Trekking in a Himalayan desert in December 2008, sadly, I could not attend the funeral of E.D.Wickremanayake, so I penned an obituary which was published. In January this year when I visited H.L, he had read it and told me I must write his obituary without fail. Shattered and to relieve myself I told him not to talk rot. His wife Manel in anguish told him that I had just reviewed his book. 

I heard the sad news today (April 9) in a SMS message up 16400 feet near Zero Point in Sikkim and reached out grievingly for my palmtop in distress to fulfil a request which I had declined. 

HL outlived his generation, when law was practiced as a profession and performed as an art with cultured elegance and courtly courtesies. Law is in the statutes and treatises but he was the magician with his hands as the wand and the mind as the computer, weaved in ingenious spells of creativity with chosen words precise and concise, enunciated to grammatical perfection, to set forth innovative but coherent interpretations, which eventually were embedded in judgements and became law. Of course, it was crafted to suit the submission of the master advocate. He made it and sold it convincingly to establish his thinking, indeed, as the law.

No wonder, he was the most sought after lawyer of his times.  

Many knew him as a lawyer, I knew him better as HL the man. Law was too small a world for him. We spent so many holidays together; he hardly ever spoke of law-he treated it as time went by -as a dead letter. To know the man, there had to be encounters away from his chambers. With a premium whiskey in hand, late into the night at plantation bungalows, he would speak of the Bolivarian revolution and its impact on Latin America, the role he played in the UN to uplift the lot of the Palestinians and counter the Jewish lobby, his admiration for Malaysia and Mohamed Mahathir for standing up to the international community and his reverence for the Buddhist monks as the bulwark who stood stoutly against the anti- national forces in history. Beneath him, he was a man of God, a genuine contemporary Methodist. He was, in reality a Sinhala- Buddhist Methodist.

 Deep down he was a rebel with a cause, still comfortable in pin stripe suit. 

He was a patriot to his last drop of blood and as such called a racist by the Colombian society of upstarts. It is more a stimulating exercise to analyse on a couch the mentality of those who called him such names? He was proud of the title – than that of the conferred Deshamanya- and often referred to himself as such. He was uncompromising in his stands but yet intellectually realistic to understand the nations needs first. He was a nationalist mindful of the global context. He often said-"Do they think I would want to hurt Tamils when my son in law is a Tamil and I love my grand children".

His demise is a national tragedy when a forthcoming constitutional exercise is high on the country’s agenda. 

His intellectual fibre was so fine tuned, much of what he said and wrote, flew in a trajectory, well above those whom he addressed- most often in court. Appealing to him to fly at ground level to be understood, was of no avail. His response was if they don’t understand the basics, I cannot take them to the Montessori. Basics to him, sadly but understandably, were not fundamentals to others. An Intellectual Goliath as against us, Simple Simeons. He could discuss Pilger and Chomsky of the present to William Said and Adam Smith of the past with effortless ease. He was not a recluse –he enjoyed the company of intellectual stimulants. He requested me once to fix a weekend with Gunadasa Amarasekera and I did set it up in a comfortable cave house on a Kotagala tea estate. It was easy to fathom why he insisted on dictating to Manel an obituary on Mark Fernando while in great discomfort. 

On that trip to Kotagala we stopped to purchase provisions at Hatton. He came carrying a load of corn beef, pork sausages and brown eggs. He sheepishly explained these were rationed items at home because Manel watched his cholesterol levels and this was his moment to gormandize. He enjoyed good food, vintage spirits and local gossip; with it flew humourous anecdotes and an avalanche of knowledge from a reservoir of experience. At such times, HL was in another orbit far removed from Hultsdorf which was too small a window in his balcony. He was great fun. It was a shame he did not open himself more often and share it with many more.

He owed so much to Manel who lived and slaved for him. He trusted her intuition more than his. 

Being associated with him in possibly every major political case (except when the Bandaranaikes had a family battle in court) for the last 35 years-he never charged a cent for any one of them, including the case of the 1970 strikers. We had many a chuckle and a yarn on the principal characters in evenings over those cases-that was the reward. I refused to appear for Lalith Athulatmudali (not Gamini Dissanayake) on their expulsion case on a principle. He admonished me, "You are not to play God in times like this" and made me sign up. He declared counsel must not pass judgment on clients but leave it to the judges. 

Unfortunately, he would never waste his time passing on his vast knowledge-selfishly or otherwise- but being in his company was a learning process itself.  

His finest hour was when he made J.R Jayewardane’s political mock trial, the Special Presidential Commission, a nullity when they found Mrs Bandaranaike guilty at an ex parte hearing held at Queen’s Club in Buller’s Road. He scorned the Commissioners-as the three gentlemen who sit in a clubhouse - illegally constituted. He mesmerised the Supreme Court with stirring word play and inspired articulation. It was authentic theatre not a sanitised court room drama. To restore the Commission, the Parliament for the first time had to annul a judgment of court. The greatness was truly vintage HL. 

He was most angry after the historic North -East merger case because the court did not permit him to open up a platform for him to destroy the homeland theory. He wanted to kill two birds but the court was correct. The mischievous moment of the case was when he was urging one of the counsel for the respondents to raise the issue and was passing the points seated at the bar table to his opponent. He whispered to me "then these boys cannot stop me from replying". He had studied the homeland theory from the many hundreds of books he had purchased and wanted it shattered in a judgement, he felt Sarath Silva had the intellectual capacity to comprehend and deliver. 

That case has so many stories of him that need be said but I am rushing down the mountain to search for an internet café to fulfil his last wish to me. The journey will take me two days and can I reach before he is buried? 

Sir, you paid me a compliment in 1978 while driving your yellow DKW, which I still treasure. You decreed to me in a senatorial voice, "You have my permission to wave the red flag if I am exceeding limits. I am more confined to the law than to the world around". I used that veto only once- at the Experts Committee in 2008 appointed to look into the constitution where you were presiding. You later telephoned and questioned me on my shocking conduct and seemed displeased. Much later from Australia you thanked me profusely for asserting. That is the only certificate that is of value to me in these times.