The story of Kavindi Jayawardene
Over the past few weeks many stories have been circulating and questions asked about the 14 year old girl who died at Museaus College, Colombo. Please pass this to all friends as nothing is worth the loss of a 14 year old….
I received this email written by Farah Azoor Tennakoon who is friend of the family.
My name is Farah Azoor Tennakoon, the best friend of Mrs. Sandhya Jayawardene, the mother of Kavindi Jayawardene, the 14-year old girl from Museaus College who hung herself with her school tie on 22nd July 2009. Kavindi’s mother and I are best friends since August 2000 and Kavindi was a dear friend of my daughter, who was two years younger to her. I have known Kavindi quite closely since she was in Montessori with my daughter.
Her father is a professional/graduate Accountant and her mother too was in the accountancy field before she gave up her job upon marriage. Her mother is from Kegalle, an innocent, down-to-earth, virtuous woman. Kavindi was an only child, extraordinarily beautiful and was very shy. She was a studious girl whose report cards received from school always described her as a “Siyalu Dena Samaga Sahayogayen Kriya Karana, Vineetha, Keekaru, Sisuwiyeki”. Anyone can take a look at her school books and report cards and see if she seems a disturbed or disobedient girl.
Kavindi’s mother was the kind of woman who even went to the extent of having a Bodhi Poojawa for my daughter who was a non-Buddhist, when she was sitting for her 5th Grade Scholarship exam, thinking of someone else’s child as her own.
It is so saddening to hear that her name has been tarnished by the school making her look like a girl who was into porn, boyfriends and similar stuff whereas in actual sense she was a girl who did not even collect pictures of movie stars, cricketers or any such thing that a teenager of today would do but was always getting good grades at school and excelling in studies.
In fact, Kavindi was the pillar of strength to her mother during their family ordeal of Kavindi’s father going through a kidney transplant about two years ago. Athula, her father was not the “STRICT” father as depicted in the media. He in fact would return home and keep Kavindi on his lap and ask her what happened at school or joke with her about things on TV. Even after Kavindi attained age and showed all signs of a beautiful young lady, Athula petted her like a little girl.
She was very close to her mother and till her death Kavindi’s world and after school activities involved playing with her little cousins next door and helping her mother with housework. She encouraged her mother to do home-gardening and have plenty of vegetables grown in their 15 perch house and land and loved seeing the produce being consumed. She was never into facebook, computer games, hip electronic gadgets or any such thing. I was always in and out of their house as Sandhya was one of the few persons (except my own Mother) that I would trust to leave my daughter with whenever I had to leave my daughter with someone.
During the past 8 years, my daughter spent most of her holidays at their home where I would drop her off in the mornings and pick her up at evening and stay on for at least 1-2 hours chatting with my best friend. Whenever I called my daughter in between, Kavindi would talk to me too and relate what they had been playing during the day and tell of their plans for evening play and I would often find Sandhya feeding both my daughter and hers, if I happen to call during lunch time. Kavindi played hide and seek, dolls, imaginary house, Lego and similar games with her mother, my daughter and her little cousins from next door and was innocent and unspoiled and a far cry from what is being told about her now.
It is sad to learn from her classmates that a Prefect from her school actually dragged her by her tie upon confronting her for playing around with a mobile (which did not even belong to her) and taken her to the Principal’s office. This fact would now be denied by school authorities for obvious reasons but for a child who has never been reprimanded in her entire life for indiscipline just cannot bear such humiliation and public embarrassment.
The school authorities should also appoint Counselors in schools who are qualified enough to handle these kind of situations instead of having Teachers and mere school girls (Prefects) handling situations involving human emotions.
Even when her body was discovered hanging in the toilet, the teachers or authorities of the school had not even loosened her tie around the neck or given appropriate first aid to revive her. The only thing Museaus can do now is to tarnish her good name and make her look like a “bad girl” who committed suicide, thereby deviating the attention of the public to the fact that the girl was suspected, embarrassed in public, emotionally abused and mishandled by Prefects and Teachers who were not capable of understanding emotions of a 14-year old and never thought of repercussions of misjudgment, harshness, cruelty and public humiliation. She had in fact begged that it is okay to tell about the incident to her mother but never to tell her father because he was a kidney patient whom Kavindi always feared would die if he faces sadness.
Kavindi was the type of girl who was so shy that she would even nudge me and her mother in embarrassment if we ever spoke out in public in protest for small injustices such as being over-charged at stores or such similar small incidents and tell “aney randu karanna epa ammey, nikam innako ammey, etc…” and blush in embarrassment. She is the type of girl who encouraged and loved the fact that her mother was among the very few mothers at her school who only wore a simple ‘Osariya’ whenever she had to visit Kavindi’s school. She never even allowed her mother’s Saree blouses to have a deep-cut neckline and would protest against any body part of her mother being shown in public. It is this virtuous charactered Kavindi who today is being portrayed as the girl who would pose nude for her boyfriend and allow to be photographed or filmed.
Since the Police have found out that Kavindi is not the owner of the mobile in question, then why isn’t anyone talking about the true owner of the mobile phone (the other student of the same school)?
I migrated to Canada 7 months ago but today each and every person I talk to in Sri Lanka knows Kavindi as the “girl who watched porn on her mobile and committed suicide in shame”, or “the girl who had her nude pictures in her mobile”, or “the girl who was mentally ill or depressed”, or “the girl whose parents were too strict” and such ghastly impressions.
Today, my best friend is a woman who hears her only child’s voice echoing around the house, sees her face every where, a broken woman with no hope for the future and a woman who wishes she died with Kavindi. She is a well-read but simple housewife whose world was woven around her only child. She is still that woman I knew who forgives the media for tarnishing her precious daughter’s name, forgives the people who did not provide timely first aid to her daughter when they found her hanging, forgives the prefects who manhandled her daughter, but the fact remains, Sandhya’s soul died along with her only child. Athula would have no interest in getting his regular dialysis treatment anymore as he was doing it all for his wife and daughter.
My only appeal to you is appropriate investigation and justice to Kavindi’s name unduly tarnished along with her parents reputation.
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SO…why dont all these “concerned” persons get together and take the school AND everyone else they SAY are responsible to task…I saw several other emails casting doubts on the entire process (the necktie that was not removed etc)..thus leading to a reasonable doubt as to whether what THEY SAY happenned is ACTUALLY what happenned…IF SO, take the authorities to task…that is THE ONLY WAY you will get to the truth!!!
The story of this young girl broke my heart. It is shocking that certain schools in Sri Lanka still uphold the values of 18 century England and Europe – a time of great rigidness in social propriety, and religious hypocrisy and cruelty which surrounded times where the wealth and position ruled, and which rarely relented to those of lesser means.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AS6qyMNqa_w
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAl4QhjJaBw – read the beginning chapter of the tale
http://digitallife.lk/oopadoopainfo/wordpress/?p=12727