Category Archives: life stories

December 29, 2014 · 3:41 am

Count de Mauny’s Island as “Taprobane” today in Lanka — itself “Taprobane” in Ancient Times

Michelle Green in The New York Times,  26 December 2014, where the title reads “In Sri Lanka, an Island of Detachment and Desire **

Bare-chested fishermen idled on the rocks one afternoon and argued mellifluously. Bony children bobbed in the water, and tinny music drifted from a stall where glistening mahi-mahi was on offer. Not one head turned when cows stumbled into an empty beach cafe, scattering chairs and then wandering into the surf.

TAP ISLAND  Girls play in the bay at Weligama with Taprobane Island in the background. Kuni Takahashi for The New York Times

But the slow-motion beach scene isn’t the attraction at Weligama, an escapist paradise open to the Indian Ocean and an infinite distance from angst. It is outshone by a dollop of an island 200 yards offshore. Ringed by gleaming boulders and topped by a cloud-white villa, Taprobane is now a landmark in Sri Lanka. Created in the 1920s by a Frenchman who claimed to be an aristocrat, the property was once owned by the writer Paul Bowles. Continue reading →

1 Comment

Filed under cultural transmission, heritage, life stories, literary achievements, self-reflexivity, sri lankan society, travelogue, unusual people

December 27, 2014 · 8:18 am

From within the Heart from within Lanka: Two Poignant Tales in Poem & Prose

PERALIYA plus

I. Chandra Wickramsasinghe: “Death of a Son – A Tsunami story”

As the gigantic wave hit the train,

Things seemed to roll over violently

And I found myself in deep water,

Being swept away

So fast, that I could only thrash out and struggle

And think frantically about my son,

My precious child, still in the train,

Till I brushed against some branches

To which I hung on instinctively,

Till the waters ebbed and receded,

Revealing a terrible spectacle of death and devastation,

With dead bodies strewn all over,

Around the grotesquely mangled

Wreckage of the rail track and the train.

After a desperate search,

I found my little boy dead, inside a carriage,

And as I carried his limp body,

With no visible wounds on his tender face,

He seemed in a deep sleep,

From which I fervently prayed, he would wake up. Continue reading →

Leave a comment

Filed under life stories, sri lankan society, the imaginary and the real, trauma, welfare & philanthophy, world events & processes

December 27, 2014 · 1:48 am

Tsunami Aftermath in Terrible Photo-Imagery

An aerial shot taken from a helicopter shows debris of houses destroyed by the tsunami waves in Galle, Sri Lanka, on December 27, 2004.  An aerial shot taken from a helicopter shows debris of houses destroyed by the tsunami waves in Galle, Sri Lanka, on December 27, 2004.

Courtesy of http://edition.cnn.com/2014/12/24/world/asia/remembering-sri-lanka-tsunami/

Continue reading →

Leave a comment

Filed under landscape wondrous, life stories, sri lankan society, the imaginary and the real, world events & processes

December 26, 2014 · 9:49 am

Sangakkara deployed in Political Canard from Anti-Rajapaksa Circles

Michael Roberts

SANGAOne of the most repulsive dimensions of Sri Lankan society is its propensity to manufacture lies and half-truths demeaning individuals and families. This type of malicious story-telling occurred in administrative and bureaucratic circles from early British times, being encouraged by the institutionalisation of the petition. While petitions could be formal signed documents, unsigned canards and slanders were often deployed by individuals seeking jobs with the target being potential competitors. Such practices must surely have been fostered by the propensity of decision-makers to take note of such machinations — so  much so that kusu-kusufying became an item of Ceylonese English. Continue reading →

Leave a comment

Filed under cultural transmission, heritage, life stories, politIcal discourse, reconciliation, slanted reportage, sri lankan society, truth as casualty of war, unusual people, vengeance

December 25, 2014 · 2:18 pm

Harrowing Memories! Profound Gestures! Harrow, Tsunami, Galle, Cricket and Vidyaloka College … Two Tales

I= Peter Foster: “Harrovian cricketers return to tsunami scene,” in The Telegraph, 24 December 2014.

A group of Old Harrovian cricketers has marked a symbolic moment on Sri Lanka’s slow road to recovery three years after the island was hit by the Boxing Day tsunami. Charlie Pelham, now 20, was with a team from Harrow School warming up for a match at the cricket ground in the fishing town of Galle when the wave swept in, lifting up their team bus and depositing it on the outfield.

HARROVIANS AT GALLE Julian Ayer’s widow, Harriet, and her son, Spencer Crawley, at the ground in Galle 

The boys and their coaches took refuge on the balcony of the ground’s pavilion and watched in horror as the bus-stand behind was engulfed by a 30ft surge of seawater, killing several thousand people. Continue reading →

Leave a comment

Filed under disaster relief team, landscape wondrous, life stories, rehabilitation, self-reflexivity, sri lankan society, the imaginary and the real, transport and communications, unusual people, welfare & philanthophy, world events & processes

December 24, 2014 · 11:44 pm

Tsunami !! A Survival Celebration at Wijaya in Southern Lanka for the Hill Family from Adelaide

Meredith Booth in The Australian, 22 December 2014,

the HILLs-news corp the Hill family today in Adelaide-Pic News Corp

ADELAIDE survivors Emily Sharp and Michael Hill will mark the tsunami’s anniversary in the same Sri Lankan beach guesthouse, owned by the same couple, from which they miraculously swam on Boxing Day 2004. They’ll be sharing the “humbling experience” of their survival and put a landscape to the story for their sons Finnley, 9, and ­Orlando, 5.

