October 6, 2021 · 10:35 pm

Daily Duality for the Citizens of Longwa

BETWIXT MYANMAR and INDIA …. as Dual Citiezens …. ITEM in Al-Jazeera …https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/4/28/tribes-along-india-myanmar-border-dream-of-a-united-nagaland

The Two Faces of the LONGWAR of NAGALAND …. and the king of the KONYOK TRIBE sleeps in Myanmar, but eats in India – his house, village and people divided by a mountain border which serves as a vulnerable lifeline now severed by a coronavirus lockdown.

People at a Union Solidarity and Development Party house in Karmawlawyi village in Myanmar’s Sagaing region [Ye Aung Thu/AFP]

Read ……………… https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/4/28/tribes-along-india-myanmar-border-dream-of-a-united-nagaland

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October 6, 2021 · 9:51 pm

Anne Frank: A Dutch Girl whom the Nazis Exterminated …. But Her Diary Lives

Bart Von Es, in The Guardian, 25 May 2019, where the title runs “Anne Frank: the real story of the girl behind the diary”

Albert Gomes de Mesquita is one of the last people alive to have known Anne Frank in person. He appears briefly in her diary as a fellow student at the Jewish Lyceum in Amsterdam, where she writes of him: “Albert de Mesquita came from the Montessori School and jumped a year. He’s really clever.” There is nothing else. In all likelihood, Albert more or less vanished from her memory, but for him the situation is, inevitably, very different.

As the years have gone by his memories of Anne have become ever more important. Aged 89, he still travels internationally to conferences on her work and life. Anne has become a strange kind of celebrity and Albert, as someone who was actually there at the birthday party at which she was given her still-empty diary, is a point of contact for that fame.

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October 5, 2021 · 11:35 pm

The Lineage “Hoolsema” – Nazi Europe to Sydney

 Michael Roberts

 My story here begins in Colombo in mid-2020 where I stubbed by big toe badly as I walked into the National Archives. The injury turned septic; and I was treated … I would say rescued …. by a Richmondite, Dr Sarath Gamani De Silva.[1] He ensured that I was fit to fly to Australia in mid-September 2020. This entailed extra airfare and quarantine for two weeks at another cost of 3000$. The toe became a godsend because it meant that my enforced stay was at a hotel run by the Health Department and not that run by the Police.

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October 4, 2021 · 11:30 pm

Melathi Saldin’s Essay ….. and a Sharp Denunciation ….

A  NOTE: The engine ACADEMIA sends me copies of articles relating to my Sri Lankan interests. The item presented below is a new phenomenon seeking to stimulate discussion directed towards cross-ethnic harmony. Whether such objectives can be served in the midst of the cut-and-thrust and slashing of throats by dedicated advocates of THIS or THAT cause is a question one must address when reading the commentary that follows. The HIGHLIGHTED EMPHASIS is my imposition. 

Dear Michael,

Reminder: You’ve been invited to join the Discussion of Melathi Saldin‘s paper “Pushing Boundaries Heritage resilience of minority communities in post war Sri Lanka”.You have been invited either because you are following Melathi Saldin or because Academia thinks you’d be interested based on the overlap between this paper and what you read and write on Academia. Since the Discussion started 4 days ago, there have been 12 comments and 22 participants.

 Melathi

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October 3, 2021 · 7:43 pm

Duleep Mendis’s Wide-ranging Career in Cricket

Rex Clementine, in The Island, 3 October 2021, where the title reads “Beware of Dulla”

Amal Silva spoke little English those days. During the Lord’s Test in 1984, when Ian Botham said not so complementary things about Amal’s mother, the opening bat was asking the non-striker and captain Duleep Mendis what’s going on. Both Moratuwa boys, they were playing contrasting knocks. Amal took 255 balls for his hundred while Duleep raced to 94 in 97 balls. The latter was dealing in boundaries particularly targeting Mr. Botham. That the golden boy of English cricket ended up bowling off-spin in that game is a little known fact. That’s Duleep. Never cross his path.

  Duleep aka “Dulla” today

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October 3, 2021 · 6:59 pm

An Orphaned Lad emerges as Cricketing Prospect for Sri Lanka

Rex Clementine, in The Island, 3 October 2021, where the title is different

At the age of 28, Pulina Tharanga is on the verge of representing Sri Lanka. A leg-spinner, who is handy with the bat and excellent on the field, will soon make the headlines all over the world. His Steve Waugh like guts, the never say die attitude, is what that has impressed the coaches most. Like most southerners, he has inherited it by birth. Or perhaps he has developed the toughness more than the other southerners. Life threw challenges one after the other at him. Here’s his story.

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October 3, 2021 · 5:06 pm

Reflections on the Commentary on “Sinhala Mindset”

Michael Roberts

When I set up the THUPPAHI WEBSITE in late 2009 I imprinted two project statements: one entitled “WHY THUPPAHI”;[1] the other bearing the heading ‘SINHALA MINDSET.” Readers can access these two items via the sub-headings within the website – so I will not reiterate the latter here.

This set of project statements was crafted after the LTTE-led drive to create an independent SL Tamil nation state had been defeated over the course of Eelam War IV. I had been in Colombo from April-mid-June 2009, so I had vivid experiences of the last stages of this ‘encounter’ and the triumphant sentiments expressed in the Colombo area when the war was won. More vitally, I had been commissioned by Muralidhar Reddy,[2] the correspondent from the Hindu newspaper chain based in Colombo to present analytic essays for their magazine FRONTLINE.

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October 3, 2021 · 1:06 pm

Soaring Thoughts at Ratmalana Airport

Roger Thiedeman

This article is adapted from the original published in the Sri Lanka Sunday Times on November 23, 1997 (http://www.sundaytimes.lk/971123/plus10.html) under the title [listed at the end of this presentation]. The title initially submitted, ‘Reminiscing at Ratmalana’, was changed at the whim of an anonymous Sunday Times sub-editor.

In August this year I stood outside the Ratmalana airbase and watched a Sri Lanka Air Force Antonov An-32B take off. As the transport aircraft soared aloft in a climbing turn towards the north, my memories and imagination also took flight.

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October 3, 2021 · 1:07 am

The Primitive Ancients Arrowhead Innovations in Sri Lanka Way-Way Back

Michelle Langley et al, in The Conversation, 13 June 2020, with this title “48,000-year-old arrowheads reveal early human innovation in the Sri Lankan rainforest”

Archaeological excavations deep within the rainforests of Sri Lanka have unearthed the earliest evidence for hunting with bows and arrows outside Africa.At Fa-Hien Lena, a cave in the heart of Sri Lanka’s wet zone forests, we discovered numerous tools made of stone, bone, and tooth – including a number of small arrow points carved from bone which are about 48,000 years old.

One of the small bone points discovered at Fa-Hien Lena. M

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October 3, 2021 · 12:14 am

Pablo Neruda in British Ceylon: Literary and Sexual Flowerings in Wellawatte and Beyond

  Jamie James, initially presented in Literary Hub, 3 June 2019, with this title “Pablo Neruda’s Life as a Struggling Poet in Sri Lanka: A Young Poet’s Adventures in the Foreign Service”

At 22, Pablo Neruda was an international literary celebrity—and desperately poor. His second book, Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair, had been a sensational success and would eventually become one of the bestselling books of poetry in the 20th century (more than 20 million copies to date), but he was paid almost nothing for it. He was a student at the Universidad de Santiago in Chile, and hunger was an issue; he wore a billowing cape to conceal his emaciated physique and a wide-brimmed hat that hoped for an air of mystery.

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