(Excerpted from Falling Leaves , anecdotal memoirs of LC Arulpragasam) I happened to be the Assistant Government Agent in the Batticaloa District in 1956. At that time, Lahugala was part of the Batticaloa District. If I may be allowed to digress a bit, I had not thought about this oddity till a chena cultivator from Lahugala came to the Batticaloa Kachcheri seeking a divorce under the Kandyan Marriages Ordinance.
Fortunately, I had served in the Kandy District and knew the legal provisions of this Ordinance. I was curious as to how a Kandyan person could fall within the confines of the Batticaloa District, a Tamil/Muslim district. So I took the trouble to read the old diaries of the Government Agents of that time.
What I found aroused my historical interest further, as to how boundaries – most colonial boundaries – were drawn. The Government Agents of the Uva Province and of the Eastern Province had been instructed to delineate their common boundaries together. They started from the Badulla District (Uva Province, which was a rich plantation province in colonial times) in charge of a senior Government Agent (presumably an older man), while the GA of the Eastern Province must have been much junior in service and in years.
The diaries make interesting reading. To the best of my recollection (some 67 years later!), after some three days of riding on horseback or walking, they shot a leopard (or was it a bear?), while on the next day they bathed in a water-hole. After about a.