What’s next for Oshini Gunawardhana?

 

The Sri Lankan chess community has known Oshini Gunawardhana for several years. She was clearly a star in ascendancy from the time she won gold at the World Youth Chess Championship in 2021. In 2024 she became the youngest ever National Women’s Champion. Today she’s the highest rated player in the world among girls under 13 years of age and is tanked 42nd among junior girls in the world, the first time a Sri Lankan player has broken into the top 50.  

She is highly talented and probably a tireless student of the game, for talent alone can only take you so far. So the question is, what’s next? 

There are titles to be secured of course: WGM (Woman Grand Master) and GM (Grand Master). Dare we speak of something even greater, for example Women’s World Champion?  We should, for she can do it. But only if she gets the opportunity to take part in strong international tournaments.

Oshini will probably shine in age group tournaments in Western Asia, Asia and the World event as well. Typically, however, she will get to test her skills against only a handful of strong players, i.e. those with higher ratings. She’ll have podium finishes, no doubt, but is that enough? No. Not for someone with so much promise and who puts in hours and hours of hard work to develop her game.

Oshini is not just the standard bearer of Sri Lanka chess; if she reaches her full potential one can rest assured that this fact alone will spur others to emulate her achievements. Chess in Sri Lanka can go into overdrive both in terms of interest in the game (measurable by numbers) and qualitative leap in playing strength.

That’s how India became a chess powerhouse. One player. One iconic player. He conquered the world on his own and in a quarter of a century India won gold in the Open and Women’s sections at the Chess Olympiad.  

For decades chess was a game mostly associated with Russia and of course the Soviet Union. The number of world champions and grandmasters was simply mind boggling. India was not on the chess world map. Not until Viswanathan ‘Vishy’ Anand emerged in the mid 1990s. Today India is a chess powerhouse. The current world champ is Domnaraju Gukesh. India won golds at the last Chess Olympiad, i.e. in the Open and Women’s events, as mentioned above.. There are several Indians who are legitimate contenders for the world chess crown in both categories. India has arrived and not just yesterday.

How did this happen? Vishy was the obvious catalyst, even before he became World Champion in for the first time 2000. His achievements not only ignited enthusiasm for chess in India but spurred several generations of young Indians to dedicate themselves to reaching similar heights. Slowly but surely a critical mass of strong players emerged in India.  

That was not all, Vishy’s success convinced parents that chess was a worthy pursuit. National pride came to be associated with the game (and not just cricket).  All of this helped develop a strong ecosystem of training. Chess academies sprouted, especially in Chennai, Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore. In time, Indian youngsters embraced wholeheartedly online platforms that helped them master the key aspects of the game. For all this, the critical factor was Indian players traveling in Europe to play in strong tournaments. Even today, the vast majority of Indian Grandmasters have secured their title norms abroad.

How about Sri Lanka?

Well, Sri Lanka is yet to produce a World Champion, although we have young players who have achieved podium finishes in regional tournaments and in some cases on the world stage. This is in age-group events. Sri Lanka’s chess ecosystem is far better than India’s at the time Vishy began his long march towards world domination.

In terms of numbers, the percentage of school children who play tournaments is the best in the region. Even the youngest players are familiar with online platforms such as ChessBase, chess.com and lichens.org. They dig deep into the relevant data bases and spend hours working on their game without compromising their regular study schedule.

What Sri Lanka lacks is a Vishy Anand. Oshini is not a Vishy Anand, at least not yet. But she can be.

Oshini, like other talented players around her age like Vinuka Wijeratne, Thehas Kiringoda and Chenitha Karunaratne, needs support. If, for example, all four players get to play in a series of strong tournaments in Europe over the course of 4-6 weeks, their will improve exponentially.

Yes, it costs. But then again each of these players by the fact of their sheer playing strength, has what it takes to be an excellent ambassador, be it for a corporate brand or for Sri Lanka.

Vishy was a catalyst. Oshini can be one too. So too Vinuka, Chenitha and Thehas. As individuals or as a team, they can continue bring glory to Sri Lanka.

Several decades from now, long after I am dead and gone, someone talking of chess in Sri Lanka might say, ‘we are number one in the world, but it all began with a little girl from Ratnapura named Oshini.’  Put another way, if Sri Lanka ever becomes a chess powerhouse (and this is possible!), we will all owe much to the likes of Oshini. We will bask in reflected glory.  

For that, however, we need to back her to the hilt, not just with good wishes, but by enabling her to take part in the tournaments that will make our little champion shine brighter in the chess firmament.  

Let’s do it.

[This article was published in the Daily News under the weekly column title 'The Recurrent Thursday']

Read more

කුදුබව

 

යුරෝපයේ පිරිමින්ගේ සාමාන්‍ය උස අඩි පහයි අඟල් දහයයි.  ප්‍රංශයේ හිටපු ජනාධිපති නිකොලා සාකෝසි ගේ උස අඩි පහයි අඟල් පහයි.  උස ප්‍රශ්නයක් කරගත් සාකෝසි අපූරු උපක්‍රමයක් පාවිච්චි කල බව වාර්තා වේ. තමන්ට වඩා මිටි පුද්ගලයින් කිහිප දෙනක් නිතරම තමන් අවට තබාගත් සාකෝසි ට මේ ප්‍රශ්නය විසඳගන්න පුළුවන් වුනා, මන්ද එවිට සාකෝසි මිටි බව පෙනුනේ නැති නිසා.  

ඒ පුවත කියවද්දී ඩලස් අලහප්පෙරුම 2001 වසරේ කියූ දෙයක් මතක් වුනා. 2001 මහා මැතිවරණයට තරඟ නොකරන්න තීරණය කල ඩලස් මාදිවෙල ඔහුට හිමි නිල නිවසින් නික්ම යන්නට සුදානම් වෙමින් සිටිය මොහොතක ඔහු හමුවුයේ 'දි අයිලන්ඩ්' පුවත්පතට ඒ පිලිබඳ ඔහුගේ අදහස් දැන ගැනීමටයි.  ඩලස් මෙහෙම දෙයක් පැවසුවා:

'මාලින්ද, අපි සුදු වැඩියි මේ දේශපාලනයේ යෙදෙන්න.  මෙතැන් ඉන්නේ දුඹුරු මිනිස්සු.  එයාල කැමතිත් දුඹුරු අයට. සුදු කෙනෙක් ආව ගමන් එයාලා දුඹුරු බව පෙනෙන්න පටන් ගන්නවා.'  

ඩලස් පසුව මේ සුදු-දුඹුරු න්‍යාය බැහැර කළත්, ඔහුගේ කතාවේ ලොකු ඇත්තක් තියෙනවා.  ඒ කාරණය දේශපාලනයට සීමා වුන එකකුත් නෙවෙයි.  

පහසු සහ වාසිදායක දේ දුඹුරු වීම නම්, දුඹුරු වෙනවා. 'මම නම් එහෙම නෑ, මම වෙනස්' කියල ඒත්තුගන්නන්න අවශ්‍ය නම්, සුදු පාට තවරා ගන්නවා.  'ඇඩ්' කියල කියන්නේ එහෙම දේවල් වලට.  අඩු වහගන්න අවශ්‍යනම් ඒ අඩුවටත් වඩා අඩුපාඩු තියෙන අය ආශ්‍රය කරනවා.     

මෙය හරිම සරල ක්‍රමවේදයක්. තමන් අදක්ෂ නම් තමන්ට වඩා අදක්ෂ අය තමන් අවට තියාගන්නවා.  තමන් හොරෙක් නම් තමන්ට වඩා හොරකම් කරන අය ළඟ තබාගන්නවා. තමන් විකටයෙක් නම් තමන්ට වඩා විහිළුසහගත අයගෙන් පිරිවර හදා ගන්නවා.  තමන් මෝඩ නම්, ඊටත් වඩා මෝඩයින් තමන්ගේ උපදේශකයින් ලෙස පත්කරගන්නවා.  

