‘‘ all of you were always neither here nor there. Now you all are officially neither here nor there!

Love Trinity -While he was working at the Ceylon Shipping Corp. as the Technical Manager, he overhearda board member of the CSC at a cocktail party talking about his great days at Trinity College. Nahil was certain that he was not a Trinitian and to avoid embarrassing him, Nahil called him aside and asked him when he was at TCK. He confessed that he was never at TCK but at Dharmaraja college but he wished he was at Trinity, and hoped Nahil didn’t mind him spinning his story. Nahil told him to go ahead and enjoy himself.

‘Gunaratna ‘anduwa genna’ – Dushantha Abeysinghe’s sister Kaushal, was married to Chandima Karunaratne, a Trinitian. Sri Saga’s home in Colombo was SS Kumar’s house at Thimbirigasaya. Sri Saga owned a BSA Bantam motorcycle and was a friend of Dushantha. As Dushantha lived around the corner and considered himself as a great mechanic, he volunteered to repair Saga’s bike. Owning only one tool – a spanner – his slogan was ‘ Gunaratna anduwa genna.’ Gunaratna was his batman. Thirty minutes later he had dismantled the carburetor with this one ‘anduwa’ and hurriedly put it back together. Saga realising Dushantha had messed it up, figured this was a waste of time and ordered Dushantha to wheel the bike to a garage down 9th lane, Colombo 3, where his regular ‘bass unahe’ worked from. The bass unahe was excellent at repair and tuning all these fast and furious machines. As soon as ‘Wale’ bass saw the bike he shouted ‘mona ***buruwek meka galleuwada’ –( which *** donkey pulled this apart) Nahil and the rest of the gang were delighted and amused that their ‘anduwa man’ was put in his place. They all turned away pretending not to have heard this until they left the place, after which it was one big laugh!The Happy Million $ Note – During the privatisation of tea estates, Elkaduwa plantation in the Matale District was up for sale. Nahil’s buddy N.U.G. Silva, a planter, was anxious to make a bid for Elkaduwa Plantations along with a foreign partner. To put up the bid, a bid bond of ten million rupees had to be furnished to the Government and NUG appealed to Nahil for a loan of this amount, to be replaced once the foreign investor came in with his funds. Time passed by and there was no sign of N.U.G.’s foreign investor. The date of the privatisation was drawing close and failure to make a bid would be a loss of ten million. In the meanwhile Mr. Handunnetti of the JVP, quite vocal against privatisation of these plantations, was seen on TV slandering the Government’s policy of privatisation, using Elkaduwa plantation as an example, while waving a copy of the bid in front of the TV camera with Nahil’s name prominently displayed on it.

Shortly after, the Government changed, with the JVP being allied to the new Government.

A few days later, N.U.G. informed him by telephone from Queen’s Hotel Kandy that he had found a buyer with US$ 1 million in cash to which Nahil said, “Okay, cash is fine; see you in Colombo.” At the end of the conversation, he heard N.U.G. say something to the effect that he would “send a photocopy of the cash,” which did not register with Nahil at the time, as he was busy and rushing through the call. NUG turned up the next day as promised at the East West World Trade Centre office. Nahil was expecting to see a box of currency, but instead was shown a US$ 1 million note which was about 18’’ long. He was flabbergasted, not knowing where to start. Nahil was itching to take a photograph of N.U.G holding the note, but since he pleaded with him, he refained from doing so. There have never been US$ 1 million notes in circulation, which he proved to N.U.G. by showing this to him on the internet.

On a closer examination of the note, he found that it was a ‘Happy Million Dollar’ note, issued at random to kids visiting Disneyland! It was then that N.U.G. realised it was a joke. Nahil was yearning to take a picture of him holding the note. Unfortunately it never happened.

Nahil’s immediate quest was to recover his ten million rupees. He contacted the Treasury Secretary and told him that, at the time the bid was made, privatisation was accepted, and asked the Treasury Secretary whether, given the JVP’s anti-privatisation stance, there was a possibility he could return the cheque to him. The Treasury Secretary informed him that he was not in a position to return it to him directly, but he would let the bid bond lapse, thus ensuring the validity of the cheque emerging as null and void. Thankfully the 10 million was salvaged.

Ex-Wives Club – The divorce case of Indrani and Nahil was heard at the Family Courts in Bambalapitiya. On the advice of his sister, and other family members, he gave up all his rights: legal and physical custody of his son Vajira to Indrani since the child was three years old and should be with his mother, even though she had left Nahil for someone else. In hindsight, he says his decision on the child’s custody was a big mistake.

The divorce case had just commenced. That morning as he got to the office, his secretary had reminded him the previous day that his case hearing was on at 9 a.m. that morning. He rushed to the courts, though late, and was relieved to find the Judge himself had not arrived yet.

Gathered there were Indrani’s lawyer, Mr. Wickremanayake, Haritha’s father, in suit and tie, her brother Manik who had been Nahil’s college mate and her whole team, all dressed up in suits. Nahil who was in his work clothes kept apologizing for getting late even though the Judge hadn’t turned up. . He was given a proxy form; a document that relieves him from hanging around on court dates in the hearings to follow. On receipt, he realised he had to make a payment for stamps and had no cash to do so since he had left his wallet in office. Noticing Nahil in a fluster, Indrani’s lawyer’s assistant opened up an envelope and pulled out his stamps worth 200 rupees, which he gave Nahil for the proxy form. While waiting for the Judge, he recalls Mrs. Gamage who sat at a desk in a corner of the courtroom, was retained to look after Nahil’s interest and she was not going to her seat since she had to be paid. This payment too was forked out by Indrani’s Lawyers assistant He left the courts embarrassed, mumbling a thank you, promising to reimburse the Rs. 400 to her lawyer.

After a few more hearings, before the ‘decree nisi’ was granted, the Court took a final shot at the possibility of reconciliation between the two parties. Indrani and Avril were getting on very well and she was there sitting on Indrani’s side. The Judge questions: “Indrani, is there a possibility for you and Nahil to reconcile, or are you in a relationship with someone else?” She affirms, “Yes, I am involved with so and so,”. Thereafter the judge posed the same question to Nahil, which he affirmed with a “Yes, I am involved too.” The Judge wanted to know if she was present. He pointed out to Avril and said, “She is the one.” “Here was my girl sitting with Indrani and the opposition,” recalls Nahil. The Judge was so taken aback he says, “Normally they are trying to kill each other and here is something new.” He was so confused, he voiced his frustration with “I don’t know what’s happening here,” pushed back his chair and left. Case closed, divorce granted!

Uncle Norman – Nahil’s uncle Norman, his mother’s brother, was very dear to their family and lived with them for a while at their home in Watarantanne. He was in the Postal service and went on to be the Postal Suprintendant of Kandy. He had a wide circle of friends and enjoyed meeting with his buddies with whom he had an occasional shot or two. He owned a Morris Minor and set off one evening in the car to meet up with his buddies after which he got back home quite late that night sans his car. He explained to the family that the car had broken down due to the clutch plate giving away.

The next morning when they went along with him to tow the car to a garage, what they saw was that his car had climbed atop a mound of gravel by the roadside with all four wheels suspended in the air. Being sufficiently intoxicated he had thought his clutch plate had given away!

Half a name – When Nahil took up citizenship in Singapore, the immigration office at their discretion shortened his name to Muthukuda Nahil Wijesuriya informing him that the system could not handle his full name. He says ‘’I was quite taken aback when I saw my name halved in my new passport. Unfortunately, I am addressed as Muthukuda in Singapore, which is now my first name according to my passport!’

Neither here nor there – Once they obtained their British Passports, Nahil’s brother-in-law, Lakshman, applied for dual citizenship. On receipt of the five passports with dual citizenship, he proudly laid them all down on the dining table and announced‘‘we got our dual citizenship’’. Nahil who happened to be there at that moment said to Lakshman, ‘‘ all of you were always neither here nor there. Now you all are officially neither here nor there!