Ms Sharp was six months pregnant with Finn when she and her partner managed eventually to escape to hills behind the village of Wijaya, south of Galle. “We were running through the courtyard while the bar was being ripped and chairs and tables were flying everywhere. Our first instinct was just to run upstairs,’’ she said at the time. Continue reading →

Leave a comment

Filed under disaster relief team, historical interpretation, landscape wondrous, life stories, NGOs, self-reflexivity, sri lankan society, welfare & philanthophy, world events & processes

December 24, 2014 · 5:07 am

Channel News Asia reviews Sri Lankan Presidential Election

Hop, Step and Jump with click to http://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/video/unexpected-competition/1522508.html …. 10 December 2014

An attempt to stay on in office that hasn’t gone quite to plan. Sri Lankan president Mahinda Rajapaksa called for snap elections, asking voters to give him an unprecedented third term. But he’s now facing a stronger than expected competition. Has the president made a miscalculation?

ANSWER as ADDENDUM; … not if his astrologer and horoscope’s guidance was on the button. OR if the deities at Thirupathi have any say in Lanka?

MR puja in India

MR + wife at THIRUPAHI

 

Leave a comment

Filed under accountability, authoritarian regimes, democratic measures, legal issues, life stories, performance, politIcal discourse, power politics, Rajapaksa regime, Sinhala-Tamil Relations, slanted reportage, sri lankan society, the imaginary and the real, world affairs

December 24, 2014 · 1:17 am

Tina Faulk’s “The Island of Singing Fish: a colonial childhood in Ceylon”

 

singing fishCeylon is a magical island which has enchanted adventurers, writers and soldiers for thousands of years.   It has, over six centuries, been ruled by three Great European Powers, Portuguese, Dutch and British. The legacy of these remain, in the language, culture, architecture and –most of all- the islanders themselves. The Island of Singing Fish is the story of a Sri Lankan family that began over five hundred years ago when Roelof Dircksz, a young Dutch trader working for the East India Company (the VOC) came ashore and married into a spice trader family in Galle Fort …. It’s the story of a family, a community and an island, written with love, nostalgia and the yearning for an island we all once called home…. Continue reading →

4 Comments

Filed under australian media, British colonialism, communal relations, cultural transmission, female empowerment, heritage, historical interpretation, landscape wondrous, life stories, literary achievements, Portuguese in Indian Ocean, sri lankan society, the imaginary and the real, unusual people, world affairs

December 23, 2014 · 9:56 am

Introducing Ranjit Ratnaike’s SARADASI

SARADASI cover  Saradasi-TheProphecy-cover-1

In a narrow valley, desolate and beautiful, surrounded by mountains heavy with snow, the Astral Lords chant softly, guiding the small spacecraft to tell its three passengers about The Prophecy. The leaders of the weary cosmic armies of good and evil have agreed each would field a small team to decide the fate of the Nereima Galaxy. The evil Prince Vira suggested virtue as the only weapon the divine astral Lord Gaima’s team would need for victory. Lord Gaima accepts members of the treacherous Saradasi race as his team, believing he can transflux enough virtue into them during their many cycles of rebirth before the battle. The Prophecy is fulfilled and the battle for the Nereima Galaxy begins. Shanaz, the beautiful young High Chancellor of the Saradasi Empire, leads Lord Gaima’s team into a parallel universe to begin the battle. Continue reading →

Leave a comment

Filed under cultural transmission, heritage, landscape wondrous, life stories, travelogue

December 21, 2014 · 1:42 pm

Attack on Pakistani GHQ: the confessions of a terrorist mastermind highlighted by DAWN

Dawn, 21 September 2011 …. http://www.dawn.com/news/660572/attack-on-ghq-confessions-of-a-terrorist-mastermind

Shortly after the attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team in 2009, Aqeel Ahmed alias Dr Usman alias Kamran alias Nazir Ahmed fled to Waziristan where he met the head of Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan’s Amjad Farooqui Group, Ustad Aslam Yasin and Ilyas Kashmiri.  The venue was Miramshah. The attendants of the meeting included some of the most notorious militants of Pakistan. And their agenda was nothing short of explosive — an attack on the GHQ with the aim to take military officers hostage.

GHQ attack item  Security forces on alert–Dawn

Shortly after the attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team in 2009, Aqeel Ahmed alias Dr Usman alias Kamran alias Nazir Ahmed fled to Waziristan where he met the head of Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan’s Amjad Farooqui Group, Ustad Aslam Yasin and Ilyas Kashmiri.

It was at this meeting that the idea of the attack on the General Headquarters was floated, reveals the main accused of the attack, Ahmed, in a confessional statement. He along with his seven accomplices was convicted by a military court on Aug 11, 2011, for the audacious attack on the GHQ in October 2009. Shooting their way into the military’s main headquarters, cowboy style, the militants took men hostage in one of the buildings. They remained there till the next morning when commandos finally entered the building, killing most of the militants and rescuing the hostages. Continue reading →

1 Comment

Filed under accountability, atrocities, Islamic fundamentalism, jihad, life stories, security, terrorism, trauma, unusual people, vengeance, world affairs, zealotry