මේකේ තව පැත්තක් තියෙනවා. උස වෙන්න බලෙන් මිටි පිරිසක් පිරිවරා ගන්නම අවශ්‍ය නෑ. කුදු මිනිසුන් අතර සෙසු අයට වඩා අඟලකින් දෙකකින් උස කෙනෙක් ඉන්නවා කියල හිතන්න. ඔන්න එයා එක පාරටම උසයි වගේ පේනවා. වෙන විදිහකට කිව්වොත්, මෝඩ රැලක් අතර අඩුවෙන්ම කතා කරන මෝඩයා ප්‍රඥාවන්තයෙක් වගේ පේනවා.  

කෙසේ වෙතත් මේ හැමදේකින්ම කරන්නේ හෝ සිදුවන්නේ හාල්කෑලි මෝරු බවට පත්වෙන එක.  මෝරු හැංගිලා ඉන්න තාක් කල් මේ ක්‍රමය සාර්ථක වෙනවා. මෝරා හැංගිලා ඉන්නකොට 'මෝරු නෑ' කියල හිතන්නත් පුළුවන්, හාල් කෑලි මෝරු හැටියට අන්දන්නත් පුළුවන්.  මෝරු කියල විකුණන්නත් පුළුවන්.  ඒ වුනාට හාල් කෑල්ලකට මෝරෙක් වෙන්න බෑ. 'හාල්කෑලිකම්' කවදා හෝ මතුවෙනවා.  

පෞරුෂ ගැන සිතමු.  වෙම්බ්ලි ක්‍රීඩාංගනය පෞරුෂයෙන්ම පුරවන්න පුළුවන් තරම්  දැවැන්ත පෞරුෂ සමහර අයට තියෙනවා. ඒ වගේම ඉතාම දුප්පත් පෞරුෂ තියෙන අයත් ඉන්නවා. ඒ අය කූඩාරමකට රිංගුවොත් කූඩාරම වෙම්බ්ලි ක්‍රීඩාංගනය තරම් විශාලයි වගේ පෙනෙනවා. පෞරුෂයන් ඒ තරම්ම කුදුයි.

ලස්සන ඇඳුමක් ඇඳගෙන, තමන්ට වඩා පෞරුෂයෙන් කුදු වූ පිරිසක් පිරිවරාගෙන පපුව ඉස්සරහට දාගෙන උජාරුවට ඇවිද්දත් අර 'මෝර ගතිය' අත්පත් කරගන්න බෑ. ආරෝපණය කරගන්න හැදුවත්, ලස්සන ඇඳුම, උජාරුව, පිරිවර පසාකරගෙන 'හාල්කෑලිකම්' මතු වෙනවා.

සාකෝසි ට කරන්න තිබුන පහසුම දේ  සාකෝසි වීමමයි. කකුලේ තරමටයි සපත්තුව තෝරගන්න ඕන.  තරමට නොගැලපෙන සපත්තු දාගෙන ඇවිදින්න අමාරුයි.  පැටලෙනවා. වැටෙනවා.  ඊට වඩා හොඳයි සපත්තු නැතුව ඇවිදින එක.  

ඒ කෙසේ වෙතත් සාකෝසිලා මැතිවරණ ජයග්‍රහණය කරන බවත් කිව යුතුයි.  එහෙම වෙන්නේ ඇයි කියන එක ගැනත් කල්පනා කරන්න අවශ්‍යයි.  අවංකකම, දැනුම, හැකියාව, මනුස්සකම වගේ දේවල් ගත්තහම සාමාන්‍ය ජනතාවට වඩා කුදු අය යෝධයින් වෙන්නේ කොහොමද? මවා ගන්න යෝධකම් වලට ඡන්දදායකයින් ගොදුරු වෙන්නේ ඇයි? මේවා ගැනත් හිතන්න ඕන.

එහෙම වෙන්න එක හේතුවක් තමයි අපේ තරම ගැන අපටත් නිසි අවබෝධයක් නැති කම.  යෝධකම් කෙසේ වෙතත් කුදුකම් ආරෝපණය කර ගන්න කැමැත්තක් තියෙනවා කියලයි මට හිතෙන්නේ.ඇතී දේ ඇතී සැටියෙන් දකින්න බැරි කමක් නැත්තම් දකින්න අකමැති කමක් තියෙනවා. දෑස් ඇරගෙන ඉන්න අවශ්‍යම අවස්තාවලදී අහක බලාගන්නවා නැත්තම් ඇස් වහගන්නවා. හාල්කෑලි-මෝරු සෙල්ලමට වශී වෙනවා.  මේ තත්ත්වය මොන තරම් දරුණුද කියනවා නම් සාකෝසි-ක්‍රමවේදය හරියට ඉල්ලුමට-සැපයුමක් ද කියලත් හිතෙනවා.      

වෙනත් විදිහකට කියනවා නම් 'සුදු-දුඹුරු' ප්‍රශ්ණයකින් ජනතාවත් (නැත්තම් පාරිභෝගිකයාත්) පෙළෙනවා.  

නන්දා මාලිනි ගේ 'කුමක්ද මරණය' ගීතය මතක් වෙනවා.  පෙරදිග මුතු ඇටයේ ඇට කටු මත සත්‍යයේ නාමයෙන් ඇස් ඉස් මස් ලේ පුදන්න අවශ්‍යයි කියල මම හිතන්නේ නෑ. ඒත් කිරි පැණි පාගල තැඹිලි වතුර නාලා පච්චවඩම් තිර හතක් මැදින් ඇදුරන් වැඩලා අපගැන අඬලා සැප දුක් ඇසු කල අප හැම සාකෝසිලා කියලත් හිතෙනවා.

Read more

Ramya Jirasinghe's 'Requisites' and the reclamation of awareness

 

BOOK REVIEW: ‘Requisites,’ by Ramya Chamalie Jirasinghe, Mica Press & Campanula Books, United Kingdom, 2025, reviewed by Malinda Seneviratne

The white American poet and writer Allen Ginsberg once said, ‘The only thing that can save the world is the reclaiming of the awareness of the world. That’s what poetry does.’

The world is too misnamed and misrepresented for people to make head or tail of it and obtaining awareness, perforce, is quite a challenge. We are caught in the swollen waters of consumerism, acquisition, competition and self image as individuals and collectively; and if rivers in spate toss us into unfamiliar banks, we dive right in, believing that we just cannot drown (how could we?)! We drown because we can’t swim, neither downstream (with the flow) or upstream (against the flow).

Poetry, if we go with Ginsberg, can offer pause. Good poetry, that is. Poets, even poor ones, offer insights, but if the narrative is uneven and lacking in cohesion (as most poetry collectives are), puffs of mediocrity quickly obliterate those rare illuminations. We learn very little.

Ramya Jirasinghe’s ‘Requisites’ is like a companion to someone on a quest, a journey out of ignorance and towards awareness of the eternal verities. It is fluid but is neither a trickle nor of monsoonal volume. Enough to quench thirst, enough to float a just-enough-room-for-one vessel. If it were the former, the reader would flounder, and if the latter, risk wreck and drowning.

It must take a lot of poetic skill to achieve such a delicate balance. Indeed, one might even wonder if such is possible. But we have in ‘Requisites’ the cover-to-cover elegance, insight and economy that are the defining attributes of good poetry.

Ramya is no novice though. Her ‘There is an island in the bone,’ published in 2010, was shortlisted for the Gratiaen Prize of 2007. ‘Love poems from a frangipani garden’ came out in 2018. Both are highly readable and re-readable, each containing more than a few poems that deserve a permanent place in any anthology of modern Sri Lankan poetry. And of course, she won the Gratiaen for her debut novel, ‘Father Cabraal’s recipe for love cake.’

Requisites: the word obtains from the ‘ata pirikara,’ the eight essential items the Buddha recommended for seekers: outer robe, inner robe, winter cloak, bowl, needle and thread, belt and water strainer. Ramya uses these to structure her reading (or reclaiming of meaning) of the world.

It reads like a companion volume to ‘The light of Asia.’ Whereas Edwin Arnold details the life and times of Prince Siddhartha and his subsequent Buddha persona, Ramya’s focus is the dhamma or doctrine of the Enlightened One. Arnold uses blank verse and therefore his text has definite structure that makes for musical rendition. Ramya uses free verse, which one might say is a better communicative enabler. Importantly, less structured, stylistically, than Arnold’s celebrated narrative poem, ‘Requisites,’ is not lacking in any way when it comes to rhythm. And of course reason.