Love Trinity -While he was working at the Ceylon Shipping Corp. as the Technical Manager, he overhearda board member of the CSC at a cocktail party talking about his great days at Trinity College. Nahil was certain that he was not a Trinitian and to avoid embarrassing him, Nahil called him aside and asked him when he was at TCK. He confessed that he was never at TCK but at Dharmaraja college but he wished he was at Trinity, and hoped Nahil didn’t mind him spinning his story. Nahil told him to go ahead and enjoy himself.

‘Gunaratna ‘anduwa genna’ – Dushantha Abeysinghe’s sister Kaushal, was married to Chandima Karunaratne, a Trinitian. Sri Saga’s home in Colombo was SS Kumar’s house at Thimbirigasaya. Sri Saga owned a BSA Bantam motorcycle and was a friend of Dushantha. As Dushantha lived around the corner and considered himself as a great mechanic, he volunteered to repair Saga’s bike. Owning only one tool – a spanner – his slogan was ‘ Gunaratna anduwa genna.’ Gunaratna was his batman. Thirty minutes later he had dismantled the carburetor with this one ‘anduwa’ and hurriedly put it back together. Saga realising Dushantha had messed it up, figured this was a waste of time and ordered Dushantha to wheel the bike to a garage down 9th lane, Colombo 3, where his regular ‘bass unahe’ worked from. The bass unahe was excellent at repair and tuning all these fast and furious machines. As soon as ‘Wale’ bass saw the bike he shouted ‘mona ***buruwek meka galleuwada’ –( which *** donkey pulled this apart) Nahil and the rest of the gang were delighted and amused that their ‘anduwa man’ was put in his place. They all turned away pretending not to have heard this until they left the place, after which it was one big laugh!

Cleaning the Beira Lake

The Beira Lake prior to the cleanup

The Navam Mawatha Business Complex was Nahil’s little empire.East West was the owning company of IBM, Forbes and Walker and Sri Lanka Shipping buildings which included the central car park area at Navam Mawatha. Due to the dry season, there was a foul smell around the Navam Mawatha Complex, permeating through with the breeze from the Beira Lake. The UDA, if he remembers correctly, was under the purview of Mangala Samaraweera. This was a reoccurring issue, especially during the dry season. The Australian and Canadian governments had given the UDA a grant of US$1Meach and appointed their consultants. Volumes of research were done by these people, but to no avail. However, they left few volumes of the research done of the Beira Lake.

One hundred years ago the Beira, a salt water lake situated in the centre of the city of Colombo was 1.65 sq km (0.64 sq ml) which down the years has reduced to 0.65 km2 (0.25 sq mi). During the colonial era of the Portuguese, Dutch and the British, the lake was used for a wide variety of purposes. It still retains its Portuguese name – Beira – which inPortuguese means border or edge. The lake is connected to many intricate canals which provided an easy route for the transporting of goods within the city and suburban cities. The lake was built by the Portuguese to protect Colombo from enemies, mainly the local Kings, by the construction of the moat which was initiated by digging the marshy land surrounding the fort in all directions except the west, which was the Indian Ocean.

Unfortunately, the water available in the marsh was not enough to feed the lake until a Portuguese captain, Lopo de Brito, while he was chasing away an invasion lead by King Vijayabahu V11, discovered a stream that flowed between the Mount of Demetagoda and Mount of St. Sabastian. After informing the officials at the fort about the stream, it was connected to the moat they had dug, creating Beira Lake.

After the Dutch laid siege and captured the lake full of crocodiles it was expanded by 1/3 of the original and created several islands such as Slave Island with some of the islands large enough to build a village and plant 600 coconut trees.

Once the British took over they removed the crocodiles and developed the area surrounding the lake for recreational activities such as rowing and yachting. Ceylon’s first botanical gardens – the Kew Gardens, was opened in Slave Island in 1910 to cultivate seedlings provided by the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew in London, to be eventually planted in Peradeniya Botanical Gardens.

Sadly by the 19th century land reclamation for development began and the land area of the lake was reduced, while pollution began to increase and the lake turned green emanating a bad odor due to over 100 years of pollution with the algae that are present in the water contributing to the bad odor, very prominent during dry weather due to high rates of evaporation which fades off during the rainy season.-

Beira Project Pipes

When Nahil agreed to take over the Beira project, the general discussion after many years of research was to raise the water level of the lake by aerating the water having water jets shooting up into the air hopefully taking down some algae.

Nahil’s simple solution was to flush the entire Beira by pumping in seawater in large quantities and displacing the dirty stagnant algae ridden water into the ocean, and bring it back to how it was before – a salt water lake.

To counter any objections, they laid a pipe from a position south of Galle Face hotel, running up to the Gangarama temple. A steel structure was built on which submersible seawater pumps were mounted pumping 1000 tons an hour of seawater. Finally, the Beira was blue and the sea in and around the Colpetty area was green. The 18’’ diameter pipe ran adjacent to the railway line, Duplication road and the banks of the Beira.

To get permission for the project he was referred to the National Building Research Organization (NBRO), headed by Mr. Godwin Vithane. Even though Godwin was a good friend he objected to it and was adamant that the saltwater would harm the steel foundations around the Beira. Nahil countered by saying that if that was so, all the structures along the coastal belt which had the usual 40mm concrete cover over the steel would have perished by now, but are not affected and the chances of this happening were very rare. As a last resort Godwin warned Nahil that the foundation of Temple Trees would also be affected. Nahil immediately measured the height of the intended water level and the foundation of Temple Trees, proving Temple Trees was much higher and will not be affected. In desperation, Godwin insisted the capillary action of the water could climb up and still affect the foundation. Finally, being a good buddy of Godwin’s, Nahil told him ‘’Godwin please just cool it and let me get on with the job at hand.’’ He finally relented.

Nahil met the cash flow for the project which included donations from the Navam Mawatha building owners with the assurance from Mangala that he will arrange some compensation by the municipality to the Navam Mawatha building owners to compensate for their contributions.

The pipeline adjacent to the railway line by the side of the Sasakawa building was piping with concrete collars joining at 12 foot intervals, with manholes every 100 meters.

Working on the Beira Project

They did not realise the concrete collars never settled down due to the frequent passage of trains, which they noticed only when they started the pumps. To their utter embarrassment, all the collars were spewing out water.

It was then Nahil remembered the large pipes under the roads in Europe. Whenever they sprung a leak, they would send a rubber sleeve, sealing all the leaks, the concrete and the surrounding area, giving it all the support.

He found a polythene bag manufacturer who made polythene rolls to any desired diameter. He turned out thick gauge polythene thereby sealing all these with polythene lining. The polythene itself was changed one manhole to another when they started the pumps getting the water to pull the ball at the front end of the line.

In 2015 he was requested by Mr Gotabaya Rajapaksa to visit him at his home and explain to him how the Beira project was done. He took all the photographs he had of the project and used them to explain the workings of the project after which, Mr. Gotabaya wanted him to explain it to his staff who were assigned to carry out the project.The next morning three army brigadiers came to his office and Nahil explained to them the entire project.

When Nahil started this project, the team was very nervous thinking that the fish in the Beira would die due to the seawater conversion. Therefore they were ready with the gear to clean up, in the event it happened. Thankfully, it did not. The heavy seawater was very gradually coming up without any turbulance thus the fish got used to two kinds of water. Studies carried out by various people who had researched the Beira Lake unanimously affirm that the pH balance of the Beira water has always been excellent. Part of the smaller fish from the sea had been flushed into the Beira with the seawater and was breeding in the lake. Strangely these little fish turned out to be quite large lake fish.

