Category Archives: life stories

October 12, 2018 · 8:52 am

Where a Drunken Binge generates a Beach Hotel in Tangalle

News Item in Daily News, 10 October 2018, with this title “Newlyweds on honeymoon in Tangalle buy their own hotel”

Gina Lyons and Mark Lee from London, decided to purchase a rustic hotel after drinking rum on the beach while on holiday – and have renamed it ‘Lucky Beach Tangalle’ A pair of newlyweds got so drunk on their honeymoon they bought their own hotel.

Gina 33 and Lee, 35, wed in June 2017 and went on a three week backpacking honeymoon to Sri Lanka in December.During their trip, the London-based couple checked into a rustic hotel on the beach and immediately hit it off with some of the staff members there. On their first night, they took to the beach with several bottles of rum and drank with one of the hotel’s bartenders, where they were told the current lease on the hotel was almost up.

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October 12, 2018 · 12:46 am

The Voices of Tiger and Army Infantrymen: Sarah Kabir’s Journey towards Reconciliation

Sarah Chatta in Daily News, 9 October 2018, where the chosen title reads thus “Faces of the war” …Stories from both sides of the barbed wire tell of the pain of ordinary lives

German native Nicolas Lamade leaned over and expressed his amazement. The auditorium of the Lakshman Kadirgamar Institute was packed with a mixed audience: army generals, clergymen, politicians, activists, journalists, and lawyers. Lamade, Deputy Program Director of the German reconciliation project GIZ, first came to Sri Lanka in the early 2000s when he said no one dared to question official versions of wartime events in public, let alone speak out about misconceptions of those events. A decade later, he marvelled at how far Sri Lanka had come.

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October 9, 2018 · 1:05 pm

Meeting Anne Abayasekara and Her World: Reflective Words

Published by Perera & Hussein (Bay Owl Press)….……..PRICE: Rs 1250/- (approx US$7.50 / Aus $10.50 / Euro6.50/ Stg 6) ………………….. World-wide orders – copies may be purchased online at the following link:-

https://pererahussein.com/index.php/books/non-fiction/telling-it-like-it-is-phph.html…… Postage (approx Rs 1000 for Australia & Europe)

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October 7, 2018 · 11:47 am

The Lines of Fire within Mark Field’s Paternalist Message

Michael Roberts, courtesy of The Daily Mirror and Colombo Telegraph

Mark Field’s visit to Sri Lanka is very, very significant. His pronouncements are threaded by the paternalistic air of an Etonian schoolmaster pontificating to students. That should not be allowed to mask the Sword of Damocles that is above the Sri Lankan body via the UNHCR as the instrument of the Western international community.

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October 7, 2018 · 3:53 am

Diego Garcia and the Fate of Its Its Indigenized Chagossian People

 

ONE = A Summary Report

Diego Garcia is part of the Chagos Atoll, a “group of seven atolls comprising more than 60 individual tropical islands in the Indian Ocean” (Jayaweera 2018). Though discovered in 1512 by the Portuguese explorer Pedro Mascarenhas, it was uninhabited till the French moved in and took over in 1783. The atoll passed to the British after the Napoleonic wars in 1814/15. Thereafter the atoll was administered from Mauritius and was considered part of its domain. Over the years the overseers and workers imported to work the plantations and settlements on the islands became indigenized as “Chagossians” and by the 1960s are said to have been around 1500 in number (note the imprecision).

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October 7, 2018 · 12:20 am

Dharmasiri Bandaranayake’s Message for Reconciliation and Oneness

Kamanthi Wickramsingha in Q and A, in Daily Mirror, 14 March 2018, where the title runs “Peace and unity should be in everyone’s heart”

Dharmasiri Bandaranayake, the maverick of Sinhala cinema and theatre, has attempted to portray the reality of the state in every production. From Hansa Vilak to Bawa Duka, Bawa Karma and stage plays such as Eka Adipathi, Dhawala Beeshana,  and Makarakshaya [he has] addressed issues from the 1980s riots to the dogma of Buddhism in Sri Lanka to other issues of national and political importance. “If the perpetrators of previous riots and crimes were identified and punished, what happened in Digana would have never happened,” said Bandaranayake in a candid interview with the Daily Mirror. He recently directed ‘Paradise in Tears’ a documentary film which portrays the historical evolution of the ethnic crisis in the country through its various phases. During the interview, Bandaranayake expressed his concerns over the manner in which the country’s rulers have treated people and how they have suffered as a result of ethnic violence, the role of artistes and how people should respond during incidents such as what happened in Kandy.   

  • There is no punishment for perpetrators
  • People should refrain from promoting separatist agendas
  • Violence should never be in the vocabulary of artistes
  • Reconciliation shouldn’t be on billboards   

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October 4, 2018 · 2:54 pm

The Kandy Äsala Perahära by Lorna Dewaraja

Tissa Devendra, in The Island, 3 October 2018, with this title “Mirror of Civilisation” being a book review of  The Kandy Asala Maha Perahera – by Dr.Lorna Dewaraja (Vijitha Yapa Publications 2018)

 

In publishing this fine book, Vijitha Yapa has faithfully fulfilled the last wish that Dr. Dewaraja expressed to her family – to hand over to Vijitha Yapa the manuscript of her book on the Kandy Perahera. I now have the privilege of reviewing this publication.

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October 4, 2018 · 10:37 am

British Minister stresses Importance of Reconciliation

Mark Field, in Daily Mirror,  where the title is “Why does reconciliation in Sri Lanka matter to the UK?”

Next year Sri Lanka will have enjoyed 10 uninterrupted years free from the misery of armed conflict. Whatever your view on how Sri Lanka has progressed since, that very fact alone is one to cherish. I know how deep the scars from decades of conflict run. When I visited last year I heard first-hand from the families of disappeared persons. It was a stark reminder of how much all communities in Sri Lanka have suffered.

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October 2, 2018 · 10:49 am

Identity. Belonging, Dignity. Lessons from Francis Fukuyama for Sri Lanka Today

Sanjana Hattotuwa, in The Island, 29 September 2018, where the title is Ïdentity and Belonging”

Sixteen years ago, I met a child soldier. He had a T-56 and was cocky. The A9 had opened up a few months ago, and taking it to Jaffna with a group of journalists, we encountered a checkpoint manned by the LTTE, past Omanthai. The children at the checkpoint, with guns strung around their torso loosely, were in the LTTE’s signature fatigue. Hostile and demanding, they curtly instructed our driver to provide the documentation to enter the area, which at the time the LTTE provided. One clambered into the driver’s seat as I sat in the passenger seat, knowing that if they wanted to be difficult, we would be stuck here for a while. I smiled. He didn’t. He looked around slowly, T-56 placed on the dashboard.

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October 2, 2018 · 3:12 am

Nationalist Studies and the Ceylon Studies Seminar at Peradeniya, 1968-1970s

Michael Roberts

The years 1966 to 1975 were heady days in Ceylon. Especially so for some of us in Peradeniya Univeristy where the CEYLON STUDIES SEMINAR was launched in November 1968 by a few members of the Arts Faculty assisted by the facilities provided by Professor Gananath Obeyesekera at the Sociology Department – located then on Lower Hantane Road away from the centre of teaching. Not least among these facilities was the service provided by the Sociology Department peon Sathiah[i] who cyclostyled the written seminar papers beforehand for circulation so that those who were keen could read any presentation beforehand if they so wished – a procedure that also maximized discussion time. This background service was seconded by the typing services of Mrs Hettiarachchi in the History Department and Mr Kumaraswamy in the Sociology Department.

A . Jeyaratnam Wilson  Gananath Obeyesekera

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