June 9, 2023 · 7:15 pm

Shinwari Rosh for Sri Lankan Cricketers

Item in Daily Mirror, 7 June 2023 .… 

The Afghanistan cricket team that visited the island for a one-day cricket tournament in Sri Lanka took steps to prepare a special meal at the hotel where they were staying. Afghan superstars Rashid Khan and Yamin Ahmadzai had prepared this dish.

A video recorded by the Afghanistan cricket team was published on the Afghanistan Cricket Board’s official Youtube channel as well. The meal was called “Shinwari Rosh or Mutton Rosh,” which is a famous dish in Pakistan.

Continue reading →

1 Comment

Filed under art & allure bewitching, charitable outreach, cricket for amity, cultural transmission, ethnicity, heritage, landscape wondrous, life stories, performance, Sri Lankan cricket, travelogue

June 8, 2023 · 1:34 pm

DH De Silva: A Cricketing Aficianado … who survived an Assassin’s Bullet

Michael Roberts, … This item was initially presented in my other [now dormant] website CRICKETIQUE in May 2014 as a form of requiem. Buddy Reid’s recent ‘memorial’ to DH prompts me to present this account again. It also provides fuller information on the assassination strike on Hema in Kandy which induced his family to flee from beloved Sri Lanka … albeit without any awareness that a bullet stub remained embedded within his body. This tale also indicates that Hema had been a significant influence in the flowering of Sangakkara’s cricketing skills. Continue reading →

2 Comments

Filed under accountability, art & allure bewitching, cricket for amity, cricket selections, cultural transmission, education, heritage, landscape wondrous, life stories, patriotism, performance, politIcal discourse, self-reflexivity, Sri Lankan cricket, sri lankan society, travelogue, unusual people, world events & processes

June 8, 2023 · 12:34 am

D. H. De Silva: A Talented Batsman & Great Sportsman

Buddy Reid … with highlighting imposed by The Editor, Thuppahi

I was fortunate to get to know DH (Hema) de Silva when I played cricket with him for the University of Ceylon. He captained the side when I was in my second year and it was then that I got to know what a courageous and hard working cricketer he was.

His courage as a batsman was exemplified in a match against the SSC when fast bowler Stanley de Alwis was delivering lightning bolts at us with the new ball. Carlyle Perera my opening partner had been dismissed fending a ball away from his head. I was at the non-striker’s end when DH came in and said, ‘Don’t worry Buddy, I will take Stanley.” He played the rising ball like a master, protecting us lesser batsmen and by the end of the Varsity innings of 136, he had scored 77.

Continue reading →

1 Comment

Filed under cricket for amity, cricket selections, education, heritage, life stories, performance, Sri Lankan cricket, sri lankan society, unusual people

June 7, 2023 · 4:47 pm

Colossal Flaws in Ukrainian Propaganda Pitch

An Observer in a Black Sea Resort Town

Here is an Ukranian propaganda film showing well-fed soldiers, wearing clean uniforms, who haven’t seen fighting, in a pristine location, with each soldier putting their forefinger to their mouth indicating “keep silent”, somewhat reminiscent of a British WW2 propaganda poster that reads, “Careless talk costs lives”. The quietness of the location in the film is emphasised by the sounds of birds and gunfire in the distance.

Continue reading →

Leave a comment

Filed under american imperialism, life stories, military strategy, politIcal discourse, power politics, propaganda, Russian history, slanted reportage, the imaginary and the real, trauma, truth as casualty of war, Ukraine & Its Ramifications, world events & processes

June 5, 2023 · 9:04 pm

‘Artificial Engineered’ Music in Memory of Professor Fred Bartholomeusz of Peradeniya University

Geethasiri Karunatillake, … from Adelaide, Australia

 

I have always been passionate about music, but I never had the opportunity to study music or the ability to sing. That’s why when I learned about the capabilities of Chat-GPT, I knew I had to give it a try.

Undoubtedly, Batho was the most popular professor at the Engineering Faculty at Peradeniya University in the 1950s to 60s. I vividly recall how he could captivate us with his lectures, simplifying even the most intricate concepts and recapitulating in the end.

Continue reading →

1 Comment

Filed under accountability, art & allure bewitching, cultural transmission, education, heritage, historical interpretation, landscape wondrous, life stories, modernity & modernization, performance, self-reflexivity, sri lankan society, teaching profession, travelogue, unusual people, world affairs

June 5, 2023 · 2:49 pm

A Mind For One and All: Jayantha Dhanapala

Tissa Jayatilaka, in The Island, 4 June 2023,  … with highlights imposed by The Editor, Thuppahi

The splendid career and the many glittering prizes won by Jayantha Dhanapala is common knowledge and does not require reiteration here. Rather I wish to focus on the man himself in this tribute to an exceptional person whom I had the privilege of getting to know personally at the tail end of the 1980s – I had of course heard of Jayantha and his many accomplishments long before our first meeting. Having read a newspaper review of North-South Perspectives, an international affairs journal that I edited, which focused on the promotion of greater understanding between the ‘developed’ and the ‘developing’ world, Jayantha telephoned me to ask if we could meet. I readily agreed and thus began a friendship that lasted until his death a few days ago.

