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…
Author: Indran Amirthanayagam
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…
At Your Service
Islanders always like to baila, party, party, nibble the ear whispering, pump themselves with arrack and go courting on the Green, but in these holidays at year’s end dedicated to forgetting the…
On Anthems and the State of the Union
I have been stirred and moved even to tears by both the Tamil and Sinhala versions of the Ceylon, now Sri Lanka,anthem. I think I owe this emotional tie to birth on…
Inheritance
There is no rule written in an enormous ledger by an acolyte angel that says a poet will write every day until death. The uncivil war will end according to absence of…
Hand Washing
Murder cannot be hidden, bodies decompose but skeletons remain; certainly they can be washed from beach into sea and stripped clean by carnivorous fish yet the panel requires just a few examples,…
On Replacing the Sun-God
The Sun God disappeared from the scene in May, 2009 killed by advancing army units, not clear which brave soldier pulled the trigger, for some reason government has kept quiet about circumstances,…
Mass Marriage, Vavuniya
What a large and dramatic idea occurred to the brigadier in charge of rehabilitation , to organize a mass wedding to spur former Tiger troops into formation under a different philosophy and…