Category Archives: commoditification

September 26, 2023 · 11:47 am

Sambhur Meat Hunters in Sri Lanka’s Jungle Sanctuaries

ITEM in Daily Mirror, 25 September 2023

Wildlife authorities nabbed four persons who poached four sambhurs and a mousedeer for meat in the Rantambe sanctuary, the Department of Wildlife Conservation said.

 

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August 30, 2023 · 10:21 pm

Dilmah Tea & Barossa Wine in Perfect Match in Adelaide

Glam Adelaide, with this title  “Dilmah joins forces with University of Adelaide expert to refine tea and wine production” …. & with highlights imposed by The Editor, Thuppahi

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dilhan C. Fernando, Dilmah Tea’s Chairman, is in Adelaide to explore the synergies and opportunities between South Australian wine, and Sri Lankan Tea.

In a pioneering venture that fuses the world of tea and wine, Dilmah, a globally-renowned tea brand, is collaborating with Associate Professor in Oenology and Sensory Studies Sue Bastian from the University of Adelaide. Their shared mission? To hone and perfect the way Sri Lankan tea and South Australian wine are crafted, emphasising the profound impact of climate, soil, and geography on their distinctive flavours.

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August 30, 2023 · 2:29 am

Sri Lanka’s Topsy-Turvy Economy in the Last Decade

Darini Rajasingham-Senanayake*…. with her choice of title being “Sri Lanka Back as Donor Darling Ignores the BRICS” and a sub-title that runs thus “France’s Macron and the US Fish in the Indian Ocean …. presented here with highlights imposed by The Editor, Thuppahi 

Sri Lanka continues to swing wildly between being a ‘Donor Darling’ flooded with foreign ‘aid’ and ‘advisors’ on the one hand to a ‘bankrupt’ pariah or outcast on the other. Last year, the strategic Indian Ocean Island went from South Asia’s wealthiest nation with the best social and human development indicators to a beggar—humiliated and shunned by the ‘international community.’ This was after staging its first-ever Sovereign Default due to a Eurobond debt trap and purported lack of US dollars. The default triggered rapid rupee depreciation and instantly beggared citizens amid a distracting transnationally networked, remote-controlled ‘Aragalaya’ protest operation led by social media influencers. Ironically, there was a blockade on fuel shipments to the country amid the United States Marine’s ‘Sea Vision’ training program for the Sri Lanka Navy.

Newly formed Sri Lankan Marine Corps gets 241 years of experience in under a week. Credit: U.S. Marine Corps photo by Petty Officer 2nd Class Jacob L. – Photo: 2023  .

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August 9, 2023 · 7:34 pm

Debating Australian Aboriginal Lifeways Past

Gillian Cowlishaw, at John Menadue’s Public Policy Journal 15 August 2023 where her title is “Misreading Dark Emu”** …with highlighting emphasis imposed by Thuppahi

 

Criticisms of the book Dark Emu and its author, Bruce Pascoe, continue to appear, and to become more puzzling. It is as if the overwhelming popularity of Pascoe and his message have disturbed comfortable convictions about Australian history shared across a wide segment of Australian society.

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July 9, 2023 · 8:30 pm

Travails of a Rookie District Officer in Polonnaruwa, 1957-58

Sugath Kulatunga

Fresh from the University of Peradeniya, after a stint of teaching at St. Anthony’s College Kandy, I was selected as an Administrative Officer in the Department of Agriculture in November 1957 with 18 others in a new cadre of administrative officers established in the Department. This cadre was the brainchild of the then Minister of Agriculture Philip Gunawardhane and was operationalized by the then Deputy Director Administration Sam Silva, who Philip called a ‘” human dynamo”. (Sam was also the prime mover in the establishment of the CWE and the Petroleum Corporation).

