Category Archives: life stories

August 30, 2013 · 5:20 pm

Remembering Lasantha: Discussion on Press Freedom across Canadian and Lankan borders

T lasantha wickrramatunga 1 lasantha wickrramatunga 44Sonali and Lal pay homage

T oronto, Ontario – August 30, 2013 — Leading journalists from Canada and Sri Lanka will come together for a panel discussion to examine press freedom and related human rights issues in Sri Lanka as part of a special event commemorating the life and times of leading Sri Lankan journalist and human rights activist Lasantha Wickrematunge.   Lasantha Wickrematunge was an internationally renowned journalist and Editor of The Sunday Leader, a national English-language weekly in Sri Lanka, and a reporter for TIME magazine. Known for his critical coverage of successive Sri Lankan governments, Wickrematunge was a lawyer and politician before turning to journalism permanently. After many years of threats to him and his family, he was assassinated on January 8, 2009. In his final editorial written shortly before his death, which was published posthumously, Wickrematunge alleged, “when finally I am killed, it will be the government that kills me.” The Government of Sri Lanka has denied any involvement in the matter and the case remains unsolved. In 2010, the International Press Institute declared Wickrematunge a World Press Freedom Hero.   Continue reading →

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Filed under accountability, authoritarian regimes, democratic measures, governance, historical interpretation, law of armed conflict, legal issues, life stories, LTTE, nationalism, patriotism, politIcal discourse, power politics, self-reflexivity, Sinhala-Tamil Relations, slanted reportage, sri lankan society, world affairs

August 25, 2013 · 3:03 am

Dilmah marks 25th Birthday at Sydney Opera House

Feisal Samath in Sunday Times

sYDNEY OOPERA HOUSE 22 DILMAH birthday Merrill Fernando with his sons

When Sri Lanka’s top tea brand, Dilmah marked 25 years in the global market, it celebrated the anniversary in style with 150 invitees at the Sydney Opera House! “I don’t think any Sri Lankan has had a celebration at this prestigious venue; We did,” said a proud and enthusiastic Merrill J. Fernando, widely considered Sri Lanka’s ambassador of tea and the flag bearer of ‘Pure (unblended) Ceylon Tea’ for more than two decades overseas.

Inviting the Business Times to his sprawling residence on Buthgamuwa road at Rajagiriya, Mr. Fernando tucked into an everyday Sri Lankan meal of stringhoppers, eggs, sambol, fish and potato curry with his fingers while going down memory lane to share the story of Dilmah and his success as an entrepreneur. The 83 year-old iconic tea businessman whose face has been on millions of Dilmah tea packets over the years, never in his wildest dreams imagined that boyhood visits to tea estates owned by families of school mates would transform him into an innovative tea producer. Continue reading →

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Filed under economic processes, life stories, performance, sri lankan society, unusual people, world affairs

August 23, 2013 · 2:05 pm

Can elections fast-track development in Sri Lanka’s former conflict zone?

Irin News

Opposition party leaders in Sri Lanka’s north have long called for power devolution to the former conflict zone as a condition for lasting peace, but voters preparing to cast ballots in the Northern Province’s first election since the end of a separatist war in 2009 say power sharing means little if basic needs are unmet.  “First we need to be able to take care of ourselves financially before we get into sharing power,” Jeyam Subramanian, a voter from the northern town of Kilinochchi, told IRIN.
WATER TOWER NP Pic by Amantha Perera

There are some indications that the planned election has quickened the pace of development work.  When Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa recently met a high level delegation from China involved in billions of dollars worth of infrastructure projects in the island, he had one request: expedite the work on a nearly 400km expressway that would link the capital, Colombo, with the northern town of Jaffna. This came shortly after he oversaw the opening of a US$150 million garment factory in the northern town of Vavuniya.  And less than one week later, the government announced the country’s rail link to the north had reached the town of Kilinochchi from Colombo. The government said it was the first time in 23 years that the rail link, financed by the Indian government, had extended so far north. Continue reading →

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Filed under constitutional amendments, democratic measures, economic processes, historical interpretation, life stories, politIcal discourse, population, power politics, power sharing, Sinhala-Tamil Relations, sri lankan society, Tamil civilians

