Helindu and Diyon shine at Queen’s Commonwealth Essay Competition

• Helindu Karunatilake wins Gold; also becomes only Lankan to win coveted Gold Finalist Award, given only to select few international participants
• Diyon Wadugamage also excels at QCEC by winning Silver Award

Helindu Karunatilake

Diyon Wadugamage

Helindu Karunatilake, a 15-year-old Grade 10 student from St. Joseph’s College, Colombo 10, won a Gold Award and received the coveted Gold Finalist Award at the recently-concluded Queen’s Commonwealth Essay Competition (QCEC). 

Diyon Nevinka Galle Wadugamage, also a 15-year-old Grade 10 student from St. Joseph’s College, won a Silver Award for his entry at this prestigious international competition. 

The QCEC is an annual event organised by the Royal Commonwealth Society. It is the world’s oldest writing competition – having been established in 1883 – and it receives entries from thousands of aspiring writers from across the Commonwealth. 

The theme for the year 2021 was ‘Community in the Commonwealth’ and Karunatilake’s composition revolved around a budding society set 30 years in the future. Titled ‘Rekindled: A Record of Communal Survival,’ his short story explores an alternate version of earth that had been ravaged and brought to ruins by COVID-19; told from the perspective of a beaten and weary survivor of the initial decimation. 

Poignant and riveting in its progression, it goes on to recount the manner in which the survivors build a fledging yet functional society, free of discrimination and prejudice, on the foundations of what was left. 

Karunatilake’s atypical approach to addressing the problems that stand in the face of communal and equal life truly resonate with the reader’s thoughts – thus allowing him to secure a spot among the chosen top 171 contestants from a pool of over 25,000 participants. 

Similarly, Wadugamage too went the extra mile and drew inspiration from the environment created by the looming presence of COVID-19 in order to construct his essay. Titled ‘Afterthoughts of a Pandemic: The End is the Beginning,’ it revolves around him making a speech in first-person narrative as the leader of Sri Lanka.

The events stipulated in his short story take place 13 years after the pandemic first set foot on the country’s shores. It shows how Sri Lanka redeems itself of its past shortcomings by unifying under the lion flag to create a cure for the virus, using Sri Lanka’s ancestral medicine. 

Karunatilake and Wadugamage are no strangers to creative writing, with the latter having published a short story under the title ‘Blood it shed – Blood it desired’ on the online publishing site Wattpadd.com. The two share a passion on the subject of English literature at school, penning many criticisms of established writers and poets. 

Wadugamage regularly spends his pastime reading novels and short stories. Rather than being confined to one genre, he reads works of a variety of genres which includes Sinhalese and English literature, and even certain Japanese creations. Karunatilake too spends most of his leisure time alternating between reading a varying abundance of novels and writing his own. 

The two of them are Junior Stewards of St. Joseph’s College’s Prefects’ Body, with Karunatilake also applying his focus on sports, namely football and swimming, where he holds positions in the college teams. Wadugamage on the other hand holds a position of Sub-Editor of the school’s General Knowledge Club, in which he has recently started a Weekly Quiz initiative in which students and adults alike can participate, regardless of age.

As students of St. Joseph’s College, they were encouraged to apply their literary talents at this prestigious international competition by their English Language teacher Himashi Gamage. 

Both Karunatilake and Wadugamage plan on continuing in their literary pursuits, so that they bring honour to their school and country.