87-year-old Elina Jayewardene speaks to The Sunday times

Remembering Dicky

By Roshan Peiris

She yearns, she said quietly, for the irrevocable. "My husband gave me a life of much happiness. I am not doing anything for his birthday. His birthdays were occasions when it was open house. Friends and relations came to greet him and he used to enjoy singing old songs. His favourite was, "I'll be loving you always". He used to look at me if I was around while singing it lustily," she recalled.

"Can you believe that at a time when there is so much unhappiness among married couples, that for the 63 years we were married we never quarrelled at all. It must be because we loved each other, understood and were aptly suited to each other."

She sighs noticeably and says, "I miss him sorely. His was a strong character and he had an equally strong will to do what he thought was right. As the wife of the first Executive President my life was full, what with entertaining foreign dignitaries and local people who came streaming in to see him night and day. 

"Dicky was a gregarious person who loved people and good times. He enjoyed talking, laughing and discussing politics which was close to his heart.

"Now without him I'm lost, I do nothing in particular, but often think about him and see him as he was, in my mind's eye as it were. The days when Rajiv Gandhi visited us there was such a hullabaloo, I remember it all.

"I do dream of him but I wish I dreamt of him more. I see him as the smiling energetic person he was, in my dreams.

"I remember for instance how when our son Ravi was born he was so thrilled, he carried the newborn baby and unlike most fathers was not afraid to do so.

"Those days we never had our babies in nursing homes. We had them at home. So Ravi was born at Vaijayantha, the present J.R. Jayewardene Centre and Museum at Dharmapala Mawatha."

She bends her head and writes the name Vaijayantha neatly on a piece of paper.

"He was such a gentleman, always polite even to the servants, whom he never referred to as servants but as domestic help. He could mix with the rich and the poor, young and old and be equally happy with them all.

"When Ravi was a few years old he played cricket with him and later with his grandchildren, getting pleasantly tired and happy.

"Dicky saw me at the Galle Face Green and fell in love with me. He sent his proposal to my mother. We then lived at Gregory's Road which in those days had a gravelled path."

She smiles to herself as he says, "Had my father been alive he would have objected to the marriage because the Jayewardenes then did not have money then."

Elina Rupesinghe was an only child, an heiress owning many an estate and house including 'Braemer' at Ward Place.

Her stubbornness surfaces then. "I too was determined to marry Dicky. I always called him Dicky and never 'darling' in public. In those days we did not believe in wearing our hearts on our sleeves, as they do today".

J.R.'s favourite foods, she said, were chocolate, curd and the Durian fruit.

"He liked any food that was nice and on Sundays enjoyed eating home-made hoppers with the family."

She was disconsolate again saying, "He constituted my life's happiness. He made life worthwhile for me. And now he is gone, leaving me with only vivid memories and an unbearable loneliness. Not even my grandchildren or great-grandsons and daughters can make me feel better." 

They were there, one grandson, the second and two great grandchildren, a girl and a boy.

"I know you will find it hard to believe but we did spend a lot of time together. I used to read the Sinhala newspapers to him because I think I was better than he in Sinhala."

"Dicky did not love dogs but I love them," she recollected.

She will be eighty seven on December 15 and she cordially invited The Sunday Times photographer and me to her birthday. "Please don't fail to come," she said simply.

Always admired for her restraint in clothes, Mrs. Jayewardene still retains her elegance and poise. She was dressed smartly in an ink blue floral printed cotton lungi combined with a long sleeved white blouse. Her hair was neatly brushed back with no parting, ending in a cone shaped konde. Remarkably there were no wrinkles on her face. She maintains, as she always did, a gentle reticence of temperament.

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