Michael Roberts
A = The ethnographic gem on events in 2009 provided by former minister Rohitha Bogollagama in 2013 that is now clarified by Chandre Dharmawardana is startling news even for those aware of the exchanges taking place in the (i) ambassadorial despatches now accessible via Wikileaks and (ii) the bare details of the secret meeting held in Kuala Lumpur at KP’s ‘office’ in February 2009 between Norwegian diplomats and LTTE operatives (with US cognisance).[1]
Filed under accountability, american imperialism, authoritarian regimes, conspiracies, governance, historical interpretation, human rights, Indian Ocean politics, law of armed conflict, life stories, LTTE, military strategy, politIcal discourse, power politics, prabhakaran, Rajapaksa regime, self-reflexivity, Sinhala-Tamil Relations, slanted reportage, sri lankan society, Tamil civilians, Tamil Tiger fighters, the imaginary and the real, trauma, UN reports, unusual people, war reportage, wikileaks, world events & processes
Chandre Dharma-wardana, an Item arising from our recent email exchanges and taken from his website …. http://dh-web.org/place.names/posts/blake.html ……….with emphasis in different colours added by me as Editor, Thuppahi
Rohitha Bogollagama was the Foreign Mininster (FM) in 2009, during the last days of the Eelam War-IV. On October 20, 2013 evening, I had a conversation with him in the presence of Mohanil Samarakoon (Address: 7 Rajapihilla Terrace, Kandy). We were at the Estate bungalow of the late Mrs. Sharmini Maththew, Korakaha Estate, Kurunegala. This was after dinner, when all other guests had moved out to the veranda. I was not personally known to Mr. Bogollagama until that afternoon. The three of us lingered further, seated around the dining table. I asked Mr. Bogollagama about the last days of the war. He spoke willingly, and with no further encouragement from me.
Rohitha Bogollagama
Later it occurred to me that many of the things stated by Mr. Bogollagama were of historical significance; hence I wrote down from memory a brief synopsis of our conversation the following day, after I returned to Colombo. What Mr. Bogollagama said was as follows.
Filed under accountability, american imperialism, authoritarian regimes, citizen journalism, governance, historical interpretation, human rights, Indian Ocean politics, landscape wondrous, law of armed conflict, legal issues, life stories, military strategy, politIcal discourse, power politics, Rajapaksa regime, religiosity, security, self-reflexivity, Sinhala-Tamil Relations, Sri Lankan cricket, Tamil civilians, Tamil Tiger fighters, the imaginary and the real, truth as casualty of war, unusual people, wikileaks, world events & processes
Charles Sarvan aka Ponnadurai, in Colombo Telegraph, reviewing K. M de Silva’s The Island Story: A Short History of Sri Lanka, International Centre for Ethnic Studies, Kandy, Sri Lanka, 2017
EPIGRAPH: “Sri Lanka in the first few centuries after the early settlement was a multi-racial, multi-ethnic society: a conception which emphasises harmony and a spirit of live and let live” (K. M. de Silva, op. cit., page 13)
It’s said that fools rush in where the wise fear even to walk. I tiptoe hesitantly, conscious that I am no historian (my discipline was Literature) while the author is perhaps the most eminent of Sri Lankan historians writing in English. The hope is that what I write will be taken as a layman’s perspective and contribution to discussion. Continue reading
Filed under accountability, British colonialism, British imperialism, communal relations, cultural transmission, disparagement, Eelam, ethnicity, governance, heritage, historical interpretation, Indian traditions, island economy, life stories, LTTE, military strategy, modernity & modernization, nationalism, politIcal discourse, power politics, prabhakaran, riots and pogroms, security, self-reflexivity, slanted reportage, sri lankan society, Tamil civilians, Tamil Tiger fighters, transport and communications, truth as casualty of war, unusual people, war reportage, world events & processes
Richard Sandomir, in New York Times, 4 May 2018, with this title “Lester James Peries Visionary Sri Lankan Filmmaker”
Lester James Peries, a visionary director whose films about the dynamics of family life in Sri Lanka brought world recognition to that island nation’s movie industry, diedon Sunday in Colombo, the capital. He was 99.
