Sunday Times 2
The woman who stood by Felix through his trials and tribulations – Appreciation
View(s):- Elizabeth Muthulakshmi Jayasundera
Elizabeth Muthulakshmi Jayasundera was a graduate in law from the University of Ceylon, an advocate of the Supreme Court of Ceylon, a barrister-at-law from the Inner Temple, and the wife of the 29-year-old, youngest-ever Minister of Finance of this country, Felix Dias Bandaranaike.
Felix’s school friend John de Saram once recalled how, on one occasion while cycling home from Royal College, Felix told him that Lakshmi was the girl he would marry. She was then at Ladies College, which Royalists regarded as their sister school. He pursued that ambition through school, the Law Faculty of the University of Ceylon, both in Colombo and on the Peradeniya campus, and then the Law College, until 1953, when they were married.
Felix and my brother had been classmates at Royal College and had together edited the College Magazine. His exploits, both in and outside the classroom, were legendary. I still remember the oversized schoolboy on a battered bicycle riding down the lane where we lived. Initially, I knew Lakshmi only by repute, having seen her in the newspapers (there was no television then), accompanying Mrs. Sirima Bandaranaike to Queen’s House to be sworn in as the world’s first woman Prime Minister. Thereafter, apart from looking after the Dompe constituency, as Felix’s private secretary, Lakshmi accompanied Felix from Non-Aligned Movement conferences to Commonwealth Prime Ministers’ conferences to United Nations General Assemblies, meeting legendary leaders such as Nikita Khrushchev, Marshall Tito and Fidel Castro, Zhou Enlai, and Gamal Abdel Nasser.
It was 65 years ago that I first met Lakshmi. My first contact with Lakshmi was on the telephone. It was 1960. Felix was the new Finance Minister. I was an undergraduate on the Peradeniya campus of the University of Ceylon. I was the President of the United Nations Student Association, and in that capacity, I had written to the Minister of Finance inviting him to address the students on the subject of “The New Lanka”. I had had no reply. A trunk call from the campus meant waiting at the telephone exchange for at least an hour and a half. I decided therefore to come down to Colombo, and from my home, I telephoned Mahanuga Gardens. The call was answered by Lakshmi, and she promised an early response. I didn’t expect one, but it did come. Eventually, when Felix and Lakshmi arrived in Peradeniya, Felix told me that the reason why he accepted my invitation was that Lakshmi had persuaded him to do so, saying that “the boy was very polite and had a nice voice”.
With the defeat of the SLFP government in 1965, Felix resumed his legal practice. The general election of that year was over, and the SLFP was now in opposition. Unlike today, there used to be a spate of election petitions filed by both parties. The SLFP MPs whose elections were challenged invariably found their way to Mahanuga Gardens. I remember the first of these petitions, against the MP for Balangoda, Clifford Ratwatte. Felix’s juniors were Lakshmi and me. Preparation for the next day in court always began with a consultation in Felix’s study at about 6 o’clock and ended around midnight. It was Lakshmi who realised that Sarojini and I had only been married for two weeks. Rather than letting me go home early, Lakshmi’s solution was to co-opt Sarojini to sit with us for six hours every evening.
Another five years, and it was 1970 and election day. After having gone round the polling stations in the Attanagalla electorate with Mrs. Bandaranaike in my capacity as her lawyer, I came home for a quick change before proceeding to the Colombo Kachcheri, where I had been designated as her counting agent. I was surprised to find that Sarojini was not at home. She had been persuaded by Lakshmi to accompany her and Felix (who was his own counting agent) to the Dompe count, which was also to take place at the same venue but in a different room. As the night progressed, I was surprised to find that Lakshmi and Sarojini were spending more time in the Attanagalla count than in the Dompe count, and then I sensed the friendly rivalry that was emerging. In the end, it was Mrs. Bandaranaike who secured the highest number of votes in the country, 31,612, to Felix’s 31,515 (97 more); but fortunately, it was Dompe that had the highest majority: 22,373 to 21,723 in Attanagalla—650 more.
