He died less than a year after Ranbanda Seneviratne passed away. Sugathapala De Silva. Kapuge had collected the payment for his part in the ‘Sunflower samaga (with) Kapuge’ album, a few hundred thousand rupees, and gone straight to visit a friend who was suffering from cancer and needed money for surgery/medication. There’s a third story and it gave a rare definition to his humanity. Telling the man that he will check if he got the roof fixed, Kapuge gave him Rs. Kapuge had asked how much it would cost to get a better roof, for example one made of cadjan. He had explained that the sheet was too small to cover the entire hut, but that he didn’t want his three children to get wet. The man apparently was taking care of pideli or clumps of grass that were sold by the piece. He noticed a man struggling to fix a polythene sheet over the shack that was clearly his house. One night Kapuge had been walking along Bauddhaloka Mawatha. I knew there would be a shirt for me at the boarding.’ Simple. ‘There was a man without a shirt and he was shivering. Saman Athaudahetti, we were told, would vouch for the veracity of the story. This was when Kapuge was either staying in a boarding house in Nugegoda or visiting friends who were boarded. 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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