The Beira Lake post cleanup

In 2015 he was requested by Mr Gotabaya Rajapaksa to visit him at his home and explain to him how the Beira project was done. He took all the photographs he had of the project and used them to explain the workings of the project after which, Mr. Gotabaya wanted him to explain it to his staff who were assigned to carry out the project.The next morning three army brigadiers came to his office and Nahil explained to them the entire project.

After cleaning up the lake, Nahil handed over all the equipment to the department of Low Lying areas

On the flipside, by doing this project he at least has a story to tell. He can proudly say, “Hell yeah, I drained the Beira Lake that day…”

Arcadia and Compass Heights Singapore

Apartment at Arcadia

During the SARS epidemic in Singapore, the property market plummeted to an all-time low, opening up endless purchase opportunities for those seeking to buy investment properties. Nahil was dealing with Deutsche Bank, whose management was willing to extend multiple facilities, as long as the borrower was known to the bank and the estate was good. Eunice Kong, a Singaporean realtor and her family, over time, became close friends with Nahil. Her husband was the maintenance engineer of the Arcadia, the largest condominium complex in Singapore built a while back by S.P. Tao, the owner of the Havelock City devolepment in Colombo. All the apartments at the Arcadia featurea minimum square footage of a whopping 4,000 sqft.

Tao had built many malls and office complexes, but the Arcadia was the only condo he built. Shortly after building the Arcadia, since the apartments were not selling, Tao and his Indonesian partner bought two apartments at the Arcadia at their own expense to meet the cash flow of the Arcadia complex. Nahil was aware that Tao had bought two penthouses and living there when the SARS epidemic broke out and Singapore was deserted. During this period, Nahil emplaned into Singapore and once inside the arrival lounge he noticed the terminal was so deserted he thought he was in a new terminal at the airport. While walking through he could see on a TV screen in the terminal building, the URA graph pricing taking a massive hit. He figured this was the time to invest in an apartment at Arcadia which was being sold at a bargain due to the circumstances prevailing in the country at the time. The price was so attractive that shortly after he bought every apartment that came on the market a total of eight 4000sqft apartments and joined two of the eight apartments, to make up a penthouse totalling a massive 8,000 sqft of living area.’’

Nahil rented out the penthouse to the manager of Air France Singapore, a French national, with a great sense of humour, whom he got to know quite well. A few months into his stay, considering Air France was taking austerity measures, with the staff instructed to cut corners wherever possible, he confessed to Nahil, that the apartment was far too big for him and he needed to move out. He was accommodating since the tenant had a genuine problem and thus cancelled the contract.

The tenant mentioned to him how he watched his little seven year old daughter walk towards the pantry to get her milk from the fridge in the night, only to do a ‘U’ turn and come back. When he inquired from her as to why she turned back, she had replied, “The kitchen is too far!”

Nahil kept one of the eight apartments for himself, completely flipping it, remodelling the toilets, fixing new ACs, refurbishing it throughout and finally listing it for sale at a highly-unrealistic, inflated rate, considering this was his habitat. At this point, his dear friend and realtor, Eunice Kong entered the picture. She brought along an Indian lady in a saree for a viewing. The lady had a good look around and conveyed to Eunice that she liked the apartment. Meanwhile, Eunice had inflated Nahil’s quoted price so much so that he looked nonplussed when he heard her quote the price to the buyer. She gave him a ‘keep your mouth shut’ look and the deal was done.

Apartment at Arcadia

The background to this story was that the lady and her husband were Singaporeans who lived in the States. Her husband, a Financial Director of a bank in the US, had passed away and she was returning to Singapore. The bank generously offered to buy her whatever property she fancied in Singapore. She loved the property owned by Nahil so immensely that the bank bought it for her. This was a lottery for Nahil. Eunice knew all about this when she brought her client for the viewing, hence the ‘shut up’ that came Nahil’s way. He sent Vijitha, who was studying in London, a mail exulting on his good fortune and he replied saying, “Thaththi, why did you sell it?” “That’s your home.” However, Nahil’s thoughts on this were it is not often that someone makes a profit of two million in a day. That was so cool.

After Nahil sold all his apartments at the Arcadia in Singapore, he bought a duplex at the Compass Heights in Sengkang, a penthouse with a roof top landscaped garden, where the condo was above the mega Compass mall, with the MRT below that. It was so convenient that once he closed his entrance door he could be down at the MRT in 45 seconds.

The distance to Dhoby Gaut from Senkang was 20 minutes, which was not too bad considering it was almost the end of the MRT line, therefore seats were available at any time of the day.

After a few months, he decided to sell, pondering the fact that at his age, living alone in a duplex was personally a bad choice. In the event he had a fall climbing the stairs and broke his ankle or some other unforeseen disaster, no one would ever find him. He sold the apartment.

Reflections

While they were operating EWE on the fourth floor of Ceylinco House, their office overlooked the brand new Intercontinental Hotel, the first 5-star hotel in town with 5-star prices. Whenever they had guests from oversees visiting the office, especially closer to noon, the courteous thing to do was to offer them lunch, which they did, inquiring from the guest as to where they would like to dine, while holding their breath hoping they wouldn’t choose a restaurant at the Intercontinental. Being a small operation of five, Lester, his niece Anne, secretary Feroza, Man Friday – Farook and Nahil, their petty cash did not stretch enough to afford a meal at the Intercontinental. However, a few years later their petty cash stretched far enough to buy the hotel, which they did!

Acquiring and Sale of Hotel Intercontinental Colombo

Kumar Sharma, an Indian living in Sri Lanka, owned the hotel which he had acquired from the Intercontinental chain. Vijitha, Nahil’s son, was a school mate and a great friend of Sharma’s son, Sandeep. The young man, though not much to show by way of academia, was an amiable lad, who would occasionally stay over at Nahil’s. His father enrolled him at the best hotel school in Switzerland to follow a three-year course in Hotel Management, whereas regrettably, he returned to Colombo after three months, affirming to his dad that he was not interested in hotel management or any related field.

Sharma had bought the hotel from the Intercontinental chain, sometime before, envisioning his son would take over and operate the hotel after his graduation in Switzerland. Considering his son’s decision, all his grandiose plans for the lad went left field. Disappointed, he offered to sell the hotel to Nahil.

Lanka Securities was the brokers of the transaction. The price Sharma quoted seemed like a good deal; interested, Nahil inquired of him if he had any debt, to which he replied, “What debt? I have ten billion cash surplus.” Nahil bought the hotel with no financial due diligence, nor physical due diligence. He managed to raise the necessary cash, buying the hotel without even visiting it; this was an honest deal between two friends.

On acquiring the hotel he did some refurbishing, getting the hotel ready for the market place, although the civil war was slowing things down on the tourism front. The Central Bank had erected a massive barrier almost opposite the entrance into the hotel, subjecting hotel visitors to double security checks, one at the roundabout and the other at the barrier. Prasanna Jayawardena of Elephant Corridor fame, a college mate of Nahil’s, was visiting the Governor of the Central Bank, and invited Nahil to tag along so he could state his case concerning the excess security barrier opposite his hotel. As Nahil tried to explain to the Governor the inconvenience faced by visitors to the hotel due to the two security checks three meters apart, he humbly requested him if possible to intervene and make it a single check. The Governor got aggressive and said something to the effect of “Do you want me to get fully checked?” – meaning ‘I can make it worse for you’. That was frustrating. You go to him for a solution and he becomes the problem. As a rebuttal, Nahil was about to say something nasty to the man, when Prasanna anticipated his mood and kicked him under the table as a sign to keep his mouth shut.

They were in this huge room which had a cupboard in one corner. When the man opened the cupboard to get something, Nahil noticed that it held a large number of fancy suits whereas Nahil expected to see a Library of books pertaining to Finance.