Two days later, Sarojini received an urgent telephone call from Lakshmi. She wanted both of us to come to Mahanuga Gardens immediately. When we arrived there, we found that Felix had left the Cabinet formation meeting that was taking place at Seevali Ratwatte’s home in Shady Grove Avenue and come home, angry that he had been offered the Ministry of Agriculture, which he had declined. He insisted he would sit as a backbencher and enjoy life as a parliamentarian with no responsibilities. “It would be fun,” he said. Fortunately, Lakshmi was able to calm him down, admonish him in her own inimitable way, and persuade him to go back. It wasn’t long before Lakshmi received a telephone call from Felix to say that he had been offered, and he had agreed, to be Minister of Public Administration, Minister of Local Government, and Minister of Home Affairs—three very important portfolios, all wrapped up in one.
What was to follow shortly thereafter was perhaps the most important event in their lives. When little Christine Malkanthi entered their home and their lives, their sense of fulfilment became increasingly evident. It was for Lakshmi perhaps the most joyous moment in her life. Sarojini and I became parents a few years later, and I recall taking our little daughter to the children’s birthday parties that Lakshmi, in her new role as a proud young mother, organised at Mahanuga Gardens. Throughout her life, Lakshmi gave Felix the deep affection, care, intellectual companionship, and understanding he required. Many were the occasions when, in Parliament, Felix was admonished by the Speaker to address the Chair, as required by parliamentary practice, and not the lady seated in the Speaker’s Gallery. In fact, it was common knowledge that whenever he successfully rebutted a point made from the opposite benches, he would look up to Lakshmi, seated in the gallery, for some indication of appreciation.
In 1978, following the defeat of the SLFP government, both Felix and I, and Mrs. Sirima Bandaranaike too, were summoned before a Special Presidential Commission of Inquiry. As Sarojini and I photocopied hundreds of documents necessary for my defence on a massive photocopier that Felix had installed in his sitting room, it was Lakshmi who constantly exercised restraint whenever Felix’s jokes, intended to keep our spirits high in those dismal days, became too racy. Eventually, Parliament stripped all three of us of our civic rights. Me, for refusing to allow the CID to detain suspects in solitary confinement (and about 40 other charges); the former Prime Minister for having kept a state of emergency on for longer than the three Commissioners considered to have been necessary; and Felix for selling milk and eggs from their farm to the Milk Board instead of hawking them around on the streets. In fact, Felix argued that a vendor walking down a street offering “the minister’s eggs” would probably have fetched a higher price than what was offered by the Milk Board.
I recall this incorruptible politician mentioning to me, after his first term in government, that to serve as a cabinet minister and not have to accept bribes and commissions, one needed to receive a fairly substantial private income. Since he could not practise law while in office, Lakshmi and he provided for that eventuality while in opposition by establishing a farm and developing and expanding it.
It was singularly ironic that their farm and the perfectly circumspect manner in which they had instructed that its produce be disposed of—to the appropriate state corporation at the daily published price rather than in the open market to the highest bidder—should have formed the basis of the charges on which Felix was stripped of his civic rights.
These are some early memories, and nearly sixty years have come and gone. So have Felix, Lakshmi, and Mrs. Bandaranaike, and so has Sarojini. From wherever we were, in whichever country, Sarojini would insist on telephoning Lakshmi on the 19th of April to wish her many happy returns. Today, we have met to celebrate the life of the one person whose single word, gesture, or frown was sufficient to bring the irrepressible Felix immediately under control—the vivacious, dynamic, captivating, witty, frightfully competent, occasionally very assertive, but always warm-hearted Lakshmi. May she rest in peace.
-Nihal Jayawickrama,
former Justice Ministry Secretary
Based on the eulogy delivered by the writer at the Thanksgiving Service for the life of Elizabeth Muthulakshmi Dias Bandaranaike (1929-2023)
on August 8, 2024 at the Church of Saint Michael and All Angels.