It is a carefully crafted explication of key elements in the journey that she considers necessary. A book for seekers, then,  But is it only that? I think not.

Ramya does not veer from the path, she merely obtains from the everyday, the ‘here’ that is close to home and the ‘there’ that is distanced by time and space. She alludes to the ‘worldly’ world that Ginsberg speak of and therefore comments on an overarching political economy that contains among other things capitalism, colonialism and empire. She get specific at times, for example in referring to Donald Trump and the current tensions over rare earth minerals, but none of it is frill. Rather, she uses them as apt windows that open to the larger or rather deeper philosophical quest that is her journey, her book.

The book is chaptered by each element of the ‘ata pirikara,’ with each unraveling key principles of the doctrine. In the ‘Outer Robe,’ for example, Ramya comments on things seen, the outer (and even pretty and alluring) skin of our lives, that which is carefully groomed for other eyes. Self-image. She interjects, ‘all around is the world in a shop window / sold to us through slogans.;

Gone, she says, are the days of

‘…[recycling] vestiary: stripping
the funeral shroud before vultures swooped in
unwrapping stained rags restitching them into a life
chosen when the map had no other place to take the wanderer.
these could be vestments for the journey upstream.
these were.’

But no more, for, she says, ‘this is another millennium.’ And yet, ‘the shunning must begin.’ Obviously it is not only the disavowal of things material, and Ramya reminds us that in fact there’s an inner robe which needs deconstruction:

‘…the most difficult task:
looking oneself, where?
in the eye.’

Because, she continues…

‘the eyes will understand what it sees
only after it has seen itself’

Then she elaborates. As she does in the other sections.

‘Requisites,’ is a smooth and yet disturbing ride. Perhaps ‘disturbing’ is the wrong word or one that needs to be broken down. Agitates (in a good or rather wholesome way) might be better, for Ramya’s effort at seeking (with words but perhaps without them, in her personal life) is at once an exercise of reclamation; she draws meaning from the seemingly meaningless, true dimensions of things exaggerated or truncated as the case may be, and awareness of the world: that which exists outside her but inevitably within her.

Perhaps because I am not necessarily a seeker of the kind that Ramya addresses, I found much delight in the little and almost peripheral pieces of ‘rock’ in the gallery of poetic gems that is ‘Requisites.’ Nothing here is peripheral of course, but there are stand-alone lines that can distract and lead the reader to destinations Ramya has not recommended.

‘…there is no cure for a hangover — it sticks in the throat
the smoked haddock de-boned from a colonial trail
sitting next to chicken tikka and butter naan’  

Pithy. So much said with so few words. Such economy! David Kalupahana, in a rare public lecture at Peradeniya University in the early nineties observed that the Buddha was an eminent linguist. Not a word out of place. He did explicate at length but then he was also able to encapsulate with such precision without compromising lyrical quality — at least in the transcriptions that have come down to us, with or without amendment. Doctrinal fidelity can be debated, obviously, but not the ‘nutshelling.’ Ramya nearly understands the worth and use of finesse in the art of poetry.

‘Requisites,’ is heavy. It is a slow read. It calls for several, slow, reads. Line by line. Words by word, even.  

‘…we keep our ear to the smooth shell of loneliness.’

Such lines abound. They are like koans which gently nudge us to reconsider the lives we live and the worlds we inhabit and are inhabited by.

In the end, we are forced to confront ourselves (the Ascetic Siddhartha’s final challenge [and ‘crossing’] came in the form of Mara, the Tempter who manifests in the form of the ascetic himself, whereupon the following is said to have been uttered, ‘architect, thou shalt not build thy house again’. — the kleshas had been exhausted).

‘…we may hang on to these eight requisites but
the practice is circular we must discard
the requisites before we carry them’
 
That circularity and the necessary, even inevitable, return to self or self-reflection is a recurrent feature in ‘Requisites’:

‘…it did not work, we know, we who fled to
our country homes looking for cool springs.
It could not work we realised: the tail meets
the tea, sooner or later’

It is a layered narrative then. There’s the everyday for those who find moments fascinating. There’s political economy for, say, the politically inclined, revolutionaries included. And philosophy for those who contend with ‘the smooth shell of loneliness.’  Well, we are all of all of the above, more or less, and therefore this is a treatise that can be read differently at different moments. That alone speaks of the richness of that narrative and literary deftness of the poetess.

And perhaps, at the end of the reading or during it, we might obtain the meaning, in all subtlety of nuance, of the following:

‘…our journey up stead was a faceting
of this still point of not wanting

not thing nor word nor metaphor.’

And we may, then, reclaim some semblance of awareness (of the world) as per the work of poetry. Or not; depending on our individual karmic accounts.

And now, I must return to ‘Requisites,’ by Ramya Chamalie Jirasinghe, for substance, lyricism and this-worldly delight, for re-visitation is both invitation and necessity in the reclamation of awareness.   

Read more

Sisil Fernando’s evolving artistic ‘aragalaya’

 

A year ago, Sisil Fernando, a visual artist, was asked to contribute a painting to ‘Artful Struggles 2024,’ an exhibition at the Gateshead Library Gallery commemorating the second anniversary of the ‘Aragalaya.’ The exhibition was presented by GemArts and Gateshead Arts Development Team as part of GemArts’ 2024 Masala Festival which celebrates South Asian art in the Northeast of the UK.  Sisil’s submission was titled ‘Alimankada’ and depicts a crow (quite a popular metaphor for corruption during those tense but exciting days) perched on a road sign indicating that elephants cross around that point. ‘Alimankada’ is a real place and is called Elephant Pass in English. Here it has more pronounced environment tones.  

Currently living in the UK, having completed an MA in Graphic Communication at the University of South Wales, UK, Sisil Fernando, at least in the context of this particular exhibition, is framed by the ‘Aragalaya.’ The ‘Aragalaya,’ translatable as ‘agitation,’ is and will be for a long time a word that describes a particularly turbulent moment in the political history of Sri Lanka, the mass protests against all kinds of depravations including fuel, electricity, food and lifestyle in 2022, which led to the incumbent president resigning and a regime-change of sorts.

It has meant many things to different people and this can be attributed to different objectives, political projects, outcome preferences and ideological bent. A common question that was asked thereafter was, ’what really changed?’ It is a valid query since a common demand articulated at the time was ‘system change.’  The ‘system’ was, so to speak, quite present and vocal within and without the ‘Aragalaya,’ and has proved to be quite resilient since.

For all that, it was most certainly a remarkable outpouring of youthfulness, courage and innovation, most evident in the cultural vibrancy of the artists; the ‘Aragalaya’ was in both frill and substance laden with music, painting and theatre. The ‘Aragalaya’ was dispersed or dissolved itself, but that vibrancy continued to flourish in relevant cultural enclaves.  

It can be argued that ‘art’ would have flourished anyway of course, but the word and its meaning have lent themselves to various forms of appropriation. It has acquired brand value and this has been recognised by those embedded in the protests as well as those who neither identified with the sentiments nor made up the numbers, as leaders or followers.

‘Aragalaya’ in this sense is akin to ‘revolution’ and even ‘Che,’ but that’s not the fault of the revolutionaries, the ‘aragalists’ or Che of course. And yet, the idea of objecting to perceived wrong or injustice can spill out of the contours of trope and travel along interesting roads or blaze new pathways as the case may be.

The ‘Aragalaya,’ it seems, has traveled to the United Kingdom or was taken there or else the ‘Aragalaya’ met another version of it in that country. That’s what struck me first when I perused the work of Sisil Fernando. He has been described as a ‘Veedi sarana siththara’ or a painter who walks the streets. ‘Street,’ is also a metaphor and to the extent that it alludes to things on the ground, grassroots, ordinary, agitation and everyday, Sisil is a walking political project or is geared to be so.