Starting with “Rekava” (“The Line of Destiny”) in 1956, Mr. Peries’s films offered a significant shift from formulaic Indian-influenced dance and fantasy movies that had been standard fare in Sri Lanka, which was known as Ceylon at the time. He wanted his pictures to accurately reflect the lives of the Sinhalese people, who constitute most of the country’s population. Continue reading
ESPN interview with Gideon Haigh at http://www.espncricinfo.com/story/_/id/23408427/story-gideon-haigh-story-packer-affair
THIS is a story you must listen to. It is not only about cricket, but also about commercial rights, its politics and the tale of a revolutionary transformation of the pictorial technology presenting cricket to its followers on TV. Michael Roberts Continue reading
Hof, in Öræfi, is a cluster of farms in the municipality of Sveitarfélagið Hornafjörður in southeast Iceland, close to Vatnajökull glacier, and twenty two kilometres south of Skaftafell in Vatnajökull National Park. It is located on the Route 1 southwest of Höfn, in the narrow strip between the sea coast and the glacier.
Wikipedia = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hof,_Iceland
PICs from https://www.bing.com/search?q=Hof%2C+Iceland&setlang=en-AU&mkt=en-AU&FORM=EMSDS0
Filed under heritage, landscape wondrous
Meera Srinivasan, in The Hindu, 30 April 2018, where the title reads “Sri Lankan filmmaker Lester James Peiris provided a realistic portrayal of rural Sinhalese”
Renowned Sri Lankan film maker and a national icon Lester James Peiris, credited with revolutionalising Sinhala cinema in the 1950s with a strong local flavour and indigenous style, passed away in Colombo on Sunday. He was 99.
A contemporary of Satyajit Ray, Peiris is regarded the “father of Sinhala cinema”. He won critical acclaim in the island and outside for his work that spanned five decades. His debut Rekava (Line of Destiny), made in 1956, is considered pathbreaking for its realistic portrayal of the ethos of the rural Sinhalese, in a newly-independent Ceylon. Continue reading
Hugh Karunanayake, courtesy of The CEYLANKAN
My previous piece on the “Early Years of Motoring in Ceylon” ( The Ceylankan # 60 Nov 2012) evoked a level of interest which has since prodded me on to reflect on motoring in more recent times. The decade of the 1950s – mid twentieth century Ceylon, could verily be described as the “golden age” of motoring. The early 1950s especially were years when the country enjoyed the “Korean boom”; export commodities mainly rubber were fetching record prices, income tax relatively low, all leading to consumption going on at a gallop. There were no national investment projects of note to capture the surplus that was generated, and most of the money that flowed in, went towards conspicuous consumption largely in the purchase of luxury goods such as automobiles.
Shirley Somanader
1. Methodist Central College, Batticaloa is specifically mentioned as an English School from August 1814 as a separate institution apart from any Vernacular school.
Rev William Ault arrived in Batticaloa on the 12th of August 1814. * He died on April 01st 1815. He laboured in Batticaloa for just seven months. * But in the first of his two letters to his mother after arriving, he writes that he has established an English school, I quote from his letter, “On my arrival here I found in this place a Tamil school containing about thirty boys. That school is now under my superintendence. We have established another, which now contains thirty, besides the English school, which I teach myself.
.as it is today
Shihan de Silva Jayasuriya, in The Island, 2 May 2014
The extraordinary love of the Portuguese for music is epitomised at El Ksar el Kabir in Morocco, 1578, where 10,000 guitars lay on the battlefield, near the dead Portuguese soldiers. The Portuguese took guns and guitars to battlefields! Is it surprising that the Portuguese presence is vibrant through Sri Lankan popular music – Baila?
Filed under art & allure bewitching, colonisation schemes, commoditification, cultural transmission, ethnicity, governance, heritage, historical interpretation, island economy, landscape wondrous, life stories, literary achievements, performance, politIcal discourse, Portuguese in Indian Ocean, self-reflexivity, Sinhala-Tamil Relations, sri lankan society, Tamil migration, the imaginary and the real, travelogue, unusual people, world events & processes
thuppahi
two symbolic snaps 