Love. Pain. Life.Hope- sometimes you need a bit of encouragement to go on.When I return to Ceylon, no matter how old I get there is one place I must see.And no it is not an endangered archaeological site or a famous land mark, since they are around and will be taken care of by the authorities and I do not ...
I've known Harry for three years now. He is one of my closest confidantes and "advisory committee members", my " cheer-er up", and my honored partner in crime; we screen each others partners, SMS each other at unholy times of the night and we know so much about each other that should we fall out, blackmail would not be a ...
About two month's back, in the course of duty I was instructed to visit Ampara.I've seen many photographs of this dusty outback territory and these always seem to give the impression of stubborn survival amongst rather desperate odds and a desolate environment. I have sat and painted the barren landscapes and dusty ruins I saw in some photos and I ...
The tsunami struck Matara at 9 23 on the morning of Sunday the 26th December 2004. I was in a small 30 seater inter-city bus on the coast, with my beloved father and a dear friend named Dieter. There were perhaps 3 minutes between us and a monstrous, 30 foot high, wall of destruction ploughing directly towards us at the ...
June 4 2007I will not forget Dieter, in many ways he made me who I am. . He was different, so different and although he touched my life only comparatively briefly, he made impressions that will never be lost. To say that I owe a lot of what I learnt in life to him, would not be enough. I owe ...
Fifteen years ago, in this serene month of June, and for my birthday I suppose, I was blessed with a baby daughter. Red in the face, cherubic and complaining loudly in the harsh lights of the nursing home she had pushed me into, she was placed swaddled in flannel on to a table near me, and I stared at her in ...
Cats plague me. They greet me with loud vibrating purry meows when I get home, hunt me excitedly around the house tripping me up, when I'm desperately looking for my sandals, spray my motorcycle jacket cheerfully with nauseous civet musks and drop suddenly out of the ceiling onto my dining table when I'm entertaining important but cat averse guests….I look ...
This is not a technical article - tekky advice you can get from just about any guy you know who rides a bike, or from the friendly salesmen at joints selling them. What follows are the kinds of tips you won't hear from the guys: stuff like how to choose road friendly feminine underwear and what parts of your riding ...
Two years ago, around this time of the year, I bought myself a shiny new Chinese moped from a very user friendly joint in Kohuwela. There was, I recall, a significant amount of family opposition to the idea of me riding a "motorcycle". Notably most of the negative attitude was feminine. My best friend, a lovely, most lady like creature ...
2009Well, I'm back: I survived the recent holiday and the astounding sense of boredom and anticipation that nationally relevant times like this carry with them, and did not actually get hit by the chikun virus ,perhaps because, like in Jurassic Park, I already harbor viruses which are ten times nastier and crunch up the chikuny ones on sight...old Picky, my ...
A CURIOUS TALE if anyBy al JuharaCurious* was discovered by a local garbage dump, weak, hungry and crooked, one soggy July evening in 2005 . Numerous unpleasant incidents with our growing menagerie mean, that we try not to see or hear stray orphans as we walk or drive around the streets of Colombo, but this one hit my eyes, solidly ...
Consider potatoes.I myself have a relatively small family to take care of, catering wise, and that too only on the weekends. It ranges from four to seven people (not counting the cats dogs squirrels and occasional tortoise who stays-)but I have repeatedly had to confront so many potatoes in my life that they sometimes come close to boring me.I view ...
Kantalai. Parched arid land and brown houses with orange dust levels. Bony cattle and the beginning of palmyra. And skies so deep azure blue that you could lose your soul to them. It is twelve years since I saw the East, a dozen years of incredible change, I last came here as a young bride, an innocent ...
Remember the lockdown of March 2020? When things started to happen to you and you had no control over them unless you were rich and influential? Where regimes did things to people that were too absurd to comprehend but you just had to agree to their cruel tyranny? In Sri Lanka we were told that we could not take a ...
DABBE was...absolutely refreshing in terms of horror fare. Unusual, original, authentic, wildly unpredictable, (which is difficult when one has been there done that in terms of every kind of nightmare film or book around...) and set in one of my favorite lands, Turkey. From the first few minutes you knew it was going to be good. Theres much to resonate ...
Dabbe" (also known as "Dabbe: The Possession") is a Turkish horror film directed by Hasan Karacadag, released in 2006. The movie has made a significant impact on the Turkish horror genre, and it stands out for its unique approach to supernatural horror and its deep connection to Islamic and Turkish folklore.The film's plot revolves around a group of individuals who ...
- Chandrika GadiewasamFrom human birth to death, in a maddening cyclical pattern of infancy, childhood, education, graduation, marriage, reproduction, aging and continuous drudgery to survive, through a whirlwind of meaningless traditions and festivals, milestones, new years, birthdays, weddings, and funerals, sickness and health... The human creature constantly seeks happiness and fulfilment and that SOMETHING….But…. are we ever content with what ...
Life after Rape: Stay away from the Second Arrow. In Buddhism we are told that the mind is the forerunner of all conditioned things. A lot of pain is caused by our minds- which is indeed strange considering how many millennia we homo erectus spent trying to evolve a bigger and more intelligent brain. Have you seen a dog with TVT? ...
Twenty years of messing with proposals and deadlines and an uncoordinated head office- but this is officially the last straw that broke the camel's back.So last week my office told me they were all working feverishly on a deadline to submit a bid to the United Nations supplier portal. You just have to upload it, they said. It will be ready ...
photo from Morten Morland TimesIm sure the IT Crowd who developed it will have lots to say about this. Trust me I welcome a debate on it. These are just a few of my experiences over the space of 36 miserable hours trying to upload a proposal to help starving third world communities. The more evil memories have been suppressed by ...
