December 29, 2022 · 11:29 pm

Rukmani Devi aka Daisy Rasammah Daniels: A Stellar Career

Wikipedia on Daisy Rasammah Daniels or Rukmani Devi … at … https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rukmani_Devi

 Daisy Rasammah Daniels, known popularly as Rukmani Devi (15 January 1923–28 October 1978: Sinhala: රුක්මණී දේවී) was a Sri Lankan film actress and singer, who was often acclaimed as “The Nightingale of Sri Lanka“.[1]

She made it to the silver screen via the stage and had acted in close to 100 films at the time of her death. Having an equal passion for singing as well as a melodious voice, she was Sri Lanka’s foremost female singer in the gramophone era.[2] After her death, she was awarded the Sarasaviya ‘Rana Thisara’- Life Time Achievement Award at the 1979 Sarasaviya Awards Festival.[3]

Continue reading →

Leave a comment

Filed under art & allure bewitching, commoditification, cultural transmission, economic processes, ethnicity, heritage, historical interpretation, Indian traditions, landscape wondrous, life stories, patriotism, performance, plural society, self-reflexivity, sri lankan society, travelogue, unusual people

December 29, 2022 · 8:07 pm

Bond Scam Shenanigans at the Politico-Economic Heights & The Chilling Killing of Dinesh Schaffter

Darini Rajasingham-Senanayake, in Climate-Change, 29 December 2022, where the title of her essay runs thus: “The media of Climate Anxiety and Debt Bondage: Cui Bono in a Post-Truth World?”

“If you don’t like the weather, just wait a minute’ runs a wry idiom in New England where the weather may change dramatically in minutes. However, these days blaming the weather for pretty much everything is fashionable– be it global warming or cooling, no rain, or too much rain, drought, floods or a snow blizzard in winter.

 

Continue reading →

2 Comments

Filed under accountability, atrocities, economic processes, legal issues, life stories, self-reflexivity, sri lankan society, trauma, unusual people, vengeance

December 28, 2022 · 2:38 pm

Vale: Preofessor Merlin Peiris, A Classicist Par Excellence

Punsara Amarasinghe, in The Guardian, 18 December 2022, where the ttile runs thus: “Prof. Merlin Peiris: The last of the Mohicans leaves the stage”

The greatest quality that would aggrandize Merlin’s name above the current mediocre scholars in Sri Lanka is his intellectual tolerance towards dissent.

 

The demise of Prof Merlin Peiris embodies the end of an epoch representing the humanities academia in Sri Lanka as he was obviously the last of those great doyens who lived when the country’s humanities education was prospering in those halcyon days at the edge of the British rule. Prof. Merlin was one of the first students of the maiden batch of Peradeniya University when it was shifted from Colombo in 1950 and began his flair for classics even before he entered the university under the wings of Noel Phoebus at St. Peter’s College in Bambalapitya.

Continue reading →

Leave a comment

Filed under accountability, art & allure bewitching, cultural transmission, education, heritage, historical interpretation, life stories, literary achievements, meditations, self-reflexivity, sri lankan society, unusual people, world events & processes

December 28, 2022 · 1:40 pm

Dharmasiri Bandaranayake’s Far-reaching Impact on the Sinhala Theatre

Prasanna Cooray, in The Island, December 2022, where the ttile reads 

Speaking at a cremony to felicitate vetran filmmaker Dharmasiri Bandaranayake, at the Tharangani auditorium, National Film Corporation, Colombo 7, recently, Prof. Jayadeva Uyangoda said Dharmasiri had changed the language of Sinhala cinema.

Dharmasiri Bandanaranayake receiving the Lifetime Medal by Prof. M. Nirmalan. Also in the picture Orlando Edwards, Country Director, British Council, Sri Lanka

Continue reading →

Leave a comment

Filed under accountability

December 28, 2022 · 11:43 am

Sri Lankans in The Australian Foreign Service

Victor Melder, in Memo dated 28 December 2022, correcting a major error in the recent Daily News Item

The news item in the Daily News of yesterday (see below) is NOT correct, we have had two Sri Lankan born Australian Ambassadors. There could even be more.

The first: David Ian WILLÉ:  born 1942, educated at Royal College, Colombo. Emigrated with his parents to Melbourne, Australia in 1957. Studied at Melbourne University, obtaining a BA and LLB. Appointed to the Australian Diplomatic Service and posted as Australian High Commissioner to the West Indies, on his return was appointed Head of the Russian desk at the Department of Foreign Affairs, Canberra. (see The Burghers of Ceylon Worldwide – Kelaart, 2007)

Continue reading →

Leave a comment

Filed under accountability, Australian culture, cultural transmission, heritage, historical interpretation, life stories, performance, self-reflexivity, sri lankan society, unusual people, world affairs

December 27, 2022 · 12:22 am

Fraternal Polyandry in Ceylon in Dutch Times

Jan Kok, Luc Bulten and Bente M. de Leede:

“Persecuted or permitted? Fraternal Polyandry in a Calvinist colony, Sri Lanka (Ceylon), seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,” a work published by Cambridge University Press, 2022 … presented here in Thuppahi in synopsis

Abstract: Several studies assume that Calvinist Christianity severely undermined or even persecuted the practice of polyandry in the Sri Lankan areas under Dutch control. We analyze Dutch colonial policy and Church activities toward polyandry by combining ecclesiastical and legal sources. Moreover, we use the Dutch colonial administration of the Sinhalese population to estimate the prevalence of polyandry. We conclude that polyandry was far from extinct by the end of the Dutch period and we argue that the colonial government was simply not knowledgeable, interested and effective enough to persecute the practice in the rural areas under its control.