Nahil made vast improvements on a barrage of mistakes he found in the hotel structure – the steps were the wrong size and the plumbing messed up, among a host of other sundry mistakes. In addition, auxiliary repairs were carried out wherever necessary.

Meanwhile, the Ports Authority, which was on the lookout for a building to purchase as an office complex, made an offer to buy the hotel for this purpose. Nahil’s secretary at the time was Surani, whose husband knew the bigwigs of the Ports Authority. Acting as a broker, he was aggressively trying to get the deal together based on the price quoted to him. Nahil maintained he would sell only if he got his price. The Sunday Leader got a hold of the story and ripped it to bits with the headlines, ‘Why is the Ports Authority trying to buy a 5-star hotel to use as an office?’ The Tuesday after the article appeared, he happened to meet Mahinda Rajapaksa in the lobby of the hotel, on his way out from a wedding. Greeting him, MR says, “What’s this story that you are trying to sell the hotel Nahil? Are you crazy? Hang on to it, real estate price is going to skyrocket in the near future’’. Nahil took his advice and held on. He reckons MR was his best financial consultant, better than his bank’. Suddenly the war was over, the price doubled, and Nahil was rocking it!

Nimal Perera, and Margu Murugeswaran, with the help of Nimal, Dhammika Perera’s lieutenant, made a bid for the hotel. East West owned 95% of the whole business, though it was a public quoted company. The public holding was negligible. Hayleys, due to a shortage of finances, bought 51%, getting the controlling interest of the hotel whilst the balance was sold in the open market, which was arranged by Nimal Perera. Hayleys may have bought the bulk of the remaining shares subsequently. Each time your total holdings go beyond 30% you have to make a general offer to the other shareholders to buy at the same price.

After Nahil sold Hotel Intercontinental to Hayleys who bought 51% of the shares, Nahil remained the Chairman of the hotel until

Hayleys made a general offer after which the old board appoints a new board while the former retires, giving time for the remaining 49% shares to be listed at the CSE.Nahil realized he had not been paid his monthly stipend of Rs.1 M, for three months, and inquired from Mohan Pandithage as to why he was not being paid. Mohan was brash and told him that his claim for the Rs. 1M ceased the day he bought the hotel from Nahil. This was so utterly childish and completely out of order. Nahil suggested to Mr. Margu to send Mohan for accounting classes. His three million rupees is still outstanding. Nirj Deva Aditthiya got himself appointed to the new board of directors and always uses the Presidential suit whenever he arrives for a board meeting. Though he has done nothing he still uses the Presidential suit.

Donating A Building to the Marine Fraternity
As a member of the SOCEM – Society of Chief Engineers Marine – and the Institute of Marine Engineers Sri Lanka, Nahil realised the two associations never had a permanent address. It was customary that the address of the associations would be the current secretary’s address, changing each time a new secretary was appointed. Finally, they moved into a small building in Crows’ Island – ‘a half-past-two-thirty place’ – in proximity to Ferguson Road, Aluthmawatha Kotahena. To Nahil this address was a disgrace and didn’t do justice to the dignity of the two associations, thus compelling him to offer the institutes a space at the IBM building, from where his office operated. With this move, both associations had an air-conditioned proper office space, rent-free. The members were elated. Whenever foreign mariners visited the office, they were thrilled at the prospect of the office being owned by a fellow marine engineer.

Apartment at Arcadia

Though SOCEM occupied the space for a few years, there was no valid tenancy agreement signed between East West and the associations, thus on the sale of the IBM building, Akbar Brothers, the buyer, realized there was no rental income generated from the associations’ office space for six months and virtually kicked them out.

Realising the associations were back to square one with nowhere to go, Nahil regretted not signing an agreement concerning the associations when the building was sold. He felt he had got caught up in the sale with the rest of the tenants automatically transferred, causing him to, unfortunately, overlook the position of the associations. At the time Nahil heard about the plight of the associations, he was overseas. The associations’ dire situation saddened Nahil since there was nothing he could do from that distance.

Opening ceremony

One evening while conversing with his sisters and discussing how they had helped many in the medical field, especially academically brilliant medical students who were struggling to survive through medical school, some of whom were now held in high regard in Europe and the US, something triggered in him. His thought was that his sisters had been benevolent and empathetic towards the hardship of youngsters in their profession and he asked himself while being so blessed, what had he done long term for the less fortunate? Deciding to help ten medical students, Nahil got in touch with the Dean of the Faculty of Engineering at Peradeniya University, who affirmed to him many brilliant studentslived in such dire circumstances that they had no idea where their next meal would come from. Nahil volunteered to pay, on a standing order, 50,000 rupees a month, to be divided between the ten neediest students

Marine House
The Agnes Wijesuriya Charity Fund

Opening ceremony

While contributing monthly towards the welfare of ten medical students, he asked himself what he had done for those in his profession. He decided instantly to donate to the associations a five-level office building he owned in Colpetty. He got the building refurbished inside and out, using cladding for the exterior and modernising it. The income generated from the rented spaces used to go directly into the recently initiated ‘Agnes Wijesuriya Charity Trust Fund.’ The fund comprises two trustees chosen from the association and two of Nahil’s family members. This was formulated as an irrevocable trust fund, allowing the Trustees to appoint/dismiss, etc. whenever the need arises.

The building generated around one million rupees a month from the tenants, to be used through the trust by the association for their purpose. An entire floor was designated for the Institute of Marine Engineers and still remains so even under the new ownership. Dialog towers are also situated atop the building, with the balance four levels tenanted to a mix of companies. One of the tenants using two floors operating ‘My Little Island’ – a youth hostel for budget travellers, operated by Nahil’s elder son, Vajira and his wife. Sadly, they recently closed up and sold off all the furniture and fittings of the hostel due to the slump in tourism, thanks to Covid-19.

In terms of value, this building is situated adjacent to the Damro Hotel/Marino Mall, just off Galle Road, behind the petrol station, opposite the Dasa building in Colpetty. He bought it 10 years back for a hundred million rupees andrecently sold it to Damro for 300 million rupees.

There was a time during the 30 years of civil war when the LTTE surrounded 600 policemen and gruesomely murdered them in the eastern jungles of Tirukkovil in June of 1990 when the then government after negotiating with the LTTE, trusting them, ordered the cops to surrender to the LTTE.

Awards Ceremony

The Air Force in retaliation to the atrocity started aerial bombings of LTTE hideouts with helicopters, which was an expensive and time-consuming exercise, considering the logistics of fuelling in Colombo and flying to the east, thus halving the fuel content, giving the helicopter pilots only a small window of time and fuel to carry out their combat, since they had to return to Colombo utilising the same fuel. When Nahil heard about this situation from a college mate who was an official in the Navy, he offered to help solve the fuel situation and the transfer of ammunition by providing the Navy his tug, to be anchored on the east coast to enable the choppers to refuel and return to their operations without delays. The Commander in charge, Mohan Jayamaha, had previous experience during his training period overseas in this kind of operation where helicopters can land on decks of small ships that are moving and was keen to facilitate it without delay. They planned to layer the tug with six containers packed with ammo and fuel.

It was further planned to fix guns on the front and rear of the tug, which would be well-shielded with the containers of ammo. It was to be a proper bunker. They had made a platform as a landing area for the choppers on top of the containers. In choppy weather you lower a rope down from the helicopter and anchor it down coupled to a winch, keeping it steady. The helicopter then tries to fly out keeping the wire taut. With the wire taut the tug and the helicopter start moving together in unison, at which point the fuel and ammo are loaded and the chopper is ready to go again.

