An exemplary officer of the Colombo Municipal Council

We all die one day and for those of us living within the municipality of Colombo, the chances are that we will be cremated or buried in the main cemetery of Colombo, the Borella Kanatte cemetery.

This famous institution is headed by a cemetery manager and a host of workers who are by the very nature of their work an essential part of the functioning of the city of Colombo. Every city has to dispose of their dead citizens in a respectable and dignified manner and the Kanatte institution is therefore an important part of the “life” of the city.

The cemetery manager who is directly under the Chief Medical Officer of the Colombo Municipality has a role to play with all the relatives and dear ones of deceased persons, and can make a funeral a “pleasant” or an unbearable experience. He is the one together with the funeral undertaker who makes the funeral function normally.

The case I am writing about is my and my family’s interaction with the manager, a new one, in a somewhat complicated procedure we as a family had to undergo, as this had to do with an exhumation, a cremation and a deposition of ashes.

Our eldest son died on May 8, 2018 in Buttala, under unknown circumstances after a lunch meal with a friend from Sweden who was visiting him.

Our son who was a bachelor lived alone on his own land in Buttala together with a caretaker and his family who looked after the agricultural side when he was not in Buttala.

We, his father and mother had journeyed to Sweden and had been there only for four days when we were informed of his untimely death. We then, together with his younger brother who lived in London, journeyed back to Sri Lanka in order to take care of this very sad event.

Since the postmortem could not definitely identify what had caused his death except for some extraneous substances found in his stomach, the coroner ruled that he should be buried at least for three years, and if necessary cremated thereafter giving time for any unexpected findings in a legal context in the meantime.

Our son whose body was brought to Colombo was then duly buried in the Anglican section of the Kanatte Cemetery on May 12, 2018 in a temporary grave.

Three years passed and in 2021 during the pandemic we took up the case for an exhumation and cremation and deposition of his ashes in our family grave in the Buddhist section of the cemetery. This involved a legal procedure in the Courts of Colombo which was done by a firm of lawyers to get official permission for the exhumation etc and also entailed the help of the Municipalty, their Chief Medical Officer and not least the Cemetery Manager of Kanatte.

This procedure in the Courts of Colombo sadly took three long years and we were given permission for the exhumation etc. I believe in October 2023.

Once the court order was ready we went with it to the Manager of the Cemetery where we were received with the utmost decorum and friendliness.

We were then told what to do, which included a funeral undertaker´s involvement in the transport of the remains to the crematorium etc. and their subsequent help in the collection of the ashes and finally the deposition in our family grave.

All this work was very smoothly done and thanks to a concerned and adept municipal officer, Mr. Herantha Jayawardane the Manager of the Kanatte Cemetery. All this work was done in just two days- the exhumation-the cremation- the collection of ashes and the deposition in our family grave.

I am glad that such officers are a part of our Municipality. Thank you Sir for all your help.

Vera Gamini Samarasinghe