![]() Last week, randomly, a group of artists spoke about Kapuge. He did not explain, he did not apologize, he did not defend himself. Kapuge passed on a year and a half later. The point was this: Ranbanda was appalled by Kapuge’s decision and didn’t mince his words when expressing objection. ![]() Whereas even a wife’s love could pass one by ‘where the Yoda Ela bends’, a mother would wait by the wicket gate outside her humble home until the son, reviled, ridiculed and abandoned, returns home. The connection with Ranbanda was this: he wrote the lyrics for what became one of Kapuge’s most endearing songs, ‘Davasak pela nethi hene’ which is about the unfailing quality of a mother’s love. He had signed a contract to do produce an album with the band ‘Sunflowers’ which according to some was more about profit and less about being sensitive to the human condition. Gunadasa Kapuge had done what no one expected him to do. ‘We should ask why Gunadasa Kapuge was sitting in a far corner of the cemetery, all by himself, and weep copious tears,’ a friend told me a few days later when we reflected soberly on the loss the nation had suffered. ![]() He died on December 5, 2001. The mortal remains of this lawyer cum lyricist and self-confessed ‘bayya’ from Mahakanadaragama, Anuradhapura was cremated a couple of days later. Ranbanda Seneviratne is a man who never abandoned the ordinary and especially subjugated segments of this country, not where the Yoda Ela bends and not anywhere else either.
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