Published in my column in The Nation on February 04, 2012 By Darshanie Ratnawalli Being Sri Lankan means different things to different people, which I think is totally fine. The only aspect of Sri Lankanness worth insisting upon is that all persons, stories, theories and analyses should place their contexts within the actual, real Sri Lanka which exists in reality not in dimension –X. A lot of
Published in my column in The Nation ‘The Painted Goose’ on January 29, 2012 By Darshanie Ratnawalli Sometimes, certain sentences lodge in my head until I have to exorcise them by an act of writing. The following are from an essay titled ‘Back to Basics: The Need for an Honest Conversation About ‘Sri Lankanness’ and ‘Sri Lankan identity’ by Achcharya ...
(Actually I was not dating Ajith then, but can’t a girl dream?) Published in my column in The Nation ‘The Painted Goose’ on January 22, 2012 By Darshanie Ratnawalli In the afternoon of 10 October 1987, sound of shelling was once more heard in Jaffna barely three months after peace was enforced in Sri Lanka by India with the Indo-Lanka Accord. Most Jaffnese (records UTHR) couldn’t believe
Published in my column in The Nation ‘The Painted Goose’ on January 8, 2012 By Darshanie RatnawalliThe LTTE were technically Sri Lankan Forces too. They are on record in non- Sri Lankan sources as having had amputations performed on people to stop them from leaving no-fire zones. A book, which announces that Sri Lankan forces amputated people’s limbs to stop ...
Published in my column in The Nation ‘The Painted Goose’ on January 1, 2012 By Darshanie RatnawalliErnest Hemingway was passionate about bullfighting and wrote two books revolving around it. When I was in school or just after, I read one, ‘The Dangerous Summer’ it must have been not ‘The Sun Also Rises’ or I would remember the plot. What I ...
And treats them like pustules in a delicate anatomical region (quietly ignores them hoping they will just go away)From 2009 to 2011 consistently, faithfully and in a variety of digital media which can be easily retrieved Niromi de Soyza has been making the same fundamental and monumental slip, which doesn’t bode at all well for the authenticity of her memoir ...
This post is in reply to the following comment By Ruwan on EMBARRASSING BITS IN PROFESSOR NALIN DE SILVA’S PUBLIC PROCLAMATIONS on 7/19/11"Every time I read literature that deals with attempts to understand this island's past, the following question keeps coming up in my mind. If Tamil is one of the oldest languages in human civilization (Wikipedia) and Sinhalese civilization ...
BY DARSHANIE RATNAWALLIAlso published in Sri Lanka Guardian (only the first part) and LankaWeb (entirely)The unease I have long felt about Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka crystallized into distaste on Sunday 13 June 2010 when I came across his interview in that day’s Lakbima. It provided a startling glimpse into the dimension of reality Dr. DJ either inhabits for real or wants to sell to the unwashed
BY DARSHANIE RATNAWALLIThe unease I have long felt about Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka crystallized into distaste on Sunday 13 June 2010 when I came across his interview in that day’s Lakbima. It provided a startling glimpse into the dimension of reality Dr. DJ either inhabits for real or wants to sell to the unwashed masses. The way he tells it, there are lessons to be learnt from the whole Dutugemunu
Those chingalaz and these chingalaz.A cat may look at a king. Similarly, even someone like me, belonging firmly to the genus Toms- Dicks-Harries-and-Janes may, spot in the communications of one of Island’s regular columnists, I won’t say fatal flaws, but clear evidence of indifferent research methods, a clear preference as it were, for surface skimming, where in-depth diving is required. I
Ethnic Identity in Sri Lanka’s Pre-capitalist Past: Shanie, Darshanie and Roberts drew a comment (Go to comments in that site). This is in responseFutury instead of history! How progressive. But with this talk of banning and silencing aren’t we actually going backwards in time, to a less enlightened era, which saw knowledge as dangerous needing to be contained, restricted, and even suppressed?
In Stephen King’s Dead Zone a character says the following remarkable thing;"It’s been my experience that ninety-five percent of the people who walk the earth are simply inert, Johnny. One percent are saints, and one percent are assholes. The other three percent are the people who do what they say they can do…….I’ve got people in the mills that take ...
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