Shantha and daughter’s last Easter breakfast
When well-known TV personality and famed chef Shantha Mayadunne walked into the Shangri-la with her husband and family to celebrate Easter Sunday with a spot of breakfast at the hotel’s Easter breakfast buffet, little did she know it will be the last meal she would have with her family. In fact, tragedy struck even before she could eat it.
Shantha Mayadunne was the first chef to have a live cooking show on television in Lanka on the ITV network. She was also the author of two cookery books Rasa Bojun and Rasa Bojun 2 published in 2001 and 2005 respectively. Having gained an advance diploma from the Wilton School of Cake Making and Decorating in Chicago and having over thirty years of experience in cooking techniques around the world studying as she had done in studied in Australia, Singapore, Thailand, India, the United Kingdom, she also ran her own cookery school named the Shantha Mayadunne School of Cooking Art.
Her daughter Nisanga who was in her early thirties had studied at the University of London. Her distraught friend Radha Fonseka described her in the following terms: “Nilanga was a very popular girl in college. Besides the fact that she was bright and smart, her mother Shantha Mayadunne, a renowned chef, made her more popular in college. Her mother was well-respected and an inspirational chef for Sri Lankans. Destiny has taken away both of them. I am devastated.”
After the family had sat down at the table that fateful morn, Nisanga took a selfie of the family. She posted it to her friends with the caption: ‘Easter breakfast with the family’. Minutes after this photograph was taken her mother asked her to accompany her to the buffet table to serve their breakfast. A bearded man with a large backpack also joined the queue. And detonated the bomb killing Shantha and Nisanga and a great many others instantly. Now all that remains for the rest of the family who escaped unhurt are memories and a last photograph of the Easter breakfast they never ate.