The sun smiled on our creative genius friend

Nimal Lakshapatiarachchi was an icon. I first met him with my partners Viren Perera and Pradip Jayewardene when we established our solar energy company in 1987. Nimal must be credited for making the SUNTEC brand name a household word in rural Sri Lanka. It was proven when Shell Renewables negotiated to buy the company in 1999. Shell executives, not believing SUNTEC’s brand value, did a survey and found it had 92 per cent recognition, beating Shell’s famous brand. That was the tribute to Nimal.

The three of us were amazed at his ingenuity, creative talent, coupled with his critical thinking skills and his connections in the arts and the media. He had an amazing ability to coordinate, organise, and inspire people to come together for a common purpose. Most of all, he thrived on the freedom he had to be creative. Impetuous and impulsive at times, but that was part of the territory.

We marvelled at his ability to get the best of Sri Lankan talent from Master Khemadasa to compose the SUNTEC theme song, Amawake handa nathi vu vita....., to coax the Muwan Pallassa crew to do a special comedy skit to promote solar electricity, and many other creative initiatives. The SUNTEC brand became embedded in the national psyche and become the generic name for solar power.

Nothing was a challenge to Nimal, even during those dark and difficult days of the JVP hartals, when business came to a halt. He came up with the idea of a newspaper ad introducing the new technology using the Sun and inviting rural youth to write a one-page essay on how it could be useful for their villages. This one ad resulted in 600 submissions from all over Sri Lanka, many of them well written with beautiful hand-drawn pictures.

We invited these youth to Colombo, 30 at a time, to learn the technology, first with a series of high-profile conferences with chief guests such as Sir Arthur C. Clarke, Professor Cyril Ponnamperuma, Dr. Ray Wijewardene, Minister Festus Perera and others. This was followed by a training programme on all aspects of the technology, marketing and financing with the support of people like Prem Sumanasekera of Vidya Silpa, who inspired and helped the three of us start this business, our own Ajit Chanmugam, Thilan Wijesinghe, Prof. Willie Mendis, Prof. P.A. Silva, Eddie de Zylva, Wijeratne of Prashakti Technical Services in Kahawatte, and more.

We ended up training more than 200 youth, which gave us the motivation to resume business in the villages, as these very youth now had an opportunity to become promoters or technicians for SUNTEC.

I remember the many village temple events, from Padaviya to Angunukolapallassa, that Nimal organised around the country. We would donate a solar electricity system to the temple at a time when no public events were allowed by the JVP.

A witty virindu karaya (poet/story-teller) would sing and encourage the community to donate towards the system, which gave the people confidence in this glass plate for generating electricity and giving them light.

Nimal coined the tag line, Anduren Eliyata and word Sooriyavahini for the solar module with Lankadeepa journalist Ratnapala Vithana, so he has left a legacy that is appreciated.

In later years, he became a successful public personality. I once flew with him to Washington DC when he was Director-General of Rupavahini. We chatted about old times and I told him, “Nimal, now you can stop calling me Sir” to which he replied in Sinhala, “Ok Sir, I will Sir”, and continued to Sir me throughout the flight.