Esara Kauminda Reincarnation case

The case of Esara Bhashitha Kauminda being the reincarnation of Thilanga Madhushan Ranasingh

Akila Weerasekera, PhD, Shanaka de Silva, MA

During their information exchange, EBK’s mother mentioned his memory of wearing a red shirt to a wedding, at which point, Mangalika started to cry saying this is indeed my son, Thilanga Madhushan Ranasinghe, who drowned in the Mahaweli river five years ago and the red shirt was the last shirt I bought him to attend a wedding.

When EBK was young, he seemed to show no strong emotion as he talked about the previous life. Overall, EBK was able to separate the past life to which he referred from his own life.

During one of his visits to Kandy in the early days, six years old EBK met his former classmate, Gayan (in his mid-twenties at the time) at his home. Gayan’s home seemed a quite familiar place to EBK, where he found his way to Gayan’s room without any guidance. Just before departing, Gayan gave his hand to say goodbye to EBK, at which point EBK gave him a unique handshake which included a series of gestures being performed in a specific and choreographed order. TMR supposedly shared this special handshakes with all of his close friends, including Gayan, astonished by this Gayan had become extremely emotional.

When EBK was younger, he had a severe fear of water. He was affraid to have a bath or stand under
a shower fully immersed. EBK’s older sister told the authors that whenever he was taken to bathe, he
screamed and ran away from the bathroom. However, right after his first visit to Kandy (when he was
four years old), where he met with his previous family, he was able to go to the bathroom and shower
himself without any fear , so the fear of water ended after this visit.

On January 31st, 2001, a student, a colleague of TMR was walking home after school to his home near
the Mahaweli river. Between 2:30-3pm, while he was passing the location where TMR had drowned
earlier that day, he claims that he met and had a brief conversation with TMR. He further mentioned
that TMR was in his uniform and going back to his home. Later that evening, when the news of TMR’s
death spread among the community and when our witness heard that the death had occurred in the
morning, he had collapsed in disbelief. On the day of the funeral, he had met with TMR’s family to let
them know of his encounter with TMR and expressed his incredulity regarding TMR’s death. To this
day, he believes what he witnessed that day was real.