IMaREST Certifcate

When the Head of the Navy, Ananda Silva, took over, he realised everything was going great and wanted to know how long the Navy could have the tug. Nahil offered it to them free for two months instead the Commander wanted the operation for a longer period. He then intimated to the Commander that in that case, the Navy would have to pay him for the use of the tug. Though it was never his intention, they presumed he would charge them an exorbitant fee and told him so. He had no time or patience to haggle numbers with them, thus the operation was suspended. Every one was dissapointed, mainly Mohan Jayamaha.The tug never left Colombo.

Unfortunately, during this period the Commander died in a LTTE bomb blast along with Denzil Kobbekaduwa, before the plan got underway. His role was taken ober by Ananda Silva who was the head of the Navy.

Chairman CWE

Ravi Karunanayake was Minister of Trade in the UNP Government, in the early 2000s. On meeting Nahil at a function, while chatting over beers, the topic of the CWE came up. In the middle of the discussion, Ranil insisting that the government had no business selling “karola” came up.

The Government had decided to privatize Sathosa. Ravi, being the Minister in charge, requested Nahil to take over as Chairman with a mandate of prioratizing some order into the system before the privatisation of the CWE. He agreed to take up the challenge pro bono, without an official car or salary.

He requested the appointment of Lal Wickrematunge as hisdeputy to handle the unions and other related stuff. While Lal used the Chairman’s official car, Nahil used his own jeep.

Based on what they were told upon taking over, they expected to walk into a den of rouges, only to be pleasantly surprised to meet the most humble, hardworking and honourable people. Since the CWE was a massive organisation, all the systems were already in place for the proper administration of the organisation. For instance, if one were to advertise sugar, rice, onions, etc., the size of the advert, the number of days it should run, the newspaper and the specifications of the advertisements, including the opening of trading among the other departments and openings of tenders and awards, everything was streamlined.

Though the CWE was messed up, he was surprised, as a leading businessman, to witness more corruption over the years in ‘blue-chip’ private organisations than at the CWE. He restructured the CWE under the banner of ‘Lanka Sathosa.’

Nahil is still not sure if they wanted him to ‘rob.’ They argued that the Government had no business to be selling karola at the CWE. The question was, will the private traders be interested in purchasing it in its present state?

He did an extensive background research of the organization. Realizing no one was going to buy this messed up enterprise in its present state, he planned to reinvent the outlets on par with, or better than, the bigger supermarkets like Cargills. The CWE had motorized tables, etc., and were the first to barcode all items on sale. Some of the smart young sales people knew the numbers which they would roll off by memory. Nahil and the senior staff organized a bar code initiative at the Chamber of Commerce where the small producers were each given a barcode which they could print on their ‘kadju’ packets and other produce. He sourced the accounting software that was being used by Cargills, from Anthony Page (Baba), the Chairman of Cargills. Baba graciously offered the accounting software including the people to implement it, though a competitor, since this was a national effort.

Before the advent of this system, the produce for sale was fully coded by the staff, using barcode printers with the labels pasted on the items, till eventually, the code was pre-printed, saving the staff time, pasting things at the point of sale. This practice was in operation at the Jawatte, Welisara and Rajagiriya outlets which were efficiently operated. Ravi was elated, suggesting they opt for the outlets to be open 24 hours. Nahil agreed to this and launched 24 hour operations. These three outlets were a model for implimenting of other outlets island wide.

Things had picked up rapidly and it was smooth sailing when the owner of Mustafa Centre Singapore turned up with an idea of making a bid to buy over the supermarket chain. Ravi sent him to Nahil, who showed him around.

During the ensuing conversation between Nahil and the owner of the Mustafa Centre, the latter mentioned that he started his business with his brothers, selling handkerchiefs on the pavement in Singapore, gradually rising to be a large and popular departmental store in Singapore. Nahil, aware that this store is congested at all times, was curious to know about the problem of shoplifting by customers, inquiring as to what measures they take to keep shoplifters at bay. His answer was amazing. He explained to Nahil that he had no problem with the customers shoplifting since they would steal, maybe come back and do so once again in a month, whereas if his staff was robbing him, it would be a huge concern, considering it would be a daily occurrence.

He mentioned that inside all his stores, cameras were trained on the staff, though not anymore. With technological advances, shoplifting is not that easy and hardly occurs now.

He further stated that previously the HR Department would show the new recruits the cameras, warning them not to try anything funny, putting the ‘fear of Moses’ into them from day one.

When a handful of local enterprises, were ready to bid for the organisation, Ravi. K was opposed to transferring 100% of the Lanka Sathosa shares, insisting that the Government should have some control of it. When Nahil questioned him as to why, Ravi averred that this way they could keep the cost of living down. Nahil pointed out to him that what he was saying was nonsense because unlike the good old days, Lanka Sathosa was presently catering to less than 5% of the market. Then Ravi messed the sale up to some extent, debating whether to sell 49% off and the Government to be in control of the rest, to which Nahil disagreed. To tide over his error of judgment, Ravi suggested a deal, insisting they have a management agreement with the buyer like Emirates had with SriLankan Airlines. Nahil was against it and suggested that they should operate in accordance with the Companies Act. In his analysis of the entire operation he seemed to think that maybe 30 years ago, CWE was a ‘kingmaker,’ a mass trading house that spiralled downwards after imports started, now basically no more. He emphasized that these Government types are control freaks, wanting control of everything they touch and without this they will revert to the nobodies they were. That’s the long and short of it. Sadly, it’s happening even today. Even in the term PPP used today; instead of privatization, two more Ps have been added, which means ‘private-public partnership’ or some such rubbish. He believes the two Ps give them a handle on it. It should have been just a privatization, and sadly this is no more.

As expected, the expansion and divestment of Lanka Sathosa, the raising of funds and equity was not possible, thanks to Ravi and his lack of foresight. Subsequently, the shares were sold to a rather unique consortium comprising Carsons, Arpico and Ceylon Biscuits who made a 600 million rupee bid for Lanka Sathosa. A few weeks later Roshanne passed away and Nahil resigned. As the buyers tried raising the capital for the 49%, the shareholders could not be matched by the government – thus the expansion could not take place and Sathosa reverted to the government, with the original buyers loosing the money invested.

This and That

Dan’s Plan Actioned – The strategy Nahil used for the sale of their East West Clearing & Forwarding shares to Dan was his genius. Dan had to come up with a payment plan and they had agreed to 30 million rupees. Dan, unable to furnish this amount of money, looked to Nahil for some guidance on how to work around the situation. Determined to come up with a plan to help Dan, Nahil, who loves challenges, especially if someone says it is not possible, informed Dan that he could have all the East West Haulage equipment since there was no point in hanging onto the lot. Nahil transferred the entire Clearing & Forwarding documentation and the haulage documents to Dan, with him going in for a lease with LOLC. EWH sold the equipment to LOLC, which they in turn leased to East West C&F. LOLC perused Dan’s history in the clearing and forwarding business, showing no interest in the equipment. Nahil used the equipment as a vehicle for Dan, inflating the cost of the equipment to cover his selling cost to Dan, who was happy for not being compelled to make any capital investment. The lease was signed based only on Dan’s balance sheets of the previous year. He paid his lease and it was done. Like a Volkswagen, a simple machine.

Flower Drum – Nahil was one of four investors in Flower Drum, a Chinese restaurant launched by David Gyi in the early ’80s. The other investors were Sohli Captain, Lester Weinman and Tony Arnolda. David offered the investors a nice deal where instead of a cash dividend on their investments they could dine at Flower Drum to the value of Rs. 4,000 a month, a princely sum at the time, which was agreed to by all concerned.

David Gyi who was formally involved in Chop Sticks Restaurant migrated with his family to Australia in the late ‘70s. Not finding their expectations met in Australia, the family returned to Sri Lanka. Lester’s cousin Cheryl was David’s wife. Lester being a good friend of David, decided to help David set up a new Chinese restaurant, being one of theinvestors in the restaurant. All four investors put down Rs.50K each and the restaurant, Flower Drum was launched in a building owned byDr. Nadesan, which was formerly a dispensary situated at the top of 5th lane, on Thurstan road.

