Blessed are daughters for they will not be forced to bed with their fathers
Everyone living in Sri Lanka, including foreigners, be they tourists, business persons, professionals, volunteers, students, INGO employees, diplomats and other workers in foreign missions and UN...
View ArticleBlessed are those who gave despite threat, abuse and scandalous pilfering
In the mid-eighties, when the then Government was facing a growing threat of by-any-means separatism that included bomb explosions targeting civilians, assassination of prominent politicians, academics...
View ArticleBlessed are the Tamil politicians for they can recover their tongues
Power imbalances make for two things: voice and echo. The degree and nature of the imbalance determines the volume of voice and the throw back compulsion of wall and the distance the echo travels and...
View ArticleLook back without anger, look ahead with reason
Barack Obama never gets angry. Well, let’s say that he never shows anger. The man’s incredibly calm; he calmly signs documents that compel military personnel to spit out hell-fire (not anger) on...
View ArticleBlessed are those who can walk and those on crutches too
It is now two years since the entire country was liberated from the threat of terrorism. Slowly but surely, normalcy is returning to this land. As is prudent in any society that is emerging from a...
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The Great(er) Elephant Torture Chamber and other tidbits
The Great(er) Elephant Torture ChamberAn elephant 'torture chamber' has been discovered in Pannipitiya. Apparently the creatures are held in horrifying conditions. This is strange news considering...
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Ananthi Sasitharan remembers (well)
[In a parallel universe, of course]I am aggrieved and so are my children. I don’t know where my husband is and they don’t know where their father is. Some may not know who my husband (their father)...
View ArticleBlessed are the resilient for they shall protect this land and our children
The days following the elimination of the LTTE leadership were justifiably joyous for a nation that had been plagued and held hostage by terrorism for three decades. Joy, however, is relative to place...
View ArticleBlessed are the rain-makers for they make the earth yield hope
I was not anywhere close to the Nandikadal Lagoon during the last stages of the struggle to save the thousands upon thousands held hostage by the LTTE. In fact the ‘war’ came to me second-hand, i.e. in...
View ArticleThe wages of flirtation
There are road blocks again in the North. That’s an ominous sign. If the threat of terrorism is the reason then let it be recognized, again, that terrorism is something that is never restricted to a...
View ArticleThe relative merits of Jeyakumari, Ruki and Fr Mahesan
An activist is an activist is an activist. This means there are all kinds of activists. An activist is someone who engages in or advocates activism. Activism is defined as ‘a doctrine or practice...
View ArticleChampions of the democracy deficit
It is pathetic, to say the least, when media rights advocates stretch and strain to scratch out some logic when they come out to defend their friends. The Sri Lanka Working Journalists Association,...
View ArticleThe Bodhisattva of Godavaya
Where the Walave empties into the sea all the sorrows and joys gathered in its long journey from the southern end of the central hills is a hamlet by the name of Godavaya. What is today a hamlet was a...
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Dr. Rajeewa Jayasinghe: He gave just by being
It’s been a year since Dr Rajeewa Jayasinghe passed away in circumstances that were tragic beyond the tragedy that the passing of any loved one usually is. Those circumstances raised questions that...
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No one gives a hoot about truth, it seems
There can be no ‘reconciliation’ (whatever that means) without ‘closure’ (whatever that means). There can be no closure without ‘truth’ (whatever that means). It follows then that obtaining truth is...
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Sangaree's advice to Pillay and other tidbits
Sangaree's advice to PillayV. Anandasangaree, leader of the TULF and probably the only true moderate in Tamil politics today, has some words of advice for UN human rights chief Navi Pillay. He says...
View ArticleThe restless earth laments…
[In a parallel universe of course...]I am not the earth. I am just a tiny piece of it. Minuscule, all things considered. I reside in Borella. That’s prime land. Except that my address is ‘Plot...
View ArticleSison wrong, Cameron right
US Ambassador Michele Sison got it wrong. Addressing a media briefing following the UNHRC vote on Sri Lanka, Sison dismissed allegations that the US-backed resolution was ‘against’ Sri Lanka. In...
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Ray!
Ask an American of the United States what association first comes to mind upon hearing ‘Ray’ and some might say ‘Charles’, perhaps less because of the man than the film about the man, such is the...
View ArticleUNHRC resolutions and the politics of discomfiture
For Sri Lanka, the only relevant resolution at this year’s UNHRC sessions is the one tabled by the United States of America. It is relevant because it was on (read ‘against’) Sri Lanka. If, however,...
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