Will Swanton, in The Australian, 19 October 2021, with this title “Cricket: The World No. 1 T20 bowler you’ve probably never heard of”
Australia faces the World No. 1 T20 bowler in its crucial opening match of the World Cup. His name is Tabraiz Shamsi. Doesn’t ring a bell? Sounds more like a fancy bottle of red? A nice little shiraz to have with dinner? No wonder. He’s played only one white-ball game in Australia, three years ago, bowling two overs of left-arm lollipops on the Gold Coast.
Tabraiz Shamsi bowls with his left hand and distracts the batsman with his right
Earl Barthelot, in Ceylon Digest, 22 February 2020, where the title reads “The Portuguese Burghers of Ceylon”
Sri Lanka is well known for its diversity with over 22 numerically small communities and majority communities such as Sinhalese, Tamils and Muslims. Burgher community is one of the numerically small communities. Large proportions of the Burghers do live in the Batticaloa District and a small proportion live both in Trincomalee and Ampara District. At the same time there are Portuguese Burghers living in all parts of the country in small numbers.
MEMO from Michael Roberts, October 16 October 2021
Moving from BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI to the Greet and Paynter lineages in British Ceylon-and-thereafter has raised a query in my mind: how is it that the category “ANGLO-Ceylonese” did not take root in Ceylon and Lanka in contrast with British India where the label “Anglo-Indian” became well-entrenched[1] and therefore was carried over to the era after India secured Independence in 1947?As we know,[2] Revd Arthur Paynter was an Anglo-Indian missionary who established the Paynter Homes in the Himalayan region of India and then set up the Paynter Home in Nuwara Eliya. He had also married a fellow-missionary in the Salvation Army who was pursuing her commitment in India, one Miss Weerasooria from Dodanduwa …and together sired a talented lineage.
Photograph on display at the Paynter Home of the Paynter family. David Paynter stands at the centre, behind his mother Agnes
Rukshani Weerasooriya, in RoarMedia, 4 December 2016, where the title is “The Paynter Behind Some Of Sri Lanka’s Finest Art”** … with highlighting imposed by The Editor, Thuppahi
The Transfiguration. Image credit: shehansilva.wordpress.com
The chapel at S. Thomas’ College Mount Lavinia is, without exaggeration, the finest feature of the school premises. Displaying Byzantine (Later Roman) architecture, the limestone structure is both stately and imposing. But anyone with even a little exposure to S. Thomas’ College will know that it is the contents of the Chapel, and not simply its structural elegance, that gives it its value. Dedicated in 1927 to the Transfiguration of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Chapel, with its high and wide nave, its great roof-beams and solid pillars, is known as the ‘Chapel of the Transfiguration.’ The word “transfiguration” means to be spiritually transformed or metamorphosed. It is a phenomenon which is hard (if not impossible) to describe in words, much harder still, to depict in art. But when you walk through the great arched doorway of the Chapel of the Transfiguration and into the sanctuary, you will be faced with a vast and powerful image, spanning across its east wall, behind the altar, which captures, by its astonishing simplicity, the essence of the transfiguration.
Stephen Corby, in TRAVEL, 23 July 2021, where the title runs thus “Statue stands and delivers a curious tale”
Standing beside Lake Albert in Meningie, South Australia, is a statue of an emu wearing a saddle, with little footrests to encourage visitors to climb aboard. It’s a bizarre tribute to the wildest, bearded-boy bushranger you’ve never heard of, John Francis Peggotty. A man who allegedly never grew larger than a seven year old, Peggotty is said to have terrorised the Coorong in the late 1800s, robbing and occasionally murdering people while riding a getaway ostrich; he was often shirtless and draped in stolen jewellery.
“Once, while waiting for a CTB bus at Kurumbacciddy Junction in 1974, I saw a blackboard advertising a lecture by the then proto-LTTE which showed speedboats pulling the Jaffna peninsula across the Palk Straits and joining it to Tamil Nadu.”[1]
DEAR JANE, WHEN precisely in 1974?
Yours is an intriguing piece of ethnography … The Tamil New Tigers were a tiny group then[2]…. and the ISSUE IS:who had the vision/imagination to formulate this prospect and/or this propaganda line? KP? Pirapaharan? …………………….. michael
What causes more surprise than all else in the recently published‘Pandora exposures’, supposedly produced through intensive investigations conducted worldwide by a Washington-based outfit named the ‘International Consortium of Investigative Journalism/ICIJ)’ on shady transactions by those at political and business elite levels is that, among many thousands of such exposures, there is only one from Sri Lanka, attributed to a relatively minor political leader having kinship ties with the two Rajapakshas – Mahinda and his brother Gotabhaya, presently at the apex of the government of Sri Lanka – and her husband, a person who, despite being wealthy, has somehow maintained relatively low profile in Sri Lankan affairs.
Though Thirukumar Nadesan is a well-known businessman, it was the Rajapaksa connection of his spouse Nirupama that captured headlines in national and international media
The Tale of a Flying Fortress bomber that continued its mission despite being cut into two halves by a collision
In 1943 a mid-air collision on February 1, 1943,between a B-17 and a German fighter over the Tunis dock area, became the subject of one of the most famous photographs of WW II.
Tabraiz Shamsi bowls with his left hand and distracts the batsman with his right
