Whenever I visit the Aukana Buddha Statue, look at a photograph of what an exceptional sculptor extracted from a rock face or even think about it I remember Mr Ilyas.Mr Ilyas was my scout master. Years later he agreed to teach me Tamil. We also discussed things of common interest. I remember discussing with him the issue of religious icons. ...

The tenses are inhabited by one and all, one way or another. There are things in the past that we visit and which visit us. We travel to futures with hope and trepidation. We inhabit a present that is unutterably magical or unbearably sad. Most times it’s somewhere between those extremities. It is the same with collectives when they are ...

Witness stands are court-appendages. That’s where we are questioned about whether or not we witnessed and, if we did, we are called upon to describe what we saw. Not all witnesses have to testify in court, before a judge and a jury. We see things all the time. We try to make sense of what we see. We form opinions. ...

Kaduwa. That’s the Sinhala word for sword. Kaduwa in certain contexts is a reference to English. Whoever came up with the idea was truly inspired. English is a weapon. Cuts. Divides. Puts down. Differentiates. It is an instrument conferred by the British to those who willingly submitted themselves to serve the colonial rulers and be their adjuncts in the exercise ...

Liyanage Amarakeerthi in Nava Kavi Salakuna, a theoretical survey of contemporary poetry, mentions that the poem is not anyone’s birthright but a territory visited by all kinds of people, some of whom take up residence and remain if they had to pay with their lives. I haven’t read the book. I have, however, listened to Amarakeerthi speak at book launches ...

I do not know whether there’s as much drama in our courts as is portrayed in the 1979 US film ‘…And Justice for All’ directed by Norman Jewison for which Al Pacino, playing Baltimore defense attorney Arthur Kirkland received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor.I do not know, but I am certain that the following individuals would: Upul Jayasuriya, ...

‘Let’s leave something beautiful for others,’ suggested my friend Tharindu Amunugama. What that would be, we didn’t discuss. He was explaining to me a photograph he had sent me; a view from a high point in the Buddhangala Monastic Complex, located deep in the jungles around seven kilometres from Ampara. Dawn. He had stayed overnight at the aranyaya, having been ...

Pause. It is a word that has lost its weight. It is not subject to the laws of gravity. It is supposed to be time-bound but it is in fact shackled to deceit and brutality. A word that implies interruption, break and step-back that is now a code-word for endless horror. Give me a sec. Give me a minute. People ...

‘Whoever sitteth on this carpet and willeth in thought to be taken up will, in the twinkling of an eye, be borne thither, be that place nearhand or distant many a day's journey and difficult to reach.’Thus does Richard Burton describe the magic carpet which Prince Husain purchases from Vijayanagara in his version of The Thousand Nights and a Night.Solomon ...

Gauze. The word came to me a few hours ago. It stayed with me. It remained with me as I was reading an essay titled ‘My Personal Hemingway’ written by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Marquez describes the first and only time he had seen Ernest Hemingway. In the Spring of 1957, while walking along Boulevard Saint-Michel in Paris, Marquez had seen ...

Pic by Rasmi SpornyWhen you are just 27 or thereabouts, being 70 years old is understandably something that can be described as ‘terribly strange.’ A few weeks ago I asked a group of undergraduates, probably in their late teens or early twenties if they can imagine themselves being 35. ‘No,’ was the consensus. I got the sense that they are ...

Protestors outside the New York Times office demanded fair and accurate coverage of Israel's attacks on Palestinians. No, not a typo. I meant “Writers’” with the apostrophe after the ’s’ and I meant ‘bloc’ and not ‘block.’ Yes, dead-lines as in ‘lines that are dead’ and not deadlines, for example the kinds imposed by editors on reporters, columnists and other ...

I wanted to write about two terms that are of particular political interest to me in these terrible days of absolutely barbaric assaults on civilians in Gaza and the West Bank and the shocking silence of the mainstream media: writers' bloc (yes, not ‘block’ and the apostrophe after and not before the 's') and dead-lines (not ‘deadlines’). I can’t. I’ve ...

In the nightmare of the dark
All the dogs of Europe barkand...Intellectual disgrace
Stares from every human faceThe above lines are taken from a section of a poem that begins thus:Earth receives an honoured guest:
William Yeats is laid to rest.
Let the Irish vessel lie
Emptied of its poetry.The German-born American historian and political philosopher Hannah Arendt, in a tribute to the British-American poet ...

I am eternally grateful to my friend Mahendra Silva for urging me to watch the movie The Life of David Gale. It happened when he quoted from a lecture delivered by the principal character, played by Kevin Spacey, in the course of clarifying something. 'So the lesson of Lacan is, living by your wants will never make you happy. What ...

Don’t get me wrong, I have been a big fan of Glenn Maxwell ever since he lit up IPL 2014 compiling 552 runs inclusive of 36 sixers for Kings XI Punjab at a strike rate of 187.75 along with David Miller (446 runs with a strike rate of 149.15). He didn’t shine in the final against Kolkata Knight Riders, getting ...

I received a request this morning: ’Write a magical piece when time permits, about something beautiful.’ It reminded me of a poem in which Pablo Neruda may have responded to a similar request. In I explain a few things. Neruda addresses the question, ‘what should a poet write about?’ What kind of poetry should be written, of course, is ...

There’s an exhibition titled ‘Art, protest and the archives’ hosted by the Beinecke Rare Books & Manuscript Library of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. It will continue until January 7, 2024. It raises an interesting question: What is the place of art and protest in the archives? Art can be an expression of protest and there are countless examples ...

Eraj Basnayake, Professor of Mathematics, Monroe Community College in Rochester, New York, was in my class from grades one through six. While there were some students in the sixth grade class who had been with us from Grade 1 to 4, they had been in different classes the previous year courtesy of what was then a mandatory shuffle in the ...

I’ve spent the past few days in Amherst, Massachusetts, with my friend, the poet John Hennessy. He teaches creative writing and literature at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and lives a few miles away from the campus. ‘A few miles away’ makes it quite rural. From the balcony of his second floor apartment one can see dozens of cows grazing ...