This is evident in the subjects that capture his imagination and which inspire his work. If street is all of the above and perhaps more, then it is where drudgery, hope, resistance and disappointment co-exist in uneasy configuration. It is in flux and is volatile; it is an unease that challenges attempts at capture. The street, like the ‘Aragalaya’ is made of constituent parts but these are not static. They move.

On the other hand, Sisil, even as he immerses himself in ‘urban sketching,’ which has become quite popular of late, also focuses on the political ‘immediate.’ In this instance, he had been commissioned, apparently, to address ‘Sri Lanka’s struggles over nature conservation.’ The painting does conform to the brief, but Sisil’s wider range of intellectual and political concerns enables him to problematise conservation and its challenges in a larger political sense.

The elephant is also the symbol of a political party that has dominated Sri Lanka for decades, a party whose leader, ironically, was seen as being part of systemic problems but nevertheless was the most evident beneficiary of the ‘Aragalaya.’ Did corruption, then, enable an elephant crossing in the political sense?

There are two other paintings in the ‘crow’ series, one with a crow perched on a stop sign and the other with a crow atop a sign indicating that school children cross the road ahead. The symbolism is plain but offers multiple extrapolations, just as in the one with the elephant crossing sign. He has used ink and watercolour for these paintings and has used a dip pen to draw. These choices, complemented by handmade instruments and of course a certain irreverence of style that is at seemingly flippant and yet carries the signature of meticulous craftsmanship, makes up his artistic signature. They seem ideal for paper sketches, which seems to be his preferred canvas as of now.

Sisil’s other interest is what he calls ‘the power of life,’ the vital energy that links humans and animals. These paintings, acrylic on canvas, do show shared energy that speak of both gentleness and strength.

Urban landscapes seem to have fascinated him of late. Capturing elements of the Sri Lankan ‘urban’ may have honed a more critical gaze on space in general, both architecture and the social life that makes and moves through buildings, for example. To him, cities are living entities shaped by human presence, emotion and memory.

‘They are like evidence left for the future about the present world,’ he has observed in an interview given to www.newswave.lk. He is not, however, a historian per se. Nevertheless, he does point us to the disjunctures in social life by ‘shaking up’ the urban landscape, as is evident in the series in his work in the UK.

The UK Collection, if I may, contains the iconic such as the Big Ben and a double-decker bus, and the relatively nondescript (for example, sketches of Cardiff and Newport. Not ‘picture postcard pretty’ but as or more alive thanks to choice in rendition.

The ‘people’ aren’t in your face; society is written into or recognised as being part of architecture. The politics of space is not outlined and perhaps that is something that the agitator in him could explore in future, after all he began his experiments with line and space as a political cartoonist. In fact he was adjudged the Cartoonist of the Year in 2019. 

The potential along such lines is apparent in the sketch titled ‘Bahirawakanda Kandy 2020,’ again mixed media on paper. The gigantic Buddha statue on top of the hill by that name looks down on the historic capital of the Central Province, Kandy. In his depiction, Sisil places several Buddhist monks before the Buddha, not in the orderly and serene manner that adherents of the doctrine would listen to the Enlightened One, but in various postures, almost discourteous and oblivious but certainly agitated.  

That’s all interpretation of course, but one struggles to find the ‘Aragalaya’ and the ‘aragalist’ in his ‘people and places’ work. Put another way, he hasn’t seen any ‘crows’ in the London, Cardiff and Newport he visited. Not that such things are musts of course. For now, he has the instruments, the insights and has honed his craft to a point that indicates that mind, eye and fingers are agile, agitated and yet controlled. What’s holding him back and what’s he holding back are the questions that pop out of his work.

There are crows, metaphorically speaking, everywhere. There are corruption-crows and crows that exploit, plunder, murder and silence. Such creatures inhabit buildings. Their signatures must be on the walls. Cities are political and ideological, just like people. A veedi sarana siththara like Sisil would do himself a great disservice if he gives such things a pass, unless his journey takes him to landscapes of the philosophical, which is possible and legitimate. Whether Sisil Fernando’s ‘everyday street’ takes him to such nodes that cry out for artistic comment remains to be seen.

Read more

The Land Reclamation Act 2025

 

'The Mahaweli, which flowed close to our home, was quite a wide river when I was a child but I have noticed it becoming narrower as the years went by. The Mahaweli has on this occasion wrested back that property that human beings forcibly occupied. As for the mountains, they have resolved on its own a land issue, evicting people from properties they were squatting on.'

The above is the rueful observation offered by Kamal Marasinghe, my batchmate from Peradeniya University.

There was, is and will always be human activity. Human beings cannot exist outside of nature, although some may believe that they are somehow superior to it and that they can, at will, intervene in or encroach upon the natural world without suffering adverse consequences.

The earth has known all kinds of catastrophes from time immemorial. Humans have had little to do with tectonic shifts, meteors and such. We don’t even know the full cost that various species had to pay for such calamities. We know there have been floods, droughts and plagues throughout history that our forefathers did not precipitate but we do know that human activity has had a lot to do with some of the disasters in remembered history.

We saw the sheer force of Cyclone Ditwah. Could we have stopped it? Obviously not. Was there anything we could have done to make sure that Ditwah came and went without a single life being lost? Probably not. We cannot stop cyclones. We cannot ensure zero loss of life and zero damage to houses, roads, and other infrastructure.

On the other hand, there are things we can do and things we should not do so that damage is minimised. Why don’t we do what we should, or, put another way, why do we do what we shouldn’t? Perhaps its arrogance, but it’s more likely that natural disasters, though more frequent now than they were several decades ago (by the way we should ask ourselves ‘why?’), are the furthest thing in our minds when we fiddle around with the environment.

How can cutting a tree or two be bad, right? What’s wrong with filling a few perches of marshy land to build a house? What’s wrong with a housing scheme on the sides of that hill when it means shelter for so many people? What’s wrong with a massive dam right there when it can irrigate so many hectares of land and produce so many megawatts of power? What’s wrong with widening the road that cuts through those hills when it can ease all kinds of burdens of so many people? What’s wrong in digging under an entire city if the exercise can yield so many precious stones that can bring so much foreign exchange to the country?  

Individuals think like this. Prospectors think like this. Governments think like this. Well, not all the time of course, but such arguments are used often enough to brush aside those who are skeptical. The problem is that they add up.

And so, the cumulative actions of many individuals and the development ‘prerogatives’ of many governments can make ecosystems vulnerable to the point of collapse. Colombo, for example, is or was mostly a marsh. Even today, there are several low-lying areas in the district that are called ‘wetlands’ and are (supposed to be) protected. Those who are old enough and those who bother to dig up the data on the matter will understand that large extents of marshland have been filled for construction. And we get flooded and wonder why. Yes, part of it had to do with drainage but an important contributing factor is that there is no place for the water to go in the event of an above average deluge.

We have rivers. So we have catchments. We have river basins. There are ecosystems that are fragile and ecosystems that can be made fragile. There’s a breaking point in all things. Reach it and the world around us collapses. This happened.  

We don’t think of building houses on a riverbed, even if it’s dry; we know that the rains will come, the water levels will rise and our houses will be flooded. So we build on high ground. Solid ground. Or so we think!

There are obviously multiple factors that could make things bad if hit by a cyclone, but the scientists probably would tell us that there are certain non-negotiable no-no things and that the ‘no’ should be enforced.

Did this happen? We don’t know. We will have to wait on that, for now is the time to attend to relief. Rehabilitation, later, but after a thorough post-mortem along political, economic, administrative and ecological lines obviously.

The river swelled. The mountain obliterated house and village. Did we, as a species, trespass. Were we, as a species, blind to warning signs? How did the Mahaweli become narrower over time? What were hills like before they became dotted with houses? And that dotting, did it involve tree-felling?

We claimed the riverbanks. We claimed the mountains. As a species. A bit like Columbus claiming he ‘discovered’ a continent or Americans putting a flag on the moon. We can claim of course. There are state institutions that are there just for this. We didn’t ask the river. We didn’t ask the mountain. We didn’t think we needed to check whether mountain and river were happy about all this. We never expected river and mountain to assert themselves. They didn’t fill forms. They reclaimed. So to speak.  

