Category Archives: life stories

July 23, 2013 · 2:05 am

Black Memories: July 1983

GROUNDVIEWS, 18 July 2013

In August this year, Groundviews will launch a compelling collection of content to commemorate 30 years since Black July. The content will feature original podcasts, photography and writing on a dedicated website. Building from the critically acclaimed Moving Images two years ago, Groundviews brought together leading documentary filmmakers, photographers, activists, theorists and designers, in Sri Lanka and abroad, to focus on just how deeply the anti-Tamil pogrom in 1983 has shaped our imagination, lives, society and polity.

black july --GV Photo by Natalie Soysa, for Groundviews

The resulting content, featuring voices never captured before, marrying  rich photography, video, audio and visual design with constitutional theory, story-telling and memorialising, has no historical precedent. Curated by Groundviews, the project is an attempt to use digital media and compelling design to remember the inconvenient, and in no small way, acts of daring, courage and resistance during and after Black July. Continue reading →

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July 21, 2013 · 2:35 pm

A Classical Appreciation for a Classical Cricketing Man

Andrew Fernando, courtesy of ESPNcricinfo

Sanga at MCC

Cricketers are sometimes labeled ‘great students of the game’. Often these students are men who distinguish themselves from the peloton of cricket’s sporty jocks by a yearning to learn more about the history and the nuances of the pursuit that consumes their lives.

When he first began playing for Lancashire, Muttiah Muralitharan was said to have had a more thorough knowledge of the team’s previous season than many of the cricketers who had played in those matches. Part of why Michael Hussey’s ‘Mr. Cricket’ moniker endured was because he would speak for hours on end about the game, in what seemed like laborious detail to his teammates. In his years as Australia captain, Ricky Ponting was found perusing grade cricket scorecards from around the country. All men, whose livelihoods had happily aligned with their life’s most ardent passion. Continue reading →

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July 19, 2013 · 4:41 am

Emily Howie’s update on irregular migrants and government reactions

Emily Howie

Hi all
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Here is an update on the boat migration issues between Australia and Sri Lanka. Unfortunately, this will be my final update of this kind as I have completed my fellowship and have returned to work with the Human Rights Law Centre in Melbourne, Australia. However I will continue to work on these and other issues with the Human Rights Law Centre and will provide updates through the Centre’s website on the international developments page (http://www.hrlc.org.au/category/primary/hr-development/hr-development-international) and also through the Centre’s monthly bulletin (subscribe on the top right of this page: http://www.hrlc.org.au/). I highly recommend subscribing to the Bulletin. Continue reading →

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Filed under accountability, asylum-seekers, Australian culture, australian media, life stories, population, power politics, Tamil migration, tamil refugees, world events & processes

July 19, 2013 · 3:03 am

Q and A with Professor Chandre Dharma-wardana

Daniel Bacon sounds out Dharma-wardana for World Scientific, 14 June 2013

CHANDRE D-22 CHANDRE D-11

  1. Discuss the differences between teaching physics at the University of Montreal and conducting research at the National Research Council of Canada?

The National Research Council of Canada (NRC) is the premier arm of government research in Canada. The NRC has always worked closely with the cutting-edge technological giants in Canada, in fields like nanotechnology, communications, materials, energy, biotechnology, aerospace etc. It also works with universities in accepting post-graduate students and researcher associates. In my career at the NRC I have had the privilege of working in almost every area of physics, and overlapping into chemistry and engineering, touching on the most fundamental and basic questions in quantum physics, and at another extreme, working directly on very practical applications like light-emitting diodes, semi-conductor field-effect transistors, photonics or plasma physics. Continue reading →

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July 18, 2013 · 2:01 pm

Social Scientists’ Association launches bookshop site with credit card facilities

KUMARI 22 KUMARI 11 www.ssalanka.org NOBODIES TO SOMEBODIES http://books.google.com.au/books?id=9eISAQAAMAAJ&source=gbs_similarbooks Continue reading →

