Hoppers are my favourite type of everyday Sri Lankan food. Cultural appropriation is my least favourite everyday form of neo-colonialism. So imagine my reaction when I read this article about some British girl minting it making hoppers in one of the poshest food market spots in the heart of London. My disbelief turned to outrage as I read the article. ...
I sent my poem Father and Dog to my dad and he sent me this poem in response! He is definitely a sentimental person but he’s never written me a poem before! I was so touched and happy and this is the sweetest thing he’s ever done for me :) so so happy. Little note: The two puppies he refers ...
two children and a wife in a foreign land You step onto cold, polished terazzo Who do you come home to? 8 o’clock specials and pre-prepared food your own mind and the drink the little black and brown one crept out, head bent low, tail waving in belaboured greeting Blackie came to be. A returned wife, one grown child, and ...
I don’t call myself a feminist. Since I was a teen, it has been plaguing me as to why everyone chooses to call me that instead of say, a postcolonial critic, a mathematician, a writer, a goof, or any of the things that I do actually identify myself as. Once, a friend joked that if we were playing Taboo and ...
I attended a seminar for justice and peace workers in Sri Lanka and had the honour of meeting some inspiring people working in grassroots groups. Below are two poems inspired through discussions with them and the seminar in general. The old adage If Money doesn’t bring Happiness what makes you think Economic Development is the post-war solution? Counselling, transitional just ...
Your milk-tea hand holds mine, gingerbiscuit brown, your mood fixed by my touch. Dry lips peeling skin off the milk tea once brewed deep as your eyes. You push the tea towards me and I offer you love cake. We don’t take sugar in our tea.
It finally happened. After years of refusing to sit on the toilet seat of public restrooms, my squatting finally went amiss, and I did it: I peed on myself. As I sit in the very café that this incident happened, tapping away this narrative on my keyboard, I sit with my right leg pressed tight against the cloth chair, hoping ...
As a Sri Lankan woman, I am doubly obliged to like kids. I feel like South Asians give white women a tacit waiver, accepting that many of them ‘choose’ not to have children but of course ‘regret it when their maternal instinct kicks in’ or ‘when they’re 40 and alone and miserable and their husband hates them because they are ...
(1) After enjoying a week’s holiday with my best friend in Tasmania, I was driven to Hobart airport to return home. I walked in and met pristine white walls and floors with a few, perhaps 8, conveyor belts at the opposite end that were the only barrier between your entry to the airport and exit into the plane. The belts ...
My birthday is tomorrow and as I await the torrent of Facebook wishes, I’d like to attempt something: asking you to ‘gift me forward’. I have money to buy myself things I need and whimsically desire. It touches me most when I see other people getting involved in making the world a better place. You don’t have to care about ...
Part III: Rejection Dukie is the greatest unrequited love story of my life. I cannot communicate to you how much my happiness depends on the love of a dog. While I was overseas, missing my pets, I would fawn after dogs in public, savouring the few times I got to pat the doggos while pretending to be interested in their ...
Part II: How to name a dog Duke is the dog every affectionate family dreams of having. Loving and obedient to his owners, ferocious – despite his diminutive size – to outside threats, and soft and cuddly to boot. He had eyes that you could read and communicate with. When he was afraid, I’d hold his little face in my ...
Part V: Purrsonality disorder When you come home from work, it doesn’t matter how bad your day has been when your baby doggo greets you at the door, wagging and whining and panting furiously, bursting with excitement at your return. It’s like the world melts away and you regain the energy to take another stab at life. I wish Dukie ...
“Have you noticed that girls with curly hair have big personalities?” my friend asked me. I know very few girls of brazen locks: which ones are lively? Are any of them not? No, came the answer not a single one timid Each as unruly in hair as in spirit Hang on, that’s not right – Most Sri Lankans are curlies ...
I used to have a nuanced view about the problems around employing foreign-educated graduates in Sri Lanka vs. encouraging locally-educated graduates. The protests by university student unions, medical students, and a host of other youth who had bought into the free education rainbow only to find no pot of golden jobs at the end – I sympathized with them and ...
Part I: How to name a cat. My cat’s name is Eddie. This is Eddie trying to wear my pants Eddie is a rescue cat: he wandered into our garden to hide from the cruel world outside and found us instead. He decided to stay after some coaxing from my patient, loving housemate, Ema. We rewarded his trust with multiple ...
My parents are well into their sixties and make do with technology by asking my brother (a total techie) and myself (more technologically inept than my parents) to help them set up Wi-Fi, show them pictures on Facebook, and so on. While my 84-year-old great-uncle marvels at his Uber application and the paradigm shift in economy that such apps are ...
When I was doing my undergraduate degree, I got a name for myself in some circles of friends as the one involved in community action, the one who ‘cares about the world’ or ‘karma collector’, to reproduce some interesting terms used by friends and acquaintances. In most of my current circles of friends I’m hardly the most involved or most ...