We were humbled, as a species, by what could be called the ‘Land Reclamation Act, 2025’ as per Kamal Marasinghe’s musings. We should remain humble. It’s probably the only thing that can give us a half-chance of surviving the catastrophes we have called forth. 

[This article was published in the Daily News under the weekly column title 'The Recurrent Thursday']

Read more

The suns of solidarity will cut through grief's dense darkness

Magalla Wewa, Nikaweratiya, Pic by Amali Nandasena

 

 

According to Tony Gilbert, a friend of Bob Marley, the great singer and songwriter was inspired by things around him. He remembers three canaries who would come by the windowsill at Hope Road and believes that they inspired Marley to write ‘Three little birds.’ There are other theories, but that’s not important.

Rise up this morning, smiled with the rising sun
Three little birds pitch by my doorstep
Singing sweet songs of melodies pure and true.

A simple observation of an everyday occurrence, at least at face value. And Marley extrapolates thus, ‘don’t worry about a thing / ‘cos every little thing gonna be alright.’

If only!

People buried. Homes buried. Villages buried. Bridges and roads destroyed. Homeless. Hungry. Thirsty. The helplessness is apparent, vivid and unbelievable. We are humbled. We are numb (or were).  It is easy to say things like ‘count your blessings,’ but what blessing can be attached to the loss of a child or an entire family or a lifetime’s labour and love congealed in a house and property disappearing in an instant?

Deluge. Of unimaginable proportions. Then the stories. Ceaseless rain. Terrible winds. And then, the sun.

I live in Kottawa. I’ve only seen photographs and reels of the handiwork of Cyclone Ditwah. To me, at least in appearance, just another day. Familiar foliage and familiar creatures doing familiar things. Familiar morning sounds. How insulated I am, for now!  But then again, the mind wanders. I cannot but wander.

It went far and wide to places known and places whose names are unfamiliar, people I’ve never met, landscapes seen from afar and in amazement but now disfigured and labeled ‘gone,’ and it tarried long on grief-stricken faces and eyes almost vacant but tear-welled.

I am safe. Secure. I cannot comprehend nor come to terms with what’s gone and what remains: on the one hand, lives, livelihoods, ways of being, certainties and familiarities and on the other, the boulders of misery scattered willy nilly on what was once thought to be landscapes that change but slowly and over millennia. I cannot get a grip on the massive water bodies of risk and insecurity that sun and gradient will not or cannot drain.

Words come to me in the form of lyrics and as salve. I remembered the Dire Straits song, ‘Why worry?’

There should be laughter after pain
There should be sunshine after rain
These things have always been the same
So why worry now?
Why worry now?

Again, easy words.

There’s a beautiful photograph of a weva in Nikaweratiya. I am not sure if Amali Nandasiri’s capture was at dawn or dusk. There’s water and a single boat among the reeds. The sun is shining through a cloud-ridden sky. Grey skies for the most part.  
 
One of the two epigraphs in Ernest Hemmingway’s ‘The Sun Also Rises,’ is a quote from Ecclesiastes:

One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth forever. The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose


Apparently Hemingway had told his editor Max Perkins that the book was not so much about a generation being lost, but that ‘the earth abideth forever.’ The characters in his book are battered, but they are not lost, he had pointed out.

How did this happen? How and when will we recover? There are questions that need to be asked and answered, sooner or later. But right now, every single effort, however minute, is wrapped with empathy, generosity, determination and hope.

Three little birds. That’s a metaphor. It is because there are innumerable little things around us gently saying ‘life remains and therefore there’s hope.’ There are things to be thankful for. We are not absolutely impoverished as a nation or a people. For all the glitches and delays, every single person who has suffered knows one thing for certain — their fellow citizens have not forsaken them. They will not. That too is part of our national signature.

We are not indestructible. We are fallible, in fact. We are not impotent. There are hearts that beat. They are warm. And they spread the warmth of true citizenship and solidarity.

The sun rises. Sets. Rises again. We must rise too. As we always have. And as we always will.

 

[This article was published in the Daily News under the weekly column title 'The Recurrent Thursday']

Read more

Kapila Kumara Kalinga's cloud-fascination

 

The sky is the closest we can get to the notion of infinity, one may argue. The sense of vastness it exudes is, simply, out of this world. One can think of the number of astral entities or rather their innumerability, for instance. Break it down to particles and it would be of the out-of-your-mind kind.

When I think of sky and vastness, I always remember something my friend Kanishka Goonewardena observed one evening when I pointed out some cloud formation above the WUS Canteen of Peradeniya University. We were standing near the parapet wall outside the Arts Theatre. He simply said, ‘infinite poetry.’

I’ve mentioned that moment a few times over the years. Today it came to me when I wasn’t really looking up at the sky. I was in fact looking in the opposite direction, flipping the pages of a slim volume of poetry, ‘Siyapathaka raendi kavi,’ by Kapila Kumara Kalinga.

Siyapatha, literally ‘one hundred petals,’ refers to the lotus. One tends to think of dew drops or raindrops lingering on the petals, not poetry, but the title of Kapila’s collection is insistent; [it’s] poetry upon the lotus (petals).’

It’s his second collection of short verses. Indeed, the second collection of a hundred short poems.  The first was called ‘Keti vunath me kavi…’ (Brief though these verses…). More than two years ago, reflecting on that collection, I observed the following:

‘It is as though he has decided to meticulously affirm the economic signature of poetry. They are brief and yes they are long. “Long,” as in deep. They stop you. They make you think. They may even persuade you to reconsider the order of the universe and abandon received truths.’

Today I am thinking more about the order of the universe. Dimensional illusions. The collapse of clouds, their relocation in different forms on mountain, valley, leaf, petal, thought, heart and a manuscript. Clouds, in particular.

The second collection has a few ‘cloud poems,’ transliterated into English and referred to below.  They aren’t connected. Disparate clouds, really.  

Evening clouds
move away sated 
having kissed
mountain breasts

Kapila notices. Kapila transcribes as he sees and at his will, his poetic fingers gathering elements beyond reach and too gigantic for the arms to embrace. And thus does he transcribe the poetry of the sky, verses that have momentarily taken cloud form.


White clouds in the sky;
upon mountain range
black shadows

Who notices such things? Having read the above, I wonder what he noticed first, the cloud or the shadow. The sequence matters. Many have heard and used the phrase John Milton coined in ‘Comus: A Mask Presented at Ludlow Castle’ — ‘every [dark] cloud has a silver lining.’ It could be but is not flipped, though. ‘Every silver lining [marks] a dark cloud.’

It’s cloud-verse (and also mountain-verse) transcribed, nevertheless.

Come right now
before it rains,
the sky tells the kite.

Delay, Kapila implies, would dissolve both cloud and kite. It’s not about clouds, kites or rain, of course. And that’s why it’s poetic. Kapila uses elements, especially clouds, to describe and (mildly) philosophise everyday moments so common that we hardly notice and certainly don’t render into poetry.

In a lonely desert
even a single cloud
is a companion

Clutching at straws? Desperation? Could be many things. Cloud, then, is an interpreter, a companion on a poetic journey that is necessarily solitary.

Under the shade
of a slow-moving cloud
an old bird
flaps its wings

The elderly must adapt and they do, Kapila notices. It’s hard to think of a more pithy way to encapsulate aging. It’s just a few lines, but it is the introduction to a biography or an afterword to a story about a life lived with vigour perhaps.

Re-reading the cloud poems, and reflecting ‘long’ on the brevity and imagination of the poet, I return to the apparent order of the universe and received truths. Cloud is cloud, yes, but cloud is so many other things as well. It’s a principle that can be applied to other things. Mountains, for example. Dewdrops, rain, grains of sand, a bird’s wing and other tangible things, each and every one of them a metaphor with multiple applications.

Clouds are intangible in a sense, but they are at least visible. Unlike solitude or heartache, for example. Unlike hope. Tyranny. The consecration of liars and thugs, the choreographed celebration of mediocrity, and the dismissal of objection with ridicule, teargas, baton or bullet. The incarceration of dignity. The twisting of tenses and timelines. Infinite are the applications. Infinite is the poetry resident in cloud formation. Uncountable are the drops of rain.

