Three years on, friends and colleagues recall Mel

Mel Gunasekara was a hardnosed journalist, but many of her colleagues and friends remember her most for having a warm personality and being a good friend.

Some of their fondest memories of Mel Gunasekera are of her infectious smile.

“She used to be always smiling,” says Shafraz Farook, a colleague who used to work with her at the Sunday Times and later at Lanka Business Online of which she was the founding editor.

“It is the first thing that comes to my mind. She had a smile for everyone. She also had a way of putting people at ease and getting them talking as if they had been old friends.”

Ruvini Jayasinghe, then Business Editor at the Sunday Times, hired her as a trainee journalist soon after Mel returned from the UK, armed with a business degree. The two became good friends in addition to being colleagues. “She would go out of her way to help her friends, almost without their knowing about it,” she recalls. “It would be through other people that we get to know that she had done it.” Mel was one of the most promising young persons she had helped bring into the profession. “She was very willing and keen to take up challenges,” Ruvini says. “She had the amazing knack of networking and keeping in touch with people.”

Mel’s warm personality instantly drew people to her. Many of her professional contacts also became life-long friends. She could keep a telephone conversation going for long periods effortlessly, drawing out people and sharing a bit of herself in the process. She kept track of birthdays of colleagues and arranged cakes and wishes.

“Her loyalty and unwavering commitment to family and friends, sense of responsibility, fearlessness, integrity and compassion for even animals made her a rare human being in our age,” says Lakshman Bandaranayake, publisher of Lanka Business Online. “She was ever willing to help people who sought her advice.”

Zainab Ibrahim, was just out of school and waiting to enter university, when Mel hired and brought her into the profession. “I remember how much of a teacher Mel was, how she took me under her wing and how much time she spent teaching me,” she says. “I value a lot of things she taught. Even though I changed careers, I still use them.” “I remember laughing with her about funny things. A lot of those memories I hold close.”

It was a great shock to family and friends, when Mel was wrenched away from them on a February morning three years ago. Amal Jayasinghe, Colombo Bureau Chief of French news agency AFP, where Mel was the first woman reporter, could hardly believe she was no more.

“Mel had a zest for life,” says Amal Jayasinghe. “Bursting with energy, even while juggling her journalistic work, she sang for Contempo, a choir of her alma mater St. Bridget’s Convent in Colombo, and was a concert violinist.”

Sri Lanka’s 30-year war, in which many journalists had died, was now over. His first reaction was that the report of Mel’s death was not true. But tragically, it was. “Mel had a special knack for unobtrusively getting a story from victims of Sri Lanka’s drawn-out war,” he said. “She reported heart-wrenching stories of mothers desperately looking for their missing children.”

At the AFP Colombo office, a framed photo of Mel is now on the wall, and is one of the first things that visitors see when they enter. After leaving journalism Mel joined the financial sector and went to work for Fitch Ratings.

“I knew her basically as a friend,” says Maninda Wickramasinghe, head of Fitch Ratings in Colombo.

“It just happened that she wanted to move on and sent me her CV to forward it to someone else. I went through her CV and realized that she fit the bill perfectly for a position that had just come up. She was surprised and very happy to join us.”

“She was very persevering and very conscientious. It was very easy to delegate work and it would be done. She was multi-talented and it is only later that I learnt she was an accomplished singer.”

“The world would certainly have been a better place if we had few more people like Mel,” adds Lakshman Bandaranayake.

“The love and affection she left in our hearts and will always linger.”

Asantha Sirimanne