Malinda Words: Calling Kapila Bandaranayake, wherever he may be!

Kapila Bandaranayake wowed teachers and fellow students while at Royal College

Most students have favourite teachers. Some teachers are liked by many, but it is hard to think of anyone who was loved by as many as Mrs Shanthi Herat was during the time she taught Pure Mathematics at Royal College. Almost everyone in the maths stream has a story about ‘Faluda,’ as she was affectionately called, or else they’ve heard of one. They all have to do with someone or many being in love with her.

She was brilliant, even those of us who weren’t good students, could tell. The general consensus was that if Faluda and Uta (Mr Malcolm Eustace) were given the same math paper, they would both score 100%, except that whereas the latter would take all three hours, Faluda would finish it in half the time or less.

Mr Eustance, much older and far more experienced, was to my mind the better teacher. Faluda probably appealed more to the bright students, i.e. those who could keep up with her speed. There was one boy at least who was faster than Faluda, according to Duminda Ariyasinghe.

Duminda Ariyasinghe, one batch senior, former Director General of the Board of Investment, who switched from mathematics to arts and went on to specialise in economics at Colombo University, where he played rugby and captained too I believe, all the while writing for the now defunct Sun newspaper, shared with me something he had been inspired to write following accolades showered upon another Royalist, Yasantha Rajakarunanayake by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.

Duminda, while acknowledging that Yasantha was one of the most brilliant students at Royal, opined that everyone knew he was a genius even when he was a schoolboy, spoke about the other genius in the class, Kapila Bandaranayake.

‘There was only one other student I would place in the same genius class as Yasantha and that’s my classmate, Kapila Bandaranayake. Not only was Kapila utterly brilliant, he was also more than eccentric. He would tell the Pure Math teacher, “madam, there are three shorter ways to solve this problem,” and she would give him the chalk.’

This was confirmed by my brother Arjuna, who was in the same class. Duminda continued:

‘Just like with the Bezos story, students from other classes would come to him to solve difficult problems. Kapila was not only brilliant but he was “nuts” and there are so many funny stories about him. We sat next to each other in class in the double math stream for 2+ years but after I switched over to the Arts stream before entering university where I specialized in Economics, I lost contact with him. This was of course before email and WhatsApp and he didn’t have a land phone. I met him sometime after, and he told me he had just entered University of Moratuwa to study Engineering. I asked him if he was mad as he was a Math genius and should have entered the University of Colombo to study math. The reason he gave was beyond frivolous. I told him if possible to get a transfer to Colombo as soon as possible.

I met him again some months later, and he was looking despondent. He had refused to do some submissions at Moratuwa first year that involved drawings, and he had failed the subject. He told me he had belatedly taken the advice and was trying to get a transfer to the Math program at Colombo but the UGC had been inflexible, saying “another student will lose a chance if we allow a transfer.” This was absurd as universities worldwide typically approve transfers and anyone could have seen Kapila’s best grades were in math. That was the last I saw him. Over the past few decades, I have asked many of my batchmates and others but he had just vanished without a trace.'

Duminda’s contention is that Sri Lankans are innately ingenious and that's why talk of Yasantha reminded him of Kapila:

‘I had coined the phrase “Island of Ingenuity” for the Sri Lankan IT/Knowledge Services industry many years ago when another friend and fellow branding buff Ruchi G had sought my advice.
We may be small in numbers but we more than make up for it by our ingenuity. Yasantha and Banda are two prime examples but there are so many other gems.’

No one knows where Faluda is. No one knows where Banda is. We need people like them.

And so, I appeal, along with my friend Duminda and my brother Arjuna: ‘Kapila Bandaranayake, wherever you may be, please, please contact your school friends. They need you, and so do we, as a people.’

['The Morning Inspection' is the title of a column I wrote for the Daily News from 2009 to 2011, one article a day, Monday through Saturday. This is the 297th article in the new series that began in December 2022. Links to previous articles are given below]

20 December 2023

Calling Kapila Bandaranayake, wherever he may be!

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