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…
Poetry
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…
Anbudan, the Memory Remains Forever
”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 At Home
“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…
Free the People
We will not be distracted. The emotion rushes through us like a river enraged, if a river, or a fault line, the heating jet stream, if these can be given human volition,…
Tourism Guidance
Wait a minute Sanath. First congrats on your appointment as Tourism Ambassador. Now you say Sri Lanka is back and tourists can come. But will the Prevention of Terrorism Act apply…
The Right Queue
Poems are waiting in a queue. But that is alright. They are poems only, not people lining up for kerosene, or fish, or paper. or petrol. I write them in a…
What’s Left
We are tired, and we have cooking gas now, and fuel shipments have docked. So we will get back to the business of living and not worry anymore about the…
To Survive, Even Thrive
My country will survive corruption in parliament, arbitrary arrests ordered by the executive, bodies washing up at Galle Face, at the Beira Lake. My country will survive farmers shooting elephants…
Governor, listen
Photograph by Marisa de Silva Father Jeewantha Peiris, Mahanama Thero, Joseph Stalin, from diverse denominations and political persuasions, are Aragalaya heroes, who called the bluff of the emperor, leading to his…
The State Versus The People
The State, knocked down in the early rounds of Aragalaya, is back, sparring and dodging and delivering upper cuts again as if nothing has happened, as if the struggle is a…