Photo by EPA/M.A.PUSHPA KUMARA courtesy LA Times It is quite possible to give detailed responses to all the questions that my learned friend Dr. Dayan Jayatilleka has asked me. Nevertheless, I will only attempt…
Photo by Dushiyanthini Kanagasabapathipillai 2009 When Sidath’s mum wore her wedding sari, she would tell her children, ‘the lotus would fully open.’ The large lotus was noticeable because its bright red sequins,…
Photo courtesy Colombo Gazette A tweet from the government’s official Twitter account around the LLRC National Action Plan noted the following today, #SriLanka has implemented 30% of #LLRC recommendations, @PresRajapaksa tells UN…
Image courtesy Tehelka Five years ago the demise of Velupilai Prabhakaran was a fast-spreading secret-on-the-block several days before it was made official and the war was pronounced to have ended. One felt…
Photo by Anushka Wijesinha, 2011, via IPS Since the end of war in May 2009, the United Peoples Freedom Alliance (UPFA) government has sought to forge a new overarching Sri Lanka identity…
In this place there are No trees no old house With the rope swing Between the karatha kolombang Trees Here there is only White heat white-brown sand Four tin walls And a…
Photo by Arun Pillai-Essex I am having a somewhat surreal conversation with a young man. He is describing a telephone conversation with a woman calling from Australia who, ‘speaks with a Sinhala…
When I was walking near the Mulativu beach by around 5.30 this morning, I came across an abandoned Catholic Church. It was in a dilapidated condition. The Church seems to have been…
Photography by AP Photo/Eranga Jayawardena, via “” – Jacques Derrida: text delivered at Althusser’s funeral “” – Jean Baudrillard, Cool Memories, London, Verso, 1990, pp 223-24. The central contention of the anti-victory celebration…
Image from SL Online News “You have to live – did live, from habit that became instinct – in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness,…
Photo by AP Photo/Eranga Jayawardena The mind tends to disconnect well tread passages during travel. It’s a wonder the simple things that stay with you, things you only notice once you’ve left. To…
Sri Lanka celebrated that very first victory day one day later than it has been marked in the four years since. It was the 19th of May, 2009. Vellupillai Prabhakaran had been…
Photo courtesy ISHARA S.KODIKARA/AFP/GETTY IMAGES, via The Global Mail [five times five things to try to say quickly] 1. The misters assisted in shelling these shells on the seashore war, The shells…
Photo by Buddhika Weerasinghe/Getty Images via Al Jazeera America In a well-known TED talk, the Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Adichie talks of the dangers of the single story.[1] “The single story creates stereotypes,”…
Photo courtesy Amnesty International May 2009 will always be an exclamation mark in Sri Lanka’s history. Many will celebrate the defeat of the Tamil Tigers as a rupture with a brutal past….
