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…
Author: Indran Amirthanayagam
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…
Negotiables
I wish to crack a bottle of arrack and kick my legs out on the verandah before the sea at twilight, this mix of liquor, even kisses, pleasure under whirring fans, brought…
The Thirty Year Old Boy
I would like to believe we have been forgiven, that the end justifies means, that prejudice has been copy-edited out of the nursery reader, that the black man with roving eyes and…
Renunciation
We turned out of bed saddened and furious when we heard Taliban detonated the Bamiyan Buddhas: What savagery, to destroy testaments aged over centuries, to a now effaced history; but today let…
Belonging
The island belongs to centipede, rat, butterfly, lots of species each with their own habitats, and supervising all arable and fallow land the president king. Minorities may enjoy clean living in freshly…
Round-up
219 Tamils were rounded up in Gampaha town during dusk to dawn raids. They had no proper id cards and did not offer adequate reason to be living in the vicinity. Their…
Dancing In Sympathy (Mullaitivu)
Six boys from Hindu College will enter the scene from Stage Left, an equal number of girls from Muslim Ladies Stage Right. They will shake their bodies, slide and writhe, and be…
Equal Treatment
Citizens of Killinochchi and Mullaitivu fled before our liberators arrived. They live for the moment in nearby jungle under a canopy punctured by shells. Some moved to a safe zone demarcated by…
Forgetting, Mullaitivu
The town is full of stray dogs, cows, ghosts, buildings pockmarked, unhinged, open to wind and rain. Soldiers patrol on foot. Trucks and tanks rumble through the center. Rebels took all the…
Let us make the bombers accountable to us!
As I write more than 250,000 civilians are trapped in jungle near Mullaitivu. They have little food, water and medicine. They are being injured and killed. They need help. Please speak to…