Seeing the importance of those little things
In the first in our new series ‘Notes on Resilience’ on life in the midst of the pandem-ic, Adilah Ismail speaks to sociology lecturer cum parliamentarian Dr. Harini Amarasuriya How do you embrace hope in the midst of global uncertainty? What does resilience look like? What are the post-pandemic futures we need to collectively work [...]
Funny Boy: Canada’s entry to the 2021 Oscars
Oscar nominated Canadian movie director Deepa Mehta’s adaptation of Shyam Selvadurai’s award-winning book Funny Boy will hit the screen next month – and is set to become one of this year’s most rewarding new movies. It has already been selected as Canada’s submission in the Best International Film category for the 2021 Academy Awards. Mehta [...]
Letters to the Editor
Coconut oil: We need a well planned clinical trial There I was relaxing with my copy of the Sunday Times on October 25 when I was struck by the headline, ‘Coconut is bad for your heart”! Now I wondered were scientists from Sri Lanka announcing the outcome of a well-planned, long-term double blind controlled clinical [...]
Appreciations
A friendship that spanned more than 60 years Jayampathi Abeysuriya Jayampathi Abeysuriya was one of my very good friends and a close neighbour in Galle. He passed away peacefully on October 10, 2018. He was the youngest son of one of Galle’s famous physicians, the late Dr.Fred and his wife Beatrice Abeysuriya and was the [...]
Family sagas and a peek at Victorian Ceylon’s westernised bourgeoisie
Few voices of the early 19th Century bourgeois Ceylonese have survived straight from the horse’s mouth to-date. Who were this new elite? What were those first English-educated generations like? How did Macaulay’s “class of people who can act as intermediaries between us and the millions we govern- English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and [...]
Your favourite Christmas Bazaar will come to you, virtually!
The International Christmas Charity Bazaar (ICCB), has been held annually in Colombo since 1980 and is organized by a committee of local and expatriate ladies residing in Colombo. This year, in its 40th event the bazaar adapting to the current pandemic situation, is going virtual. The bazaar will open online for the first time, allowing [...]
Tribute to Kamini–‘Trees, Forest and Birds’
Ruk Rakaganno, the Tree Society of Sri Lanka will present ‘Trees, Forest and Birds’ by Prof. Emeritus Sarath Kotagama – a reflection on the life and times of Kamini Meedeniya Vitarana today, from 7-8 p.m. The online link to the lecture is: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85709177169. For further information; contact Dushy via email: dushy101@hotmail.com or call Shiranee on [...]
Double boiled sweets and truckloads of current history
The candy man in The Kandy Man, Volume One of three designed to constitute the autobiography of Sarath Amunugama, scholar, distinguished public servant, aesthete, politician and minister of government, as expected, brings us not only double boiled sweets that his ‘beloved nanny Roslin’ bought for him on his way home from Kandy Girls’ High School [...]