A feather fallen from the sky
a new journey begins
upon the waters of a river.

Kapila Kumara Kalinga doesn’t collect feathers or kites. He merely observes much of that which is seen but goes unnoticed. Their movements and occasional stillness he records. Almost surreptitiously. Like a cleverly camouflaged secret agent. It is as though he is filing reports for the eyes of the authorities in language so beautifully innocent that they are then immediately declassified. It’s as though they have a column title, ‘love,’ but can nevertheless be read as ‘rebellion.’ Or something else. Or anything else.  To each according to his or her fancy (of the moment).

Clouds get configured and reconfigured. Then they collapse or dissolve. They disappear. But they remain for all that happens is reinvention. Kapila Kumara Kalinga notes. Records.

[This article was published in the Daily News under the weekly column title 'The Recurrent Thursday']

Read more

Tripping along with the sweetest surrender

 

Love. Yes. Back in the day, that’s somewhere in the late nineteen eighties, all I knew about that term was the John Denver song. Catchy tune. I heard someone hum it. I may have heard it being played over the radio. Back then lyrics weren’t as easily accessible. In time I got most of it right, but some of it was dead wrong. Back then, it didn’t matter. All that mattered was the following lines:

‘Tomorrow is open and right now it seems to be more than enough to just be here today.'

I sang it (with lyrics all wrong!) on a train to Ohiya along with some friends and again at night somewhere close to Farr Inn at Horton Plains. It was that age, I suppose. Young. Carefree. In the moment. Made sense.

I remember that we got most of the following verse right as well:

‘And I don't know what the future is holdin' in store
I don't know where I'm goin', I'm not sure where I've been
There's a spirit that guides me, a light that shines for me
My life is worth the livin', I don't need to see the end.’

The song returned this morning. Well, the words at least. I was driving to Colombo with my daughter. There are times we talk or rather she listens. Sometimes I feel I am talking to myself, but that’s alright with me. And with her. She simply says, ‘you have an amazing capacity to self-entertain.’  

Entertainment is good.

As always I skipped from one story to another and another. I told her about that trip to Horton Plains and how my friend Nishad Handunpathirana, now Sangeeth Nipun with a doctorate in music from Lucknow, had twisted the words to yield the following, ‘Like a bird in the water, like a fish in the air,’ and how we all laughed and kept repeating the lines at the top of our lungs on the top of the world, no less!

That came later though. I was telling her about Abū 'l-Muġīth al-Ḥusayn ibn Manṣūr al-Ḥallāj, submitting to a sentence to be stoned to death for blasphemy, dancing and chanting ana’l-ḥaqq (I am God). Stones rained on him. He laughed. He laughed because those who stoned him did not know (and I interjected, ‘Father forgive them, for they do not know what they do,’ and added, pointing out that it was parenthetical, that Jesus, on the cross, also said or is said to have said, ‘Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani’ or ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’).

That’s just one version of the death-story, but it’s one I like. Anyway, someone threw a rose. His sister, they say. And he stopped. Wept. He knew that someone knew. For me, it meant, ‘if god is omnipresent, then god should be within me; ergo ‘I am god.’  

‘Maybe that’s why they say god is love. Ergo, love is god.’

Said that too. And returned to ‘submission.’ Or surrender.

‘My friend Mahendra Silva once said that love is about placing your neck on a chopping block, handing a sword to the beloved and saying, ‘now behead!”’ Absolute, absolute submission. Like Manṣūr. The deliberate and happy embrace of total vulnerability. Sacred nudity, if you will. Conviction. Like Jesus, on the cross, saying ‘I assure you and most solemnly say to you, today you will be with me in Paradise.’

No, I didn’t say the last line to my daughter. I just asked if I sounded like someone delivering a treatise. She said gently, ‘you seem to think so.’ And I laughed. ‘Self-entertainment,’ I said. She smiled.

Later, I looked for a poem I wrote about Manṣūr and sent it to her (I titled it ‘There will be a rose’).

Striding down an empty street,
so much like a King;
nothing ahead, nothing behind,
and on either side
the multitude screaming;
Mansur danced the dance of the sublime,
singing the praises of the lord:
“Ana al Haq, Ana al Haq, Ana al Haq....”
So fervent the conviction,
so true the word,
it had to rain and how!
Stone after stone after stone,
making a monument
a blasphemous sepulchre
for Mansur Al Hallaj, Son of God.
Eli, Eli, lamma sabacthani?
And yes, there was Veronica
with a rose-petalled kerchief.
and then the tears.
And Mansur
risen from the dead
once again unafraid
walks the streets of love
lined with screams and hand-grenades.
There is a humble song
of love and roses,
of waiting and knowing
and a scattering of body
in the disavowal of divinity.
Listen!

Veronica, I wrote, referred to the widow who gave Jesus her veil so he could wipe her forehead. Made sense to me, considering the context of divinity, faith, compassion and human frailty in the Manṣūr story. At least it did when I wrote it decades ago. I think I should delete the last line, 'listen!' with 'It must be Mansur.'

Later, when wondering what I should write, I thought of sweet or rather the sweetest surrender. I checked the lyrics of that song. The engine directed me to Sarah McLachlan’s song by the same title.

‘Sweet surrender is all that I have to give.’

Love. Yes. That’s surrender. The sweetest there can be. 

[This article was published in the Daily News under the weekly column title 'The Recurrent Thursday']

Read more

Who remembers Lt Manohara De Silva?

 

It’s more than 16 years since what is known as the thirty-years war came to an end.  Over 5 million were born after 2009 and that’s close to 20% of the current population.

Who remembers that time? Some do. Time blurs of course, but those who were old enough know what those thirty years were like. And then there are some who just cannot forget — those who lost someone they loved, someone they associated or knew.

We remember and we forget. We know numbers. We know the aggregate. We know history in sweeps. Details? Not so much. When thousands die, individual names get swept away by the enormity of it all.  And we forget.

Lieutenant Manohara De Silva was never forgotten by those closest to him. Family and friends. He joined the Army after leaving school, sometime in the year 1989. He was in the infantry. He died in action four years later.  

His school friends from Royal College remembered him. Again. There was a difference this time. They inaugurated something in his name: the Lieutenant Manohara de Silva WWV Memorial Education Scholarship. It was officially launched at the Army Headquarters. Accordingly, 12 deserving students received scholarships, each worth Rs 60,000. The plan is for them to be given this amount annually until they leave school or until they graduate from university should their academic careers extend beyond the Advanced Level. Additionally, Lieutenant Manohara De Silva’s friends hope to increase the number of scholarships in the coming years. In addition, his classmates also donated a shield for the annual inter-troop first aid competition of the scout group in his name, 'the Lt Manohara De Silva WWV Memorial Trophy.'

The ceremony was attended by the Commander of the Army, the Principal of Royal College, and members of the Group of ’89, led by Mr. Senaka Senaviratne. Senaka is well-known for his philanthropic endeavours. He’s all about Sri Lanka and a large part of his ‘Sri Lanka’ is Royal College. Innumerable are the projects he has initiated or supported over the years. Indeed, as he pointed out in his short speech, his vacations in Sri Lanka are all about work. Social work. To him it’s a debt owed, he said.

Senaka observed that his friend had made the supreme sacrifice for his country. Lieutenant Manohara De Silva, Senaka said, has paid in full the debt owed to the country and fellow citizens on account of receiving free education. That debt, as far as his friends are concerned, remains unpaid. But then again, they are conscious of what is owed and they duly pay ‘loan instalments’ so to speak.

He also mentioned the other classmate they lost during the war, Lieutenant Hisham Ousman of the Gajaba Regiment who laid down his life for his country in Welioya on the 11th of September, 1991. Hisham was one of the best boxers produced by Royal College and has the rare distinction of being adjudged Best Boxer at three successive Stubbs Shield meets, from 1986 to 1988. His friends established a boxing scholarship in Hisham’s name in 2013. They are survived by five others who joined the security forces from the Group of 1989.

For some reason nothing was done in Manohara’s name until this year. It’s inexplicable, Senaka said.

‘We are sad that we waited so long. In fact we don’t have an answer to the question of why we waited so long,’ he said.