The restaurant was thriving, being more or less the best place for a good Chinese meal in Colombo expanding to Flower Lounge and Flower Song. On one occasion, during a ‘take away,’ Nahil noticed the ‘take away’ bill was issued through Flower Drum Catering Services. Puzzled, he showed the bill to Lester and inquired if he was aware of this, and how another company was being operated within the premises with another set of shareholders. They called David, questioning him on this new company; David told them this company was formed to avoid VAT, which did not apply to takeaway businesses promising he would regularize this sometime soon as a part of the investment of the four original shareholders. Nahil was not happy and requested David to buy his share. David wanted to know how much the share cost. When given the figure, he said “impossible”. Then to be fair Nahil offered to buy David’s share at the same price quoted by Nahil for his share. When Lester heard of Nahil’s offer to buy David’s share, he questioned Nahil as to what he was trying to get into and what the heck he knew about running a restaurant. At that point, Nahil reminded Lester that they had started lots of projects they knew nothing about and not done too badly. ‘‘Ironically, here we were talking about operating a restaurant; a few years into the future and we are operating a 5 star hotel!’’ The next day David bought Nahil’s share at the quoted price.

Regressing from above, one evening David hosted a dinner for many of his friends. Included in the guest list was Nahil. During the dinner, David stood up and announced to his guests that he was contesting the upcoming election for the post of Captain of the Royal Colombo Golf Club (RCGC) and requested all present to join the club as members and vote for him. This is how Nahil ended up as a member of the Golf Club.

East-West Trading – It was incorporated in 1982, headed by Mazar Fazerally, mainly trading in spice exports to India. The spices were stored in a rented warehouse that caught fire or wilfully set on fire during the ’83 communal riots. As a result all the stored goods were destroyed amounting to huge losses since neither the goods nor the warehouse were insured. After settling in full the bank loan taken, they immediately discontinued the operation. The other shareholders were Nihal Wickramanayake and Jith Warnakulasuriya. The two of them including Mazer backed out leaving Nahil to carry the burden. Nahilsettled the bank loan in two years.

Mentors – During his tenure as an apprentice at Walkers, he had the privilege of being mentored by three machine operators, Siripala, Simon and Camillus – “The best I’ve encountered in all my years,” says Nahil. They taught him drilling, boring, milling, etc., inculcating in him the finer ‘tricks’ of the trade. After the three retired they were somewhat destitute and he took it upon himself to look after the three financially. Of the three, only Camillus is alive and sadly has cancer. He comes around periodically to the office where the staff have adopted him, helping him with his requirements. Matthias was the foreman at that time.

The Forbes & Walker Building

Forbes & Walker Building

Vanik, a financial securities company that issued bonds with very high interest rates was launched in 1980. Vanik was doing well and heading the company as Chairman was Justin Meegoda. Besides buying the bonds, Nahil also bought sufficient shares in Vanik that automatically made him a Board member of the company. Being a Board member helped him study how the system worked. The articles of incorporation of Vanik stated that no shareholder could buy more than 10% shares. Upsetting this rule, he bought 12% of the shares, so that as a member of the Board he could keep an eye on his bonds which were above Rs.300 million paying an interest of 15%.

The first year it all went well and the interest was paid without a hitch. The next year on one occasion he found out that all the interest cheques had gone out to the investors while his interest cheque was held back. Inquiring as to why he was not paid, Justin Meegoda informed him that since he was a Director they would settle him sometime later. He vehemently protested, informing Justin that he got on the Board as a Director to find out how the system worked and to make sure he got his interest paid to him along with the other investors. He found out that there were various conditions in place pertaining to the payment ofinterest and that one such condition was the failure to make the interest payment permits the receiver to request the liquidation of the company. The reason for the Board panicking, was that they were short of finances. Nahil requested his bonds back and since they were short on cash, in place of his investment they offered him the Forbes and Walker building on Navam Mawatha, Lanka Tiles and a mix of shares in various companies to make up the difference. This was how he acquired the Forbes and Walker building.

The members of the Vanik Board were persons who were really serious. He remembers Mr. Tilakaratne, ex-Governor of the Central Bank; Ajith Jayaratne, Chairman of Forbes and Walker; and Ricky Mendis, the Chairman of Delmege Forsythe. While things took their course, the final straw was the Vanik Board meetings which would go on for eight hours at a stretch.

They also owned a soya bean company and a tile company. Though Vanik started as a very successful financial firm, its downward spiral was due to diversifying into unchartered territory especially with the purchase of Forbes & Walker. Finally, it was decided at a Board meeting to liquidate all the subsidiaries and stick only to Vanik, which was their ‘core’ business.

The following month at a meeting, Justin Meegoda informed the members that he had got a new recruit, Mr. Smith, to head the travel company, Tour East Lanka. Nahil and the rest of the board were taken aback that Justin had found a new top manager from Emirates Holidays This was because the travel agency was in the throes of being shut down with the head of the agency migrating to Australia and this was the easiest manner to shut down the agency without retrenchment compensation. The board had decided to wind down all the non-financial businesses including the soya bean company, the tile company and the plantations to name a few along with the travel agency, and now Justin comes up with a new manager for the travel agency. It seemed a revival was taking place.

Nahil questioned the Board on how they planned to meet the expenses of operating the travel agency, including a car for the manager. Justin was quite confident that a car could be bought for Mr. Smith with a loan arranged on a bank guarantee given by Vanik to the travel company. Nahil then informed the Board that giving a bank gaurantee was as good as giving cash and as discussed at a prior meeting, they were supposed to stick to the core business, telling them that if they carried on like this, they would soon be saying ‘flda’ business!’’

Vanik operated the first credit card company in Bangladesh. One weekday at the end of an eight hour meeting, as Ajith Jayaratne and Nahil stood waiting for the lift, Mr. Tilakaratne ambled towards the lift and informed him that Justin and he were travelling to Bangladesh for their Board meeting. Nahil was livid, questioning as to why two people had to travel for the meeting that could be chaired by one person. They were booked to fly business class and their per diem was US$ 600 per person for four days including a separate charge for hotel accommodation. He was able to extract these figures through the travel company Tour East Travels. Before their return, he did a full search into corporate travel and found that by way of expenses, they were far ahead of the more profitable agents in the market. At the next Board meeting, he voiced his concerns by suggesting they scale down, cutting down on spending and working within their means. Nahil was a person who always traveled coach (economy class) starting from his first trip to the UK as a student; and now in his 70’s he always travels economy class and pays for the tickets. Whenever he has travelled business class it has been due to an upgrade using his points or his ticket being paid for if he is on a consultancy. Many people question him as to why he opts for coach when he can easily afford business class.His reply was ‘‘I can interact with people of diverse backgrounds which I find extremely interesting’’.

A few years later, no longer involved in Vanik, while boarding a flight he had to pass through business class to get to coach, he bumped into Justin Meegoda who was flying business class. He remarked to Justin, “Here we go again, you are flying business class.” They had a good laugh with him seizing the opportunity to make fun of the situation.

Later on, whilst winding down his empire on Navam Mawatha, he sold the Forbes & Walker building to Dilmah, who were willing to pay a premium price for the property since they already owned Forbes & Walker plantations.

Airlanka Cargo

In 2001 he recalled meeting Ranil at a function hosted by Ravi Karunanayake, where, at a discussion, Ranil mentioned to the group he was chatting with, that once he became PM he would get rid of the Emirates agreement, which at the time, restricted any other local airline operating out of Colombo.