 

Continue reading →

4 Comments

Filed under accountability, authoritarian regimes, British colonialism, centre-periphery relations, commoditification, cultural transmission, disparagement, economic processes, ethnicity, gender norms, heritage, historical interpretation, island economy, Kandyan kingdom, landscape wondrous, life stories, modernity & modernization, politIcal discourse, religiosity, self-reflexivity, sri lankan society, travelogue, unusual people, world events & processes

December 26, 2022 · 11:06 pm

Dil Jayawardena: An Outstanding & Upstanding Lady

Nan, in the Island, 18 December 2022, where the title runs thus: 

 I had met, listened to, read, and spoken to Elmo Jayawardena. Admired him very much too. He invariably brought his wife into any public address he made or personal conversation. Hence my emails conveyed my regards to Dil though I had not met her. Then I did. I invited the two of them to visit and as she stood in my doorway smiling so friendly, I immediately warmed to her. I felt she was a friend I knew so well. I was struck by the fact that there was no remarkably outstanding facial feature in Dil but she was truly beautiful, very beautiful. I surmised her loveliness was because her warm and generous personality shone through. She gives the impression of sincere friendliness and puts one at ease.

Continue reading →

Leave a comment

Filed under Uncategorized

December 26, 2022 · 7:25 pm

A Royal-Thomian Cricket Match Remembered Not Only for the Cricket

Hugh Karunanayake

                                               “Oft in the stilly night

                                                Ere slumber’s chains has bound me

                                                Fond memory brings the light

                                                Of other days around me

                                               The smiles, the tears,

                                               Of boyhood years”  

The Royal Thomian match of 1951 will for long be remembered for its nail-biting finish, and for the manner in which the Royal College team led by skipper T. Vairavanathan  extracted a victory from the jaws of defeat. It will certainly occupy a top position in the history of the series, the second oldest school cricket encounter in the world, (the first game being played in 1880).

Continue reading →

1 Comment

Filed under accountability, charitable outreach, Colombo and Its Spaces, cricket for amity, cultural transmission, education, hatan kavi, heritage, historical interpretation, landscape wondrous, law of armed conflict, life stories, patriotism, performance, Royal College, self-reflexivity, sri lankan society, tolerance, unusual people

December 26, 2022 · 12:05 pm

Murali the ‘Chucker’ Now An Aussie Consultant

Malcolm Conn in Newscorp.Australia, dated 22 December 2022 … SEE https://www.foxsports.com.au/cricket/australia/hiring-suspect-spin-king-muttiah-muralitharan-a-huge-philosophy-shift-for-australian-cricket/news-story/89e05872e303384ef66a1472f048c649… But Note the Thuppahi Note at the bottom

THE appointment of Muttiah Muralitharan as a spin bowling consultant by the Australian cricket team shows a huge philosophical shift in Australian cricket and the ruthless pragmatism of Darren Lehmann.

Previous Australian spin bowling coaches such as Terry Jenner and Ashley Mallett have refused to teach the doosra to their understudies in the belief it cannot be bowled legally.

Continue reading →

Leave a comment

Filed under accountability, art & allure bewitching, Australian culture, australian media, centre-periphery relations, cricket for amity, cultural transmission, disparagement, ethnicity, fundamentalism, historical interpretation, legal issues, life stories, performance, photography, politIcal discourse, self-reflexivity, trauma, unusual people

December 26, 2022 · 12:12 am

The Paravas in Sri Lanka and South India in the Sixteenth Century

Chandra R. de Silva

It is likely that the paravas (also known as Bharathas in Sri Lanka to indicate their Indian origin) were working as fishermen and mercenaries in South India and the north western coast of Sri Lanka well before the sixteenth century. Tradition links them to the evolution of the catamaran (a small craft with two hulls) and with a major role in pearl fishing in the Gulf of Mannar. They were also proficient in chank (turbinella pyrum) fishing: chanks being seashells that were used to make ornaments and drinking vessels. The coming of the Portuguese to the region in the sixteenth century provides us many Portuguese records that illuminate the history and seafaring skills of this community.. Historian Jorge Manuel Flores, for example, quotes a mid-sixteenth century Portuguese document which records thanks to a parava convert named Duarte de Miranda for assistance in navigating the seas off South India.

Continue reading →

Leave a comment

Filed under authoritarian regimes, centre-periphery relations, communal relations, cultural transmission, economic processes, ethnicity, governance, heritage, historical interpretation, Indian religions, island economy, landscape wondrous, life stories, Portuguese imperialism, Portuguese in Indian Ocean, religiosity, sri lankan society, transport and communications, travelogue, unusual people, working class conditions, world events & processes