Off the Field
In the end we have only ourselves to pick up from the grass, the bed, the gymnasium floor. The dead will have their say in dreams, and fond ones too, how the…
Author: Indran Amirthanayagam
We Are Resolved
Sri Lanka is small but the government thinks big, always has; since independence its growth rate in ministries and delegations the envy of Asia, and now defeat of the resolution the charge…
The Island Abstains
The decision by the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka to abstain from the General Assembly vote calling for an end to violence in Syria, and stepping down of its president, cannot…
Killer Representative
I am assembling the scene, a local hood and his gang come to a Christmas Eve gathering at a beach hotel, want to dance with foreign women, see a bloke from town…
Measuring (After Nandikadal)
An embarrassment, to forget over short eats, ignore the bundle on his back, that sloshed set of poetry he cannot avoid carrying, an appendix, reptilian brain, fascination with naming elements of the…
A Fisherman Testifies
I learned from Sri Lanka to go overboard, to flounder in the deep ocean while Navy sailors beat me with sticks, and cut my nets, and round me up as the country’s…
Prescient
When Lasantha wrote the editorial that predicted his imminent assassination he suggested the civil war would turn steadily uglier, then move inwards, as a lizard searching for its tail, insidious in the…
Cheran
He is writing history, where he lives, when he travels, to Denmark, Singapore, Tamil Nadu, Toronto. Edward Said wrote about Palestinians, Rudramoorthy Cheran, Tamils. News that my friend has suffered a mild…
Climate-Induced
Plantain leaves, steaming yellow rice, katta sambol, seer fish, passion fruit, the island’s culinary pleasures I think of first, batting then for a day, stopping for lunch and tea, but this strain…
Overseeing the Farm
Planning a visit home is not easy for a Tamil returning to Jaffna. First, he needs to fly into the international airport at Katunayake and pass through customs like any traveler. He…
The Destroyed Temple
The house at the end of the road, the giant multiple-walled house at the end of the road without a telephone, or internet, without a satellite dish, without rubbish—the residents burned what…
The Right to Respond
: The numbers do not add up. Census says 430,000 people resided in the Vanni mid-2008. A year later, 290,000 are shepherded by the Army into “welfare centers” where one hundred men,…
Cricket, Lima
In the mist that blows over the field at Lima Cricket near the Pacific, moist, cool air lets the wicket breathe and the crack of bat on ball sing like a memory…
On Relative Rights
A short fall in human rights suggests a failure in the harvest, perhaps a missing plank in the slide, and some will go flying, others hungry, while you add ridiculous to describe…
Party
To spoil a party, call the police to enforce noise laws or prohibitions against drinking by minors, we can understand as a necessary if unpleasant right of a neighbor who cannot sleep…