Taking him at his word, once the Emirates agreement was terminated, East West launched a cargo carrier, using a good marketing ploy by naming the enterprise Airlanka Cargo. The name ‘Airlanka’ was not registered by the Registrar of Companies, thus keeping the name open to anyone to use. As they started up Airlanka Cargo, there were no restrictions in place for cargo carriers. They started up virtually hitting the ground running, doing test runs using a Russian aircraft on the Colombo-Male-Sharjah-Chennai-Colombo sector. The project was amazing. It was all about getting the ground-work in place for a passenger carrier and not about the cash. Their ploy of using the name ‘Airlanka’ paid off, so much so that whenever they handed out their business cards to people, with Airlanka on the cards, it opened many doors, though they made it a point to enlighten everyone that their operation was independent, with no connection to SriLankan Airlines. The name helped when it came to Sharjah and other destinations.

East West Cargo Place – AirLanka.org

In the midst of all this, the SriLankan Airlines management was up in arms that East West was operating under the Airlanka banner. Aware that East West was in the clear using the name Airlanka, operating within the rules, there was nothing they could do, thus SriLankan started annoying Airlanka by filing cases against it. An injunction was filed for two weeks each time. They kept repeating this many times over which amounted to Vexatious Litigation. This barred them from using the name Airlanka when answering phones etc. SriLankan used this harassment tactic, which was good. They sent Shibly Aziz, their lawyer, to Dubai to negotiate this, by which time Nahil had many letters and emails in support of Airlanka, outlining how the Emirates agreement was ‘thrust’ upon the Government – a four-way airline agreement between SriLankan, Emirates, the Sri Lankan Government and the Department of Civil Aviation, prepared by Emirates and handed over to CBK.

A person who worked previously for the Department of Civil Aviation, presently working in the Middle East, informed Nahil that there was a way out, claiming the DCA was not party to a commercial venture, since they had removed the Director General of Civil Aviation (DGC) from being a party to the Emirates/SriLankan Airlines agreement; he confirmed this avenue could be used. The DCA is responsible for the issue of licences for airlines. The Government had left the DCA out of the SriLankan-Emirates agreement, therefore it could issue licences without this being an issue.

The day Shibly was leaving for Dubai, Nahil met and informed him there was a loophole in the system since the issuing authority was the DGC who had no affiliation to either SriLankan or Emirates airlines. Shibly mentioned that he would keep in mind what Nahil had told him. A few days later, he conveyed to Nahil that according to Emirates, if Nahil proceeded with his airline, Emirates would send back the Sri Lankan housemaids employed there. Nahil ceased operations immediately.

East West was keen to operate the Colombo/Jaffna run under the ‘Airlanka’ banner and tried to do the pilot run in an aircraft chartered from Russia. This aircraft had been previously used by the charter operator for gun and ammo running in Africa. The aircraft, chartered for US$ 50,000, had to comply with the DGC regulations which the operator promised to get done. Airlanka had already paid the cash to the airline operator when the airport informed them that the aircraft was being prepped for take-off illegally. On account of the operator’s dishonesty, East West decided to get the charter operator to furnish a bank guarantee of US$ 50,000, which they were unable to encash. This went on for three years. In the melee, the same aircraft was sent to Karachi with a haul of cargo. Whilst landing, the plane’s landing gear played up and the flight crash-landed on the runway, causing the airport to be closed. Airlanka Cargo was banned from arriving into Karachi!

Patent for Method of Manufacture – Fixed Dish Antennas

15 meter satellite recieving dish

When Asia Sat 1, the first broadcast satellite, was launched to cover Asia, the beam centre was in Pakistan and the signal was very weak by the time it reached Sri Lanka.

The only stations using this satellite were ETV and Maharaja for MTV, who had bought a 50’ diameter NEC receiving antenna for a few million dollars.

ETV required only one signal from Asia Sat which was quite stable in its station allocation at 108 degrees. They decided to experiment with a fixed dish of 50’ diameter pointing at the Asia Sat 1 built out of concrete. Nahil and his crew knew approximately where the signal was and constructed the antenna nearby. To fine-tune the exact location, they had an axis of this semi parabolic template that was to be cut to the shape of the reflecting surface. The axis was moved around till the pilot dish showed a faint signal from Asia Sat 1. This confirmed what was required to cut the parabolic shape for the 50’ diameter. Once the shape was cast, they lined the 50’ surface with reflecting kitchen foil stuck to the concrete with fiberglass resin and finished it at the pick-up point for the broadcast. They were receiving broadcast quality signals on all the channels. This dish cost just 3.5 million rupees akin to the MTV dish which was around US$30 million. Nahil patented for the alignment of fixed dishes. Shortly after, when he met Maha at a function, he inquired of him as to why he spent such a colossal sum of money on the NEC antenna for MTV.

Nahil’s buddy, Jim Sow, was keen to introduce the then, recently appointed CEO of MTV, Robert Barton to Nahil who was quite happy to meet him, the only condition being that Barton pays for the beers at the Hilton Sports Bar. During their conversation, Barton questioned Nahil as to why he was taking on Maharajas, which had very deep pockets; Nahil was quick to respond that this was the kind of challenge he liked, concluding with “Game on, MTV!”

Patent Granted

Marriott Resort and Spa Weligama

After the Intercontinental Hotel was sold, his two younger children Vijitha and Anika, who along with him were previously fully involved in the day-to-day operations of the Intercontinental, decided to continue in the hotel business. Nahil thought this was a great way to keep them occupied, even if they kept themselves busy by just hanging around the place. With the prevailing minimum rates in the Colombo hotels, which they absolutely disagreed with, and not too keen on acquiring anything in Colombo, their sights were set on acquiring a place out of Colombo, since the minimum rates did not apply to non-city hotels.

Vijitha took it upon himself to source a suitable site, surveying almost 60 properties along the east and west coast of the island. Nahil requested Vijitha to bear in mind the property he was looking for should have main road frontage and beach frontage, void of a rail crossing approaching the site. He also stressed that the advantage ofmain road frontageis the free publicity considering the number of vehicles that ply the route daily, and all that is needed is excellent signage.

In his research, he noticed that most of the bigger hotels along the coast had a rail crossing over the road or no proper beach frontage, one example being the Blue Water Hotel, which has beach frontage but one has to cross a railway line to get there, thanks to the British, who built the railroad adjacent to the beach.

The site in Weligama was unique in the sense that the rail line was set on the east of the main road while the site was on the right side of the road, overlooking the beautiful Weligama Bay, right on the beach, a surfers’ paradise.

Anika, Nahil Arne, Vijitha

Site secured, they browsed the worldwide hotel networks to look for the largest chain of hotels; the potential manager of the property, a chain whose priority was good marketing. They selected the Marriot chain which is the largest hotel chain in the world – even bigger than the Hilton Chain- with over 7000 properties which include the Ritz Carlton, Westin and Sheraton hotels. It was plain to see that the Marriott chain was streets ahead in marketing and industry standards, especially after the purchase of the Sheraton chain. The Marriot has more than 5,700 hotels in 110 countries across the globe with their international headquarters located in Bethesda, Maryland, founded by J.Willard Marriot and his wife. It is presently headed by Bill Marriot the Executive Chairman andArne Sorenson is the President and CEO.

Vijitha and Anika were hands-on dealing with the hotel project from day one – negotiating the management agreements with Marriott and following the 600 pages of Marriott design guidelines. Anika was also in charge of procurement and the interior decor for the hotel with a team based in their Colombo office at the WTC. Nahil says he can’t think of anyone in Sri Lanka who has had this kind of experience in constructing a hotel to international brand standards and maintains all this was an educational trip for both kids. For him, it was mostly the sort of exposure they got for general business, something that both have picked up, considering they were just raw off university. Even though this work experience was different from their pursued degrees, he believes the ‘on- the-job’ training acquired will stay with them always. As a team, they got the ball rolling by speaking to Marriott India, all the legal stuff from Delhi and the operational procedure from Bombay. Anika attended to the management agreement, researching on the net for all the various agreements and the variations available. One request put forward by Marriott and agreed upon was a minimum of 200 rooms. According to Marriot, anything less than 200 rooms was not viable or worth it when it came to sending a Marriot-trained General Manager for the hotel. Marriott loved the view from the site, but raised the question of how East West Properties proposed to sell the rooms on the other side of the hotel overlooking the road since everyone would request a sea view.

