Story of courage and resilience: Second Sri Lankan to climb Ama Dablam in the Himalayas

“T want to be a special, exceptional and unmatched citizen of this country. That is the purpose of my living. And, I want to give back my share to this country, which is the greatest country in the world,” Dimantha Dilan Thenuwara, who is now in Nepal to climb the Ama Dablam one of the famous peaks in the Himalayan range, said.

- By SHANIKA SRIYANANDA

Thenuwara, a business analysis manager of the Cloud Solutions International owned by the famous Dr. Sulaiman Al Habib Group, which is one of the lead-ing hospitals in the Middle East, is a living testimony, who turned a disaster to embark on a differ-ent journey with sheer courage, determination and resilience.

Life is always full of ups and downs but losing the person who is closest to one’s heart is always a permanent scar.

Some people make these scars lifelong sufferings but Thenuwara made it to keep his footprints in different terrains to make his loss alive.

“The day after Christmas, 26 December 2004, changed my life forever. I was 17, happily rid-ing an early morning train from Colombo to Galle in the south with my family. We were excited to meet relatives who were visiting Sri Lanka after a decade — like eve-ryone else, oblivious to the trage-dy ahead,” he recalled that fateful day over thousands of people were taken over by giant waves when the catastrophic tsunami struck Sri Lanka 20 years ago.

Everything was calm when their train stopped at the coast-al village of Paraliya. Then at 9:28 a.m. a wall of water hit us. I heard screams and saw commo-tion. Nothing was left undam-aged.

Survived but losing pillar of strength

“T survived, and managed to save my mother, her sister and her son. But I could not save my father — my best friend and my pillar of strength,” he got emo-tional when recalling the inci-dent that took place when he was 17 years old.

On 26 December 2004, the Tsunami, which took over 230,000 lives was recorded as one of the deadliest natural disasters in his-tory.

A product of D.S. Senanayake College Colombo, Thenuwara made losing his father a strength to complete his higher stud-ies with a BSc Honours in Information Technology (First Class), Middlesex University, UK and an MBA (Distinction), Cardiff Metropolitan University, UK.