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Floundering without integrity and ethics
EDITORIALThere are two processes before us. In one, a set of judges whose career advancement is tied to decisions taken by a body presided over by a particular individual, deliberates on the...
View ArticleDhamma’s father, the rich man of Karametiya, Viyaluva
I have never met Dhamma Dissanayake’s father. In fact I’ve known nothing about his personal life. I first met him at the end of one of those ‘Common Opposition’ May Day marches which ended at...
View ArticleFactoring ‘integrity’ into media freedom
The Editors’ Guild of Sri Lanka has issued a statement regarding a brutal attack on the Editor of Uthayan, T Thevananth ‘while covering an event at the Jaffna University’. The missive, signed by...
View ArticleAney Haamuduruwane!
There is a school of opinion which holds that the clergy should not be involved in politics. In fact UNP MP Wijedasa Rajapaksha has called for constitutional measures prohibiting clergy from entering...
View ArticleA note on resilience
Sri Lanka is a resilient nation. The people of Sri Lanka lived through two bloody insurrections, three decades of war, and all manner of natural disasters capped by a tsunami that left hundreds of...
View ArticleCrow-shit blessings
Lakshman Joseph De Saram is made of music; few who know him would contest the claim. Like most great talents, Lakshman is self-effacing and humble. We met once when we were both invited for dinner...
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Rhapsody of blueness
There is water and there are water songs. All kinds of water songs. All kinds of water bodies in words and musical arrangement. That’s not unusual, considering that no poet looking for a metaphor or...
View ArticleTrue conspiracies
There was a time when the SLBC program titled ‘Subharathi’ was dishing out the Eelamist line (in federalist terms of course). Time passes and that kind of politicking was hoofed out. What we have now...
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The original sin of selection
The fate of the Chief Justice is now officially in the hands of the Parliament and thereafter the President, in the event that Parliament recommends removal from office. The fate of the dignity of her...
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AMARADEVA: THE VOICE OF OUR NATION
පින් කේත හෙළ රන් දෙරණේ යලි උපදින්නට හේතු වාසනා වේවා Pundit W.D. Amaradeva [Pic by Sandra Mack]There are differences in playing to a full and captive audience in a magnificent theatre, engaging in a...
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The European Union made me laugh (for a while)
When Barack Obama was named winner of the 2009 Nobel Prize for Peace, I laughed. I likened the decision to offering a ‘Man of the Match’ before the toss of coin in a cricket match. When Liu Xiaobo...
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On the art of drawing with eraser
My friend Munza Mushtaq posted a beautiful John W. Gardner quote recently on Facebook: ‘Life is the art of drawing without an eraser.’ It’s a perfection-line which prompted me to reflect on its...
View ArticleImpeachment moves into Sakvithi-Mode
Sakvithi Ranasinghe, accused of swindling clients of millions of rupees, is reported to have undressed himself in court on Friday to protest procedure. Not everyone undresses in public in a literary...
View ArticleBASL Resolutions and implications
The Bar Association of Sri Lanka (BASL) adopted three resolutions yesterday relating to the impeachment of the Chief Justice. In essence, the BASL requests that the President re-consider the...
View ArticleThe politics of commemoration
Sometime in the mid 1980s, the students of Peradeniya University put up a statue, a memorial of sorts. It was of a young man, book in hand and his foot on a gun. I am not sure if the statue...
View ArticleNation-building and the lessons of the Kula Sutra
Last night I searched for an article I had written a long time ago and found it in the archives of the 'Daily News', to which newspaper I contributed a daily column under the title 'The Morning...
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Journey-prints are found in feet, did you know?
This was written almost 3 years ago. Feet, though, are timeless. Journeys seldom end and seldom in ways anticipated. 'Feet' almost all of us have. We use them but don't seem to appreciate them....
View ArticleOf goldfish, ‘bowling’ and the incarcerations of our times
IN THESE DAYS OF JUDGES AND JUDGEMENT...All human beings have questions. Some have questions that may sound strange to others and indeed may be quite unanswerable. I have hundreds and that probably...
View ArticleDid you cross border or did border cross you?
I have often been disturbed by the expansionist posturing of some people in the USA. It’s all there in the language and it is so ‘goes without saying’ that I am convinced it ‘came without saying’ too....
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And so this is Christmas!
So this is Christmas...and what have you done?Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loosen the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every...
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