gathering at a beach hotel, want to dance
with foreign women, see a bloke from town

trotting high with a blonde, but when
they ask for a spin, are spurned, although

they are hot shots in the area, their chief
an elected representative; they have guns

and knives in their pockets, or placed
discreetly on their reserved table, and

they tear a woman from her boyfriend,
cutting her up and him, then shooting.

Government in a tither, keeping press
at bay, we cannot have these stories

displayed in the West where similar
incidents take place in the most respected

capitals, says another representative,
and the perpetrators have been booked,

are under investigation, although the head
of the local governing council has been known

to kill in the past but nobody is sure who can,
or will, introduce historical evidence.

• Aiyo!
• The Art of Forgetting by Lisa Kois – Director’s Introduction and Previews
• my teacher talks of a sri lankan english-poem ii
• Web censorship in Sri Lanka: Documenting a growing trend
• Disappearances of Persons in Sri Lanka

on his back, that sloshed
set of poetry he cannot avoid

carrying, an appendix,
reptilian brain, fascination

with naming elements
of the crime, breadth

of carpet strafing
of civilians in tents

on banks of the lagoon,
while tails for the ball

are rented
and we sit down

to quail and goose,
although elements

of the meal have
no political meaning.

They are foods for festive
or special occasions: here

fundraising, so ordinary
citizens can travel

to see the miscreant
dictatorship, dressed

in civvies, mixed in
with the crowd,

not in a killing field,
drawn up in advance,

but the larger and
harder-to-manage

masses of the post-war
streets, and report

what they find
before the police visit.

• Ayelasah
• Beauty
• Does cricket have a citizenship?
• Sri Lanka’s Flood Response: In Dimbulagala, people protest and plead
• Do candidates need armed security to ask for people’s votes?

while Navy sailors beat
me with sticks, and cut
my nets, and round me up

as the country’s diplomats
meet my Indian representatives
with elaborate denials

of mistreatment
on the high and most
domestic seas.

I want to feed
my wife and children,
return to Tamil Nadu

with my catch. I have
not been re-schooled
as a farmer

or an errand boy.
Will the United Nations
take up my case?

The International
Criminal Court?
My Chief Minister

protests and protests
but the Center is deaf
and keeps speaking

with the devil.
How can we calm
his temperature,

cool the beast,
teach the tyrant
that he cannot stifle

Tamils beyond
the nautical limits
of the Sri Lankan island?

• Is Sri Lanka in danger of being held accountable by the International Criminal Court?
• Much ado about nothing: Is Sri Lanka in danger of being held accountable by the International Criminal Court?
• Not signing the Rome Statute is not enough! (A response to Ranil Wickremasinghe and Mangala Samaraweera)
• An inconvenient history: A reply to Victory Ivan’s viewpoints on criminal defamation
• Petrol Pricing

as a lizard searching for its tail, insidious in the way
each institution begins to lose its independence,
the machinery of the ruling family greasing every

Tom, Dick and Banda—forgive my allusion to white
rulers of a more genteel if not innocent nursery school—
this forsaken Ceylonese child has turned monstrous now

in the eyes of Whitehall and Ottawa’s Parliament Hill,
betters going wild about pressures in Canberra to present
a bold brief on behalf of human rights and investigation

of war crimes as Commonwealth heads prepare to meet,
while on the island rival thugs, from within the all-powerful
ruling group, battle over drug routes and a parliamentary seat.

• Overseeing the Farm
• Slow Creep — the World Tamil Movement and Tharisanam TV
• Please leave us alone; a voice from Muslim community
• Bully Boys and Bully Girls
• Unshed Tears

News that my friend has suffered a mild heart attack
does not surprise me. His muscle has been strained
for more than thirty years. From the Saturday Review

where he reported the first days of rebellion in Jaffna
to more recent sociological study and dramatic writing,
the man, as scientist and poet, has let emotions hang

on strings strummed to a tabla’s beat. Wordsmiths
for Tamilians are as good as our instruments
and words are always enhanced by music. I recall

when we met in 1987 at the International Centre
for Ethnic Studies on Kynsey Terrace in Colombo,
where I moved as a kid when the house was home

and not yet a center dedicated to resolving differences,
the wounds of the1983 “Riots” were still very fresh,
and enthusiasm for resolution of long-standing

grievances strong, and nobody thought
we would allow democracy to fall into tyranny.
Neelan had not yet crossed the hairs of a Tiger,

nor even Premadasa, but the Indian Army were
landing in Jaffna, and resistance came soon after
that brief spring during which Cheran and I smoked

a cheroot and spoke poetry tinged with sadness
still for the murders of Black July and later,
on another visit, the suicide of Sivaramani,

whom we translated before the light
of an oil lamp in a thosai kaddai and thought
that, now we live abroad, let us recognize

at least that our spirits will not present passports
and our children, whom we could not imagine
then, would wander about our new homes and one day

think that to be Tamil is to be well-prepared to write
the essay on expulsion from the garden, and to feed, dream
and compose that other promise too, called the right of return.