August 23, 2013 · 1:49 pm

Sundus Shaker Saleh’s case vs George Bush and USA’s double standards –today

Inder Comar

-george-bush-barack-obama-1f9a4d558a2525a2SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., (Aug. 20, 2013) — In court papers filed today (PDF), the United States Department of Justice requested that George W. Bush, Richard Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice and Paul Wolfowitz be granted procedural immunity in a case alleging that they planned and waged the Iraq War in violation of international law. Plaintiff Sundus Shaker Saleh, an Iraqi single mother and refugee now living in Jordan, filed a complaint in March 2013 in San Francisco federal court alleging that the planning and waging of the war constituted a “crime of aggression” against Iraq, a legal theory that was used by the Nuremberg Tribunal to convict Nazi war criminals after World War II. Continue reading →

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Filed under american imperialism, legal issues, life stories, politIcal discourse, power politics, truth as casualty of war, world affairs

August 21, 2013 · 3:35 pm

Jean Arasanayagam: Poet, Author, Activist

Sarah Hannan, in the Sunday Leader, 7 July 2013

arasanayagam-4co copy “We’ll all become spinners of endless sagas which we read in the silence of our eternal loneliness. We inhabit the world of exile, which lies within the Babylon of ourselves” – Jean Arasanayagam.  Dr. Jean Arasanayagam – is a renowned poet and author who has contributed immensely towards the English Literature circuit in Sri Lanka for over four decades. Having written poetry, prose and short stories in English she is celebrated by literati around the world and was recently honoured with a doctorate in letters by the Bowdoin College, USA. Joining In Conversation Dr. Arasanayagam shares her life as a person of letters and art. Having been a voice for the people who silently suffered the hardships of war, the writer asked her, what changes she sees in the society three years into peace and reconciliation under one flag. Continue reading →

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Filed under cultural transmission, education, ethnicity, female empowerment, gender norms, life stories, literary achievements, performance, sri lankan society, unusual people

August 21, 2013 · 3:23 pm

Loudes Melorin Vincent: an example to us all and in service of AUSLMAT

Quintus de Zylva

MeloDr. (Mrs). Loudes Melorin Vincent is a proud product of the Batticaloa District. Her father was a mechanic and she struggled financially to complete her school education and then went to Peradeniya University to do a degree in dentistry. Her education was supported by the Burgher Union of Batticaloa. In June 2006 she graduated with a Bachelor of Dental Surgery. Her story is one of great effort in the face of severe financial stresses and one that should serve as a source of encouragement to all those students who want to study and rise up out of the vicious cycle of poverty that drags some children down. Continue reading →

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Filed under female empowerment, life stories, performance, self-reflexivity, Sinhala-Tamil Relations, sri lankan society, unusual people, welfare & philanthophy, women in ethnic conflcits, world affairs

August 21, 2013 · 3:08 pm

Living costs today in Sri Lanka

Harold Gunatillake

The rich, newly or otherwise, will be rich always; will never feel the hunger pains of the suffering masses. They live, most of them in architect designed homes, one or two luxury vehicles in the double garages, eating rich food, obvious from the visible obesity problems they carry. That class of achievers is essential in a capitalistic society to keep the economy viable and a necessary asset. This brief article focuses on the non-achievers, battlers and the unfortunates who are deprived of the basics in life, and the numbers seem to increase day by day. This could be assessed from the number of people begging on the roadsides near traffic lights, when you wait for the green light.

One year ago a good size papaw in the Wellawatte market was approximately Rs. 60 and today the same size papaw is Rs 200. Within a period of one year the prices have doubled and over. These fruits are locally grown without any care, or fertilizing with no cost to the producer. But why have the prices doubled within one year? Your guess would be as good as mine. Continue reading →

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Filed under economic processes, life stories, population, sri lankan society

August 18, 2013 · 4:05 am

Confronting Charlie Ponnadurai: Clarifying the Context of Disparaging Ethnic Epithets in Sri Lanka over the last 180 years

Michael Roberts

Charlie and I go back a long way – to Ramanathan Hall at Peradeniya University where we were freshers together in 1957 and thus were ragged together.[1] Charlie was known then as Charlies Ponnadurai, but he is now a “Sarvan” and resides in Germany with his German wife after years of work in Zambia and the Middle East. He has done me a singular honour in basing an essay on “Para Dhemalā” purely on my work. The reference is to “Pejorative Phases: the Anti-Colonial Response and Sinhala Perceptions of the Self through Images of the Burghers.”

