Richard Guilliatt, in The Australian Weekend Magazine 20-21 June 2020, where the title is
Simon Quinn is a 32 year old PhD student from Australia, studying Sanskrit living in Gurgaon 30km South West of Delhi. When the Indian government announced a sudden & draconian nationwide lockdown on 24th March, to halt the spread of Covid19 among the nation’s 1.38 billion people, he logged on to a chat forum for Aussies travelling in India on his lap top. Anxious messages were flooding in.
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Chandra Fernando
We have been donating these lights since May 2014 to the same school [viz., the Thalakolawewa Primary School], amongst other places all over Sri Lanka. Last Saturday we received news that 42 children who studied under our lights were able to pass their Govt Scholarship Exam.
This result is mainly due to the Principal’s dedication and commitment in encouraging the staff to have night classes and in making a special request for extra lights for the school. He came to Sudath’s place and collected the lights personally. We have since arranged to give the school 4 lighting packages each containing 6 lights for the new batch of students.
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Michael Roberts
A chance finding of an old article that I had written on “dedicated medical work” on both sides of the battlefront during the last stages of the war brought vibrant memories of Dr Susiri Weerasekera into my mind. Getting to know him well after I visited the Friend-in-Need Society opposite the Gangarama at Colpetty in mid-2010, I can assure all readers that he was a man to have alongside one in adversity. We became warm friends over the years.[1] My admiration for his dedication towards humankind, his industry, patriotism and sagacity is unbounded. He is alive still I believe; but I write in the past tense because he lapsed into a state non compos mentis about two years back and I find it distressing even to seek information on his state of body and mind.
This is a valedictory memorial in several parts.
Dr Weerasekera standing 2nd from right facing us with a visiting dignitary at the FINS buildng
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Chandra Fernando informed Thuppahi that on the 21st September 2019 “30 Solar Powered Lighting Packages were distributed at Udagaldebokka. The first two photos show the packages being carried to village and the trail….
Thuppahi Comment: The pictures are not only significant in displaying some facets of the terrain; but also in underling the cultural practices within (in this instance) Sinhala society inclusive of class differentiation. This set of illustrations should be treated as an essential appendage of the item by SWR de Samarasinghe entitled “The Variation in the Diffusion of Electrical Power” …… https://thuppahis.com/2019/09/27/the-variation-in-the-diffusion-of-electrical-power/
Click to view MAP prepared by Gerald Peiris = Udagaldebokka environs (1)
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Michael Roberts, in SOUTH ASIA¸ Sept 2008, 31: 394-96 reviewing Ethnic Warfare in Sri Lanka and the UN Crisis (London: Pluto Press, and Colombo: Vijitha Yapa Publications, 2007), 296 pp.
This is an unusual book and essential reading for those interested in the ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka. William Clarance was head of UNHCR’s relief mission in Sri Lanka from 1989 to 1992. He kept a diary and has waited until he had left the arena of international administration before recounting his riveting experiences in the field.
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Michael Roberts
Charles Sarvan’s recent essay in Colombo Telegraph “On ‘Reading’ A Picture” presents reflections with a dispassionate air that conveys an impression of philosophical weight above the tumult of a propaganda war in which all of us are willy-nilly involved.[1] He distances himself at the outset from the identities of the victors in the picture as Sinhalese and the vanquished as Tamil by terming that differentiation “accidental”. But, in concentrating on the horrendous assaults on women perpetrated by men, he proceeds to a presentation of the contemporary Tamil litany about the horrendous acts inflicted on the Tamils in the last stages of Eelam War IV. He does this without any historical, political and cartographic contextualization of the events that unfolded from mid-2006 to May 2009.
Map I = The Situation in late December 2008
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…. OTHER SCENARIOS from the Sri Lankan Wild
Pics by Zac Roberts Ronald at Bundala, early January 2018 Continue reading
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