• In conversation with Vivimarie Vanderpoorten
• Ground realities in Jaffna and its environs: Two key perspectives
• A travesty of justice: The sentencing of J.S. Tissainayagam
• Rajani commemoration: An absence of actuality
• my teacher talks of a sri lankan english-poem ii

passion fruit, the island’s culinary
pleasures I think of first, batting

then for a day, stopping for lunch
and tea, but this strain of poetry

has been sidelined, a war
won and lost, rewriting of history,

yet the latter may not be
necessary, building of

monuments to the bullet
near the sea, or the various

stupas popping up by kovils,
or replacing them quietly.

The waters of the Bay
of Bengal are rising steadily.

• In conversation with Vivimarie Vanderpoorten
• No one to listen to our pleas
• A-Z of Sri Lankan English: I is for isn’t it?
• Negotiables
• Madness

He may be asked to step into
a back room, to answer why
he carries the Economist
in hand luggage, or stickers
from the World Wildlife campaign

to save the tiger, given that
such animals have not been spotted
on the island in thousands of years,
if indeed they ever sauntered through
the wild grass or paddy fields.

He may be grilled about
family members in Wellawatte,
and what career he pursues
in the Scarborough, Ontario refuge
where wild and liberal creatures found

a home before conservatives took
over in Ottawa; he may be whisked
through secondary, and into a waiting
vehicle for a fast ride to the upstairs room
at CID headquarters where he will meet

his guide, his helper, who will say,
come friend, the campaign is lost,
give me a few names of laggards,
dreamers still in the foreign networks.
We must root out the germ.

Human beings have almost
eradicated polio, why not this
virulent, regional strain called
Eelam? Unfortunate, the cricketer
who failed a dope test,

and the others charged
with fixing matches, and
the Tamil policemen, who trained
in the hot sun for weeks to march
in the Victory parade for Eelam War IV,

told they cannot, on orders
of the President’s security detail.
What the hell, machan,
in paradise only Man is vile, said
the preacher who visited the island

in ancient times. Now we are renewed,
climate savvy, the A-9 Highway
is open to tourists beyond
Elephant Pass, but not yet, without
permission, to returning Tamils,

Hambantota boasts a deep water
port, and all our teenagers will
receive mandatory training
in military arts, which should help
them run animal farms in the far North.

• The Jaffna priest and the policeman who turned IGP
• Public Servant or Public Sahib?
• A-Z of Sri Lankan English: E is for Eelamist
• Speaking lies to power: Sri Lanka’s PM and the LTTE in India
• Forcible resettlements in East

at the end of the road without
a telephone, or internet,

without a satellite dish,
without rubbish—the residents

burned what they consumed—
certainly smoke can be traced,

and the courier’s story leaked
out of somebody else’s mouth

held incommunicado
in an East-European dungeon,

on leased land in the island
of Cuba, but that is another story,

the war found its target, today,
in helicopter to hand combat,

four aircraft once again, this time
choppers, and special forces—

not from Afghan camps
into Florida flight schools–but

Navy Seals, and the target
legitimate, not three thousand

ordinary civilians living
their American lives

until robbed by death,
rules for the rest of us

alive modified, and now
another death, tying

of the circle, a full spin
around the planet, what

Peru’s president said
was John Paul’s first miracle,

coincidence, his beatification
and death in combat

of Osama Bin Laden,
a bullet in the temple

of Evil, no longer
a Mastermind.

