Editor Thuppahi’s Admiring NOTE, April 2025
As with the Foundation of Goodness based in Hikkaduwa down south, VANNI HOPE continues to serve a number of villages and many people in the northern eastern and central parts of the island. Is is worthy of support from Sri Lankans at home and abroad; and from wellwishers around the world ………………………………………………………….. https://www.linkedin.com/company/vanni-hope/?originalSubdomain=au
Filed under accountability, life stories, self-reflexivity, unusual people
Malinda Seneviratne
More than twenty years ago, when I worked for the Sunday edition of ‘The Island,’ I would step into the editorial office of our sister paper, ‘Divaina,’ just to chit-chat with fellow journalists. I enjoyed conversations with almost all the journalists working there, young and old. On one such occasion, I noticed Dr Nalin De Silva standing near a table, looking a bit out of place.
Filed under life stories, self-reflexivity, sri lankan society, Uncategorized, unusual people
From An Article entitled “Professor Emeritus Naren Chitty: A Career winds up” … with underlining emphasis imposed by The Editor, Thuppahi
Professor Emeritus Naren Chitty’s responsibilities at Macquarie University came to an end on May 30, 2025, after thirty-six years. He had continued for six years, post-retirement, to direct the Soft Power Analysis and Resource Centre (SPARC) that he founded in 2010. …
Naren with Castro …. and with Ronald Reagan Continue reading
Filed under life stories, self-reflexivity, sri lankan society, unusual people
Sophie Brew in ???? where the title runs thus: “A Sri Lankan Feast on a Tropical Modernist Estate” …. NB: several striking pix of the food could not be uploaded
The chef Cynthia Shanmugalingam cooked a meal that celebrated the country’s heirloom produce and homegrown creative culture.
Guests of the chef Cynthia Shanmugalingam gathered on the red terrace of the Lunuganga Estate, the former country residence of the architect Geoffrey Bawa in Bentota, Sri Lanka.CreditCredit…Video by Pietro Lo Casto
In March 2021, a year into the pandemic, the British Sri Lankan chef Cynthia Shanmugalingam, now 42, was quarantining at a hotel in Ahangama, a town on Sri Lanka’s southern coast. She’d traveled from her home in London and was self-isolating ahead of a six-month-long stay with her parents in Nelliady, at the island’s northern tip, where she was planning to write her first cookbook. Eventually, she completed a draft of “Rambutan,” as she titled it (and as she would later call her restaurant in London’s Borough Market that opened in 2023). But a less expected outcome of those weeks alone was that she met her future partner, the 46-year-old entrepreneur Joe Lenora; he was based nearby and they started talking online. Last January, they returned to Sri Lanka to get married.
“Remarkable Cricket at a Remarkable Age …. An Atrociously Remarakble Youthful AGE!” — The Opinion of One Thuppahiyaa! namely The Editor.
READ Louis Cameron’s Piece in cricket.com
Vaibhav Suryavanshi’s extraordinary journey from rural farmland upbringing to Indian Premier League riches might just be beginning. In October, a 13-year-old from India’s northeast made global headlines when he pummelled Australia’s Under-19s for a 58-ball century in Chennai. In hindsight, the young Aussies might have gotten off lightly.
Item in Jurist News, 25 April 2025, bearing this title “A Crisis of Governance and the Fluidity of Ethnic Identity: Understanding Modern Sri Lanka — Interview with journalist Mark Salter”
As the author of the acclaimed To End a Civil War: Norway’s Peace Engagement in Sri Lanka, Salter also reflects on missed opportunities for peace during the civil war, including the challenges of bipartisan political cooperation and the ultimate failure of negotiations between the Sri Lankan government and the LTTE. The interview concludes with a discussion of current political dynamics under President Anura Kumara Dissanayake (AKD) and his National People’s Power (NPP) alliance, examining the transformation of the historically anti-Tamil, Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), into a coalition that has gained significant support in Tamil areas while facing challenges in delivering promised constitutional reforms.
An EMAIL NOTE from Mayura Botejue, in USA, 26 April 2025**
I have been to Gallipoli and read the following on a memorial: “Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives … You are now lying in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore, rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side here in this country of ours … You, the mothers who sent their sons from faraway countries, wipe away your tears; your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace. After having lost their lives on this land they have become our sons as well.”
These famous, heart-rending words, attributed to Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who was a commander of Ottoman forces at the Dardenelles during the first world war and later the founder of modern Turkey, grace memorials on three continents, including those at Anzac Cove, Gallipoli.
Zaid Bin Shabir in Frontline, April 2025,where the title reads “A season of hope ends in Kashmir before it begins”
For over six years, Mohammed Mohsin*, 27, had wanted to resurrect his family’s aging hotel in the picturesque hill town of Pahalgam in Southern Kashmir. The old structure—set against a backdrop of lush pine trees, with the raging waters of River Lidder gushing ahead and the snow-capped Himalayan peaks in the distance—had worn down with time, and the business struggled to bring in profits.
A NOTE from Retd Gp Capt. Kumar Kirinde, 25 April 2025
thuppahi
