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…
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…
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…
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,…
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, 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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
”Sometimes tears flow uncontrollably and I cannot work anymore. I know I want to be strong, I want to call my historical strength as a woman. I want to remember and…
“Gota go home” the Aragalaya demanded. Now, fifty odd days after going abroad instead, he has returned, to a garland and a motorcade, to bodyguards and decoy cars, to a house…
