More than ten years ago my friend Lasitha Yasanga Herath offered the following observation on unity: Unity = kneeling down ‘together’ in front of freaks,…
The return key is made for poetic architecture, I sometimes tell poets and sometimes tell myself. Take a paragraph, move the cursor and at appropriate…
The late Lanil Kalubowila once offered some interesting reflections on language and politics. The last time I met him, along with our mutual friend Kanishka…
Pic: www.roar.lk On the 31st of July, 1989, a 42 year old man was dragged out of his house by a group of armed men.…
I remembered R K W (Raja) Goonesekera. Patali Champika Ranawaka made me remember him. It took me back to the year 1992. When Patali Champika…
Revolutions and songs go together, it seems. Song can call forth revolution. Art can do that. Not often though. More typical is for revolutionary fervour…
Words are of many kinds. That’s stating the obvious, yes. This is about words associated with love. Love-words, then, if you will. Things that need…
It must have been in the year 2001 that all this happened. No, before we get ahead of ourselves, I didn’t win a Pulitzer back…
This is said to have happened almost a century ago. Maybe even before that. The month and year I do not know and it doesn’t…
Ella Cara Deloria (1889 – 1971), also called Aŋpétu Wašté Wiŋ, meaning ‘Beautiful Day Woman’ in Lakota, the language of the Lakota people of the…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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,…
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…
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…
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…
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.…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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.…
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…
The Roberts: neighbors, friends, family By the time I was 9, I knew only a handful of people who had what could be called English…
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…
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…
‘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…
Over the last 24 years, Easter Sunday has been celebrated on various days, from the 23rd of March to the 5th of May. It…