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July 16, 2013 · 12:04 am

Vijitha Yapa: Journalist, Editor, Bookseller, Publisher

Ishara Jayawardane, courtesy of The Daily News, 22 January 2013

YAPAFrom the most humble of beginnings ending up as one of the most influential people in Sri Lanka, Vijitha Yapa’s is a success story. He has been a leading journalist and editor and is now a publisher. Vijitha Yapa is a well known name in Sri Lanka being the Founder, Chairman, and Managing Director of the largest English bookstore chain in the country. Reminiscences of Gold spoke to Vijitha Yapa about his life experiences and achievements.  “I was born in a small village called ‘Waralla’ which is in the Southern Province; a little village between Kotapala and Morawaka on the Akursssa-Deniyaya road. My father was a tea planter and he was also Chairman of the Village Council. One of the things that he insisted was that we all go to school in the village and that is an experience I treasure very much. He had 10 children and all of us went to this school and the early part of our childhood was spent there. The whole school had only one building and all the classes were held there. We had long desks and benches and next to me was a boy whose father was the peon in my father’s office. It gave us a tremendous introduction to life and an ability to understand people. My father said that we should never forget our roots in the village. Continue reading →

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July 15, 2013 · 3:39 pm

And WHAT will the Taliban say to this !!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch_popup?v=quhlxIqw_EA&feature=youtu.be ……. JAZZ EN ESTAMBUL.

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July 15, 2013 · 6:58 am

Thugs who roam the internet

Quotation of the month from Padraig Colman within a subsection entitled ‘Moderation in All Things”

PADRAIG However, most reputable websites have a moderation policy which forbids author abuse, obscene or offensive language and off-topic discussions. Only extreme libertarians would object to a website policing itself to eliminate hate speech that stirs up racial animosities. Whether a comment falls into any of those categories is determined by editorial judgement. Where do you draw the line between moderating and censorship?

The price paid for freedom of speech is that gangs of thugs, whose malevolence towards their fellow human beings is pathological, pseudonymously prowl the precincts of the internet. The people who moderate do not always  know the difference and are, allegedly, sometimes part of the gangs. Someone has privately suggested to me that many of the pseudonymous trolls are actually fakes manufactured by the editors to drum up interest.  An analysis of the UK Guardian’s on-line community by digital consultant Martin Belam suggests that debate is dominated by a tiny minority. (He estimated that a fifth of comments were left by just 0.0037% of the paper’s declared monthly audience.) Continue reading →

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July 14, 2013 · 4:27 pm

In search of indigenous artists

R. K. de Silva, courtesy of Art Sri Lanka

Most of the indigenous artists appears to have been restricted to temple murals and drawings on cloth, such as flags and banners.  Of the few of these artists who painted in the water colour medium, the traditions of temple art have been maintained, the colours being generally confined to white, red, yellow, black and more rarely, blue.  The lack of perspective is also very evident. Ananda Commaraswamy in his erudite work “Mediaeval Sinhalese Art” says that there are no drawings on Sinhalese paper, which was very coarse and rough.  The only drawings and manuscripts which have been preserved, are on Dutch, and late, English paper. Coomaraswamy mentions that he was acquainted with only two paper manuscripts, one written on 158 leaves of Dutch paper and containing a selection of discourses of the Buddha and said to have been used by King Narendra Singha as a prayer book, another, on 150 leaves, written in 1811 by Iruyagama Dharmadassi and affording and interesting side-light into Kandyan court life.Both these books are illustrated, the painting being typical examples of the Kandyan style of the 18th century. Continue reading →

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July 14, 2013 · 4:09 pm

The Colombo Chetties of Sri Lanka : Three Essays

I. The Colombo Chetties of Sri Lanka by Shirley Pulle Tissera

The Colombo Chetties form an integral part of Sri Lankan society. They are a separate ethnic group different from the Tamils, Moors, Malays, Burghers, and the majority Sinhalese community. In the census of 1946 (Vol I Para I) the Superintendent of Census, Mr. A.G. Ranasinghe, states that the Colombo Chetties must receive mention in a racial distinction of Ceylon. The term does not include the Nattukottu Chetties who have formed themselves into a guild for carrying on business in Ceylon and are only temporary residents of the Island.

3b-C'bo Chetty -- SylvafColombo Chetty –a representation painted by Hippolyte Silvaf  in the 1840s or so ** Continue reading →

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