THE INITIAL REPORT in AFP and Dawn, dated 21 & 22 July 2020 had this title “Elephant crushes scholar to death in Sri Lanka”
A young university scholar has become the latest victim of a deadly wild elephant attack in Sri Lanka, officials said on Monday, after a growing spate of similar incidents across the island nation.
Ruhuna Putra, in Island. 22 July 2020, with this title “Galle’s famous Fibber’s Tree”
It was a giant tree of the Banyan family (Ficus altissima), fairly tall, most of its branches canopied and dotted with many a rookery, while some branches bent downwards to the ground and propagated. It also had several subsidiaries. It was centrally located within the town of Galle in a small section of the large cattle pen of the mighty King Ravana covering vast acres, opposite the present police station and close to the war memorial roundabout.
Filed under cultural transmission, elephant tales, heritage, historical interpretation, island economy, landscape wondrous, life stories, performance, politIcal discourse, press freedom, pulling the leg, slanted reportage, sri lankan society, the imaginary and the real, tolerance, travelogue, unusual people, working class conditions, world events & processes
DBS Jeyaraj in Daily Mirror, 25 July 2020, where the title is “TNA Must Seek India’s Help To Protect 13th Amendment”
Filed under accountability, authoritarian regimes, centre-periphery relations, communal relations, constitutional amendments, democratic measures, economic processes, electoral structures, governance, historical interpretation, Indian Ocean politics, life stories, parliamentary elections, politIcal discourse, power politics, Rajapaksa regime, security, self-reflexivity, Sinhala-Tamil Relations, sri lankan society, TNA, world events & processes
I lived and thoroughly enjoyed my life for ten years or so from the age of Ten at 38 Middle Street in a house rented from a Muslim family. We had two Temple trees in our narrow front ‘patch’ between house verandah wall and a parapet. The street arena had a small triangle of grass with a large breadfruit tree in the centre. THAT is no more …. and No. 38 is abandoned and decrepit — one among a [dwindling?] sprinkling in the Fort in such a state…… Michael Roberts
Filed under British colonialism, centre-periphery relations, communal relations, cultural transmission, economic processes, ethnicity, heritage, historical interpretation, island economy, landscape wondrous, life stories, meditations, photography, politIcal discourse, self-reflexivity, sri lankan society, travelogue, world events & processes
Filed under slanted reportage, Sri Lankan cricket, sri lankan society, travelogue
Batapola Man**
Michael, I thought [your article on “Battleships Down: Early Signs in the Decline of British Imperial Power across the Span of the Indian Ocean”] is a very insightful piece that opens up an important and (as far as I know) unexplored dimension of the comparative Lanka-India route to Independence. I am not going to post these comments online because they will just encourage the abusive trolls.
Michael Roberts
My essay on “The Basis of British Power” (July 2020) was instigated by articles from Prabath de Silva and Leelananda de Silva on aspects of the Donoughmore Reforms and subsequent developments. Vinod Moonesinghe has seized on secondary dimensions to press some hoary old strands of Trotskyist thinking and to laud (A) the intervention of SWRD Bandaranaike and the MEP forces for getting rid of British military bases in the 1950s and (B) the radical political messages of the young LSSP politicians who burst onto the scene in the late 1920s and early 1930s.[1] This is linked to the standard Marxist belittling of the achievements of DS Senanayake and associates in the interpretation of the island’s path to independence.
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thuppahi
