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…
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…
“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…
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…
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…
“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…
The 93 year old woman had died of Covid-19. Her body was brought to the Mathugama cemetery in a hospital ambulance, placed inside the crematorium, then hastily removed and returned to the…
The Rajapaksas are at war. Not with the pandemic but with those who inform the public about the pandemic. Sudharshini Fernandopulle, the only minister who seems to possess a brain, a vertebra…
Days after the presidential election of 2010, the Rajapaksa siblings gathered to enjoy an evening of musical extravaganza. Organised by the state-owned ITN and titled (Victory Victorious), the show was billed as…
To mark the Global Climate Action Day, the youth wing of the Wild Life and Nature Protection Society put up a massive mural decrying ecocide. The President’s environmental-loving soul was lacerated by…
The Defence Secretary is shocked, outraged, and flummoxed. The National Security Council has discussed the ongoing environmental devastation. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men (airmen too) have been mobilised…
Image Courtesy of Women Working The tyranny of unreason does not stop at the borders of politics. It spreads its tentacles to every aspect of human life. In his first post-Trump media…
In early November 2019, a 45 year-old man in Northwest Sri Lanka sought divine assistance to find a wife. The intermediary was a former labourer who became a godman after his body…
A pandemic with no end in sight, an economy that is unravelling, a fiscal abyss, a debt pile-up, an overwhelmed public health system – and the Gotabaya-Mahinda government is planning to build…
“ On October 7, Sri Lanka officially informed the United Nations that the government of Gotabaya Rajapaksas has successfully contained Covid-19. On October 7, 519 Covid-19 patients were identified in Sri Lanka….
