eLanka Newsletter 8 February 2023 …. presented here by Thuppahi because eLanka is a patriotic cause located in Australia working for the island and all its peoples in their considerable variety. eLanka also offers to deliver gift packs to residents or insitituions and charities in the island….. visit Elanka … newsletter@elanka.com.au>
Filed under art & allure bewitching, charitable outreach, cultural transmission, economic processes, education, ethnicity, heritage, historical interpretation, island economy, landscape wondrous, life stories, literary achievements, patriotism, performance, photography, photography & its history, self-reflexivity, sri lankan society, tolerance, travelogue, unusual people
Laleen Jayamanne, whose title is “Notes towards a Politics and Aesthetics of Film” in a review essay presented in The Island, 1 & 2 February 2023: the focus being Ashfaque Mohamed’s ‘Face Cover’ **
‘Face Cover’ by Ashfaque Mohamed
Asfaque Mohamed
“Black cat, at the tip of my fingers pulsates poetry,
Desiring hands, yours, nudgingly pluck those roses of mine
In the soft light of the moon
The dreams we picked from the foaming edges of waves of the sea.”
Jusla/Salani (in Face Cover)
Filed under anti-racism, art & allure bewitching, centre-periphery relations, citizen journalism, communal relations, cultural transmission, discrimination, economic processes, education, ethnicity, heritage, historical interpretation, Islamic fundamentalism, landscape wondrous, life stories, literary achievements, meditations, modernity & modernization, Muslims in Lanka, performance, pilgrimages, politIcal discourse, religiosity, self-reflexivity, social justice, sri lankan society, terrorism, the imaginary and the real, trauma, travelogue, unusual people, working class conditions, world events & processes
David Sansoni, whose preferred title is “STC – an unauthorised history of Lanka’s greatest Public School”
Richard Simon’s ‘history of Lanka’s greatest public school’, is an epic poem!
Epic, in its reach; poetic, in its lyricism, this towering, magnificent opus is a pearl, of both history and literature. “STC” touches the soul and core, of historophile, linguaphile and bibliophile; Christian, Lankan and, above all, Thomian.
Filed under accountability, architects & architecture, British colonialism, Colombo and Its Spaces, cultural transmission, economic processes, education, ethnicity, governance, heritage, historical interpretation, island economy, landscape wondrous, language policies, life stories, literary achievements, modernity & modernization, patriotism, performance, politIcal discourse, S. Thomas College, self-reflexivity, sri lankan society, teaching profession, unusual people, world affairs
Vinod Moonesinghe, in RoarMedia, 13 January 2023, where the title runs thus: “How Sri Lankan Tamils Came To Have ‘English’ Names”
Many Sri Lankan Tamils have English or otherwise European names, and are often confused with Burghers or Eurasians. How this came to be constitutes a vital part of the evolution of modern Sri Lanka.
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David Sansoni, in The Sunday Observer, 22 January 2023, where the title reads “Peter Colin-Thome: A Multi-faceted Personality”
Peter Colin-Thomé was a buddy of my cousin Dominic Sansoni and of a few of my friends and acquaintances. It was at Dominic’s home, on Anderson Road, Bambalapitiya, we first met, circa 1973.
Peter immediately made an impression. Tall, well-groomed and well-spoken – that sonorous Bass voice. His father, Percy, was a ‘name’ in Colombo circles, as was Peter’s mum, Moira.
Laleen Jayamanne, in The Island, 28 December 2022, reviewing Ayesha Wickramasinghe’s ‘The Dress of Women in Sri Lanka’
Dr. Ayesha Wickramasinghe, a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Textile and Apparel Engineering, at the University of Moratuwa, has recently published her doctoral research on sartorial styles, The Dress of Women in Sri Lanka (2021), in a handsomely designed hardcover book. The historical information, which spans the colonial and the postcolonial periods, with glances at the ancient past, is presented as a cultural survey, in an engaging manner, with a large number of photographs embedded, in the text, as illustrations. It has been published by The National Science Foundation and has recently received a national award as well.
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Punsara Amarasinghe, in The Guardian, 18 December 2022, where the ttile runs thus: “Prof. Merlin Peiris: The last of the Mohicans leaves the stage”
The greatest quality that would aggrandize Merlin’s name above the current mediocre scholars in Sri Lanka is his intellectual tolerance towards dissent.
The demise of Prof Merlin Peiris embodies the end of an epoch representing the humanities academia in Sri Lanka as he was obviously the last of those great doyens who lived when the country’s humanities education was prospering in those halcyon days at the edge of the British rule. Prof. Merlin was one of the first students of the maiden batch of Peradeniya University when it was shifted from Colombo in 1950 and began his flair for classics even before he entered the university under the wings of Noel Phoebus at St. Peter’s College in Bambalapitya.
Richard Hermon to Errol Fernando, early December 2022, responding to “The Power of Privilege: Illegitimate Progeny in the Plantations of Ceylon and Beyond” **
Dear Errol
As a Eurasian myself on both sides, since both my grandfathers were Brits and both my grandmothers were Sinhalese: one Kandyan from Welimada, and one Low-Country from Baddegama to whom both my grandfathers were married.
Filed under anti-racism, British colonialism, citizen journalism, cultural transmission, demography, discrimination, economic processes, education, ethnicity, heritage, historical interpretation, island economy, landscape wondrous, life stories, literary achievements, patriotism, plantations, politIcal discourse, self-reflexivity, sri lankan society, travelogue, unusual people, world events & processes
“Disappearing Burgher Surnames in Island Lanka” …. Author and location unknown at present … and not to be confused with Careem’s article on “Disappearing Burgher & Malay Surnames in Island Lanka”…at… https://thuppahis.com/2017/01/30/disappearing-burgher-and-malay-surnames-i
Pix of Burgher Tennis Club in the Fort of Galle in 1928 inserted here courtesy of David Colin-Thome … for names: visit https://thuppahis.com/2017/06/29/burgher-tennis-club-in-galle-circa-1928/
Some of the most colourful surnames that once stood as a beacon to help distinguish the ethnic backgrounds of locals have now gone into abeyance. The ethnographers are of the opinion that the frequent intermarriages with members of the prominent ethnic groups and the death of male line descendants have gradually airbrushed the identities of many minorities. However, it is unmistakably clear that many of the Lankan patronymics and surnames have European roots. The Ceylon Burgher Community is the finest exponent of this European Onomatology in Sri Lanka, as the members of the community carry some of the World’s rarest surnames, several of which at present verge on extinction. The ancestors of the Dutch Burghers were not necessarily Dutch by ethnic origin as the Dutch East India Company installed hundreds of mercenaries from all parts of Europe who later reached the shores of Lanka to strengthen the Dutch garrisons on the Island.
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