• Robberies Increase In Jaffna
• Chikenguniya Spreads In Jaffna
• The Big Stink in Sri Lanka
• Love Displaced
• The Publicity Baby

Govt: I understand
Tamil Net will jump to spread
the pernicious bleeding
heart report from those pesky
fellows at Channel 4,
so we must follow
our Leader and enact
his plan to send teams
to like-minded, non-aligned
countries to show how
governments can eliminate

terror, following our way
or the highway, of no return,
but we won’t use that crude
phrase. We believe we are
among friends here
in the poem without a need
to camouflage. Yet, we must
practice to win the diplomatic
battle now in the third and
fourth worlds where we
are very much at home.

• To The Courts, In Remorse
• Send us content for publication
• Joshua Roman in Sri Lanka
• Use Of SMS By Govt For Vital Information Dissemination
• Tsunami and asbestos

breathe and the crack of bat
on ball sing like a memory
of toffee I recall, outside

the tuck shop, the day
Josephians played St. Peter’s
in the wet air off Beira Lake

and all the boys, let off early
from class, rang the ropes
with cheers: St Joseph’s

victory, St. Peter’s parippu;
now forty years later,
accused still of immaturity,

I have dressed in whites,
a sun hat, am padded
up and ready to go out

again into the middle
to knock four fours
and a couple of sixers

in half a dozen balls,
to save the side
from infamy.

• AFLAME – Remembering Black July, 1983
• Beauty
• The victory that never came: Photos from Colombo during Cricket World Cup Final
• Theeban’s murder: An epitaph in Sinhala
• The opposition needs common sense, not a common candidate

a missing plank
in the slide, and
some will go flying,

others hungry,
while you add
ridiculous

to describe
the call
for a boycott

of your literary
party by so-called
rights activists,

which I presume
to mean men
and women

who agitate on
behalf of humans;
their call certainly

draws unwanted
attention to murder
of journalists

so let me propose
that we make fun
of it by such

ridiculous
excesses
as burning

an effigy of a doll
named censorship
without addressing

the argument
of the boycott
which did not say

don’t go, just
be aware of where
you speak in deed.

• Writing against the RSF/JDS appeal to boycott the Galle Literary Festival
• LLRC: Submission by Manik de Silva, President of the Editors Guild
• New Festival to Promote Unity in Sri Lanka
• Responding to a facile appeal: Galle Literary Festival and the freedom of expression
• GLF: A space for activists?

by minors, we can understand as a necessary
if unpleasant right of a neighbor who cannot

sleep or is bothered by willful disregard
for children. But to say, do not come to literary

feasting at Galle because journalists are killed,
or kidnapped, or forced to go abroad to save

their lives, this I read is an attack on the country,
which allows murder, rape and kidnapping

to bypass judicial review, and will not accept
responsibility for those who drive around

without license plates on its roads, or unfortunate
trapping of human beings on a killing spit of land

between lagoon and sea, which allows a minister
to chain a constituent to a tree, denies visas to left

and sundry, detaining a pesky lawyer from
Tamil Nadu at a checkpoint near former Tiger

dominions, meanwhile English elite, including me
on one occasion, have enjoyed, and will, liberty

at the party in Galle sponsored by Tourism Board
and interested businesses, hotels principally.

• election 2010
• Concerned Tamils, but what about the rest?
• Satellite View
• The future of tourism in Sri Lanka: A conversation with Renton de Alwis
• Focus on Badulla: Landslides

whispering, pump themselves
with arrack and go courting

on the Green, but in these
holidays at year’s end

dedicated to forgetting
the war and all those gadflies

buried in graves, some families
mourn their heroes away

from the headlights’ glare
of vans without license plates

that remain in service waiting
to be summoned when necessary.

• Party
• A brief note on the attack on J.C. Weliamuna
• Negotiables
• A Day at the Cricket
• Mass Graves: Nothing new to Sri Lanka

I find myself a bit blasé contradicting the noted historical wisdom of the ministers who passed the recent decree. They said there are no countries which sing their anthems in more than one language. Of course, that is not true. Canada, Switzerland, New Zealand, South Africa, even the United Kingdom which brings together different nations with their particular anthems, come to mind. But I wonder why a country that has celebrated its rich mixes– that have produced outstanding talent in literature (Ondaatje), cricket (Murali), and that sprinter, Susanthika Jayasinghe, who won a silver at the Sydney Olympics in 2000, and Duncan White who started the trend at the White City Games in 1948– has changed its law.

I speak too much of sport. What about antropology, which has rewarded the world with Gnanath Obeysekere and Valentin Daniel, political analysis, with Jayadeva Uyangoda, diplomacy with Jayantha Dhanapala? We have many heroes in our country and we were all once, boys or girls, moved, choked-up, listening to our mother tongue on the loudspeakers.