That error has now been corrected.  In doing so, the Group of ’89 reiterated the love and deep respect they have for their dear friend. They also support students in need and in doing so keeps the memory of their friend alive. And warm.

Manohara De Silva hailed from Ambalangoda. He was a quiet boy, apparently, and never meant any harm to anyone or ever uttered a harsh word. In fact his friends had been quite surprised when they learned that Manohara had joined the Army. He is even quieter now. His memory, though, will not remain silent, for this initiative taken by his friends will give voice to many who will no doubt in turn articulate in one way or another the truth of a selfless life that nurtured them through difficult times. They will remember the name. And they will pay their own debts not just to the Manoharas and Hishams of our country but every citizen who in some small way contributed to their education. So Senaka hopes.

Twelve deserving students received scholarships during the event. This thoughtful initiative reflects the deep respect the Group of ’89 holds for their friend and aims to support students in need while keeping his memory alive.

Thirty two years have passed. Thanks to his friends, we know his name, Manohara De Silva. Lieutenant Manohara De Silva. There are tens of thousands whose names we don’t know. We owe them a debt. Senaka and his friends continue to chip away.  It won’t hurt if the rest of the country follows their suit. We are, after all, incredibly indebted.

[This article was published in the Daily News under the weekly column title 'The Recurrent Thursday']

Read more

At the intersection of literature, sociology and philosophy

 

A few weeks ago, writing on the library that is Professor Desmond Mallikarachchi, I recounted a conversation that took place more than twenty five years ago at the end of a thesis defence. My last official words to the committee were as follows: ‘I have come to understand that the distinctions between sociology, philosophy and literature are arbitrary and false. I do understand the need for disciplinary boundaries and that you are required to make sure I stay within them.’

The words just came out. Partly as an excuse for incompetence. And in part because I wanted to diffuse a tense situation. Deep down, though, I was speaking the truth of my convictions. The moment returned a couple of days ago.

I was revisiting Desmond, as I had promised. We spoke for about five hours. Needless to say it was quite enlightening and stimulating to listen to him. There were some breaks when he had to attend to household matters. I was in one of his working rooms. There was a table with notes, some in files and some not. Piles of them. And a book shelf too. I browsed.  I would tell him later that it made me want to visit him more frequently.

Anyway, he spoke about philosophers and sociologists, philosophies and sociologies. He told me he was writing an article about Emil Durkheim for a volume felicitating his colleague Kalinga Tudor De Silva. He spoke about the unwarranted fixation that sociologists have with facts. Or numbers. He spoke of the ideological preferences that may have influenced Durkheim. Many other things which would bore the reader, probably, and even me in a different context.

Anyway.

Anyway, we discussed methodology, quantitative and qualitative. I spoke about research I had conducted more than 25 years ago which I worked into the thesis that was defended and ended as described above. It was about a cluster of villages identified with particular castes. My piece was about the ways in which people located in lower strata of the caste structure negotiated honour and dignity. These, I said, cannot really be quantified or even categorised.

Facts are important. Numbers too. Marx, Desmond said, was all about ‘data.’ He used numbers. He was relentless in gathering information, much of which came as numbers. Quantitative data. But, he pointed out, it was not only about numbers. Value can take other forms, he implied. And he offered a gem of an example.

‘I was once lecturing some sociology students in a masters program. One of the students asked me if I could explain the difference between “quantitative” and “qualitative.” I said “yes.’ I said I can do it in verse. And offered them this line, “menalada puthe kiri dunne mama numbata” (did I, my son, measure the milk before giving it to you?).’

It is the last of a four line verse. The mother visits her son because, she says, she was hungry. The son gives her two measures of rice. She says that love for a child turned her blood into milk (as is commonly said) and observes that measurement was non-existent in her mind when she fed milk to her son when he was an infant.

There. In a nutshell.

Desmond had added, ‘Can you measure the quantum [of sorrow] in a single tear?’

If one person cried his heart out and another’s eye yielded just one tear, would the sorrow of the latter be less? Not all things can be quantified. Quantity does not always tell the whole story.

Is a novel contained in 567 pages or, let’s say, is made of 134,982 words superior somehow to one that is told in, say, 81 pages or has just 21,453 words? Is a novel necessarily a superior literary product than a short story. Is poetry a lower caste genre? Are poets inferior to those who prefer to write prose? That’s another way of illustrating the point.

There is error is ‘reading’. Desmond said, ‘If you send a Buddhist, a Christian and a Marxist to America and ask them to describe it, they will come up with three readings vastly different from each other.’ Subjective, yes. And yet, numbers are not innocent either. They too mislead.

Twins, then? Separate and yet not. Not mutually exclusive, I suggested. He agreed.

Our reading of things and processes is framed by what we have previously read, our outcome preferences and our inevitable limitations. Our writing is influenced by what we ‘read’ and how we’ve read it, both substance and style. So, are we a bunch of half blind or mostly blind dabblers seeing the world in fragment and fervently believing that we’ve seen it all? At times, yes. Even scholars are not immune to such ‘ailments.’ They are tripped by conviction. And they quarrel with one another. Sometimes that’s a good thing. Sometimes not.  

Anyway.

Anyway, I left Desmond’s place in Naththarampotha around 5.30 after a brief chit-chat over a cup of tea. Driving back to Colombo I realised that in that moment of milk, blood and tears, I was privileged to inhabit a rare intersection of sociology, philosophy and literature.

And now, three days later, writing this, the dedication I penned at the beginning of the thesis draft I had submitted suddenly came to me:

‘To the silent eloquence with which silence trips the word.’

Again, cheeky. Flippant. An excuse too, one might say, for incompetence. At some level though, it is again an intersection of sociology, philosophy and literature. A Naththarampotha moment anticipated a quarter of a century before. An end it was and still can be. And yet, a beginning too.

[This article was published in the Daily News under the weekly column title 'The Recurrent Thursday'] 

Read more

The Desmond Mallikarachchi Library

 

Way back in the late nineties, the Department of Development Sociology, Cornell University, had a weekly seminar series. On Wednesdays, if memory serves. Typically some renowned academic who happened to be visiting the university or someone specifically invited would speak on a subject on which they had written extensively. Occasionally a graduate student, usually someone who has just defended or was about to defend a doctoral dissertation would be invited to speak. On one occasion, three masters students spoke.

‘Here I am, standing between two colleagues who had just defended their theses, required to speak on my as yet undefended and perhaps indefensible thesis.’

Ice-breaker. Nerve settler. I got quite a few laughs. I remember the tentative title and not much else: ‘Journeying with honour and dignity in search of the vague and indeterminate.’ Today, a quarter of a century later, I can laugh at it all, but instead tend to smile.

Anyway, I did attend the ‘thesis defence.’ After much cajoling and veiled threats. I still remember the pre-defence meeting with my committee (Shelley Feldman and Phil McMichael) and the then Director of Graduate Studies, Chuck Geisler. I ran into Shelley where two corridors met, just outside the room where the meeting was to be held.

‘So young man, do you have a story?’

Shelley was an excellent academic and possessed a strong and even fearsome personality. I just smiled and said, ‘Shelley, when did I ever not have a story?’

We both laughed.

‘We are not putting you on the spot. No one is being judged here,’ Chuck’s voice was reassuring. Then he asked, ‘so what do you have to say?’

That was putting me on the spot, right there.

‘If the question is, “what have you been doing in the eight months that have passed since you last met with your committee,” the short answer would be ‘living.’  

Cheeky. But I had more to say.

‘This thesis is like a plate of rice I’ve been eating for two hours. I’ve lost my appetite and would rather push the plate away. That said, I have completed the thesis.’

And I drew from my bag three printed-and-bound copies of the manuscript. They were thrilled. The defence was scheduled. And I was told, ‘with minor revisions we could give you a terminal masters; but to officially put you on course for a PhD you would have to do extensive revisions.’  

‘I have come to understand that the distinctions between sociology, philosophy and literature are arbitrary and false. I do understand the need for disciplinary boundaries and that you are required to make sure I stay within them.’

Parting shot. With another smile.

