Life after this Death?
“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,…
Author: Tisaranee Gunasekara
Comrade Q – An Incomplete Sketch
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…
Sri Lanka in the Chalk Circle
“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 –…
The End?
“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…
Dawn at Galle Face: Which Tomorrow?
“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…
On Protests
In November 2019, 6.9 million Sri Lankans overestimated the intelligence, capacity and compassion of the Rajapaksa brothers. That mistaken assessment was the root cause of the tragedy we are living through today…
Something Toxic this Way Comes
“Terror continuous dark terror against the fragile human land…” Zbigniew Herbert (To Marcus Aurelius) Had Sri Lanka a parliamentary system of governance, the Rajapaksas would have been out by now. Thanks to…
National Community and International Community
“A crisis of this magnitude can lead to renewal or destruction…” Ariel Dorfman (The last September 11) Perhaps England’s Henry II did not quite say, “Will no one rid me of…
After Gotabaya, the Deluge?
“Slip slidin’ away, Slip slidin’ away…” Paul Simon No astrologer in Sri Lanka reached such dizzy heights as Sumanadasa Abeygunawardane. He predicted for the Rajapaksas the future they wanted and was rewarded with power…
Weaponising Buddhism: Will the Third Wave Be the Last?
Independent Sri Lanka experienced three waves of weaponsation of Buddhism. The first was when S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike embraced the Buddhist Commission Report. D.S. Senanayake had refused, on Constitutional grounds, a request by the…
The Next Three Years
In Terry Pratchett’s Small Gods, a god gets turned into a tortoise. Omnia is great god Om’s fief. Everyone worships him there, out of habit or in fear of his human…
The Two Year Crash Course
“We can only shake our heads at how all of us followed this lunatic…” A German general (quoted in Volker Ullrich’s Hitler – Downfall – 1939-45) The first seeds of America’s Afghan…
A Stake Through the Ideological Heart
Hours after losing the presidency, Mahinda Rajapaksa climbed on to a windowsill in his ancestral home and informed a crowd of grieving supporters, “We must remember they got their majority vote from…
A Country To Die In
President Gotabaya Rajapaksa addressed the nation on the day Sri Lanka became South Asia’s first in average Covid-19 deaths. One hundred and ninety five people died on that day, according to official…
Rotten Creeds, Failed Gods
“A leader is found! Yet cautiously to myself I ask, a leader to where? Despair overthrown often turns us in mad directions.” Katharine Kressmann Taylor (Address unknown) In Brother Grimm’s Little Briar…