Some apa venuven api for the dairy industry?
For years the milk powder industry operated in a context where officials and consumers were blissfully ignorant about the possibility of contamination. Archaic labeling laws didn’t help either. There...
View ArticleThe baila of independence
‘Baila’ is a form of music. Some who consider themselves connoisseurs would rate it as a lesser creature in the musical firmament. This is perhaps why it has often been used as a metaphor for things...
View ArticleThe bend in the breadthless length
A line or rather a straight line is the shortest distance between two points. That’s conventional wisdom. Mathematicians would call it ‘geodesic’. In the seventh grade geometry class we were told it...
View ArticleLie is followed by truth and hopefully by embrace*
There was one factor which worked for the LTTE. For decades. Propaganda. This, more than anything else, was what tripped the Sri Lankan security forces. The LTTE, as a unit, was the Grandmaster of the...
View ArticleRaja Raja Chola 1 and the quicksand of Tamil chauvinism*
The history of this island can be read as an account of invasion, resistance, conquering and routing the enemy. It is also a history of migratory waves and, in recent times, emigration as well. There...
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Jayalalithaa’s good neighborliness
Neighbors are allowed a certain amount of license. If the branches of your mango tree have strayed into your neighbor’s domain, some mangoes are bound to fall into his garden. If you are not helping...
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Briefing and de-briefing and other tidbits
Briefing and de-briefing, US-UK style US Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs Nisha Nisha Biswal who visited Sri Lanka recently is reported to have stopped over in Britain...
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Michele Sison chortles (privately)
[In a parallel universe, of course]I read somewhere that some cabinet ministers are peeved that I am in the habit of inviting heads of state institutions for chit-chat over coffee, tea, wine or whisky....
View ArticleThree problematic ‘traditional homelands’ can intersect to create a wholesome...
Eelamist sections of the Tamil Diaspora, including of course its Sri Lankan component, naturally subscribe to the unsubstantiated claims of the North and East being the exclusive traditional homelands...
View ArticleVaporization of corpses
A hitherto unknown outfit (at least in Sri Lanka) that calls itself ‘Public Interest Advocacy Centre’ has made a very serious claim: ‘Mass graves may have been systematically destroyed by Sri Lankan...
View ArticleFreedom is made of ‘give'*
The fourth day of February is a mis-named or mis-interpreted day of independence. When we got the independence which we commemorate we remained subjects of a lady called Elizabeth who lives somewhere...
View ArticleBuddhism, radicals and radicalism: a necessary preamble
The adjective ‘radical’ has two principal definitions. In common usage, ‘radical’ conjures images of or alluding to Che Guevara. It doesn’t necessarily have to be about those who think like Che or...
View ArticleIs an election a ‘village tank’ to monitors and donors?
[Sri Lanka has had elections since 1931. We got 'monitors' only recently. The need was produced by palpable election malpractices, many but not all eliminated by the introduction of new laws and...
View ArticleA radical will explore ‘revelation’ and ‘report’ critically
Siddhartha Gauthama, our Budun Wahanse, in the Kalama Sutra, advocated that the Kalamas should not take things at their face value. In this discourse that can be taken as a Charter on Free Inquiry,...
View ArticleRadicalism should tread gently on legend and tradition
The revolutionaries of the 20th century were, admittedly, influenced mostly by the works of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, the Germanic notion of ‘stages’, the on-the-ground example of the Russian...
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Mahinda Algama: his lyrics will resist editing
Pic courtesy Silumin[This was written on February 13, 2014 for The Nation of February 16, 2014. Mahinda Algama will not read this piece. He passed away on the 15th of February, that's yesterday.]...
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Ranil's expertise and other tidbits
Ranil's expertiseRanil Wickremesinghe has a solution, he says. He says he knows how to resolve problems between Sri Lanka and India. That's great. We know of course that not all solution-blueprints...
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The walls speak out
'We are layered and un-layered, again and again' -- Pic courtesy Sunday Times[In a parallel universe, of course]It’s that time again. Life is not easy as it is, what with tuition masters, karate...
View ArticleMarch of folly or opportunity
March is about ‘Geneva’ and has been for the past several years. March is also time for opinions from all quarters about how to handle ‘Geneva’. Naturally policy decisions and choices will be called...
View ArticleCPA, NPC and TI is about bucks (big ones!)
It's election time again. That's 'election monitoring time' for buck-strapped, cause-less NGOs. This was written three years ago. The usual suspects. They are also Geneva-bugged these days. Worth a...
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