Sugath 

Philip Gunawardena

CP De Silva

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June 19, 2023 · 1:04 am

Amitav Ghosh: Straddling the Mediterranean & Indian Worlds

Dr. Shalva Weil, in https://ejewishphilanthropy.com/in-an-ancient-land-trade-and-synagogues-in-south-india/

The Calcutta-born novelist Amitav Ghosh tells the tale, in his novel In an Ancient Land, of a medieval traveler by the name of Abraham Ben Yiju who conducted an import/export business from Cairo through Aden to India. Ben Yiju was a member of the Synagogue of Ben Ezra, or the”Synagogue of the Palestinians”, as it used to be known while it was still standing, in Cairo, at the end of the nineteenth century. It was in that synagogue that congregation members used to accumulate and store their papers and manuscripts. The last In an Ancient Land Revisited Trade and Synagogues in South India document that is known to have been deposited in this Genizah was a get, a divorce settlement, authorized in Bombay (today Mumbai).

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June 13, 2023 · 12:16 am

Special Vistas For Tourists in Sri Lanka Today

Lee Tulloch, in Sydney Morning Herald, 9 June 2023, where the title reads = “Why you should visit this undersold, teardrop-shaped island right now”

If there’s a country that could do with a lot of love right now, it’s Sri Lanka. Over the past three decades, the island nation has been ravaged by conflict and disaster, beginning with the devastating 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, which claimed 30,000 lives, and the 26-year-long civil war, which ended in 2009.

It had just re-emerged as a popular tourist destination when, on Easter Sunday 2019, an Islamic group, in retaliation for the Christchurch attacks thousands of kilometres away, bombed three churches and three luxury hotels in Colombo, unnerving the tourists who had returned in record numbers.

Sri Lanka’s famous Nine Arch Bridge.
Sri Lanka’s famous Nine Arch Bridge.CREDIT:GETTY IMAGES

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April 24, 2023 · 7:35 pm

Sinhala Village Roots and Jungle Lore at Discerning Depth

Sugath Kulatunga, 

responding to an Invitation from The Editor, Thuppahi after the latter had seen an extract of this detailed and invaluable autobiography in Facebook in 2023 **

1/10/2014: Written for the reading pleasure of my grandchildren.

As a child and in school:

I am very fortunate to have been brought up as a small child in a rural village in the Kalutara District of Sri Lanka, in a setting under relatively comfortable and caring conditions. I was the number two of three brothers and two younger sisters. Two more brothers were added to the family later on. We were the masters of our time and life was totally carefree. Our parents had an abundance of time for us. In addition, most of the time during the early childhood we had my mother’s sisters, who adored us, staying with the family. We also had the loving but respectful attention of the senior schoolgirls.

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April 2, 2023 · 1:13 am

British Ceylon Deciphered by Stress on the Deep Structures of Social Togetherness

Uditha Devapriya, in The Island on 24 March 2023, with this title “Sri Lanka under British rule: Neither Gemeinschaft nor Gesellschaft”

Since at least Marx and Malinowski, anthropologists have been fascinated by, and focused on, the links between “primitive-tribal” and “modern-secular” societies. I use these terms with a pinch of salt – hence the asterisks – for the simple reason that no society can be said to fit one case or the other. In its initial phase the social sciences did, admittedly, distinguish between the two, and took the teleological position that the one would lead to another: hence Ferdinand Tönnies’s idea of a progression from Gemeinschaft to Gesellschaft. Such progressions were depicted as long, eventual, but inevitable, and were accepted widely at a time when Europe, the harbinger of industrialisation and colonialism, had consolidated its position as the main, if not sole, locomotive of world history.

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March 31, 2023 · 3:29 am

The Origins of Burgher & Malay Surnames in Colonial Ceylon

Author Unknown … sent to Thuppahi by Kodi Kodituwakku of Chandos St, Fort, Galle

The Ceylon Burgher Community is the finest exponent of this European onoma-tology in Sri Lanka, as the members of the community carry some of the world’s rarest surnames which at present verge on extinction. The ancestors of the Dutch Burghers were not necessaril.y Dutch by ethnic origin as the Dutch East India Company [recruited] hundreds of mercenaries from all parts of Europe who later reached the shores of Lanka to strengthen the Dutch garrisons on the Island. These Europeans later espoused local women and paved the way for the Lankan Eurasian Community, which later came to be known as ‘Dutch Burghers’ meaning ‘Town Dwellers’.

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