Category Archives: meditations

September 1, 2025 · 8:10 pm

Learning Law with Aid From Colvin R de Silva

A Guy named Talagalla, …  with highlighting imposed by The  Editor, Thuppahi

I am just penning this note after finishing my research for the day, before the thoughts dissipate into the quiet of the evening. The cases I read, the legislation I examined, and the scholarly writings I consulted all converged in my mind, and they brought me back to a lesson I once received from my senior, Mr. D.S. Wijesinghe, President’s Counsel, passed down from his own mentor, Dr. Colvin R. de Silva. The story of how Dr. de Silva engaged with the law has lingered in me for years, and it bears repeating, for stories carry the weight of wisdom in ways instructions never can.

Dr Colvin R de Silva

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August 26, 2025 · 3:00 pm

Travels & Travails: Cycling Along Australia’s Ocean Roads

An Editor’s Apologetic Note, August 2025

I got to know Eardley because his anthropological fieldwork and dissertation in Uva in Sri Lanka came to m attention way back, maybe in the 1980s when I was teaching in Adelaide. I think we met once or twice in Sydney. That is how Eardley’s subsequent “adventure” … presented below … came into my files.

…. and THEN got swallowed up somewhere.  But fortune has favoured the arduous and I can tell the world WHAT no other migrant Sri Lankan Aussie has done …... A BUGGER OF A JOURNEY

Eardley Lieversz

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August 21, 2025 · 4:51 pm

Yasodara Kumaratunga’s Inventive Mind: Free Verse from London

Michael Roberts in Adelaide, August 2025

Among a small pile of photgrpahs, letters and papers left by my departed elder sister, Estelle Fernando, is a printed ‘pamphlet’ published by Yasodhara  Kumaratunga, the  eldest daughter of Vijaya Kumaratunga and Chandrika Bandaranaike.

It presents thirteen brief  poems coined by Yasodhara when she was “in exile in  London” — as  the Foreword by an unknown person  tells us. These were “written by Yasodhara between the ages  of 8 plus 1/2 years – 11 years” during a period when she  was beginning to learn English after an education in Sinhala.”

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August 16, 2025 · 12:02 pm

Protecting One’s Computer

Chandre Dharma-wardana in Canada**

Best system is to NOT use Windows operating system, and instead switch to Linux, and then use any commercial anti-virus and protection software.
More details:
  • Linux is inherently more secure:

    Linux distributions have a more robust security model than some other operating systems, with features like a strong permission system and less reliance on a central administrator.

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July 30, 2025 · 1:26 pm

From Kamburupitiya … Malkanthi’s Multi-Faceted Journey

Fazli Sameer in Those Fuzzy Days, July 2025 … presented in fazli@substack.com with a slightly different title and the sub-title: “A trek through days of milk, honey, and roses”

In the small southern village of Kamburupitiya, nestled amidst the mist-covered hills of the southern coastal city of Matara, a determined teenage girl named Malkanthi prepared for a journey that would alter the course of her life. At sixteen, she was the pride of her village school, a bright, kind-hearted girl who had earned a scholarship to pursue her higher studies in Colombo.

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February 4, 2025 · 11:46 pm

Responsibility … “Duty of Care” on the Cricket Field: Senake’s Thoughtful Essay

Michael Roberts 

In THIS MEMO inspired by Senaka Weeraratne’s article below, I present two striking photographs to illustrate the amateurish and rudimentary nature of treatment for those subject to serious injury on the cricket field in the 20th century in contrast with the jeep-ambulances and medical staff attending matches in recent decades. Howeer, these facilities did not prevent PHIL HUGHES from succumbing to “death-by-bouncer”  during a Sheffield Shield match.

Duleep Mendis bing carried off the field by Mevan Pieris & Dennis chanmugam (two teammates) after he was felled by paceman Jeff Thomson at the ODI match at Kennington Oval in London during the World Cup Prelims in summer 1975

When Phil Hughes wes felled in Sydney in 2014, there was a jeep with a stretcher available to carry him off …. Alas, he died in hospital; whereas Duleep suvived, played on and is still in the cricket circuit as a coach. C’est la vie.

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January 16, 2025 · 12:22 pm

A Drumbeat For The Geriatric Elderly in Sri Lanka

KKS Perera, in Daily News,  16 January 2025, where the chosen title is “Aging With Dignity” … with highlighting imposed by The Editor, Thuppahi

It was Hubert H. Humphrey who said, “The moral test of a State is how it treats the elderly; those who are in the dimness of life; the sick, the deprived and the handicapped.”

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January 15, 2025 · 10:56 am

Marakkalayaa & Thambiyaa: Epithets That Bind Us Across Time

Sent by FIRAZATH HUSSAIN, an Old Mate from the Fort of Galle
 
Read slowly to be more meaningful
In the heart of the isle, where the oceans meet,
lies stories of traders, their journeys replete.
𝑴𝒂𝒓𝒂𝒌𝒌𝒂𝒍𝒂𝒚𝒂, a name of the seas,
Born from the waves, carried by the breeze.

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January 6, 2025 · 1:20 pm

Meeting Professor Hilali Noordeen in Galle via Karen Roberts

Michael Roberts

In late 2003 or early 2004 I was privileged to receive an invitation from Nazreen Sansoni of Barefoot to participate in the Galle Literary festival where the central events took place within the precincts of the Galle Fort — a familiar spot replete with memories of my childhood and youthful experiences.

Dr Hilali Noordeen

Karen Roberts

As it happened one of the literary stars featuring in the manifold ‘events” of the GL Festival was Karen Roberts, whose background and literary work was known to me. She was, I stress, no relation, though she had been educated in a school in Wellawatte that was a stone’s throw away from my sister Estelle Fernando’s abode in Hampden Lane Wellawatte.

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December 26, 2024 · 11:34 am

The Tsunami Twenty Years After

Padraig O’Leary writing from the vicinity of Colombo now

Twenty Years after the Tsunami

Did the children and I come to you when the waves came?

Were the kids there with you when death came?

In eternity, do you want to be mine again?

Will you come back at least in my dreams?

Those words were written by a grieving husband on the side of a rusting railway carriage at Peraliya in southern Sri Lanka.

 

On 26 December 2004, 36,000 to 50,000 people (the numbers of dead vary depending on the source) died in Sri Lanka in the St Stephen’s Day tsunami. Between 1,700 and 2,500 passengers on the holiday train, Queen of the Sea, perished as the wave engulfed it at Peraliya, between Colombo and Galle. Rescuers recovered only 824 bodies, as many were swept out to sea or were taken away by relatives without informing the authorities. The village itself also suffered heavy losses: hundreds of inhabitants died and out of 420 houses, the great wave spared only ten.

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