A Thuppahi Journey
Panoramic view of Galle Face Colombo, Sri Lanka around 1880s-1900, looking south from Galle Road (later this path became the Galle Road), ClubHouse & Galleface Hotel (far right) showing in the background……… Lankapura …. https://lankapura.com/2011/04/panoramic-view-galle-face-green-colombo/
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Laleen Jayamanne & Nammika Raby, in The Island, February 2025
“People were nourished by stories….” (Kathandarawalinne minissu jeewathwune) Gananath
“Man does not live by bread alone” Matthew 4:4
Dimuthu Saman Wettasinghe’s film Gananath Obeyesekere: In Search of Buddhist Conscienceopens with a bravura tracking shot moving past trees, water, a splash of saffron robes. These sunlit images are enfolded in a non-religious, rather melancholy male choral chant, but soon the singular voice of Professor Gananath Obeyesekere cuts through with a kind of Dionysian intensity. He tells us a story about Gauthama Buddha, as the camera encircles, at speed, what turns out to be the Kandy Lake. His tale is about a devastating war waged by the king of Kosla against the Sakya kingdom but of the Buddha’s unshakable belief that if folk get together and discuss matters in good faith (call it diplomacy), all wars could be averted. This carefully and deeply researched, imaginative, ‘Educational Film’ of 142 minutes, with its exhilaratingly dense overture and its subtle montage, is a loving tribute to an exemplary Lankan scholar/teacher and his life work (of some 70 years) as an internationally renowned Anthropologist.
The film shows Gananath’s empathetic ability to pay careful ethnographic attention to a variety of gendered states of mental distress and trauma and their traditional ritualised ecstatic expressions, especially with regard to women, well before some feminist scholars in the West began to be interested in the topic of ‘Women and Madness’ from a Freudian psychoanalytic perspective. Psychoanalytic theory became methodologically important for Feminist Film Theory, which I used in my doctoral thesis on ‘Female Representation in the Lankan cinema’.
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Sumanasiri Liyanage, … His Prologue to An Academic Appreciation of Professor HA De S Gunasekera
Prologue …. Vice-Chancellor, Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Dean, Faculty of Arts, Head, Department of Economics, Members of Prof. H A De S Gunasekera family, colleagues, Friends and students.
It is indeed a pleasure to be in Peradeniya once again, and I felt honored and privileged when I was asked to deliver the Prof H. A. De S. Gunasekera memorial oration 2025 for which I thank Prof Sri Ranjith, Head/Economics and members of the H.A. De S. Gunasekera Memorial Committee.
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Rajpal Abeynayake, in The Daily News, 20 January 2025
This week marked the passing of a public figure who was controversial by any measure, and the forgettable passing of another that most Sri Lankans would for very good reason, rather forget. The controversial figure would in most people’s estimation be regarded as a good man, though flawed. He was Victor Ivan the journalist, or rebel and insurgent turned activist.
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Michael Roberts,
I got to know Victor at a convivial session at Ananda Chittambalam’s house in Bambalapitiya in 1989. Our common interests in the island’s history and its tempestuous present meant that we kept in sporadic touch. I have his illustrated book PARADISE IN TEARS …. and I will present a Vale as well as items referring to his articles and work in Thuppahi. His demise at a relatively early age is a blow to all Sri Lankan patriots.
WIKIPEDIA
Majuwana Kankanamage Victor Ivan (Sinhala: මාජුවානා කන්කානම්ගේ වික්ටර් අයිවන්; 26 June 1949 – 19 January 2025) was a Sri Lankan journalist. He was a Marxist rebel in his youth and later became the Editor of the controversial Sinhalese newspaper Ravaya. He served as the Editor of Ravaya for 25 years consecutively from its inception. Victor was an investigative journalist, political critic, a theorist, social activist and also an author of several books.
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Mario Arulthas, in Al-Jazeera, 9 January 2025 …. with highlightinging emphasia imposed by The Editor, Thuppahi
The Maaveerar Dead as A Perpetual Inspiration For Eelam
The nationwide electoral success of the anti-establishment NPP does not mean Tamil nationalism is on the decline.
An election official holding a ballot box gets off the bus outside a vote counting centre after the voting ended for the parliamentary election in Colombo, Sri Lanka, November 14, 2024 [Thilina Kaluthotage/Reuters]
“They’re trampling on our graves with their boots,” said Kavitha, a Tamil woman, as the torrential rain lashing our faces washed away her tears. Standing barefoot and ankle-deep in mud at the site of a former cemetery in Visuvamadu, Sri Lanka, she was lamenting the adjacent military base built on the graves of fallen Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) fighters, including that of her brother.
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Renuka Sadanandan, whose original title runs thus: “Karen Roberts Writing. Her Way of Staying Close” **
Pix by M.A. Pushpa Kumara
It was probably the single most frightening thing that happened to her. Having to walk alone from the advertising agency in Kollupitiya where she worked part-time to her home in Dehiwela, through the streets aflame. Those terrible scenes stayed imprinted in her mind though it was many years before she would think of putting them down.
“On twenty-third of July 1983, the day the world went mad, was how Karen Roberts would later write about the ethnic violence in her book ‘July’. Her world changed that day, she says sombrely. “Until then my life was great…..my only concern was what to wear on Saturday night!” Her father was abroad, her mother had to fetch her younger sister home from school and her brother was stuck somewhere and the 17-year-old Karen had to fend for herself amidst the mayhem and madness that saw the familiar Colombo landscape turn into killing streets.
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Gamini Seneviratne, in The Island, 23 December 2024, where the title runs “What AKD and NPP should bear in mind” … reproduced here with highlighting imposed by The Editor, Thuppahi
This is to thank you [the ISLAND newspaper] for drawing attention to the dangers posed by India to our society and its culture and other basic resources as well as its on-going exertions towards encroaching on our maritime territory. 
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Henry Ergas in The Australian, 15 November 2024 with this title: “Jew hatred festers amid multicultural malaise” ….
The attacks, which followed a soccer game between a Dutch and an Israeli team, appear to have been premeditated and well-organised. Nor were they an isolated incident.
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thuppahi
“Barbarians on scooters are riding through our capital city hunting Israelis and Jews,” David van Weel, the Dutch Minister of Justice and Security, wrote on X late last week as a violent, largely Muslim, mob rampaged through Amsterdam’s streets.