Guest of the Week, Dr. L.B.K. Laksiri
The 2023 Kingswood Week was held at Randles’ Hill, Kingswood College recently.
Held for the 115th time, this high point of the school’s calendar featured the annual prize day (held after a delay of four years due to the pandemic and its after-effects), the awarding of colours to outstanding sportsmen, the yearly arts festival (Kala Ulela), as well as assemblies and get-togethers of the school’s young and old that have for them traditional meaning.
This year’s “Week” was the first under the school’s new Principal, D.N. Namal Chandana Kumara, who assumed office in August this year.
Kingswood was founded on 4 May 1891 by the Ceylonese educationist, historian, and writer Louis Edmund Blazé as a private non-affiliated school in Pavilion Street (Deva Veediya), Kandy.
In the founder’s memoirs he reflects on the school as an “experiment in education”: an attempt to set upwhat, in the prevailing idiom, might be called a “student-centric” and “student-driven” school based on principles of the British public school.
Religious rites at the Sri Dalada Maligawa
In particular, Blazé desired a learning space where the cultivation of character and personality took precedence over examinations: where community-values and fellow-feeling (often dubbed in Blazé’s writings as “loyalty”) played defining roles. Blazé addressed his boys as “gentlemen of Kingswood”: a practice which succeeding school headstook over and continued.
Move to Mulgampola
In 1894, the school was placed under the Ceylon Methodist Mission whose board of management toiled to establish Kingswood as a modern educational institute.
In 1925, the unwavering efforts of the Mission secured for the school its current home in Mulgampola, Kandy, through the benevolence of British industrialist-cum-parliamentarian Sir John Randles who donated a handsome sum of £ 10,000 for new buildings (later, the school grounds were renamed Randles’ Hill after this benefactor whose portrait is prominently displayed in her hall).
Colours Night: A student receives an award
In 1960, six and a half decades of Methodist management ended and Kingswood was absorbed into the state’s centralized education programme.
Sixty three years under state patronage Kingswood has grown in numbers and been elevated to the status of an A-grade national school.
Despite these changes, Kingswood continued tocherish its core traditionswith the full endorsement of old boys and succeeding Principals. Running well back over a century and a decade the Kingswood Week ranks high among these traditions.
The Week commences on the Sunday of the week with multi-faith religious programmes attended by all students in leading Buddhist, Muslim, and Christian temples and churches. Keeping in line with the effortlessly pluralistic outlook Kingswood has nurtured over time, this year too, pilgrimages were made to the Sri Dalada Maligawa, the Meera Makkam mosque on and the Kandy Methodist church.
Guest of the Week
The Kingswood Prologue being recited at the Prize-giving
On Monday, at the Week’s main school assembly, a “guest” – typically, a person of eminence bearing a historical or sentimental connection with the school –is introduced to the boys as the “Guest of the Week”: an honour that traditionally requires the guest to stay over and be a part of the Week’s many events, as time permits.
This year, Dr. L.B.K. Laksiri, the Project Director of the Moragolla Power Scheme, a Chief Engineer attached to the Ceylon Electricity Board – a past Kingswoodian –was presented as the Week’s “guest”.
A more recent addition, the Kingswood “Kala Ulela” welcomed the renowned composer and musician Dr. Rohana Weerasinghe to preside over a vibrant line up of song, music, and dance.
The prize giving this year felicitated the top achievers in the school’s academic life for the past four three years, from 2019 to 2022.
The chief guest, Prof. Kolitha Bandara Wijesekara, the Vice Chancellor of the Uva-Wellassa University, is also an alumnus of the school.
Colours Night
The Week’s programme rounded up with the awarding of colours to outstanding sportsmen, which was graced by Commodore Pradeep Karunathilaka, a Director of the Naval Engineering Division of the Sri Lanka Navy, an old Kingswoodian.
The Kala Ulela in progress
Former Kingswood First XV skipper and national colourman Gayan Weeraratne attended as the guest of honour.
The Kingswood Week also featured the Kingswood Prologue: an annual recitation presented at the prize giving by a senior boy that is looked forward to by literary enthusiasts. Normally a verse composed to Augustan meter commenting on community matters, social issues, and on significant global developments brought under the author’s notice, the Kingswood Prologue was penned annually by Blazé until his death in 1951.
Since then, the tradition has been continued through a ghost-writer. In its being a compendium of interest for the literature scholar, historian, political scientist, sociologist and the casual reader for pleasure, the Kingswood Prologue, perhaps, is a unique achievement of its kind. The Kingswood Week 2023 was a collective achievement of the students, academic staff, friends of the school, and alumni networks of past Kingswoodians; in particular, the Kingswood Union.
In spirit, it marked the end of a stagnant period where the school struggled among the shockwaves of the pandemic and the economic meltdown to rejoice and take refuge in its traditional celebrations.
