The first few weeks, months, and years of trying out a new sport are never easy. You get injured, poked at, ridiculed, sometimes put down, and always intimidated. It’s probably that fear of being intimidated, or the anxiety of being in front of a large cheering crowd, that kept me from trying out anything at school, period. That’s a given. ...
My first encounter with the sport was through my father’s film collection. A long time ago, I picked up one of the VHS cassettes we had and started to watch it. The story was intriguing enough: a loan shark, i.e. someone who coerces debtors to meeting their dues, is enraptured by a prizefighter’s open offer to contend with a random ...
Not every talker is a debater and not every debater is a talker, I've noticed. Talk is cheap. Debating, on the other hand, is a completely different kettle of fish. While the one and the other do meet in and enter everyday conversations and tournaments, they are not the same, because debating is a craft, an art in fact, which ...
Reflections on Sri Lanka’s Number One Quizzer.Quiz competitions aren’t just about questions and answers. They are about teams pitting their wits against each other and getting to know about each other. They are about teachers, students, and well-wishers exchanging pleasantries. And they are about relationships and commonalities rooted in the excitement of knowing the correct answer to the correct question. ...
Schools are like offices. People come and go. They are hired and fired. They are subject to decay and hence grow used to and wary of where they are. As such some go quicker than others. Well yes, some stay and live the better part of their lives in them, but they too (have to) leave sooner or later. Naturally ...
Michelle Dilhara is something of an enigma. For the most. By her own confession she is still learning her craft, which means she is still a student in that perplexing, disillusioning field called television, but what she’s learnt so far has given her enough confidence to pause, take stock of what was, and prepare herself for bigger and better roles, ...
When you see Geetha Kumarasinghe dancing away, her own way, dazzling us, you wonder whether this could be the same performer whose father, an editor of a conservative Sinhala Buddhist magazine, prohibited her and her siblings from going to the theatre. Then you realise that Geetha’s career, in the movies and also, to a considerable extent, in politics, has been ...
There are songs that remain etched in our minds long after we listen to them and long, long after we forget the first time we came across them. They bring to mind certain experiences that we like to forget but for some inscrutable reason don’t want to forget. Like schooldays. First crushes. Unfulfilled romances. Friendships that sour into enmities. And ...
Words fascinate me. They were made for scrambling and unscrambling. For ordering and disordering. For constructing and deconstructing. They are what we make of them and don’t make of them. But on their own, they are not enough.The World Youth Scrabble Championship is not the only Scrabble tournament organised internationally, but it is by far the biggest and the most ...
From 1969, which saw Sugathapala Senarath Yapa’s Hanthane Kathawa, to 1989, which saw Vasantha Obeyesekere’s Kadapathaka Chaya, Vijaya Kumaratunga, the greatest matinee idol to ever grace the screen in this country, averaged about five movies a year. In both these films, undervalued for their time, reassessed more favourably today, he was cast opposite that other great actor, Swarna Mallawarachchi, and ...
Sanura Kulanaka had an idea. He wanted the students to read. He also wanted them to write. So he organised class libraries, appointed library readers, got junior members to sketch out, in drawings, what they felt about what they read, and got more senior members to write down capsule reviews regarding the same. Time usually spent playing cricket, having brawls, ...
A tribute to the first real woman I saw onscreen here.In Yasapalitha Nanayakkara’s Anjana Swarna Mallawarachchi does something she never did in her other movies. Dance. Anjana erupts in a riot of colour (it still feels rather oversaturated today, like all those commercial films from the eighties) and practically subsists on sharply defined reds, greens, and blues: ideal for the ...
“With apologies for generalising, I would say that despite decades of free education Sri Lankans are still lazy thinkers; a most gullible lot. Astrologers abound and it is easy to spread a false story. Divine intervention is still widely believed and sought after and clever Kattadiyas make good money. Political leaders shamelessly dash coconuts asking for divine curses on enemies. ...
“It must be seen today, by the young of today,” Ranjith Rubasinghe told me over lunch. He was talking about Sagara Jalaya, Sumitra Peries’s fifth film, which I think is one of the three or four most perfectly constructed films ever made here, and which I believe is Sumitra’s masterpiece. Those who watch it today are often overwhelmed by the ...
Two months ago, while I was on my way home, I ran into a storm that threatened to turn the city I was in into a merciless, never-ending river. The driver of the van I was in was frustrated, the traffic outside looked interminable, and the rain didn’t stop: it kept on coming back. We took a detour and drove ...
In an interview with AFP last Wednesday, Mahinda Rajapaksa has denied any involvement with the Bodu Bala Sena. He has called the organisation a Western conspiracy that alienated Muslims. We can assume it wasn't just the Muslims it alienated, but let's leave that for later. For now, we can take this statement in either of two ways. We can think ...
Garasarapa, Jayantha Chandrasiri's latest, was given a special screening at the Tharangani Hall at the National Film Corporation on Friday, the 22nd of June.Dewnaka Porage, in one sense the hero of Garasarapa, is the definitive younger face of Kamal Addaraarachchi, who plays his character as a psychology lecturer when he grows older. Everything is there - the frown, the firm ...
Like writers and lyricists, photographers are an accursed lot. By-lines don’t get attention, after all. That is why these fields are tough on those who try to make it to the top. That is also why, to get to that top, one must let one’s work speak for itself. With the advent of editing software, however, it has become difficult ...
I was 10 when I first saw Sagara Jalaya. The story struck me. So did the actors. Swarna Mallawarachchi gave her finest performance there. She is a farmer's widow who loses everything. She loses her husband and has to look after her son. Friends and relatives verbally abuse her, while she takes their blows as they come. The son pities ...
In 1957, a group of people climbed Sri Pada with cameras, lighting equipment, and strange costumes. They climbed all the way to Maha Giri Dambe and began shooting a sequence featuring a song by H. R. Jothipala. The film, an adaptation of a W. A. Silva novel, was a first since the cinema had not "touched" the Holy Peak before.Now ...