• AFLAME – Remembering Black July, 1983
• Dial a White Van for a pest-free life!
• Hear My VOICE: Velupillai Yesupalan ~ “My father is my role model”
• Does cricket have a citizenship?
• A-Z of Sri Lankan English: L is for link language

according to absence of such dictate when humours start to break down
cellular walls and cancer spreads overcoming defences of heart, lungs,

kidneys, gut, brain, in no particular order, as aforementioned parts
succumb to constant hammering of shells, fits of barking orders to kill,

and distant turning away from disaster, beating breasts, while asking
focus groups, how can we intervene in a sovereign nation, does this

particular wilful disregard for human life meet your standard, fellow
citizens and friends? Pure fantasy. Nobody consulted the man in Peoria

or the soothsayer shuffling along to the bead shop on Main Street. There
was no attempt to interfere with ordinary irritations of Western peoples

living in their democracies, or Chinese factory workers assembling sound
cards. Father or politburo know best which is to donate or lend fighter jets

in return for port concession and road-building, forest-felling contracts and
much more promised also to the other great power of the Indian Ocean, but

how to determine the amount any government can sell in order to kill in peace,
to eliminate its cancer with a terrifying dose of radiation, to keep the ground hot and

de-mine it slowly over decades while population dies off or sympathizers abroad
tire of protest marches on anniversary days. Human societies are slow to heal and

nurse resentments over decades and centuries. Welcome to hurt passed down to
children and grandchildren, to unpaid crimes, suppressed anger, cold war.

• Reaching out
• Belonging
• Madness
• Sethu Samudram: Bridging art, history and human relations
• Discovered: A sunken island, an Indian Ocean Atlantis?

and stripped clean by carnivorous fish yet the panel requires
just a few examples, sufficient to flesh out a theory of mass

slaughter; satellite shots will be investigated abroad and
conversations conducted with survivors of precarious boats

landing on Christmas Island or dragged into Jakarta. Scale
of killing poses a serious problem for management of disaster;

appointment of soft, suave diplomat to run damage control
at foreign ministry did not succeed. Murder will be revealed.

Macbeth is read also in Sri Lanka; it landed in the culture
before the current lot of customs inspectors; am sure

Saratchchandra contemplated translating the play if it did
not circulate already in the island like monsoon wind or ethics

which exist along with denial and chutzpah among
its inhabitants; government can throw a temper tantrum

but GSP will be linked to human rights and Ban Ki Moon
advised by his own handpicked men and eventually argument

about staring blind ahead into a bright and unitary future
while keeping North and East pressed down under army boots

will appear misguided, the world will keep reminding Colombo
that Vanni cannot remain a public jail where prisoners live

in tents and beg in thoroughfares during days supervised
by soldiers in watchtowers, on foot patrol, driving past in convoys.

• Now our New Year has no moon
• Negotiables
• On Relative Rights
• A tragi-comedy? The UN Advisory Panel and war crimes in Sri Lanka
• Yellow Banana

pulled the trigger, for some reason government has kept quiet
about circumstances, but other magicians in splendid whites

are raising arms to salute on Galle Face Green’s reviewing stand
troubling peace-loving citizens. They stand before armoured carriers

while fighter jets fly over the head of Old Parliament at the annual
parade to celebrate the late rebirth of Dutugemunu into our democracy,

a spirit who appeared to have achieved beatitude centuries ago,
but has required one more round on his favourite hunting ground,

a touch of three kingdoms-in-one panache, obeisance of tens of
thousands marching past, and loyalty before judgment of the ruling

family which will not brook any pesky, possibly traitorous questions,
while poets must in turn choose subjects patriotically, no more kissing

under umbrellas on the Green facing crashing sea, or relaying news of
former residents of Menik Farm turned beggars on streets of Kilinochchi.

