The Taieri Gorge railway run is presented as one of the the world’s “great train trips” and apart from the striking ‘gorgic’ scenery one meets several little railway stations of yesteryear that are as charming as extraordinary. For Sri Lankans with a penchant for awkward phonetic connotaiiosns when one crosses language divides, of course, Pukey-Ran-Gi will draw a laugh.
This is one of the other stations:
Filed under cultural transmission, heritage, life stories, pulling the leg
Compiled by Michael Roberts to assist present-day debates on Sinhala -Muslim tensions …with RED identifying contemporary material
Abdul Rahiman, W. M. 1915 Letter from WM Abdul Rahiman to Sir Robert Chalmers [Governor], 1 July 1915, in Colonial Office 54/782.
Ameer Ali, A. C. L. 1981 “The 1915 racial riots in Ceylon (Sri Lanka): a reappraisaof its causes,” South Asia 4: 1-20.
Amunugama, Sarath 1978 “John de Silva and the Sinhala nationalist theatre,” Ceylon Historical Journal 25: 285-304. Continue reading
Dominic Davies as Symposium Facilitator
This Day Symposium, hosted by the Oxford Centre for Life-Writing at Wolfson College, Oxford, marked and celebrated the centenary of the publication of Leonard Woolf’s path-breaking first novel, set in then Ceylon, The Village in the Jungle (1913). It explored the novel from a number of different critical and informed angles, all of which addressed and emphasized its richness, complexity and importance as a piece of literature. The Symposium was well attended, with over 60 delegates engaging with the various presentations, lectures and papers in the rich discussions that followed them.
Michael Roberts hijacking Dhaneshi Yatawara
I: Preamble by Michael Roberts
Dhaneshi Yatawara is a Sri Lankan reporter whom I do not know and have no contact with. I happened to be in Sri Lanka in April-June 2009 and collected news clippings, which now guide me to items on web. Among the latter are a series of striking photographs provided by Dhaneshi Yatawara on the 10th and 17th May 2009 respectively. The first lot were obviously (though not so stated) snapped on the foreshores in the Pulmoddai or Trinco area as Tamil IDPs injured and “carers” were disembarked from ICRC ships guided by the SL Navy. Parenthetically I note here between the 10th February and 15th May 2009 the ICRC ships “Green Ocean” and “Seruvila” escorted by the SL Navy made several trips and evacuated “over 13,500 sick and wounded people and their caretakers” (http://www.icrc.org/eng/resources/ documents/ update/sri-lanka-update-090609.htm).[1]
This Pic is not from Yatawara Continue reading
Filed under accountability, citizen journalism, economic processes, historical interpretation, IDP camps, life stories, LTTE, military expenditure, military strategy, politIcal discourse, power politics, propaganda, Rajapaksa regime, reconciliation, rehabilitation, Sinhala-Tamil Relations, sri lankan society, Tamil civilians, tamil refugees, tolerance, truth as casualty of war, welfare & philanthophy, women in ethnic conflcits, world events & processes
Camelia Nathaniel reporting from Kilinochchi in The Sunday Leader, 18 February 2013
The Civil Security Department (CSD) has recently recruited 3,500 former LTTE cadres despite requests by the TNA that rehabilitated cadres should be given a chance to lead normal lives as civilians and not be recruited into any military or paramilitary organizations.
While in the LTTE they had caused so much destruction to this country, but today having realized their mistake they have joined hands with the Civil Security Department (CSD) to rebuild the nation, said Ramalingam Kumar an ex-LTTE cadre who had joined the CSD after undergoing the government’s rehabilitation programme. Continue reading
Ishara Jayawardane, in The Daily News, 5 February 2013
As I approached his apartment I saw Dr. Nimal Sanderatne standing outside beaming at me. The Sri Lanka-Australia cricket match was on and we chatted a little bit about cricket. I soon discovered that I was dealing with a dynamic personality – a man who is many a man rolled into one. He has compressed the lifetimes and careers of many men into his life. A journalist, a scholar, a university don, an economist, a banker, an international consultant, and the Chairman of the Bank of Ceylon and NDB I met with an engaging personality and an effervescent man.
“I was born and bred in Dehiwela. I first attended a small school in Dehiwela where the children were mostly of fishermen in the area. This was because my father was keen that I mix with poor children. This was in 1943 during the war. I recall two things from those days. When the sirens sounded we had to put a pencil in our mouths and hide under the desks. The other was the mid day meal of warm bread, dhal and pol sambol. To this day this is my favourite meal.” Continue reading
Filed under life stories, sri lankan society, unusual people
Michael Roberts
Pic 11 -bowling brace being fitted by Dr. Mandheep Dillon
Pic 22- Murali ready to bowl with brace
Not all Sri Lankans disagreed with Darrell Hair. Initially the cricket buff Shehan Karunatilaka, now a famous author, also thought Murali was a chucker.. His reflections on this issue are now available courtesy of ESPNcricnfo. This is a beautifully crafted essay. I note some excerpts below but also add some published references noted in the ESPN site. Plus more after the extracts …. all of which will indicate why this theme is included here in THUPPAHI and not in CRICKETIQUE.
* “I was delighted to see science and rationalism – western imperialism’s hammer and sickle – being used by the East to clear a bowler’s name; tickled to see those who live by the sword being put to it.” Continue reading
Venue: Haldane Room, Wolfson College, Oxford. OX2 6UD.
The Oxford Centre for Life-Writing at Wolfson College is delighted to host this workshop marking the centenary of the publication of Leonard Woolf’s path-breaking first novel, set in then Ceylon, The Village in the Jungle. Woolf’s novel (the first of only two) is a leading yet often overlooked modernist document and is increasingly recognized as an extraordinarily far-sighted colonial text, an oblique record of his years as a colonial officer in Ceylon (1904-11). It has also become a foundational novel in the Sri Lankan literary canon. The workshop will consider Woolf’s radical colonialist legacy, and will explore the relationship of The Village in the Jungle to his later oeuvre of economic theory and political commentary, as well as to the field of post/colonial and empire writing more broadly. We will be interested, too, in the many intertextual links running between the 1910s work of Virginia Woolf, Lytton Strachey, E.M. Forster and others of and related to the Bloomsbury group, and that of Leonard Woolf, and consider some of the intersections between their works and their lives.
Please address any queries about the symposium to Dominic Davies by emailing leonard.woolf.symposium@gmail.com Continue reading
thuppahi