Touring our Site

Nahil decided to make full use of the view, building a single loaded slab where all the rooms faced the ocean with a single corridor overlooking the road, serving the rooms. Originally the decision was five floors, which had to be doubled to ten floors to accommodate the 200 sea-facing rooms. It consisted of ten floors above ground with guest rooms, a service floor and mezzanine floor – altogether 13 floors. After the hotel was handed over to Marriott, Nahil as the owner, had the choice of appointing the General Manager and the Financial Director which can be refuted three times. In the event of a fourth time, he would have to agree to the Marriott choice. The present GM is an Indian, Elton Hurtis. All nine heads of the various departments are also Indians in charge of training and local recruitment.

A month into the hotel’s operation, while Nahil was testing all four restaurants, he invited Margu Murugeswaran to lunch with him. Before the meal, he ordered some beers. Upon receiving the bill, it read bill #xxx, owner’s discount 50%. Then he knew Marriott had taken over. He was a guest now!

Completing his three score and ten with few more years added on, he decided to hang up his boots and start taking things easy, thus when an offer for the hotel came in from HPL Singapore, owned by billionaire Singapore businessman, Mr.Ong Beng Seng. He had met him at the signing of the Singapore/Sri Lanka free trade agreement on the 23rd of January 2018, when Mr. Seng accompanied the Prime Minister of Singapore to the event. Mr.Ong Beng Seng who as a young man, started his career as an insurance underwriter is today the owner of HPL Hotel Properties Limited in Singapore. They are also the owning company of the Singapore Hilton and a multitude of luxe hotels across the globe, including the multi-franchise Komoco Group. In 2007, Mr. Ong clinched the deal to bring the F1 race to Singapore (Singapore Night Races) after a year of negotiations, due in large part to his friendship with F1 boss Berni Ecclestone. The F1 race and the accompanying glamour events saw Mr. Ong, top ‘The Straits Times’ lifestyle power list.

View from the road

Nahil figured it was the right time to sell. The negotiations went on for a few months with Mr. Stephen Lau, Chairman of HPL and finally, he sold the hotel to HPL in March of 2019 for US$57M. The final payment due to him was scheduled for the second week of April and due to the Sinhala and Tamil New Year holiday the payment was delayed, and finally paid to him on the 19th of April, and the bomb went off on Easter Sunday the 21st of April.

While he has enjoyed all his years of of hard work he is now taking life easy and is bored with nothing to do. He has made sure his three children, Vajira, Vijitha and Anika have a financially secure future by gifting them shares he owned in East West Properties. He fondly refers to them as his ‘very gifted family.’

While discussing what he hopes to do in the days to come with so much time on his hands, He has finally decided to pursue that ‘pink gin’ that has been eluding him for so many years by escaping to some remote island in the pacific, sit under a swaying palm and sip on that pink gin with his current Phillipina babe but he says, after covid-19 is completely erradicated throughout the world. This could be a never ever.

Lalith Coonghe, living in France, a seafarer friend of Nahil’s, married to a French lady, was sent to Sri Lanka to set up the Walls Ice Cream factory under the Unilever brand. Though Nahil was not too keen, Lalith tried his best to cajole Nahil to buy the plant, with a promise that he was more than willing to stay in Sri Lanka and operate the factory for him. Nahil, realising the plant would be ideal for Cargills, kept bombarding his friend Anthony Page (Baba), Chairman of Cargills to buy it. Baba kept on resisting, haggling about the price, etc., until Unilever bought the price down very low due to an epic fail in its marketing strategy, especially the cycle vendors. The price quoted was a steal. Baba finally relented and bought the plant and ‘Cargills Magic’ Ice Cream was launched.

Touring our Site

His Typical Day
Nahil is up by 5 a.m. most mornings, around the time the Asian markets open. New Zealand opens at 8 a.m. NZ time, which is around 3:30 a.m. SL time. He gets to bed each night waiting for sunrise so he can get to the market place and do something constructive. Sitting at his computer, he does some gold trading and if he makes over a million bucks in that day’s trading, he takes a shot of his spreadsheet and sends it to the three children, and his two sisters, who keep advising him against sending it to the kids, saying, “They will think this is an easy way to make money.” He counters the claim by telling them that he makes a million in three hours because he is right, even though it’s a bit of a gamble. This is not a daily occurrence and losses are inevitable. His daily objective is to be doing something useful to keep the ticker going and the grey cells active. He is not a ‘gym-goer.’ He says he has never worked out in a gymnasium per se. He has a treadmill in his room on which he works out for ten minutes, three times a week – trying to emulate Lee Kwan Yew, a hero. He believes his routine of keeping himself occupied by doing something useful beats gym time any day. Each time the adventure of the journey gets him to his destination with the job well done. His big issue is delegating. Each time he delegates, he loses money; whereas some people are experts at delegating and getting things done. With him, it’s hands-on from start to finish. With the hotel recently sold, he works from home, which he seems to enjoy, cutting time spent on the road, thus channelling that time into doing something productive.

He kick-starts his day with a cuppa and fruit followed by a light Sri Lankan breakfast bathala or kiribath with pol and lunumiris is at the top of his list, checking his day’s schedule on his computer while having his breakfast. This time is also spent answering the many WhatsApp messages from his portfolio of ‘baes’ in the Philippines, who appeal for financial help. He faithfully makes his way to Orchard road to send them the money through Kabayan, one of the many Philipino money transfer agencies located at Lucky Plaza. Reaching out to them, he is helping some of the hard pressed people in a third world country live with some dignity. He says, while he was not in a position to solve the problems of the world, he believes in helping those he comes across in daily life. ‘‘If they need my help, I don’t hesitate to help them financially.’’

He generally requests those he has appointments with to call him an hour before their meeting since scheduling it on his phone is a wasted exercise, considering someone has to remind him to check his phone! By the way, he insists that it has been researched and proven that ‘forgetfulness is a sign of intelligence’. He forgets who said this…

Being a citizen of Singapore, Nahil spends his days dividing his time between his homes in Singapore and Colombo, but with C-19 rampant in Singapore, he now lives in Colombo.

Life has come full circle. His three children are all settled and well provided for, while he is once again a true blue bachelor. Interestingly, he is technologically on ‘fast-forward,’ always online, looking up new and exciting developments and keeping abreast of the happenings around the world. All this helps him keep the grey cells buzzing and his mind active, which he emphasises is important as one grows older.

Lady Ridgeway Hospital
Author’s Words

Dear reader, while compiling and writing Nahil’s biography, I ‘ve strived to do my best to expand and highlight in as much detail as possible the narrative of his life without bordering on boredom – the proactive and productive times of this man’s exciting career and his maverick approach to life along with short and subtle glimpses of his colourful personal life.

I sincerely hope you draw inspiration from his many achievements in the dynamic sphere of his work-life – never shy of hard work, his ability to pursue and persevere, reach for the stars, occasionally falling short but rising above, his compassion, the ability of being a ‘machang’ to people from all backgrounds, being generous to a fault, his fireball advocacy for the underdog, and being always confident in himself and what he stands for, despite the many curve balls thrown at him in life.

I have spent many hours reflecting on his story, trying to come up with one word to describe him. I finally did! Unique. That’s the ‘Mot juste.’

He is himself; he is ‘simply Nahil.’