Michael Roberts in Adelaide, August 2025
Among a small pile of photgrpahs, letters and papers left by my departed elder sister, Estelle Fernando, is a printed ‘pamphlet’ published by Yasodhara Kumaratunga, the eldest daughter of Vijaya Kumaratunga and Chandrika Bandaranaike.
It presents thirteen brief poems coined by Yasodhara when she was “in exile in London” — as the Foreword by an unknown person tells us. These were “written by Yasodhara between the ages of 8 plus 1/2 years – 11 years” during a period when she was beginning to learn English after an education in Sinhala.”
For the benefit of new generations and those unaware of the background, let me note that her father Wijaya Kumaratunga, a famous film star who had become a politician pursuing a conciliatory middle path in the Sinhala-Tamil conflict and had embarked on a mediating mission to the LTTE dominated arena of the Jaffna Peninsula in …… 1986 [see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxKjBepXwUM …. & ….]
The extremist militant group known as the JVP did not value Vijaya’s effort. They asssassinated him at his home at Kirulapona Colombo .on the 16th February 1988.
Chandrika and her two young ones would have gone into hiding immediately. It is my surmise that my sister had been one of Yasodhara’s teachers when she, Estelle, was head of the Montesoori section of Museaus College in Cinnamon Gardens, Colombo. It is possible that Estelle had also taught the two young Kumaratunga children to swim at the SSC pool in the same suburb — for that was another activity that she was widely known for.
Estelle and her husband CH Fernando, best known as “Mallie” 
….. young Estelle
…. an aged Estelle in retirement at her daughter & son-in-law’s home in Nugegoda beaming in the presence of Chandrika some years back — surely a mark of deep connections associated with a heartwrenching tragedy
YASODHARA’s FERTILE YOUNG MIND
