A decade: In Passing
Photograph courtesy My mother always used to ask me why I didn’t write more often and I always had a stock reply “Everything I write is so negative, even I can’t stand…
Groundviews at 10
Good Governance and Corruption
Featured image courtesy Al Jazeera Good Governance is a key challenge Sri Lanka has faced and spectacularly failed to deliver for most of its modern history. This challenge is not only about…
Writing to Reconcile: A personal journey
Image from Write to Reconcile Last fall, in Toronto, I went to see a play that was written by one of the writers in this anthology, Sindhuri Nandakumar. The play was called…
The Curse of the Obstinate Patriarch
Today marks the second anniversary of the victory of Maithripala Sirisena as the President of Sri Lanka at the 8th January 2015 Sri Lankan Presidential Election. And the second anniversary of the…
Survivalist and Irrepressible: The Two Faces of the Sri Lankan Media
Introduction The past decade produced two critical moments of transition in Sri Lanka. On 19 May 2009, a 30-year war came to a brutal end with the defeat of the Liberation Tigers…
Ten Years: The Rise of the Average Sri Lankan ‘Netizen’
Photo by Anushka Wijesinha/The Picture Press, via 30 Years Ago As government, which came to power with a reformist agenda, as old wine (arrack?) in new a bottle. In such a landscape,…
Beyond serendipity
I What do our new generation of parents, friends and neighbours, colleagues at work and future leaders think about cultural supremacy? 64% of Sri Lankans aged 15 to 29 believe their culture…
From ‘Api wenuwen api’ to ‘Aba Saranai’: Snapshots of ten years
Photograph courtesy When Sanjana came up with an offer too tempting to pass, I accepted with the knowledge that rolling out the significant junctures of the past decade and reflecting them upon…
Emotional People and Emotional Nations
Photo by REUTERS/ Mariana Bazo, via Time magazine There is no getting around it, we humans are emotional beings. Thereby, nations made up of humans will possess an emotional psyche which is reflected…
The Story of One: On some lives erased and others that give hope
I first met Father Harry Miller in 2013. We sat and talked in his office on the top floor of St. Michael’s College, Batticaloa. Noisy crows had gathered outside his window, threatening…
Ceylon’s First Moor Journalist
The Muslim community is at the centre of news each day- rarely for the right reasons. The unfolding of the Islamic State has shown the worst ways in which religious identities could…
Groundviews during a Cold Peace
Photography by James Morgan has continued to be a necessary space for discussing the cold peace that arrived with the conclusion of the war in May 2009. It was only in late-2009…
Lessons Learnt on Reconciliation
After opening night of on the 26th of November 2009, a small group remained behind long after the show finished. They sat dotted around the small amphitheatre, not speaking a word. Theatre…
10 Years of Groundviews: What’s the impact?
Any pioneering venture that stays the course requires commendation and acknowledgment. Therefore when invited by Sanjana, founder curator, to pen a few lines on 10th Anniversary, I saw it as an opportunity…
Reconstruction
Pictures photographed for . The book is a visual documentation of this four-year undertaking by the Trust, in partnership with UNICEF. The Trust’s activities centred around education, health and child protection as…
