presented by Anusha Palpita … Aug 7, 2016
Category Archives: plural society
Eduard Hempel Flourishes in Galle and Lanka
SinhaRaja Tammita-Delgoda, in Sunday Island, 26 July where the title is “ A Seeker after Many Truths, The Lives of Eduard Hempel”
The canoe nudged its way through the deep brown water. It was thick and heavy, like treacle and the boat inched towards a tree trunk on the river bank. The boat sat low in the water, barely a few inches above the river. “Closer, closer,” said the voice at the stern. “I can’t really see it.”
“Well I can,” protested the voice from the bow. “Its close enough, isn’t it?”
” No, its okay. It doesn’t seem to be moving.” All of sudden the tree trunk moved. Coming suddenly to life, it slid down the river bank, crashing into the water.
“Don’t worry, they are much bigger on the Zambezi. It’s probably scared of us. That was why it was rushing into the water. Look they are all doing that.”
There was a series of splashes, each one louder than the other.
Filed under accountability, architects & architecture, art & allure bewitching, communal relations, cultural transmission, economic processes, ethnicity, heritage, historical interpretation, island economy, landscape wondrous, life stories, modernity & modernization, patriotism, performance, photography, plural society, security, self-reflexivity, sri lankan society, the imaginary and the real, tourism, travelogue, unusual people, wild life, world events & processes
Galle Fort Today: Janaka Gallangoda’s Marvellous Lens
Reading Roberts on Sri Lanka’s Socio-Political Ailments: A Letter to Roberts
Drawlight, 10 June 2020
Sir: I have read through and consider this an excellent summary of the key issues,[1] particularly for those who are not very knowledgeable about history and of the sort who are busier protesting matters that have no relevance to them (the current trend among especially the youth in Sri Lanka on social media bandwagoning on BLM issues in the US simultaneously ignoring the more immediate realities of fellow Sri Lankans engaged in modern day slavery in the Middle East and other countries).
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On Kandy. For Kandy.
Gerald H Peiris’s New Book: PLANNING FOR THE FUTURE OF KANDY …. a monograph
Kandy 1
Kandy is considered the epitome of Sri Lanka’s civilisational heritage, both as a supremely venerated sanctum in the world of Thēravāda Buddhism as well as from perspectives of harmonious multiculturalism evident in its demographic, structural and functional characteristics…..
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A Medley of Races by T.W. Roberts
“A Medley of Races” … being an article in the Times of Ceylon Christmas Number 1935
A land where five empires have met and clashed and left remnants of themselves behind. Here and there a monument, a temple, a church, a road, a plant and everywhere the most vivid remnant of all, chunks of humanity. And so you often stumble on Sinhalese endowed with features that seemed to have stepped out of a picture by Velasquez. Similarly, most of the Sinhalese of one district (Negombo) talk not Sinhalese but Tamil, while the intelligentsia of all Ceylon know English better than they know their own languages.
Filed under British colonialism, Buddhism, citizen journalism, cultural transmission, economic processes, ethnicity, heritage, historical interpretation, landscape wondrous, life stories, meditations, plural society, politIcal discourse, self-reflexivity, slanted reportage, sri lankan society, the imaginary and the real, travelogue, unusual people
The Presidential Race: Samarasinghe’s Evaluative ‘Punches,’ II and III
SWR de Samarasinghe
ONE: “Premadasa’s Candidacy – Bringing Democracy to the UNP Machine,” in ISLAND, 8 October 2019
The two major political parties, in the south, have had a long tradition of being managed more like private clubs belonging to a particular family cabal than vital public institutions in a democracy. Whoever happens to be the leader has had an iron grip on the party. There is little inner-party democracy in such a set up. The significance of Sajith Premadasa’s victory over Ranil Wickremesinghe in the fight for the UNF presidential candidacy has to be evaluated against such a background
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Hard Times and Bleak Prospects for Malayaha Plantation Work Force
Meera Srinivasan, in The Hindu, 5 October 2019, with this title “A bitter brew: For Sri Lanka’s tea estate workers, fair wage is still elusive”
Often described as the backbone of the economy, close to 1.5 lakh tea estate workers have been agitating for fair wages for the last three years. Ahead of Sri Lanka’s presidential election in November, which the labourers see as another season of empty promises, Meera Srinivasan reports on how they view their struggle
“Half the blood in our bodies is sucked by these leeches. Can’t someone find some medicine to keep them away?” At first it is hard to locate the voice that is emerging from the bushes. A few feet off the road margin, at a slightly higher elevation is a worker, with her head alone visible over the lush green leaves. “They get all over us even if we smear a packet of salt,” the worker says, as she continues to pick leaves at an estate near Hatton in Nuwara Eliya district of the Central Province in Sri Lanka.
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Sri Lanka’s Rivers of Grief from 1956-to-Present within Documentary Film
Anurudha Kodagoda in Sunday Observer, 6 October 2019, reviewing Dharmasiri Bandaranayake’s TEARS IN PARADISE
Dharmasiri Bandaranayake’s latest documentary film, ‘Tears in Paradise’ (Paradisayaka Kadulu), consists of the political history of Sri Lanka from the assassination of S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike to the 1983 Black July, emphasizing the dark history of violence released by the Sinhala-Buddhist ethnicity of the country with the patronage of the Sri Lankan Government which was in power at that time.
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