Aunty Savitri

Though she was small… she was mighty!

Some people knew her as Lila but to me she was always Aunty Savitri and I can’t remember a time in my life when she wasn’t there.

Her independent spirit was incredible. If she had been a driver, you could imagine that she would have traversed countries in a hardy Land Rover… but she told me once of her driving lesson in Sri Lanka with one of her brothers… she said that the car was going everywhere and she just wanted to take her hands off the wheel and cover her eyes when a wall was coming towards her. Kandy did well to survive that day.

Aunty Savitri ended up in the UK and became a temple and monastery buddy of my Mummy. Apparently she was Mum’s chaperone when Mum started dating Dad. When I was younger we were fascinated that she had been a colleague of the poet Philip Larkin at the Brynmor Jones Library of the University of Hull. She stayed with us in July-of-this-year and I tried to get details about her time with the celebrity. But she simply said ‘he had his famous friends and didn’t know we existed’. She was ever modest, so I don’t know if that’s true.

Aunty Savitri was a real aunty to me. My Sri Lankan aunts were in Sri Lanka and my English aunts in Australia and New Guinea and I didn’t know them. Aunty Savitri was a real and active aunt: she phoned often to check up on Mum and I, she took me for coffees to listen to my difficulties with Dad as a carer. There was a Buddhist tone to the way she spoke, and listened - the pauses and the consideration before words came out. All of us will remember that. Her advice was gentle and she was gentle to be with. 

She gave me £5,000 when I tried to buy a flat in Bournemouth… and refused to take it back when the sale fell through. This is unsurprising - this is her generosity.

We have an Aunty Savitri Chair at home. It folds out into a bed with a mattress that really suited her.  I used to love preparing the place for her stays, and making a fuss of her – particularly because she wanted no fuss or to be any bother. I loved bothering about her. I bought the chair with the hope that she would stay with us more often.  It’s normal, I suppose, to wish we had done more when a loved one journeys on. 

May she attain the supreme bliss of Nirvana.