Gwen Herat, courtesy of Daily News, 8 June 2016
And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest’……..
A prince he was;
A prince who captured the imagination of the literary world and who rose to be one of its icons.
Gone but the indelible aura remains sweeping gently over all those who met and shared his life and sprit; big and small, famous and not so famous.
A compilation by Ishara Jayawardane and Ruwini Jayawardana: “Tribute- Ashely Halpe: The Professor of all time: Unassuming but charismatic, perceptive yet discreet,”… Daily News, 20 May 2016
Hugh Karunanayake, courtesy of The Ceylankan, Vol. XX: No. 2, May 2016, where the title is “Royal College role in the Birth of S. Thomas College”
S. Thomas College Mount Lavinia was established in Mutwal on 3rd February 1851. It was then described as a “Collegiate School’ which was much akin to what was later to emerge as a secondary school. The intention of its founders was to establish a College and a School. The latter was designed to prepare candidates for admission into the College. The College was to prepare students for entry into tertiary education including Theology and Divinity Studies. When initially established it was not possible to differentiate between School and College, there being 70 students in the whole institution and not enough students to commence the College. One year later with the arrival of Warden Wood the College was opened in January 1852 with 20 students, the rest being included in the Collegiate School.
The original school building in Mutwal — from WT Keble History of St Thomas College 1937 Continue reading
Filed under British colonialism, cultural transmission, economic processes, education, heritage, historical interpretation, island economy, landscape wondrous, life stories, literary achievements, performance, politIcal discourse, religiosity, sri lankan society, unusual people, welfare & philanthophy, world affairs
Among the films being shown in Australian cities by the Alliance Francais Film Festival is that entitled DHEEPAN. The Tamil migrant and ex-Tiger fighter who inspired this tale and appears as the principal actor first burst onto the media pages as Shobasakthi …and the author of a book entitled Gorilla. The brief resume of the film is followed by a news item from 2008 .
Dheepan is a major film event and the winner of the Palme d’Or at the Cannes International Film Festival in 2015. This blistering slice of realism, entrenches director Jacques Audiard’s status as one of today’s greatest auteurs, with a unique presentation of the asylum seeker experience that will move audiences profoundly. Three strangers in conflict-ridden northern Sri Lanka band together as a makeshift family in order to flee to the suburbs of Paris: Dheepan, an ex-Tamil Tiger (Antonythasan Jesuthasan, author, activist, and former child soldier); lost young woman Yalini (Kalieaswari Srinivasan); and orphan girl Illayaal (Claudine Vinasithamby). As they struggle to find stability, they are forced to improvise their relationships. Soon they find they must cope with new violence and intolerance in their adopted home.
Based on Antonythasan’s own experience, his journey of self-realisation is a powerful and visceral tale, told with a timeless classicism that marks the finest world cinema. As in A Prophet and Rust and Bone, director Audiard orchestrates creeping menace with an emotional punch and a complex social message. Continue reading
Filed under accountability, cultural transmission, economic processes, historical interpretation, human rights, immigration, Left politics, life stories, literary achievements, LTTE, nationalism, politIcal discourse, power politics, prabhakaran, security, self-reflexivity, Sinhala-Tamil Relations, sri lankan society, Tamil migration, Tamil Tiger fighters, the imaginary and the real, truth as casualty of war, unusual people, war crimes, war reportage, world events & processes
Rajpal de Silva, in the Sunday Island, http://www.island.lk/index.php?page_cat=article-details&page=articledetails&code_title=143108 3 April 2016, introducing a book Vignettes of the Ceylon Civil Service 1938 – 1957, prepared by Vijaya and Parakrama Chandrasoma, and printed by Lazergraphic, Colombo., 2016.
This new handsome hard-cover publication by M. Chandrasoma’s sons, Vijaya and Parakrama, includes an Introduction and Postscript and six photographs showing Chandrasoma at various events during his career of nearly 20 years in the Ceylon Civil Service –which then comprised an elite group of individuals (usually an annual intake of 10) chosen from the cleverest of the Ceylon University’s recently qualified graduates. There was no political ‘input’ in this long bygone era – and hence the administration of the numerous and varied governmental departments whether they be Forestry, Fisheries, Agriculture, Public Works, Health or Revenue were managed by the best intellects that the island produced annually.
Manikkuwadumestri (Tissa) Chandrasoma’s original book, published in 1991, is once again reproduced in full. The original title, Vignettes, is most appropriate, considering that Chandrasoma’s book of 153 pages is sectionalized into 37 chapters. 
