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A New Leaf
The town of Gampola in Sri Lanka’s Kandy district houses a 100-year-old structure comprising five “line rooms”—each windowless square, just ten by 12 feet in size, was once home to an entire family...
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A lesson from Colombia: how to defeat exotic frog smugglers
The first time, it was 400 frogs in a backpack. It was 1998 or perhaps 1999, and Colombian conservationist Ivan Lozano-Ortega was working at the Bogota Wildlife Rescue Centre—a drop-off point for the...
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Bogota’s bibliophile trash collector who rescues books
Bogota, Colombia – Finding Anna Karenina in the rubbish would change Jose Alberto Gutierrez’s life. It was 20 years ago, but Jose still remembers first glimpsing the Russian classic by Leo Tolstoy in...
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Aracataca: In Search of the echoes of a novel
Have you heard the story about Gabriel García Márquez’s 80th birthday party? Gabo was famous by this time, his years as a poverty stricken journalist having given way to his career as Colombia’s most...
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Picos in a time of violence
You hear El Jude before you see it. Its music fills the streets around Mario de Moya’s cantina in Malambo, an hour outside the Colombian port city of Barranquilla. Mario has just returned from a...
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Through the eyes of a pioneering forensic architect
Today, Prof. Eyal Weizman will deliver the 18th Neelan Tiruchelvam Trust Lecture at BMICH. Its open to all, and you should go. From experience, I can tell you that Weizman’s work is both provocative...
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‘I am drawn to terrifying things’, says the novelist who feels squeamish...
Chhimi Tenduf-La was anxious about dengue even before the current epidemic in Sri Lanka reached its height this June. With 80,000 cases so far, and hospital wards overflowing, he felt his heart sink...
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When it comes to toddy, timing is everything
We find our toddy tavern down a dirt road in Mannar; a one-room structure with a grimy, shadowy interior and an uninspired beige exterior. The only building for miles, it blends in perfectly with its...
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Varanasi and Anuradhapura: Sacred Geographies
YOU CIRCLE THIS exhibition as you might a sacred site. The layout is such that one artwork leads you to another in a ring. The Red Dot Gallery in Colombo is so small that every work in ‘A Tale of Two...
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With elephants and humans in conflict, Sri Lanka looks for new solutions
Farmers watch over their fields at night from treehouses like this one. (Smriti Daniel) It is difficult to predict when the elephants will come. As darkness falls around Udawalawe National Park,...
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