Readers may have been misled into thinking this was either a book or an independent article. Not so. The title is that of a chapter, “Pejorative Phrases….,” which is the first chapter in the book People Inbetween. The Burghers and the Middle Class in the Transformations within Sri Lanka, 1790s-1960s,” – a large tome published in Sri Lanka in 1989 by Sarvodaya Book Publishing Services. This book was one part of a longer projected series involving myself, Percy Colin-Thomé and Ismeth Raheem. That venture was inspired in part by our discovery of a treasure trove, namely, the Lorenz Collection at the library of the Royal Asiatic Society in Colombo. It has not seen the fullest fruition; but the first step was People Inbetween which was almost wholly my work, albeit aided by citation-aid and other inputs from Colin-Thomé and Raheem.[2] Continue reading →

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Filed under British colonialism, disparagement, economic processes, ethnicity, historical interpretation, island economy, life stories, politIcal discourse, reconciliation, self-reflexivity, Sinhala-Tamil Relations, slanted reportage, sri lankan society, Tamil migration, tolerance, truth as casualty of war, world events & processes

August 17, 2013 · 5:23 am

Shulman’s Exploration of the Imagination in the South Indian Cultural World

Steven P. Hopkins, … a longer version of a review in South Asian History and Culture, vol. 3, no. 4, July 2013, pp. 424-26 (see below)

Coming away from a close reading of this remarkable book one cannot help feeling much like the bemused lover in Ativīrarāmaṉ’s 16th century Tenkasi Tamil poem on the tale of Nala and Damayantī.  The goose messenger has just described in vivid imaginative detail the body of Nala’s beloved, almost placing her “before his very eyes,” when he wonders aloud: “Seeing through the mind [thought, imagination] of a true friend is really seeing (mēyt tuṇaiyār karunttiṉāṟ kāndale kāṇṭa)” (186). Seeing the histories of South Indian literatures through the singularly perceptive and creative mind of David Shulman is, indeed, “really seeing.”  And what we have before our eyes in Shulman’s seeing is an exhaustive and deeply nuanced work of scholarship on the nature of the “imagination” in India.

david_shulman_na_web David Shulman Continue reading →

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Filed under cultural transmission, heritage, Hinduism, historical interpretation, Indian religions, Indian traditions, landscape wondrous, life stories, literary achievements, meditations, pilgrimages, Saivism, the imaginary and the real

August 17, 2013 · 4:47 am

Meeting Michelle de Kretser and her QUESTIONS OF TRAVEL, 2012

Susan Wyndham, in Sydney Morning Herald, 6 October 2012 … “The Interview: Michelle de Kretser”

michelle-de-kretser_20121005123354987325-620x349- steven stewart Pic by Steven Stewart

Michelle de Kretser has made two geographical leaps in her life: at 14, with her family from Sri Lanka to Australia, and three years ago, with her partner and dogs from Melbourne to Sydney. Both gave de Kretser new perspectives on the world and both underpin her new novel, Questions of Travel. Sitting in a cafe in inner-west Newtown, she seems to be a slightly exotic local: her refined accent hints at elsewhere; an atlas fragment of the Pacific Ocean is aptly pinned to her jumper. She says, ”Moving up to Sydney, I was suddenly a stranger. I always had the intention of setting this book in Sydney, the hubris of which now astonishes me.”

De Kretser compares Sydneysiders’ complaints about the city – traffic, public transport, pollution, overcrowding – with Melburnians’ civic pride. ”Yes, there are all those things,” she says, ”but this is also one of the most beautiful places on Earth: the vegetation struck me as very lush, so it reminded me of childhood. The diversity of people. It has the buzz of a big, modern city and the problems.” Continue reading →

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Filed under Australian culture, australian media, communal relations, cultural transmission, ethnicity, female empowerment, heritage, life stories