Photo courtesy Facebook page It is Lakshman Piyasena, introduced to me by my friend Jayantha Dhanapala, who first told me of Udayasiri Wickramaratne’s play. Piyasena urged Dhanapala and me to see a performance…
Image courtesy Transparency International Recently an air of nervousness has insinuated itself in to the Sri Lankan psyche. Doubt and uneasiness seem to be seeping like moisture through invisible social capillaries, carrying…
As part of the Galle Literary Festival, I had the opportunity to speak with Shashi Tharoor, whose writing I’ve immensely enjoyed read since my University days in India. As the festival’s website…
Boys will not always be boys! Photo credit: National Geographic The possessive pronoun “our” is deceptively simple. But who are the “we” that it refers to? The expression our people is a…
Image courtesy , by Ajith P. Perera It was not so long ago that the post-nominals was a sure route to employment in the administrative cadre of the Government of India, in addition to being a…
One morning last week, as I sat in my armchair reading the report of the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliations Commission (LLRC), I saw a man dressed only in a sarong running along…
Writing from a Tamil nationalist position which occasionally earned the LTTE monster’s ire, David Jeyaraj has provided the world with invaluable service over the years. He had considerable information on both the…
Niromi de Soyza’s so-called autobiography, weekend magazine.[i] Gordon Weiss, the moral crusader, proclaimed it to be “incredibly moving” and considers it “a story of redemption” (as quoted by Nikki Barrowclough). This may…
John Ralston Saul[1] Edward W. Said[2] The job of a writer, especially one dealing with matters of historical import, is to make his or her agenda clear to the reader. Michael Roberts[3]…
The national tree and the national flower were both in the news this year. In August the uprooting of the Indian willows lining Independence Avenue to be replaced by indigenous na trees…
I welcome the statement by the SJC87 Initiative rebutting my aspersions about this charity. The primary focus of my research note was the contents and the publicity material of the book by…
Editors note: Also read by Muttukrishna Sarvananthan. ### Mr. Sarvananthan’s so called ‘research note’ has seriously undermined the reputation of the SJC87 initiative and its ability to function as a non-political, non-profit charity…
This is a book that documents the life story of Lionel Bopage, who was one of the highest ranking leaders of the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP- the Peoples’ Liberation Front) and a…
The objective of this research note is not only to uncover the truth or otherwise of the “memoir” by Niromi de Soyza (, but to go beyond and investigate the purpose/s of…
Sunimal Fernando, speaking from the audience at my presentation on Sri Lankan English at the recent conference on Language and Social Cohesion (Colombo, 17-19 October), confirmed my own conclusion, that while the…
