['The Morning Inspection' is the title of a column I wrote for the Daily News from 2009 to 2011, one article a day, Monday through Saturday. This is the 201st article in the new series that began in December 2022. Links to previous articles are given below] As I write, Arjun Erigaisi, the 19 year old Indian Grand Master (GM) ...
['The Morning Inspection' is the title of a column I wrote for the Daily News from 2009 to 2011, one article a day, Monday through Saturday. This is the 200th article in the new series that began in December 2022. Links to previous articles are given below] All things natural, one may argue, are works of art. Of course if ...
['The Morning Inspection' is the title of a column I wrote for the Daily News from 2009 to 2011, one article a day, Monday through Saturday. This is 199th article in the new series that began in December 2022. Links to previous articles are given below] It is a name that lends itself to multiple truncation. Daya Sahabandu was Daya ...
Pic courtesy www.backofbeyond.lk['The Morning Inspection' is the title of a column I wrote for the Daily News from 2009 to 2011, one article a day, Monday through Saturday. This is 198th article in the new series that began in December 2022. Links to previous articles are given below] Pristine ecologies there very well may have been. Maybe there still are ...
['The Morning Inspection' is the title of a column I wrote for the Daily News from 2009 to 2011, one article a day, Monday through Saturday. This is 197th article in the new series that began in December 2022. Links to previous articles are given below] After a hard fought political battle in an institution was lost, a soldier noticing ...
Longevity alone can make legends for people are made of stories and the years invariably produce voluminous content. Making it to 98 is itself legendary. People who live that long are libraries, for their lives are made of innumerable stories and they are veritable repositories of history. Summa Navaratnam turned 98 recently. Survived only by a younger brother with most ...
Around six or seven years ago, a first year student of the Faculty of Art, University of Peradeniya, wrote to me seeking some advice on writing poetry. It so happened that I was planning to visit Kandy and therefore I arranged to meet him. It was late one evening when I got to Peradeniya. He was waiting for me on ...
This year in the Northern Hemisphere the autumnal equinox falls on the 23rd of September. That would be the first day of Autumn, but in the USA they would say ‘Fall.’ The Fall, quite in contrast to the Biblical allusion of innocence-loss and all associated negativity, is beautiful. Before the leaves actually fall, they perform an almost ritualistic dance of ...
Apoorva Mudgal and Ria ModakSouth Asia is a region. It is a region made of countries and therefore a territory parcelled by lines. Borders. It wasn’t always like that and maybe in time to come it won’t be like how it is today. Maps are made. They are amended. The work of cartographers never ends. Not too long ago, there ...
I do not know how Galgamuwe Chandi earned his nickname. Maybe he was aggressive by nature or due to circumstances; a creature inclined to be playful but who was sometimes or even frequently over enthusiastic, perhaps. Who renamed him 'Chandi,' for he was first known as 'Eka Danthaya' or ‘Single Tusked One’? Is he a rogue elephant? Was he always ...
Pic by Thilina KaluthotageA wewa, Peter Wise once insisted, is not a tank or a reservoir for those terms don’t capture the true social, cultural and ecological weight of this particular kind of water-body. People in Sri Lanka know what a wewa is. Children learn about the great bodies of water built by their ancestors, the Kala Wewa, the Tisa ...
Rajiv Gandhi and Narendra Modi, united in hegemonic intent ‘This is the beginning of the Bhutanization of Sri Lanka’ — Rajiv GandhiPresident Ranil Wickremesinghe has called on all political parties to submit their views on the 13th Amendment. He, more than anyone else, should understand that right now the legitimacy of all political parties (including his) and all politicians (including ...
There was a man once, one of many, who was taken to the United States of America to be part of a human exhibition. He, like others from territories and cultures unknown or lesser known to the average North American would-be viewer, was shown off, much like a reptile, mammal, bird or fish that was foreign and on account of ...
Antony Blinken is concerned, poor man. The US Secretary of State, following talk of the current Niger leadership considering obtaining military support from the Wagner Group, told the BBC that ‘every single place that this Wagner Group has gone, death, destruction and exploitation have followed.’ Hold on to that.What is referred to as the ‘Wagner Group’ is a Russian state-funded ...
Ivanthi Fernando is a poem. So said her late husband Ravindra Devenigoda, long before I actually met her. I first met ‘Deveni’ when he was a second-year undergraduate at the University of Peradeniya reading for a special degree in Sinhala about 25 years ago. Deveni could write. Deveni could draw. Deveni never completed his degree, but while an undergraduate published ...
I can’t remember whether Prabath Sahabandu, currently the Editor of ‘The Island’ but then a first or second year undergraduate at the University of Peradeniya, said it somewhere near the Kandy Clock Tower or in one of the canteens of either Dumbara Campus or Peradeniya or in the ‘chummery’ of three rooms and six beds we shared with 10 others ...
Tragedy of any kind can yield tears. Tragedy of any kind can also yield resolve. There are other harvests too. Apportioning of blame, absolving responsibility, anger, revenge-intent and collapse of one kind or another for example. It’s seldom just one thing. And so, in this country where there has been so much death, dismemberment, destruction and displacement, we’ve seen all ...
Way back in the late eighties, a group of students silenced politically on account of holding views that were at odds with those of the ‘Action Committee’ of the University of Peradeniya, ventured into theatre. The intention was probably not one of finding a different platform to express themselves, but that invariably happened.The late Gamini Haththotuwegama, known variously as GK, ...
When I first came to the United States of America more than 30 years ago, I was naturally curious about things that were very different from what I was used to in Sri Lanka. The ‘American accent,’ I knew was different and it took me a while to get used to it. There were things that I just couldn’t get ...
My friend Senaka Seneviratne, whenever he calls me, addresses me as ‘Captain Seneviratne.’ I have duly appointed him to a higher rank, Admiral Seneviratne. We’ve known each other for more than 40 years now, but back then he was just a junior scout and I was, so he says, his instructor. Time passes. Acquaintances become friends and friends become brothers. ...
