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Who really wrote ‘Mother’?
‘Mother,’ a Russian novel written in 1906 about revolutionary factory workers, has been translated into many languages. It has been made into several films as well. Bertold Brecht and his friends based...
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An island which no flood can overwhelm
One of the most fascinating source stories or nidhaana katha of the Dhammapada is that of the brothers Mahapantaka and Culapantaka. Chulapantaka, the younger and generally seen as a dullard, is...
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Debts that cannot be repaid in full
A friend joked recently that there was a time when friends and relatives would ask ‘aren’t you thinking about being married?’ but now they ask ‘haven’t you thought about migrating?’ Clearly times have...
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To be an island like the Roberts...
The Roberts: neighbors, friends, familyBy the time I was 9, I knew only a handful of people who had what could be called English names. Well, there were many in my parents’ and grandparents'...
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Panduka Karunanayake and bibliographic windows
Many decades ago, Piyasiri Pelenda, friend and colleague at the Agrarian Research and Training Institute, speaking about his studies in the former USSR, related an interesting story.Apparently at the...
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Kumkum Fernando installs Sri Lanka in the California desert
Kumkum. Kumkum Fernando. What a name! ‘He’s the only Kumkum Fernando in the entire universe,’ his father, Ajith ‘Ajja’ Fernando, philosopher and traveler, pointed out. No, exclaimed. I put down the...
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On sweeping close to one's feet
Jayanath Bodahandi (Bodhi), the eldest in his family, would have been just out of school when his father, an illustrator at an advertising agency, passed away. Bodhi could draw and the kind people at...
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'Wetness' is not the preserve of the Wet Zone
I don’t know when the terms viyali kalaapaya (dry zone) and theth kalaapaya (wet zone) were first used in relation to this island. I don’t know when the term mosam sulang (monsoon winds) was first...
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Recovering run-on lines and lost punctuation
Rukshan Abeywansha was a photojournalist at ‘The Nation’. Centuries ago. We worked together. Although I called him Rukshan and he called me ‘Boss,’ we were friends. Our ‘working together’ was not...
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It begins with a dot
I had always taken dots for granted, like most things, when I was a child. I never knew they needed to be defined or indeed if that was even possible. I would have been about 11 years old when Mr...
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Harpo: a brand with the flavor of music
Harpo. Harpo? That’s music. That’s what people who were young in the nineteen eighties would have said, if they moved in certain circles. DJ Harpo. A man. At first I thought ‘DJ’ were his initials. But...
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Let’s meet at ‘The Commons’
When you are a freelancer, you can’t ask someone to meet you in your office. Indeed, some offices won’t tolerate random people dropping in for a chit-chat. When you live far away you can’t ask people...
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Enlightening geometries
Sunsets are delightful. Sunrises too. Many things in the natural world are pleasing to the eye. Rainbows, the movement of water, cloud formations, the play of wind on leaves, rain, waves breaking on...
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ඇරඹුම තිතක්මය
පුංචි දවස්වල ඉරි සහ තිත් ඇති තරම් දැක තිබිණ. නිශ්චිත ප්රමාණයක් හැඩයක් නොමැති මුත් ඉරක් නැත්තම් රේඛාවක් ඉරක් ලෙසත් තිතක් නැතහොත් ලක්ෂ්යයක් තිතක් ලෙසත් හඳුනා ගන්න හැකියාවක් තිබිණ. ඒවාට නිර්වචන ඇති බව...
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Deveni: a one-word koan that’s priceless
When Ravindra Devenigoda brought out his first and probably only book of poems, 'Kamatahan Rupiyalai (One rupee per koan)' his friends, all in good humour, altered the wording on the poster announcing...
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Charles’ coronation and secularists’ blues
Sunil Ariyaratne who wrote Nanda Malini’s celebrated song ‘Nidahas Baila’ got it all wrong when he claimed that no blood was shed in the struggle for independence from British rule. He claimed that no...
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Thursday!
Thursday is just one of seven days of the week. All named. It has the same number of hours, minutes and seconds that make a Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday or Saturday. It may be significant...
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Inscriptions: stubborn and erasable
Rock-paper-scissors is a game usually played by two people where each player simultaneously forms the shape of one of the three objects using an outstretched hand. Accordingly, a closed fist would be a...
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Blackness, whiteness and black-whiteness
Jan-Erik Olson is the man associated with what is called the Stockholm Syndrome. He took four hostages during a bank robbery in 1973 and eventually the victims not only developed a bond with their...
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Ella Deloria's silences
Ella Cara Deloria (1889 - 1971), also called Aŋpétu Wašté Wiŋ, meaning ‘Beautiful Day Woman’ in Lakota, the language of the Lakota people of the Sioux tribes, was an educator, anthropologist,...
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