Hugh Karunanayake
Gerard Edward Scott Dirckze, known as “Scott” to all his friends and acquaintances, passed away in October last year after a brief illness. He had turned 90 years of age earlier that year, and was a man of wide interests, and great achievements in life.
Jamie Walker, in The Weekend Australian 1/2 February 2020
Passenger A flies into Melbourne from Wuhan on January 22 before the Chinese government seals off the drab industrial city of 11 million people in a futile bid to halt the spread of the coronavirus. He doesn’t know it — because what he feels is excitement to be on holiday in faraway Australia — but he has brought the disease with him.
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FactCheck at http://factcheck.lk/claim/udaya-gammanpila-10
[According to Article 7 of the constitution] Sri Lanka’s national anthem is “Sri Lanka Maatha“… if anything other than the words of “Sri Lanka Maatha” contained in the third schedule is considered to be the national anthem, it would be a violation of the constitution.
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Pranavesh Sivakumar in Daily News, 6 February 2020, where the title runs “Sangakkara bestowed with top Tamil recognition”
Former Sri Lankan captain Kumar Sangakkara became the first-ever sportsman to be honoured and felicitated at Kamban Vizha (a prestigious Tamil cultural festival) for his exceptional and exemplary service and for doing his country proud.
Star southpaw Sangakkara, awarded the K. Vijayapalan memorial award, joined an elite and exclusive list of award winners and honourees, including Indian musical maestro S.P. Balasubramaniam, who shared the same stage.
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Michael Roberts
The full-frontal challenges from Janaka Perera and Daya Hewapathirane[1] to my advocacy of the National Anthem being sung in Sinhala and Tamil are on different scales, the one moderate and the latter extremist/chauvinist. But they are not totally apart. Both indulge in cherry-picking examples from the world beyond Sri Lanka to bolster their prejudices. More significantly, the moderate claims of JP work insidiously to bolster the extremists like DH and, worse still, to alienate moderate Tamils (the extremist Tamils, in my assessment, are beyond conversion to amity or sanity).
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On the 21st January 2020 two personnel who are part of an “Email Collective” in which I am a member (mostly as a recipient) raised challenges by a comment within the Thuppahi route (Perera) and by an Email Note to the Collective (Hewapathirane) — arguing for the singing of the national anthem in Sinhala Only. Expecting the issue to arise on February 4th and overwhelmed with work on my two websites and other pursuits, I did not respond immediately. Janaka Perera is nothing if not persistent and has tapped me on the shoulder again.
Let me place their theses in the public domain first so that other voices can chip in. My answer will appear in a day or so as a separate entity.
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News Item in Colombo Gazette, 4 February 2020
Concerns were raised today over the failure by the Government to sing the National Anthem in Tamil at the main Independence Day event at Independence Square. The National Anthem was sung only in Sinhalese, which was a shift from the policy of the former Government which decided to sing the anthem in Sinhalese and Tamil in order to promote reconciliation among the communities.
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Julia Smith: “Michael Jackson and the Anthropology of Dance,” …… https://www2.naz.edu/dept/sociology-anthropology/faculty-and-staff/yamuna-sangarasivam/
Yamuna on right with a student
Although she was a huge fan of the King of Pop, she never imagined that she would meet him, let alone dance a duet with him in one of his music videos! She heard of Jackson’s call for ethnic and modern dancers and auditioned — along with more than 3,000 others — because the amazing opportunity blended her passions for the anthropology of music and the anthropology of dance with her expertise in Odissi dance (classical dance tradition of Orissa, India).
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Rajeewa Jayaweera, in Sunday Island, 2 February 2020, where the title runs – “A bygone era diplomat of perspicacity. A third-year remembrance of my father”
‘If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch’ – Rudyard Kipling
My father, Stanley Robert Jayaweera (SJ), passed away on February 4, 2017, four months short of his 90th birthday. Over the last couple of years, I have penned several articles of his work, besides one in May 2017, of the different phases in our father-son relationship. This article would be the last. As memories begin to fade, they too need to be reposed.
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thuppahi
