asia's greatest love story

Thomas Maitland appears to have fallen for Lovina Aponsuwa, half Sinhalese and half Portuguese, the lead dancer of her father’s dancing troupe. We don’t have any contemporary pictures of her, but relying on the typical dancers of today, we have a reconstruction of the event. 

"As she danced before him, enticing him with her long flowing jet black tresses and fixing his attention with her large, expressive, hazel brown eyes, King Tom was mesmerised."

At any rate, she and her troupe became regular performers at the Governor’s house, and before long King Tom and Lovina were  engaged in a clandestine romance.  

She lived not far from the Governor’s house and a tunnel led from near her home to the cellars of the house, so she could come and go without attracting undue attention.   

A Tunnel of Love

The tunnel was probably been built for security to provide a means of escape in case of need, but served a useful purpose for their romance.

The relationship only ended in 1811 when Thomas Maitland was forced to resign the Governorship due to ill health and return to England where he almost at once became  in suppressing the Luddite Revolt in Yorkshire in 1812.

However, he did not leave Lovina penniless, and presented her with a large piece of land in Attidiya, a village some miles away..