Saying goodbye has never been one of my strong suites. I just can’t seem to get it right. Other people seem to know all the right moves – crying at a funeral: getting drunk with that friend who’s about to leave the country. Me, on the other hand – I’m the sort of person who […]
They say the Chinese have a curse: may you live in interesting times. We Sri Lankans have definitely been cursed by the Chinese. This isn’t just a pun on the Port City: In the space of one year we, as a nation, have toppled a dictatorship, installed another one, cried out against Saudi Arabia and argued passionately the subject of ...
Malu-O! The Maluman – thus I call him in my head – trudges up the lane. His panniers are balanced across a bent back. Green sarong, dirty white shirt, stalking through the neighborhood of balconies and rich mens’ conversation. Sometime curtains are closed as he passes with his panniers of fish. The laboring man is a subtle insult to many, ...
Royalty. A bit of an odd thing, really. On the surface of it, no-one really seems to be sure why it’s still around (unless you’re in the Middle East, in which case the answer is ‘oil’). Most of the world’s countries don’t have a king or queen anymore. The very concept of power being transferred through a dynasty is carefully ...
Unlike the BBS, I have no illusions that the Ruling Dynasty will just step down from power. Time has proven that Mahinda Rajapakse knows better than most people on how to wield the powers of the High Office. What I am concerned about is that nobody in the Government - much less the Familia - seems to be speaking out against the BBS.
Sri Lanka has a lot of protests, most of them conducted by local universities. We protest everything – governments, private education, scholarships, private education, private education… you get the picture. It seems that every other month there’s a couple of metal barricades and one of them water cannon machines rolling up the road. I’ve had the unfortunate experience of being ...
I’m about as omnivore as can be, perhaps leaning towards a more carnivore-ish evolution of humanity: I don’t quite trust anything green on my plate, and I hold that most vegetables (like beans and carrots) are poisonous in large quantities, and should be exchanged for chicken where possible. Seriously, the only thing you can reliably trust is a potato. I ...
Does anyone remember the original TIME magazine? I don’t. The first TIMEs shipped in the late 1920s – almost thirty years before my parents first opened their eyes and screamed out their existence to the hospital ward. I’m from the 90’s: generation Z, the Millenials, call it what you wish. My memories of TIME are boxes of thin, red-bordered magazines ...
Have you seen a recent article on the Island titled ‘Buddhism – “The Best Religion in the World” award’ ? If you haven’t, you should. This wonderful article proceeds thus: The Geneva-based International Coalition for the Advancement of Religious and Spirituality (ICARUS) has bestowed “The Best Religion in the World” award this year on the Buddhist Community. This special […] ...
“No one man should have all that power.” – Kanye West If you were to liken the 19th Amendment to poop, you’d end up with an incredibly crude but hilariously accurate description. It was a long poop. Protracted. Painful. It even made me want to quote Kanye West. But it was necessary, oh, so necessary. Because Kanye, despite being ...
She halts, looks back, and waves at him again. He smiles back, the cheerless window framing his face. The train is too crowded to wave back; so he smiles, fingering the little silver cross she gave him that morning. “God loves you,” she sobbed. “I love you.” “I love you,” he whispered back in the dawn light. The cross gleams ...
Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking. – Marcus Aurelius Ceasar, the last great emperor of Rome | philosopher Anyone who’s had a serious chat with me recently would have noticed a tendency to go on and on about Thailand. Thailand happened at a crucial time for me. I was ...
Throughout the Presidential Election, my Newsfeed’s been inundated with people praising the former President of Sri Lanka, His Excellency Mahinda Rajapakse, for stepping down peacefully after a decade in power. Many were expecting a bloodbath. Despite reported last-minute attempts by H.E to use the military to suppress the voters, that didn’t happen (thanks to a few strong civil servants who ...
When I was a child, I wanted to be an author. Unfortunately, my father, who was a smart man, took me aside and said to me, “Son, you might enjoy reading, but you’re never going to make money writing.” Now, years later, I’ve proven him wrong, but he had a point. The world was changing. This was the 90s: in ...
“Mokaddhe machang mey ice bucket challenge eka?” (What’s this ice bucket challenge, machang?) asks person A. Let’s call him Ruwan. “Mala vikarayak oi! Ara Polonnaruwe minissu wathura nathuwa merenawa: mehe booruwo wathura liter ganang oluwe dhaala nasthikaranawa!” (It’s a farce! People are dying of drought in Polonnaruwa and here people are wasting liters of water […]
Indians are assholes. They are smelly, dirty and they poop on the pavement. This is known. It’s also false. I’m in Bangalore, sitting on a very comfortable sofa in a luxury apartment in Baipenahalli. The electricity here is backed up by a diesel generator downstairs and a separate battery in the house backing that up […]
We cry for freedom. Yet what is freedom? The freedom to make our own choices? Is that freedom? When every decision we make , every step we take is haunted by the teachings hammered into our minds since childhood: when every choice is haunted by all that we were, are and will be: when every […]
I’ve been hearing some pretty interesting things about our Glorious Leader, Percy Mahendra Mahinda Rajapaksa. 1) Percy has cancer. Unfortunately, cancer does not vote SLFP, and therefore he’s having a hard time controlling it. 2) Percy has diabetes. 3) Either way, he flies to the US once a week for meds. Ironic, isn’t it? 4) Percy went to Nepal last ...
A couple of days ago, I was analyzing who the biggest political influencers on Twitter were. The numbers were small, because despite the number of selfies generated by the average TweetUpSL, Twitter in Sri Lanka is still a small circle. It’s Facebook that reigns supreme for now, so let’s get on the Zuckertrain. Warning: you’re in for a spreadsheet. Friendly graphics appear after the ...
I’m no Sun Tzu, but some things need to be said.* Thou shalt not hate a human for their religion. There’s some interesting math on the atheism wikia: postulating from an estimate of 63,000 religious groups throughout human history, all the way from the ancient Hittites, they estimate that we – the human race- came up with some 28,000,000 religious deities. That’s ...
