A picture, they say, is worth a thousand words. The flip is also true. A single word can a thousand images conjure. That’s what good writing is all about, especially poetry. Not all pictures have 1000-word equivalents of course and not all words generate a 1000 images. But some words do. For example, love. There are others: child, childhood, fear, ...
When a journalist calls someone to obtain opinion about a non-issue, i.e. something that did not happen but is said to have been about to happen, it is not illegitimate, except of course that one would think that there are happened-things that ought to be focused on. When it is done (and this is pretty clear in the case ...
[In a parallel universe called 'Humility'...] Last week I heard a very sad story. It was originally related by Mahinda Kumara Dalupotha, who hails from Ehetuwewa, around 9 km from Galgamuwa off the Kurunegala-Talawa road. Apparently there had been a humble farmer who lived in contentment. He had a herd of cattle. As the farmer grew old, his son ...
Sampath Agalawatte was always a hero to me. I first saw him when I was 11 years old. He was, at the time, the unnamed leader of the cricket team of that class. 'Class' as in the entire 6th grade of Royal College, 1976. He played junior cricket and had he continued he would probably have kept wickets for Royal. ...
A line or rather a straight line is the shortest distance between two points. That’s conventional wisdom. Mathematicians would call it ‘geodesic’. In the seventh grade geometry class we were told it is made of an infinite number of points. Analytical geometry, if one got that far, would contend that it is ‘a set of points whose coordinates satisfy ...
The politics of skipping the caveats When the Government proposed setting up a Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC), there were howls of protests from the likes of Jehan Perera and Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu. Many of these I/NGO operators didn’t even appear before the LLRC perhaps fearing that the Commissioners would ask them to submit in full their various comments to ...
This was published exactly 6 years ago in the 'Daily News'. Maybe no one read it. :)Sri Lanka had a problem that no one thought it could handle. Terrorism. The problem was so monumental that many said ‘sue for peace’, meaning ‘surrender’. Sri Lanka fought the world’s most ruthless terrorist outfit to a finish. Sri Lanka suffered a terrible tragedy ...
There's a term being tossed around in Geneva these days: widespread allegations. 'Widespread'? What does that mean? Longtime Tiger-lover Bishop Rayappu Joseph sending a note to Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu and Sara saying something to Jehan which Jehan whispers into Nimalka Fernando's ear and which Nimalka passes onto Callum Macrae and which Callum emails Frances Harrison and the whole bunch of ...
Write something beautiful, I was told. About butterflies, for example, I was advised. I am not sure if I was being asked to write beautiful or write beautifully. I don’t set out to do either. I can, however, write about butterflies, although I cannot guarantee ‘beauty’, in description or shapes crafted by word choice. Butterflies remind me of Gabriel Garcia ...
There’s a song from the US sitcom ‘Cheers’ that has been playing in my mind for sometime. For no reason that I can identify, I should add. This is how it goes: “Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name, and they're always glad you came; you wanna be where you can see, our troubles are all the ...
This is the twenty third article in a series I am writing for the JEANS section of 'The Nation'. The series is for children. Adults consider yourselves warned...you might re-discover a child within you! Scroll down for other articles in this series. Watch the wind play with the cloud. Watch it turn those fluffy white things into forms and patterns. ...
When a high-ranking Bikkhu of the Asgiriya Chapter made a reference to Hitler, many recoiled in horror. There was much spit thereafter, mainly from but not limited to the yahapalana tribe. It’s a fair guess that the moralizing was due to the reference being made at an event where Gotabhaya Rajapaksa was present. Indeed the name was linked to ...
Christina Glaves, friend, photographer and a healer who had that rare gift of absorbing the pain around her and thereby delivering relief and peace, once told me that people don’t look at the sky enough. This was said in a small café frequented by out-of-the-mainstream sorts in Ithaca, New York. We were having coffee at ‘Stella’s’ on a cold February ...
Michele Sison can be loquacious Americans of the United States are familiar with the term ‘Pleading the fifth’. It refers to the 5thAmendment to the Constitution which, in popular understanding, gives witnesses the right to desist responding to questions if it was felt that the answer would contribute to self-incrimination. It has been used so often, in and out of ...
Some years ago a reckless act by my reckless friend Buddhike Navaratne, at the time working under me in the Special Media Unit of the Information Department, saw me visiting the Kirulapona Police Station sometime after midnight. He had not only been caught riding his motorcycle under the influence of alcohol, he had made matters worse by arguing with ...
They are not named. Not because they are nameless, but nameless and countless because their victims were. They were the Governors who presided over theft of one kind or another and were brutal as and when necessary or found pleasing. Not all of them are here, but this is representative enough. They were all gentlemen. Not in the sense ...
Many believe that the world is made of secrets. One reason for this is that we are not born knowing everything. There’s so much we don’t know. The moment we recognize this, we start getting curious. We want to know stuff. We want to know the names of things we encounter for the first time. We want to know what’s ...
Sampath Agalawatte [left] still has the moves and most importantly the grace Everyone who knows Sampath Agalawatte, especially Royalists of his time, will associate the name with the incredible run of Royal's rugby team of 1984 [Read about it here]. He was a cricketer, a ruggerite and a basketball player. He was a gifted athlete and loved all sports. Still ...
SHE EMBRACED THEM ALL Pic by Ravindra DharmatillekaSchool children yearn for end of term. Year-end is made for extra joy because there is always something new to look forward to: new class teacher, new books, new classroom and maybe new friends as well. Then there’s also the illusion that all that was bad, weak and forgettable of the year that ...