Continue reading
Filed under British colonialism, cultural transmission, economic processes, education, governance, historical interpretation, island economy, life stories, literary achievements, modernity & modernization, parliamentary elections, politIcal discourse, social justice, sri lankan society, world affairs
Padma Rao Sundarji, courtesy of Asian Age … http://www.asianage.com/books/living-expectations-only-parts-561 … where the title is “Living up to Expectations, only in parts”
John Gimlette is a winner of the Shiva Naipaul Prize and a celebrated British travel writer. The natural beauty of Sri Lanka’s wildlife parks, coasts and mountains is legendary. Putting those facts together, any reader would naturally expect “Elephant Complex” to be replete with finely-crafted adventure stories including some on one of the nation’s best-loved symbols: its elephant population. The book lives up to that expectation in parts.
Filed under British colonialism, centre-periphery relations, citizen journalism, landscape wondrous, life stories, literary achievements, modernity & modernization, politIcal discourse, Sinhala-Tamil Relations, slanted reportage, sri lankan society, the imaginary and the real, travelogue, truth as casualty of war, war reportage, world affairs
Anne Blackburn, from The Island, 30 January and 1 February 2016, where the title is “Why we need Humanities in our university curriculum” …. The text of the keynote speech delivered by Professor Anne Blackburn, Cornell University at the Inauguration of Postgraduate Institute of the Humanities & Social Sciences on January 27, 2016.
It is a great honor to speak on the occasion of the inauguration of the Postgraduate Institute of the Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Peradeniya. I was myself a student at this university in the 1980s, and again in the 1990s, and I always return to this extraordinarily beautiful campus with feelings of gratitude and positive memories. As an undergraduate student in the mid-1980s I heard lectures in History, Political Science, Sociology, Philosophy, and Buddhist Studies from some of Sri Lanka’s brilliant scholars. During the early 1990s it was my privilege to be attached to the Department of Sinhala, receiving expert and illuminating doctoral guidance for a dissertation related to Kandyan Period history and literature. So I speak with you today as one of Peradeniya’s former students, someone who has benefited greatly from the expertise of this university’s dons, spent many hours in the university library, and drunk my share of tea in both the canteens and the Senior Common Room.
Filed under cultural transmission, education, governance, heritage, historical interpretation, landscape wondrous, life stories, literary achievements, meditations, modernity & modernization, politIcal discourse, self-reflexivity, sri lankan society, teaching profession, the imaginary and the real, tolerance, welfare & philanthophy, world affairs
Shihan de Silva Jayasuriya, in The Island, 26 January 2016, where the title is “The Political Agenda behind the Literary Work”… http://www.island.lk/index.php?page_cat=article-details&page=article-details&code_title=139247
Leonard Woolf (1880-1969) is an important figure in international relations and imperial history but he was also a writer. The literary genius of his wife Virginia (neé Stephen) overshadowed him. This is partly due to lack of recognition of Woolf’s own novel, The Village in the Jungle which is shaped around a marginalised group of jungle dwellers in Ceylon/Sri Lanka. The Village in the Jungle (1913) ranks on par with E M Forster’s Passage to India and George Orwell’s Burmese Days but predates both these works; eleven years before Passage to India (1924) and twenty years before Burmese Days (1934).
Filed under British colonialism, centre-periphery relations, cultural transmission, economic processes, governance, heritage, landscape wondrous, life stories, literary achievements, religiosity, self-reflexivity, sri lankan society, the imaginary and the real, unusual people, vengeance, wild life, world affairs
Lalith Gunaratne, courtesy of Groundviews 01/07/2016 …….. where the title is different and where comments will be found
Featured image courtesy The Justice Project – South Asia
As I watched “Silence in the Courts“, a documentary movie by award-winning Sri Lankan filmmaker Prasanna Vithanage aired at the University of Ottawa Human Rights Film Festival on 3rd December 2015, the narrative was all too familiar – the powerful man and the powerless woman – showing man’s unchecked reptilian indulgence for power, pleasure and to procreate, being played out. In this case, if not for a couple of more enlightened men who believed the woman’s story enough to share it with the world, this too would have gone unnoticed like many other violations and crimes that some men in power commit with impunity.
“Silence in the Courts” was a part of a series of international films highlighting compelling human rights issues focusing on the theme of violence against women. Continue reading
thuppahi
