Target
I don’t want to be a pessimist, to darken your day, to add a fresh pack of stones to the load you carry. But I cannot help myself, not now,…
Poetry
On Burial and Punishment
I note the moral equivalence, one punishment for another although I don’t think we can fix history in a flash. Go back to days before October 7th or 8th. But…
Tamilian in Paris
Weekly The restaurant served idly and dosai around the corner from Notre Dame, before the fire, in a perfect union of India and Europe, while at my table a waitress asked…
Poetry and Photography Reveal the North’s War Trauma
Sarath Chandrajeewa’s first impressions of Jaffna came from his father’s stories about the north where he was stationed as a police officer. His father spoke of the friendliness of Jaffna people, their…
Rebirth and Memory Black July, 40 Years Later
It is painful to read how Sri Lankan government ministers rallied their goondas to fan out in neighborhoods looking for Tamil homes marked on voter lists. It is painful to…
Jaffna Today
How to select keys for the door when you know the gatekeeper all too well, when chance and destiny carry the same code words, when love no longer depends on…
Blood Sport of a Man
at her school, it’s not only the muscular jock that makes rape sound like a shaggy-dog story it’s also the averagely built skinny man who camouflages in feminism flexing his wit,…
Sister, Sister
We lock pinkies and swear oaths stronger and more fearsome than a man could dream for blood is our birthright so our ties are awash in it drenched in a secret…
Boys Will Be Boys
Boys will be boys, And that girl who was groped in the back of the bus, Will go back home, See phantom handprints on her clothes, And wince every time someone comes…
The Sri Lankan Kella
I am the woman of my country The product of ‘culture’, of history of a nation The result of procreation The manufactured playground of patriarchy The battlefield of nationalism I am…
Independence Song, 2023
Are we free in 2023? To declare love and friendship without fear, without visits from police or blackmail from nosy neighbors? Are we free in 2023? To deny low wages or flagrant…
The Year’s Fruits
What did this year bring? It brought the Palais des Nations in Geneva to hear my thoughts on poetry and diplomacy in the early months of the now even more…
Aragalaya, Tsunami and the New Year Dividend
On this Boxing Day, eighteenth anniversary of the Tsunami I write about the year in which the Aragalaya swept up and dispatched the ruler of the ruling family. He fled first to…
Brilliance and Resilience
There have been dark times in Sri Lanka in 2022. Economic anxiety and disruption of existing supply chains for the essential services of food, gasoline, petrol and electricity led to profound distress…
On the Operating Table
Paralysis, blocked arteries, arrests cutting off ringleaders, in a plot to silence the flow and will of the majority, this reality implemented swiftly once the dictator fled to be replaced by…