Sari
Photo by Dushiyanthini Kanagasabapathipillai 2009 When Sidath’s mum wore her wedding sari, she would tell her children, ‘the lotus would fully open.’ The large lotus was noticeable because its bright red sequins,…
Post-War
Questions, five years on
Image courtesy Tehelka Five years ago the demise of Velupilai Prabhakaran was a fast-spreading secret-on-the-block several days before it was made official and the war was pronounced to have ended. One felt…
Good women and bad women of the post-war nation
Photo by Anushka Wijesinha, 2011, via IPS Since the end of war in May 2009, the United Peoples Freedom Alliance (UPFA) government has sought to forge a new overarching Sri Lanka identity…
Happy Families
Photo by Arun Pillai-Essex I am having a somewhat surreal conversation with a young man. He is describing a telephone conversation with a woman calling from Australia who, ‘speaks with a Sinhala…
Writing on the Wall: A Sinhala Prayer in a Tamil Church
When I was walking near the Mulativu beach by around 5.30 this morning, I came across an abandoned Catholic Church. It was in a dilapidated condition. The Church seems to have been…
A response to the critiques of the victory celebrations
Photography by AP Photo/Eranga Jayawardena, via “” – Jacques Derrida: text delivered at Althusser’s funeral “” – Jean Baudrillard, Cool Memories, London, Verso, 1990, pp 223-24. The central contention of the anti-victory celebration…
Life in the Open-Air Panopticon: Surveillance and the Social Isolation of Ex-LTTE Combatants in Sri Lanka
Image from SL Online News “You have to live – did live, from habit that became instinct – in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness,…
Things Seem Better, No?
Photo by AP Photo/Eranga Jayawardena The mind tends to disconnect well tread passages during travel. It’s a wonder the simple things that stay with you, things you only notice once you’ve left. To…
A ‘victory day’ sketch
Sri Lanka celebrated that very first victory day one day later than it has been marked in the four years since. It was the 19th of May, 2009. Vellupillai Prabhakaran had been…
The Five-Year Tongue Twisters
Photo courtesy ISHARA S.KODIKARA/AFP/GETTY IMAGES, via The Global Mail [five times five things to try to say quickly] 1. The misters assisted in shelling these shells on the seashore war, The shells…
The Single Story of Sri Lanka
Photo by Buddhika Weerasinghe/Getty Images via Al Jazeera America In a well-known TED talk, the Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Adichie talks of the dangers of the single story.[1] “The single story creates stereotypes,”…
Quo vadis Sri Lanka?
Photo courtesy Amnesty International May 2009 will always be an exclamation mark in Sri Lanka’s history. Many will celebrate the defeat of the Tamil Tigers as a rupture with a brutal past….
Post-war Economic Progress: Investment, Positioning, and Reforms in a New Sri Lankan Economy
Photo courtesy As the war was intensifying in the jungles of the Vanni in early 2009, another battle was being fought – the battle for the Sri Lankan economy. The global economic…
The slow wheels of justice and change: a Sri Lankan case study?
Image via Rights Now Five years since the end of the war, the state of affairs in Sri Lanka is likely to evoke feelings of frustration and despondency for most readers of…
The Lost City
Image courtesy News First ‘We were anonymous, and even then I had the sense that cities were yielding; that they moved over and made room.’ ― Sheridan Hay, They are often warned…
