George Chandrasekar
I’m Gloriya George from Wattala. We usually go to the Wattala church, which is our parish church. But on that Sunday morning, Dada took my sister Shopiya George and me, to St. Anthony’s Kochchikade as we had missed mass the day before. Unfortunately the mass we missed was Holy Saturday, which Dada had attended. He came with us as we missed the mass. Dada wanted us to go for the mass, and until we turned towards Colombo, we didn’t know that we were going to St Anthony’s church. My dada had great faith in St Anthony.
While we were on the way to church, he did not speak anything. When we reached the church, it was very crowded. We somehow went inside and found some space on the left side at the back of the church. Dada told us to go in front without waiting with him. It was very strange, as he usually never wanted us away from him. Whenever we went out, he wanted us to be with him. But strangely that day he wanted us to go away from him to another place. But we insisted and stayed with him.
On that day the sermon was too long. As we were wearing high heels, we could not stand for a long time, so I can remember that I kept looking at the clock. It was 8.43am, within some minutes like at 8.45am, I heard a huge noise and saw flames going up. I fell down. In a moment everyone was gone, and as I got up, I saw my sister coming towards me from the right side of the church. I was confused, she was trying to talk with me. I couldn’t hear what she was trying to say. Then we immediately tried searching for our dada. Everyone around me had died and there were body parts everywhere. I saw my Dada lying on the floor under some dead bodies, and I thought he was alive. I called out to him, but he didn’t answer. But I felt like he was shaking his left hand, so I wanted to take him to the hospital. Since we were two girls we couldn’t carry him, so I asked my sister to stay near my dada while I went out of the church asking for help. No one was up to help us, so I was trying to carry Dada and wanted people to help us. But nobody came. Instead, they were taking videos and photos.
Since no one came to help, with the greatest difficulty we carried Dada out of the church. But there was no one to put him into a vehicle. Then we got a trishaw, and there was a man who came and offered to help us. We thought at last an angel had come, and we didn’t realize that we too had to go to the hospital. Instead, we went home as we were smelling of blood and there were remnants of flesh on our bodies. So, we rushed home and had a bath, and later we got admitted to hospital as we were bleeding from our ears.
However, the man we thought was an angel turned out to be a real thief. He had stolen all the jewelry Dada was wearing, and had emptied his wallet as well. It’s so sad that there are people who take advantage of incidents like this.
By the next day I got to know that my dada had left us. It was really hard to accept this. My Dada was our King, and my sister and I were his princesses. He was so protective of his two daughters. We were so close to him, we used to call him George, just like a friend, instead of calling him Dada.
WE MISS YOU GEORGE, COME HOME SOON.
– This Tribute is by Gloriya George – Daughter of George Chandrasekar whose precious life we lost at the Easter Attack.
We at The Easter Attack Survivors Project thank Gloriya for sending in this beautiful Tribute of her father.
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