
Still on the Rotten Bridge
“Homo Sapiens is prone to orgies of stupidity, brutality, and destruction.” Martin Wolf (The crisis of democratic capitalism) So back in the Chalk Circle but this time play ends in Act 2.…
“Homo Sapiens is prone to orgies of stupidity, brutality, and destruction.” Martin Wolf (The crisis of democratic capitalism) So back in the Chalk Circle but this time play ends in Act 2.…
Sri Lanka’s poorest of the poor, their lives devastated by economic collapse, may face a killer blow soon: a crippling of the public health system. That GMOA is planning to paralyse the…
During Black July, marauding mobs, when uncertain about the ethnic identity of a potential victim, would order him/her to recite the five precepts in Pali or the chant , a composite which…
“A tangle within, a tangle without…” Jata Sutta – Samyutta Nikaya In July 2020, Indika Rathnayake, a non-theistic online activist, was summoned to the Organised Crimes Prevention Police Division and questioned for three…
Before Gotabaya Rajapaksa, there was S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike. Before organic only, there was Sinhala only. And the related transformation of Vidyodaya and Vidyalankara from monastic colleges to secular universities. Like Sinhala only, this…
“We have not abandoned our people, neither will we do so.” Mahinda Rajapaksa (Budget 2023, second reading debate) The seminal event of the 2023 Budget cycle was not Budget 2023. The Budget…
Twenty two is not perfect. Far from it, perhaps light years far. Yet, in a season of defeats and setbacks, it is a win for Sri Lankan democracy, and for those Sri…
Sri Lanka, unravelled and unravelling, is mesmerised by a new wonder: the Lotus Tower. When that monumental symbol of Rajapaksa folly was opened to the public last week, people thronged to pay…
Most politicians have a questionable relationship with reality. The Rajapaksas operate in a reality that is all their own. Asked why brother Gotabaya fled the country, Mahinda Rajapaksa replied, “Who accuses him…
“A wandering fire at a terrible height – can it be a star shining like that? Osip Mandelstam (Poem 101) A walking path bordered by the sea and a bit of lawn…
“All that is solid melts into the air…” Marx and Engels (The Communist Manifesto) The socio-economic edifice that is Sri Lanka’s informal sector is collapsing. According to the 2020 Labour Force Survey,…
The caption was pure Qadri: piece of June 2020 might have been the first time it strayed into his public writing. But then, as he points out, appointing a taskforce to create…
“Without gas, without kerosene oil, we can’t do anything. Last option what? Without food we are going to die. That will happen hundred percent.” Mohammad Shazly a part-time chauffer, Colombo (Reuters –…
“We must love one another or die,” wrote Auden in September 1, 1939 as the world slid into calamity. Gotagogama and the nationwide anti-Rajapaksa struggle it pioneered and symbolized seemed to be…
“Beyond the barricade Is there a world you long to see?” Do you hear the people sing (Les Misérables) “I’m 89 years old,” the grandmotherly protestor holding a hand-drawn placard says. “For…