Category Archives: life stories

Aside

Appreciating a Towering Figure in ‘Peradeniya School’ as he reaches Ninety

K. N. O. Dharmadasa, courtesy of The Island, 27 February 2015, where the title is slightly different**

It is a well known fact that the 1950s and 1960s were a period of intense activity in the field of Sinhala literature. A prominent factor in this activity was the so called ‘Peradeniya School’ which upheld a modernistic outlook revolutionising literary and artistic creativity. The novelists, poets and literary critics who represented the ‘Peradeniya School’ were an avant garde boldly challenging established norms and advocating a freedom of expression untrammelled by traditional constraints.

SIRI GUN- Sat mag Continue reading →

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March 2, 2015 · 3:09 pm
February 23, 2015 · 9:57 am

Siri Gunasinghe at 90: Insightful Essays from Four Men of Letters

Courtesy of a special feature in the MIDWEEK REVIEW in the Island …. http://www.island.lk/index.php?page_cat=article-details&page=article-details&code_title=119737 [1]

SIRI G--11 mid review

I: “Siri Gunasinghe — A Reminiscence” …. by H. L. Seneviratne, 17 February 2015

One of the semi official tasks that the University of Ceylon undertook as it established itself in the new campus at Peradeniya in the early 1950s, was the regeneration of national culture in the form of the arts. This was reflected in a seminar held at Peradeniya in 1956, whose proceedings were published in the same year under the title Traditional Sinhalese Culture. Prominent among the scholars who succeeded in that endeavour were Siri Gunasinghe and Ediriweera Sarachchandra. While Sarachchandra’s work was confined to literature and drama, Siri Gunasinghe stood out for his versatility, his interests covering every field of the arts. So much so that his adversaries who had embraced a different kind of cultural resurgence – a militant, prudish and philistine Sinhala Buddhist nationalism—derisively called him sakalakalavallabha, “the husband of all the arts”. Continue reading →

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February 13, 2015 · 1:29 am

We “soldiers of the caliphate’’ — al-Kutobi and Kiad

Paul Maley, in The Australian, 12 February 2014, with the title “Suspects’ Chilling Video Message“

TWO alleged terrorists spoke of “stabbing the kidneys and striking the necks” of their victims in a chilling video message recorded just hours before their planned Sydney attack. Omar al-Kutobi, 24, and Mo-ham­mad Kiad, 25, were ­arrested on Tuesday afternoon in western Sydney allegedly as they were in the final planning stages of an ­Islamic State-inspired terrorist ­attack. In a video message seized by police, the pair proclaimed themselves “soldiers of the caliphate’’ who would carry out the Islamic State’s first successful operation in Australia.

AL-KUTOBI + Kiad and Kutobi – Pic from The Australian

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February 11, 2015 · 4:20 am

The Killing of Osama bin Laden: Rob O’Neill, the Seal, speaks

Toby Harnden, in The Australian, courtesy of The Sunday Times, 11 February 2015, with the title “The Man who shot Osama” IT was a fraction of a second, but the moment he saw Osama bin Laden is seared in Rob O’Neill’s mind. “Every time I close my eyes I can see it,” he says. “I remember looking at how tall he was, skinnier than I thought. His beard was shorter. He’d a crew cut almost and a white cap on.” O'neill in the Oz Rob “Neill as Seal- Pic from NewsCorp Through his night-vision goggles O’Neill could see the al-Qa’ida leader’s hands on the shoulders of his youngest wife, Amal, pushing her forward. He wasn’t surrendering. O’Neill shot him twice in the forehead, the second round hitting him as he crumpled. As bin Laden lay on the floor, the US Navy Seal put a third bullet into his head for good measure. O’Neill and I are sitting at a breakfast table on the patio of a hotel overlooking Laguna Beach, California. The 38-year-old, who grew up in Butte, Montana, and whose ancestors were miners from County Cork in Ireland, leans towards me. “It was this close,” he says. “Two feet, if that.” He continues: “You want the bullet to go through the back of the brain so you cut off the spinal cord. If someone might be wearing a suicide vest, you shoot him in the face. People don’t die as fast for real as they do in the movies. Shoot someone in the chest and he’s going to have time to explode the vest.” Continue reading →

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February 11, 2015 · 2:55 am

Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy, 1877-1947: Art Historian, Writer and Philosopher

Thiru Arumugam

“The artist is not a special kind of person; rather each person is a special kind of artist” Ananda Coomaraswamy.

Sir Muttu Coomaraswamy (1834-1879) was the first Ceylon Tamil Knight. He was a lawyer and Member of the Legislative Council of Ceylon. He was the first non-Christian Asian to be called to the English Bar. He married a wealthy English lady, Elizabeth Beeby, who was a Lady-in-Waiting to Queen Victoria. They had one child, Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy, who was born in Colombo in 1877.

