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Yasmin Khan: The Raj at War
Somewhere, halfway through Yasmin Khan’s wonderful new book, I go looking for a picture of Aruna Asaf Ali, née Ganguli. I have only the vaguest recollection of her, but the woman Khan describes is...
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Asoka Obeyesekere: an ‘MP monitoring scorecard’
[Colombo] In the run-up to critical parliamentary elections on 17 August, Manthri.lk, a parliamentary performance monitoring website, is providing unprecedented insight into the workings of Sri...
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Salman Siddiqui: The drone buzz over Sri Lanka
[COLOMBO] High spatial resolution images captured by drones are bettering those generated by satellites, and enabling researchers in Sri Lanka to study crop health and irrigation in greater detail. A...
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Natasha Ginwala, Menika Van Der Poorten, Jan Ramesh de Saram, Thenuwara:...
32 years after the riots of Black July engulfed Colombo, there is perhaps only one place in the city where you can still see traces of the fires that were set that day. But that is not the reason why...
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Kumudini Samuel, Thiloma Munasinghe: Gaps in Sri Lanka’s reproductive health...
[COLOMBO] Sri Lanka has made significant progress on maternal and child health but falls short on critical health services for vulnerable women, sexual minorities, the country’s at-risk population and...
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Donovan Storey, Sudarshana Fernando: Turning waste into resources in Sri Lanka
[COLOMBO] An integrated resource recovery centre (IRRC) model, which uses composting, recycling and bio-digestion, offers an inexpensive solution to the escalating problem of waste management in Sri...
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Donovan Storey, Udan Fernando: Small cities are ‘key’ to South Asia’s urban...
[COLOMBO] South Asia’s medium-sized and secondary cities, rather than its megacities, will determine whether urban development succeeds or fails in the region says a UN report. The State of Asian and...
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Sumudi Suraweera, Eshantha Joseph Peiris:
With white sarongs draped around their waists and white turbans on their heads, two bare-chested traditional Sabaragamuwa dancers perform on stage. In the background is a contemporary jazz trio...
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Chandima and Anoja Rajapatirana, Soharni Tennekoon, Jennifer Seybert, Soma...
C-H-A-M-M-I. Chandima Rajapatirana’s first word, painstakingly spelled out, letter by letter, was a revelation. He had had no means of communicating in the 17 years that led up to this moment. Few...
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Sebastian Faulks: “the effects of the past are felt in every beat of your...
British novelist Sebastian Faulks is the latest member of the Fairways Galle Literary Festival team. His job description, as he puts it is to act as “a sort of go-between” for authors being invited to...
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Minoli Salgado: Returning again and again to a familiar landscape
Though she was born in Kuala Lampur, and has since lived in England, Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia, Minoli Salgado will tell you her earliest memories are of her grandparent’s home in Sri Lanka....
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Jeet Thayil: Living outside history
When Jeet Thayil was 13 years old, he bought a copy of Catch-22. His father, the noted journalist and editor TJS George, did not approve. When he found Heller’s book, he confiscated it. Thayil went...
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Amitav Ghosh: Writer on the move
What would Kesari do? As Amitav Ghosh stood arguing with a taxi driver, a character from his book popped into his head. For Ghosh, who in 2015 brought his enormously ambitious Ibis Trilogy to...
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Damian O’Brien, Shanmukam Thankamuththu, Ananda Chandrasiri: Demining Sri Lanka
Muhamalai, Sri Lanka – Not so long ago Shanmukam Thankamuththu had 25 goats; now she has only five. The other 20 have been sold, each animal bringing in 9,000 rupees, or around $60, depending on its...
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Shahidul Alam: The search for Kalpana Chakma
Shahidul Alam has long been gripped by the life of a woman he has never met. It’s been two decades since Kalpana Chakma was abducted, but Shahidul refuses to forget her. Standing at the threshold of...
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Ariyaseeli Gunaweera, Dr Ruwan Wijayamuni,Dr Kapila Jayaratne: Why Sri Lanka...
Colombo, Sri Lanka – Ariyaseeli Gunaweera, known as Ari to all, is a supervising public health midwife in Sri Lanka. She is, as a result, a person of some importance. Ajith Kumarasiri certainly thinks...
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Seran Sivananthamoorthy, Kopinath Thillainathan: Sri Lankan Tamils around the...
Seran Sivananthamoorthy is only 25 years old which is why his knowledge of the Jaffna Public Library is limited to memory and anecdote. The library with some 95,000 volumes including the only original...
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Shehan Karunatilaka: What to expect from Shehan ‘Chinaman’ Karunatilaka’s new...
The sastra karaya could see a ghost standing behind Shehan Karunatilaka’s shoulder. He said the spirit was a woman, someone Karunatilaka had known and who was now his guardian. Now, in his airy living...
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Sunila Galappatti: A quiet voice amid the noise of war
In A Long Watch Commodore Ajith Boyagoda of the Sri Lankan Navy reflects on how the story of the Sagarawardene, the ship of which he was captain, was one he had read long before it was one he told....
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Jayanthi Kuru-Utumpala and Johann Peiris: On top of the world
It’s been three years since anyone has made it to the summit of the world’s tallest mountain. But in May a young Sri Lankan woman climbed 8,848m up to stand on the roof of the world. Just 300m from...
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