Continue reading →

2 Comments

Filed under accountability, art & allure bewitching, centre-periphery relations, cultural transmission, economic processes, education, governance, heritage, historical interpretation, human rights, landscape wondrous, life stories, literary achievements, modernity & modernization, patriotism, politIcal discourse, self-reflexivity, social justice, sri lankan society, theatre world, unusual people, world affairs

June 5, 2023 · 12:09 am

How the Kandyan Sinhalese Forces Kept the European Powers at Bay for Two Centuries

PK Balachandran, whose original article in the Daily Mirror of 26 November 2021, is entitled “Kandyan armies which kept Europeans at bay for two centuries”

The Kandyan army also had local Malays and Kaffirs (Africans) and also Indians like Malabars, Tamils, Telugus, and Canarese (Karnatakas).  There was also an assortment of European deserters and prisoners. These mercenaries also served in the armies of European powers.

Kandyan peasant warriors. Codice Casanatense Sinhalese warriors. Wikiwand

The Kandyan Kingdom’s dogged resistance to European invaders from the 17th century to the second decade of the 19th century has not received the attention it deserves from military historians, laments historian Dr. Channa Wickremesekera, the author of “Kandy at War: Indigenous Military Resistance to European Expansion in Sri Lanka 1594-1818.”

Continue reading →

1 Comment

Filed under authoritarian regimes, British imperialism, centre-periphery relations, Dutch colonialism, economic processes, ethnicity, historical interpretation, landscape wondrous, law of armed conflict, life stories, martyrdom, military strategy, patriotism, politIcal discourse, Portuguese imperialism, power politics, sri lankan society, world events & processes

June 4, 2023 · 12:17 pm

Deciphering Buddhism: The Correct Pathway

Ananda Abeysekara’s Academic Article: “On Rewriting Buddhism: Or, How Not to Write a History,” Religion and Society, vol. 13. 1(2022): 39-80. 

ABSTRACT: Through a detailed reading of a recent study of medieval Buddhism and politics in Sri Lanka in conjunction with a number of other works, this article explores the troubling legacy of translating the historical questions of subjectivity into the modern language of ‘agency’, ‘autonomy’, ‘innovation’, and ‘creativity’. This legacy cannot easily be separated from the politics of white privilege in post-colonial studies of Buddhism and South Asian religion. The problem with trying to expose creativity, so pervasive in the studies of South Asian religion, is not merely a matter of anachronistic conceptualization of divergent historical forms of religious practice and subjectivity. It is that the very possibility of translating subjectivity into easily digestible aestheticized modes of being (e.g., creativity) is predicated on an uninterrogated assumption about the self-evidence of such concepts independent of temporal forms of power encountered in forms of life. Continue reading →

Leave a comment

Filed under ancient civilisations, art & allure bewitching, Buddhism, cultural transmission, education, heritage, historical interpretation, Indian traditions, landscape wondrous, life stories, meditations, modernity & modernization, politIcal discourse, religiosity, religious nationalism, self-reflexivity, sri lankan society, tolerance, world events & processes

June 3, 2023 · 1:15 am

Where No Woman is Kota Uda

…. and where one is at ease in the company of the Birds and the Bees                                                                                                           
and Where… Continue reading →

Leave a comment

Filed under accountability, performance, self-reflexivity, sri lankan society, the imaginary and the real, unusual people, wild life

June 1, 2023 · 7:30 pm

Hot-Hot Cricket News: Monies & Lanka’s Team Selections

Victor Melder as Compiler

Sri Lanka will earn as much as Rs. 8.6 billion per year over a four-year period (Rs. 34.2 billion in total income) as the island’s allocation from the International Cricket Council’s annual payouts.  In US dollars Sri Lanka’s share is 27.12 million compared to India’s lion’s share of USD 230 million but the amount in still massive by Sri Lanka’s standards. The International Cricket Council has made the allocations taking into account factors like performance in both the men’s and women’s teams on the international stage over the past 16 years and contribution to the ICC’s commercial value. The earnings of the ICC of over $3.2 billion come from the sale of its media rights alone, which recently, for the first time, were sold across five separate regions globally including the Indian market. The vast bulk of that money has come from the sale of rights in the Indian market, where Disney Star paid just over $3 billion for four years according to ESPNcricinfo (Sunday Observer, 14.5.2023).

Continue reading →

1 Comment

Filed under accountability, cricket selections, economic processes, governance, landscape wondrous, life stories, performance, politIcal discourse, self-reflexivity, Sri Lankan cricket, sri lankan society