AK COOM Ananda grew up in England, where he studied at the University of London, graduating with first class honours in Geology and Botany. Having returned to Ceylon in 1903, he was appointed as the first Director of Mineralogical Surveys. In 1904 he identified the mineral Thorianite and his work on this subject led to the award of a Doctor of Science degree from the University of London. He called it Uraninite in an article in Spolia Zeylanica and then followed an extended correspondence with double Nobel Prize winner Madam Curie about its radioactivity. She suggested that it be called ‘Coomaranite’ but he declined the honour. Continue reading →

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February 5, 2015 · 2:25 am

A Flying Scholar for All Seasons: An Appreciation of Graeme Hugo from Canada

Louisa Taylor,  4 February 2015, in  http://themigrationist.net/2015/02/04/migrationist-community-mourns-the-loss-of-prof-graeme-hugo/where the title is “A Gentleman and a Scholar: Migrationist Community Mourns the Loss of Prof. Graeme Hugo”

graeme in OTTAWAIt was one of those steamy late June days in Ottawa, blasting sun one minute and drenching rain the next. Inside the minimalist cool of the Carleton University Art Gallery, Professor Graeme Hugo stood at a podium painting vivid pictures of a world in motion. His words were simple, his delivery understated, but Hugo’s presentation packed a punch. Continue reading →

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February 5, 2015 · 1:34 am

DEW Gunasekera in Profound Q and A with Chandraprema

DEW Courtesy of The Island, 5 February 2015, where the title is “Chandrika said only Mahinda can win”

Communist Party leader and opposition parliamentarian D. E. W. Gunasekera speaks to C. A. Chandraprema about the unexpected outcome of last month’s presidential election and the situation that has arisen in the country with the fall of the Rajapaksa regime.

Q. You had been warning the government not to hold the presidential election early. So obviously you were not surprised by the result.

No. We did an analysis of past election results from 1977 onwards including the results of the 2005 and 2010 elections. Our assessment was that Tamil votes for the UPFA from the North and East will increase, but not substantially. Mahinda used to get about 20% of the Muslim vote. But because of the Bodu Bala Sena that was lost almost completely. Even in our party, Muslim members refused to vote for Mahinda. I met the president about three times to discuss the presidential election. The first time, Vasu, Tissa (Vitharana) and Lalith Weeratunga were also present. Continue reading →

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February 2, 2015 · 1:42 am

The Call of Galle and Its Environs: A Flock of Foreigners

Avantika Chilkoti, in the Daily News, 2 February 2015

The price of homes along the country’s southern coast have rapidly increased since the end of civil conflict in 2009 The ruined ramparts of Galle Fort feel out of place in this peaceful seaside town. The bastioned stone walls, built by Dutch settlers in the 17th and 18th centuries, seem to belong to a faraway era when there was a threat of bloody conflict, not in what is now a quiet bay in southwest Sri Lanka. In fact, as recently as 2009, Galle wasn’t so far from bloody conflict. Although the south of the island remained relatively safe, a civil war ravaged the north for 26 years. The small number of foreign investors that invested in this picturesque town despite the violence has now rapidly increased since the government defeated the separatist Tamil guerrillas.

“We love Galle because it combines something of the charm of a Mediterranean, medieval town with the exotic, tropical landscape,” says Hamish Macdonald, a British expat with property in Colombo and Galle. “The beaches are beautiful.” DSC00056 Mosque and New Lighthouse from old lighthouse bastion on south west corner of the Fort — Pic by Michael Roberts in 2011

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February 2, 2015 · 12:51 am

Whose Terrorism? A World of Double Standards

Adam Goldman, courtesy of the Washington Post and the Sydney Morning Herald, 2 February 2015 where the title reads “CIA, Mossad killed senior Hezbollah figure in 2008 car bombing”

On February 12, 2008, Imad Mughniyah, Hezbollah’s international operations chief, walked on a quiet night time street in Damascus after dinner at a nearby restaurant. Not far away, a team of CIA spotters in the Syrian capital was tracking his movements. As Mughniyah approached a parked vehicle, a bomb planted in a spare tyre on the back exploded, sending a burst of shrapnel across a tight radius. He was killed instantly.

The device was triggered remotely from Tel Aviv by agents with Mossad, the Israeli foreign intelligence service, who were in communication with the operatives on the ground in Damascus. “The way it was set up, the US could object and call it off, but it could not execute,” said a former US intelligence official.

IMA 11- Hezbollah militants carry the coffin of slain commander Imad Mughniyah through the streets of Beirut in 2008  Hezbollah militants carry the coffin of slain commander Imad Mughniyah through the streets of Beirut in 2008 — Photo by Reuters

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January 30, 2015 · 1:48 pm

Migration to Australia: 28 per cent of 2014 population born beyond its shores. with Brits. Kiwis, Chinese & Indians at the cutting edge now

Rick Morton, in The Australian, 30 January 2015, where the title reads “Migrant Wave not seen since the Gold Rush“

DREAMS of a better life, educa­tion and solid investments have fuelled movement of migrants to Australia, with more than 28 per cent of the resident population born outside the country. That equals about 6.6 million people, numbers not seen in 120 years or since the tail end of the gold rush, said the Australian Bureau­ of Statistics’ Denise ­Carlton.

COUNTRY OF BIRTH

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