• umbrella over bird
• A different kind of theatre in Sri Lanka
• Hear My VOICE: Thenuja Tharmeshwaran ~ “I am always my father’s favourite”
• Prawns and privations: Sugeeth’s life in Slave Island
• Too tired to say ‘human rights’

troops into formation under a different philosophy and yet appeal
to their strengths to cohere as a group not any longer in waging war

against the State but to reveal their common humanity to agree
to a public celebration of private bonds, to ensure their co-habiting

led to proper inheritance for children, access to social welfare
payments when necessary, all to the good for these members

of a herd, now in white vershtis and magenta sarees eating cake
and chatting with relatives witnessed by the Bollywood actor

Vivek Oberoi, no less, before returning to detention camps,
now two by two, respectable members of the new unitary ark,

where domestic animals gather obediently while the brigadier
sheds a tear; he told the press, he was nervous, even more so

than before his own wedding, which did not take place thankfully
under public glare and was not diminished by the splendour

of mass marriage like mass production of poultry, efficiencies
of scale, government desire to move rehabilitation forward

in one swoop, a sort of dog training in a large group; anybody
realize that marriage among truly reborn takes place between

two people and the witnesses are God and invited guests? Here,
some exceptions were made to the usual practice, no consultation

with bride or groom, whether the actor was indeed an honoured
guest, or if the brigadier should cry like a mother, or if even

53 couples minded seeing their knots tied in the presence
of each other, or have Reverend Moon and other enlightened

priests of mass marriage, become advisers to Sri Lankan
military, spiritual guides to its standard operating procedure?

• Mass Graves: Nothing new to Sri Lanka
• Reflections One Year On: The Commission of Inquiry and the International Independent Group of Eminent Persons
• Picking up the Tamil Tigers’ scent
• Reconciliation through ‘Rehabilitation’ & ‘Reintegration’ of Ex-LTTE members in Sri Lanka: Separating Fact from Fiction
• My abducted brother found in Colombo National Hospital

before the sea
at twilight,
this mix of
liquor, even

kisses, pleasure
under whirring
fans, brought
by our soldiers

bludgeoning
villagers with bombs.
They chose war,
the Tamils,

must now face
the music,
hopping
on one foot

to a new master.
This is obvious,
why write poetry
anymore, or even

put on a suit
or read the classics?
The arrack is sweet
and limestone,

salt and gems,
if any , in the North
will be harvested
to enjoy our southern

evenings strolling
at Unawatuna
hand in hand
under the moon;

even that Tamil
boy who lost
his mother
and father

to a misplaced
projectile,
says he must
move on,

learn a trade.
There is a new
calculus, throw
away the abacus,

Boys, the dream
has been denied.
Bend your heads
and genuflect,

we may yet
be kind and
give you a bit
of land down

the street
from the newly
shooted Bo Tree
and the shrine.

• Now our New Year has no moon
• Superstitions in the 21st century: Of black pottu, politicians and punools
• Hear My VOICE: Velupillai Yesupalan ~ “My father is my role model”
• A-Z of Sri Lankan English: C is for cousin brother
• At Your Service

means, that prejudice
has been copy-edited out
of the nursery reader,

that the black man
with roving eyes
and moneyed breath

is not after all Tamil,
a dirty devil come
to spook our children

at night who wish only
to dream of sweets
and cricket, and how

they pumped
the minority during
the tea-break in front

of the tuck shop
in a public hazing,
not approved

but allowed
by the benign authority,
the Principal

of laissez-faire–
oh let our boys
steam off,

better now
than grown up
and angry with wives

or trying to get a job
in the Tamil-run
Public Works Department,

or the Civil Service,
or even the thosai kaddai.
Of course that is history

now, the Thirty Year
War has been won,
and Tamil shopkeepers

must hide their newspapers
under lungis, and speak
Sinhala at checkpoints,

or while seeking
entry into government
buildings.

Their identity cards
will betray them
of course constantly,

as we noted in Afrikkan
guidance read in preparing
our civic practice,

the administration
of our post- 1956 democracy
based on the tyranny

of the majority
and the humble
subservience

of these once
mighty clerks.
Let them eat strings.

Let them learn
that when one party
wins, another gets

kicked in the butt,
that pottus are walking
invitations

to unseemly violations,
that 100,000 relations
are still under lock and key

in the Northern camps,
that cleaning up
must be sped up

so we can get these

potential voters out
to their farms and shacks

so they can prepare
succulent meals
for the hordes of

war tourists,
the gawkers
in search of

burnt-up pick-up
trucks, and the family
members

who want to see
where their sons
and daughters died.

• Cheran
• In conversation with Prof. Sumanasiri Liyanage
• Have NGOs failed in peacebuilding? An interview with Jehan Perera
• We can believe in NO candidate in 2010. What’s new though, right?
• Why should Tamil speaking communities give critical support to Sarath Fonseka?