lit a candle 3h agoman I read this on my phone during halftime of the Cowboys game and just sat there. a doctor AND an engineer AND wrote songs, that's not normal, that's somebody who wasn't playing around with the time he had. 53 is nothing. my pastor always says some people get handed more gifts than they know what to do with and it sounds like this man actually used his. praying for his parents back in Sri Lanka, can't imagine getting that call about your son. edit: just read he trained in Cambridge and Oxford both, I had to read that twice
Their story
Udara Kularatne was a Sri Lankan born consultant musculoskeletal radiologist in England whose life took in engineering, investment banking, medicine and Sinhala poetry. Known to his many friends and colleagues as Udi, he worked at the University Hospitals of North Midlands from 2015 until his sudden death on 18 October…
Udara Kularatne was a Sri Lankan born consultant musculoskeletal radiologist in England whose life took in engineering, investment banking, medicine and Sinhala poetry. Known to his many friends and colleagues as Udi, he worked at the University Hospitals of North Midlands from 2015 until his sudden death on 18 October 2026, aged 53.
He was the son of Professor D. S. Kularatne, a former Dean of the Faculty of Education at the University of Colombo, and Lalitha Kularatne, a science teacher. He began school at Dharmapala Vidyalaya in Kottawa, where his mother taught, and came first in the island in the Grade Five Scholarship Examination. At Royal College, Colombo, he won the Donhorst prize, was placed first in the island at GCE Ordinary Level and third in the mathematics stream at Advanced Level in 1991. A scholarship then took him to Monash University in Australia, where he took a degree in engineering.
After working as an engineer and as an investment banker, he changed course at about the age of 30. According to Sri Lankan press accounts, he was inspired by his father's heart bypass surgery and by a consultant radiologist, Ray Godwin. He began reading medicine at the University of Cambridge in 2003 and graduated in 2007 with an overall distinction in his final examinations.
He trained as a registrar at the Royal Orthopaedic Hospital, Birmingham, and on the Nottingham training scheme, and completed fellowship training in musculoskeletal radiology at the Robert Jones and Agnes Hunt Orthopaedic Hospital, Oswestry. From May 2015 he was a consultant radiologist at the University Hospitals of North Midlands, working at Royal Stoke and County Hospital, Stafford, with a particular interest in sports injuries, arthritis and bone and soft tissue tumours. He sat on the Royal College of Radiologists' Professional Practice Board for clinical radiology and was active in the Sri Lankan Medical and Dental Association in the UK, returning often to Sri Lanka to teach medical students.
Outside medicine he wrote in both English and Sinhala. He was a lyricist and the author of the Sinhala poetry collection Arunoda Seeyak (A Hundred Awakenings).
He died on 18 October 2026 in a hospital in Oxford after an unexpected cardiac event. The Royal College of Radiologists, the Sri Lankan Medical and Dental Association and the Royal College old boys in the UK paid tribute to a humble, kind and generous man. His remains were returned to Sri Lanka for final rites in Colombo on 28 October 2026.
Biography adapted from Royal College of Radiologists, Sri Lankan Medical and Dental Association UK, Gossip Lanka News and NHS consultant directory.
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1by People Forever
he studied in Oxford and Melbourne too, man was not messing around