Category Archives: trauma

January 12, 2025 · 1:54 pm

The Maaveerar Dead as A Perpetual Inspiration For Eelam

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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January 6, 2025 · 8:02 pm

Remembering Karen Roberts Who Chose Writing …..

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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January 3, 2025 · 12:32 pm

ERROL sticks His Neck Out

In his unrestrained and self-deprecating manner, ERROL FERNANDO has presented this bold forecast about the ways the Sydney Test Match will pan out. Enjoy folks …… Editor, Thuppahi.

Ostrich and Man with His Head in the Sand Stock Illustration – Illustration of ostrich, terrain_ 138335911 Continue reading →

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December 28, 2024 · 12:55 am

The Tsunami Trauma in the Town of Galle, 26 December 2024

Dr Pilane Ariyananda, whose chosen title is “The Worst Day in My Life” ….. while I as Editor have imposed highlights only towards the end of this harrowing tale ….. letting Pilane’s weight of words penetrate the souls of readers because of the stark realities embedded therein.

Sunday, twenty-sixth of December 2004, the Boxing Day and the Poya Day, dawned as a quiet day, and as it was a triple holiday, there were very few people on the road. As usual, I had my morning walk on Galle Fort Ramparts and returned home around eight o’clock. After a leisurely breakfast, seated on an armchair in our veranda, I was reading the Sunday newspapers that I had picked up on my way back.

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December 26, 2024 · 3:59 pm

A Poignant Tale … “I Am Not Lighting A Candle Today”

Buddhika Dassanayake, …. reflections presented on 26th December 2006

Its been two years since a friend called one morning, as we were studying for exams, to ask why lamp-posts were shaking. Two years since another friend called from Galle Hospital; tired, depressed, fiercely determined to see things through, utterly helpless. Two years since we heard that Tharini was missing; that the place we stayed at the last time we visited Unawatuna had disappeared along with the occupants.

 

Murali , Mahela & Kumar at a refugee camp on the east coast …having taken emergency supplies

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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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December 26, 2024 · 11:03 am

Remembering the TSUNAMI …. 26 December 2004

Michael Roberts

The Roberts family were assembled at a house-for-hire off Goolwa and near a beach in South Australia when the first news of the devastating tsunami of 26th December 2004 hit the headlines. One of the first inklings the world received about this massive disaster came from Galle in the southwestern corner of Lanka. This was through a series of photos or a movie-camera display of a body of seawater moving from left of screen to right with cars and bodies amidst the debris….. and the walls of the Fort of Galle in the background.

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December 20, 2024 · 4:04 pm

UN Agencies That Deployed False Death Figures re Eelam War

Palitha Senanayake, in The Island, 20 December 2024 …… ‘UN fudged Lankan casualty figures’ – Lord Naseby

The United Nations Human Rights Council at its 57th session adopted a resolution extending the mandate of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) Project on Sri Lanka Accountability by one year. Babu Ram Pant, Deputy Regional Director for South Asia at Amnesty International, has commented extensively on this resolution.

United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon (L) arrives at a hotel for a joint press conference with Sri Lankan Minister of Foreign Affairs Rohitha Bogollagama in Kandy on May 23, 2009, after Ban visited Menik Farm camp, home to thousands of civilians who fled the war zone. UN chief Ban Ki-moon came face-to-face with the despair of Sri Lanka’s war-hit civilians as he toured the main refugee camp and flew over the devastated war zone. AFP PHOTO/ROSLAN RAHMAN (Photo credit should read ROSLAN RAHMAN/AFP via Getty Images)

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December 15, 2024 · 2:03 pm

Vale = An Appreciation of Professor Padmasiri De Silva

Revd Mahinda Deegalle from London, in The Island 15 December 2024

The year 2024 is rapidly drawing to a close. This year marks the personal losses of many helpful academics, monks, family members, and friends. I place this brief note of appreciation here to pay tribute to the late Professor Padmasiri de Silva (1933–2024), one of my teachers at the University of Peradeniya in the 1980s, who was just about to celebrate his 92nd birthday on January 18, 2025 with the publication of his most recent contribution The Moral Psychology of Buddhism, which is currently under preparation for publication posthumously in Melbourne.

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December 12, 2024 · 11:49 pm

Seeking Ethnic Reconciliation Through Commemoration of the Dead-in-War

Capt Prasanna Rajaratne, SLN … in DAILY FT, 6 December 2024, ….. where the title reads “National security only through national harmony“
They may still feel trapped in the same plight, and unless that perception is acknowledged, addressed, and their aspirations realised, the resurgence of dissent is not merely possible but inevitable

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