I mentioned Rajah in my memoir on the public service in Nuwara Eliya in the early 1960s and have offered your readers, since, a sample of anecdotes that illustrated his sense of humour, which almost always attained the status of wit. His life-style was such that, say, thirty years ago, one might have thought that in his passage through sansara he’d soon be tenured as Court Jester in the palace of a Maharajah like himself. He did fancy the position of purohita but Felix Dias and Anura Bandaranaike wished that role upon themselves, and Gamini Dissanayake ‘advisers’ should work, actually. Given his very English ways Rajah may have preferred to tip-toe his way in while St. Peter took time off to wipe his eyes. He passed away last week at 78.

He was born into a wealthy and, in some ways, a unique family. His older brother, Artie Seneviratne, was ambushed and killed while he was on his way to a family estate in Kalkudah in May 1958 (part of which, his older son, whom I met for the first time at Rajah’s funeral, told me yet remains). Artie Seneviratne was Mayor of Nuwara Eliya at the time. He was a prominent personage no doubt but the proceedings related to his obsequies were, at best, unwarranted; at worst incendiary.

His body was brought, with in/appropriate stops/slow-downs, via Maha Oya, Bibile and, I think Badulla, through Welimada to Nuwara Eliya, igniting anger all the way. The communal riots had commenced in and around Colombo, and S W R D Bandaranaike, in an Address to the Nation that I listened to over the radio, mentioned/drew attention to the fact that Artie Seneviratne, the Mayor of Nuwara Eliya, had been killed in Kalkudah. It was clear as daylight, in this thrice-blessed land, and dark as dark could be anywhere, that Bandaranaike’s ‘address’ fanned the flames that were by then visible over Mount Lavinia.

We rarely discussed personal matters relating to his immediate family; such discussions had rather to do with his new-found ‘families’, some of whom, I felt, as did other friends, tended to regard him as a man of wealth and so on. And, so, I do not know where Rajah was at the time of his brother’s death; I should think he was in London at the time pursuing his studies at some Inn or the other. When I was posted to Nuwara Eliya some four years later Rajah was His Worship the Mayor and, at some point thereafter his namesake and cousin too served as Mayor of Nuwara Eliya: hence the particular distinction of that family.

Rajah tended to act as though his given name was a title acquired by inheritance. He was always attired (not dressed) immaculately (no connotation of ‘convent’ there) and was chauffeured through his domain in a big car, a Plymouth or an Austin Princess more ‘well-appointed’ than Cyril Gardiner or any yakko in Colombo could boast.

In the spare calendar of public events in Nuwara Eliya at that time were the (horse, not pony) races (on a course that’s now been taken over rather like the reservations around the railway tracks) and the Flower Show, the big events of the year. The first was graced by socialites from Colombo-way, Ooh-la-la Jutehessian at the top of that mound of blossoms, some fading, supported by husbands who had mountains of ready cash for the most part traceable unlike nowadays. The second was long looked forward to by Planters’ wives, poor dears.

The atmosphere was charged, needless to say, by pistols being primed and claws refurbished. Disputes were sometimes carried over to the Grand Hotel; some resolution was sought on the dance floor, men playing macho, women displaying the agility of behinds - in so far as that was possible before baila had been allowed in. The agricultural exhibition and that of cottage industries, mostly handloom cloth, offered easy-picks for the cognoscenti from the low-country or downland.

I did sketch, in thumb-nail fashion, Rajah’s skirmish with the Kachcheri. It occurred in 1963 and bears re-telling.

I quote:

"Quite beyond the authority of the Kachcheri was ‘His Worship’ the Mayor, Rajah Seneviratne (no relation). Back from Oxford or Cambridge or some such tutory, and a Barrister-at-Law, he had succeeded his big brother, Artie, (whose murder in Kalkudah lent fire to the outage of 1958). When the ‘April Season’ came round, Rajah assumed he’d be the King of the show; anyway, he was monarchy and he could run it as he wished, with ‘Oo-la-la Jute-hessian’ and her long cigarette-holder and all.

"Custom was that the Kachcheri ran the agricultural exhibition. Rajah declared that it was his prerogative as Mayor. The Government Agent told him, ‘You are Mayor of the Nuwara Eliya town, I am G A for the whole District’. Rajah would not budge: ‘Do what you wish in the District, the Park belongs to the Municipality’. The G A said he’d take back the Park under the Land Acquisition Act.

"The Superintendent of Police was called in as mediator, and, as I happened to be there on a brief visit and knew Rajah, in so far as anybody knew him at the time, including himself, I was co-opted into the negotiations. The matter was resolved, the Agricultural Exhibition and all else being handled by the Kachcheri, the Flower Show with its roses and carnations and lilies and all by (the) Rajah."

Among the many elements that marked his character was that, among his peers, he was a good friend. He was not as understanding with Sugath, his companion of some two decades who together with his family in Badulla had been with him through the difficult points in his life.

Rajah adjusted to the loss of empire and lucre in his own fashion. He resumed his practice in the law, mostly in Nuwara Eliya and Welimada. Much of the real estate had been evaporated and he moved in to rented premises. When I visited him with my younger son and daughter, he gave us his bed, the only one in the house, and left them to battle over who would sleep in the middle. He told them, ‘I am an Arab, child. I live on Dates!’ He cut his coat according to the cloth, never mentioned the state of his finances. Whenever he succeeded in encashing his real estate, he was rather naive about the procedure for doing that and about what to do with the cash.

When my wife and I visited him some years later, en route to Hakgala, he took us to Baker’s Farm for breakfast with a former UN operative, Chelliah(?), who had rented the place. Raju Comaraswamy and his wife and daughter were there. After a strenuous effort by our host to make a ‘Bloody Mary’ (Raju encouraging him to add more sauce etc so it could be ‘a proper curry’), we all went to Hakgala.

Patrick Fernando, our most committed poet in English, came up and said, in words I could not associate with him, ‘Did you not hear of the great tragedy of my life?’ Raju was pointing out to his daughter the kind of vine he had in mind over the porch of his house on Pedris Road that his tenant had grafted himself into. He was not to see that day; not long after, Chelliah and Patrick and Raju passed on.

At the best and the worst of times Rajah was hardly ever, at appropriate times of the day, without a glass of alcohol in his hands, but he was not a heavy drinker. He paced himself until he was felled by a stroke. At the cemetery in Mount Lavinia his family and friends were there to say goodbye in their own fashion.

Gamini Seneviratne