Listen
Listen to the doctor, the pediatrician, the head of the children’s hospital in North Gaza. Listen to him mourn his son. Listen to his cries, his wailing. his son killed…
Poetry
Nyet
No more refugees. No more border- crossers. No more morning after pills. No more right to decide who will decide if I will bear the greatest child in the greatest nation.…
Kintsugi by Anoma: Repairing, Rebuilding and Healing a Shattered World
When a delicate object like a glass vase, ceramic bowl or porcelain cup breaks, we throw it away thinking that it is beyond repair. But in the Japanese art of kintsugi, cracks…
Naming the Dead and Disappeared as an Act of Memorialisation
Naming the names of the dead is an important act of memorialisation; for those they leave behind, it is their names that contain their essence. Palestinians in Gaza are writing the names…
Target
I don’t want to be a pessimist, to darken your day, to add a fresh pack of stones to the load you carry. But I cannot help myself, not now,…
On Burial and Punishment
I note the moral equivalence, one punishment for another although I don’t think we can fix history in a flash. Go back to days before October 7th or 8th. But…
Tamilian in Paris
Weekly The restaurant served idly and dosai around the corner from Notre Dame, before the fire, in a perfect union of India and Europe, while at my table a waitress asked…
Poetry and Photography Reveal the North’s War Trauma
Sarath Chandrajeewa’s first impressions of Jaffna came from his father’s stories about the north where he was stationed as a police officer. His father spoke of the friendliness of Jaffna people, their…
Rebirth and Memory Black July, 40 Years Later
It is painful to read how Sri Lankan government ministers rallied their goondas to fan out in neighborhoods looking for Tamil homes marked on voter lists. It is painful to…
Jaffna Today
How to select keys for the door when you know the gatekeeper all too well, when chance and destiny carry the same code words, when love no longer depends on…
Blood Sport of a Man
at her school, it’s not only the muscular jock that makes rape sound like a shaggy-dog story it’s also the averagely built skinny man who camouflages in feminism flexing his wit,…
Sister, Sister
We lock pinkies and swear oaths stronger and more fearsome than a man could dream for blood is our birthright so our ties are awash in it drenched in a secret…
Boys Will Be Boys
Boys will be boys, And that girl who was groped in the back of the bus, Will go back home, See phantom handprints on her clothes, And wince every time someone comes…
The Sri Lankan Kella
I am the woman of my country The product of ‘culture’, of history of a nation The result of procreation The manufactured playground of patriarchy The battlefield of nationalism I am…
Independence Song, 2023
Are we free in 2023? To declare love and friendship without fear, without visits from police or blackmail from nosy neighbors? Are we free in 2023? To deny low wages or flagrant…