GAYA’S INTRO: The author left his parents behind in Northern Jaffna to join up ten years ago, strangely coincidentally on May 19th 2005. He has much to remember… BY ARAVINTH RAJESH Ten years ago, this day this time… many things were in my head. Decided to leave home to bring many sleepless nights to an end. Leaving parents behind I made myself go forward to ...
THE ISLAND, Nov 9 Bishop: “I’m afraid you’ve got a bad egg, Mr. Jones!” Curate: “Oh no, my Lord, I assure you! Parts of it are excellent!” – From Maurier’s cartoon, True Humility, (1895) Another budget has come and gone. It is already as good as passed because the government commands a two-thirds majority in Parliament. The debate that ...
A comment on De-Mining Sri Lanka: A Job for Widows and Survivors Read Smriti Daniel’s article on Al-Jazeera published on 12 January 2016. Enter a world you didn’t know existed, but one which Vimaleswaran Gunamala, Ananda Chandrasiri, Damian O Brien of the HALO trust —and even His Excellency the British High Commissioner James Dauris, who previously in Columbia knew de-mining ...
GAYA FERNANDO Rizana Nafeek left the country forging her age on a passport and found herself in hot water with the laws of the foreign host nation. She was denied her life in the discretion given to the tribal family negotiation process in Saudi Arabia and was sentenced to a terrible death. Ranjini left the country as a refugee post-war ...
Gaya’s intro: The irony of this post below is that one year ago when the BBS were attempting to stir up anti-Muslim this was an iSrilankan Avurudu post 2013 echoing a campaign by non-Muslims to turn the current around: Buy Muslim without fail this Avurudu! UDAN FERNANDO Colombo and outskirts are having their usual ghost town character during the Avurdudu ...
KASUNI THEWARAPPERUMA A little remembrance on this day for Nandakka. For some, she might have been a servant, but to us she was family. That’s why we called her Nanda-akka (Nanda-big sister). She carried my dad when he was a baby and she looked after us. Cooked like a demon and was a friend to our late aunty who never ...
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high Where knowledge is free Where the world has not been broken up into fragments By narrow domestic walls Where words come out from the depth of truth Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way Into ...
It’s Avurudu time. We live in Italy where there is no koha, alas. Other avurudu’s were sad and void of hope; in short, pretty hopeless. There was no end in sight. Kohas sounded hollow and Avurudu only meant that Southern Colombo people could leave the city for a long weekend confining themselves to safe cities outside the war zone. We ...
GAYA FERNANDO Some people get into development work without a clue as to what it’s all about. They joined up to a corps of people who wanna make the world a better place. That’s fine. Then there are professionals who slog away at commercial jobs and half-way take a break, unwind in the mountains or beaches of Sri Lanka and ...
By Lifeisnotabeach Dear Mr President, It is one year since I woke up to an ‘aha!’ moment in my life… A long awaited sense of freedom, not just freedom from terror, but also freedom of speech, freedom of living a life devoid of constant fear of being ‘watched and listened to’, a violation of basic human rights, stolen from us ...
Living as a migrant for the first time in Zürich, Tanuja Thurairajah found herself thinking about the narratives that people were exposed to in their daily life. “When I came here I met other Tamils, but somehow I felt that they reached out to a different narrative and I reached out to a different narrative…” “It’s difficult to really ...
SANDYA SALGADO: Batticaloa District, in the Eastern Province of Sri Lanka is an ethnically diverse city with a population of approximately 490,000. The three decade old civil war wreaked havoc in this beautiful coastal town where the majority of the people are Tamil (74.5%) with a smaller Muslim (23.5%) and a Sinhala (1.3%) community living amidst some amount of ...
The BBC reported this today on a school reopening in Beghazi and I was reminded of what the Jaffna teacher said … “I hope my country can find a way forward. By opening the school, we’re trying to establish some kind of normality here. Despite this war, despite all the destruction, we are still keeping on. We need to live. ...
The deadline for applications is February 29, 2016. This year as well, I repeat the special call-out for a Masters in Development Practice due to its uniqueness: An opportunity for those who do not hold a Bachelor’s degree to offer their valuable experience in development work as a requirement to qualify in a program designed to deliver, creating an environment in ...
A must-see, must-hear writer-lecturer-broadcaster is in town—Kenan Malik— the author of the book I am reading right now and one of the cleverest dudes of our times. Which town? If you glance to the what’s on listings on the top right column on the home page of iSrilankan you will see all three listed events in Galle, Colombo and Jaffna ...
Image of the Week BY ARUMUGANESAN PONNUDURAI AP as I call him or Nesan to his friends is from Thirunelvely East, Jaffna in Sri Lanka and lives in London. I love his photos and on this holiday in Sri Lanka he clicked some amazing photos of the flora, fauna and else. Proud to feature the Snakes of the Snake Charmer at Galle Fort as Image of the Week.
Maskeliya, Sri Lanka. Image Credits: Deepthi Peiris, So we got our land back from the British and before that the Dutch and Portuguese. It’s one hell of a land with mind-blowing pics of each strand of sea n foam, pasture and plain, paddyfield and rubber estate, desertlike palm to the south and Palmyrah to the North, sunrise on white ...
Siva is an artist, survivor, citizen and a human most extraordinary. His work is a testimony to how the human mind with artistic expression can transcend the violence of war, the other myriad constraints and negotiations that await the unsuspecting human and the navigation of pain and moving beyond. Do share this post, and drop in at the theertha ...
