Reflections on ‘Widows’ and ‘Unearthed’
Work and travel kept me from writing about two significant theatre productions in the past month. Ariel Dorfman’s ‘Widows’ directed by Feroze Kamardeen and produced by Sirraj Abdul Hameed was staged at…
Language
Still Counting the Dead: A welcome first step
“We used to be a very proud people”1 – Uma, I Few years ago, during a very wintery January weekend, at a Copenhagen hotel, I was scrambling to prepare a last minute…
A-Z of Sri Lankan English: W is for will and would
Will and would have a habit of changing places in Sri Lankan English. Sometimes (“I knew the car will be there”), and sometimes it’s the other way round (“We would inform you…
Being small, thinking Big: Publishing for the International Market
Original photo courtesy Tarika Wickremeratne Being small, thinking Big: Publishing for the International Market from the perspective of an independent small publisher concentrating on fiction) Sri Lanka, like many countries of the Asia-pacific…
Monsoons and Intermonsoons
Photo courtesy The New Zealand cricketers should not be surprised that their matches are being rained on. The following is from an article titled “The Language of Climate in Sri Lanka” (…
Invitation to prospective writers: A Sri Lankan Anthology of Hint Fiction
Photo courtesy The Blue Bookcase Around two months ago, I picked up on a whim edited by Robert Swartwood. Swartwood’s definition of hint fiction is ‘a story of 25 words or fewer that…
A-Z of Sri Lankan English: T is for this thing
Original photo by Deshan Tennekoon What do you call something whose name you don’t know or can’t remember, or which you prefer to avoid naming for whatever reason? A whatsit or a…
Cast as Mother – A Reading: Audience Reviews
‘Cast as Mother’ – a dramatic reading of an upcoming play by Stages Theatre Group was held at the Lionel Wendt on May 24. Directed by Ruwanthie de Chickera, ‘ featured the…
A-Z of Sri Lankan English: S is for Singlish
Singlish is the term used to describe the mixture of Sinhala and English which is frequently used by bilingual speakers. But Singapore got there first: Singlish is generally accepted as referring to…
Review of ‘Kandy at War’ by Channa Wickremesekera
Image courtesy Sri Lanka Travel Guide Rabindranath Tagore[1] This is what the Portuguese unleashed in 1505 in Lanka, the machine of plunder. They were followed by the Dutch and ultimately the British…
A-Z of Sri Lankan English: R is for rubber slippers
Image courtesy Odel They’re called . Here in Sri Lanka they’re most commonly referred to as rubber slippers; also bathroom slippers, and Bata slippers (or Batas). And some of us like to…
Arthur C Clarke’s World of 2012: Insights from his Titanic Novel
The year was 1989. Margaret Thatcher and George Bush, Snr., were in office. Mikhail Gorbachev was slowly but surely dismantling the Soviet Union. The infamous Iron Curtain was crumbling under pressure from…
Trilingual bus signboards
“The private transport services ministry has made it compulsory for all buses to display name boards in Sinhala, Tamil and English languages.” (Sunday Times Online 15/03/12) The 135 bus runs past my…
Culture & culture: 14 March to 19 March
Dinner review Jack Tree, Park Rd., Col 5 Gray cement all around, dark green trim (to emulate a Jak tree no doubt), with red elements reflected in the staff uniforms, combined with…
A-Z of Sri Lankan English: Q is for quazi
Equality before the law? I’m no lawyer, but I have always wondered how this fundamental principle is possible in a country with several different legal systems operating alongside one another. The main…