My colleagues, as was the practice, had prepared post-defence snacks. I updated them. And said, ‘I am not sure what we are celebrating here.’

So, there were no revisions, minor or major. I returned home, having completed the coursework for the PhD and nothing else to show. Still just a graduate. Unemployed. And wandered into journalism.

Since then, there have been occasions when I’ve asked myself a few questions beginning with ‘what if.’ Rare. And quickly dismissed. I continued however to acquaint myself with ‘the latest’ in social theory, mainly because of sporadic and yet stimulating conversations with accomplished friends in academia, especially Kanishka Goonewardena and Pradeep Jeganathan. I’ve flirted with the idea of returning to postgraduate studies. Again, rare and quickly dismissed.

Until last evening.

Last evening I visited Prof Desmond Mallikaarachchi at his home in Naththarampotha, Kundasale. At 81, he was still thinking, processing and writing. Still alert and insightful. Stimulating. It reminded me of S B D De Silva, the unheralded but easily the most intellectually honest economist the country has known, who was researching well into his nineties.

Desmond spoke of Gananath Obeyesekere, David Leach, Bruce Kapferer, Marshall Sahlins, Terry Eagleton, Pierre Bourdieu, Richard Gombrich, Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Antonio Gramsci and of course Karl Marx. He was not name-dropping. The names were mentioned in the course of elaborating on some idea related to some topic we happened to be discussing. He spoke of his own work, almost in passing.

I listened, along with two other contemporaries from Peradeniya University, Premasiri Werawella and Priyantha Wickramasinghe. Desmond was formally attached to the Philosophy Department of that university. We were not listening to a philosophy professor, though. He sounded like a sociologist at times and at times an economist, a psychologist, a linguist, a historian, a political scientist and an anthropologist. And although in so many ways poorer than he, none of us felt that he was talking down to us. He spoke as though to equally accomplished colleagues. We offered the rare comment. He listened. Responded. I cannot remember ever encountering such scholarship and humility resident in a single person.

I was too young, too distracted by the politics of the moment and affairs of the heart to understand that Desmond Mallikarachchi was like a university within my university. Too stupid to look for him.

Too late.

Peradeniya, like most universities in Sri Lanka, divides itself into disciplines. I studied sociology. ‘Philosophy’ was another country. I didn’t have a visa and didn’t even think of a visit. That shouldn’t have been an obstacle because Desmond was a ‘global citizen’ and went wherever he wished. My bad.

Again, ‘what if…’ came to mind. For a moment. But there’s consolation. There is his work. And there’s the open invitation: ‘aney, onama velavaka enna…mehe navathinna puluwan (please come…whenever you want…you can stay the night).’

I don’t know if there are doors and windows in Desmon Mallikarachchi’s heart and mind. Probably not, but even if there were, they are always open.

It’s too late for me to return to theses that never got written, I know. Yesterday I learned that there’s a process I had to follow in order to access the Peradeniya University Library. I will go through the paces soon. There’s also a library in Naththarampotha, Kundasale. The Desmond Mallikarachchi Library. No protocols. No tedious processes to follow. Open 24/7.

I will visit.   

[This article was published in the Daily News under the weekly column title 'The Recurrent Thursday'] 

 

Read more

Feet enable, eyes soar and mind translates into poetry

In most workplaces, especially offices, there’s invariably that one person whose eyes stray to one of two places: the seat of the immediate superior and the seat of he or she who is directly below in the official hierarchy.  This is of course usually among executives but it’s a phenomenon that can be found elsewhere as well.  

But why? Simple. The gazer is concerned about upward mobility, i.e. the seat ‘above’ and at the same time is worried about being replaced.  

Nothing illegal or unethical about it of course. Moreover if the said person attends to tasks efficiently and maintains expected quality of work such concerns should not bother anyone. Except of course the would-be-replaced and the would-be-replacer. It could be unnerving for some, but then again in such situations people can always grow a second skin, cultivate a poker face, go through the day and bide time.

I have wondered about eyes lately. Gaze, to be more precise. My thoughts had strayed to what is arguably a rather boring mathematical proposition: square feet. Essentially a measurement of area. Floor space, mainly. We see the term in the classified ads related to rentals, mostly with regard to office space but sometimes apartments and houses as well.  

It’s all about square feet. Area, But also feet, literally. Space to move around. The prerogatives of feet. And that’s two dimensional. There’s also wall space and that’s not about feet in the walking sense. Which brings us to the vertical. And roofs or ceilings. And therefore, to ‘spacious.’

All of these things would probably bore to death an architect or interior designer for whom anthropometrics is a topic covered in their first year in university. In fact it was my friend Kanishka Goonewardena, then an architecture student at Moratuwa University, who introduced the term to me. He would later move to planning and eventually a reader of cities as political space. Back then too, obviously, he knew of space but in a less ideological sense. He got me thinking about the vertical. The third dimension.

Feet essentially live in a two-dimensional universe. Not so the eyes. They can wander left and right, slide down stairways, climb walls and even dark across a ceiling. That’s in an enclosed space. Step outside and dimensions expand exponentially. Yes, you need feet to get you out of the door and to places of vantage from where gaze can travel farther. Feet take you places. Eyes colour those places.  

Then there’s the mind. It is a device for extrapolation. And synthesis. It allows us to ‘see’ that which is not yet visible or is no longer visible. It moves in an intangible universe whose boundaries are defined only by our own limitations.

The three work together or rather are interdependent to a greater or lesser degree. They can be independent too. You could, for example, walk mindlessly, totally oblivious of the world around you. You could sit somewhere, close your eyes and yet drive your mind to faraway places. Or let colour, line and space repaint the mind as they will or prompt feet to move closer to obtain detail or speed away in horror.  

My inimitable travel companion and photographer of island magic in innumerable combinations of light, shade, colour, shape and texture, Tharindu Amunuguma, told me once to let my feet do the zooming. A tip. Practical. Learnable. Feet enable. Eyes soar thereafter or else dwell on nearby details — footprints, scattered leaves, blades of grass. The mind translates all into poetry. Sculpts. Re-sculpts. Constructs. Deconstructs. They are companions on a journey whose pathways can be randomly picked, planned or chanced upon. 
 
There are of course individuals who are perhaps disappointed, perhaps resourceful, perhaps pernicious, perhaps ambitious, perhaps patient or impatient individuals filled with rancour, hope or resignation  with their eyes darting in one of the two directions mentioned above. They may be missing amazing stories, but then again one might argue that they’ve spared themselves unnecessary distraction. There are others too. Fettered or unfettered.

A few ago I watched Doctor Zhivago with a group of young people. Yesterday I asked each of them who their favourite character was. Some liked Lara, some Zhivago and a few were partial to Pasha Antipov. One, though, mentioned Kostoyed Amoursk played by Klaus Kinski. He was a prisoner on the train Zhivago and his family were travelling on, from Moscow to the fictional town Yuriatin. Chained. At one point he rattles his chains and says, ‘I am a free man,’ and adds, ‘I am the only free man on this train.’

We are all prisoners of one kind or another, some, as the line in the song ‘Hotel California’ goes, ‘of [their] own device.’ And even if unfettered unlike Kostoyed, we can be limited or limit ourselves, unless we free feet, eyes and mind, and welcome dimensions that have gathered dust or the passageways to which have remained unknown.

There are vistas that await our feet, our eyes and our minds. Let us travel, then. 

[This article was published in the Daily News under the weekly column title 'The Recurrent Thursday'] 

 

Read more

Chess IS education

 

On October 20, in Astana, Kazakhstan, the world body for chess (FIDE) and the International School Chess Federation (ISCF) signed a Memorandum of Cooperation to jointly promote scholastic chess globally as per the deflation of 2026 as ‘The Year of Chess in Education.’ Accordingly, the two organisations will launch a series of international school team tournaments as the flagship event of the ‘Chess in education 2026’ programme.

Well, it’s not as though there’s been no chess in schools or ‘chess in education’ all these years. Kids even as young as just three years old have taken to chess for decades if not centuries. In Sri Lanka, the vast majority of active players are still in school. Schoolboys and schoolgirls have won the national title on numerous occasions, some as young as 12! In fact the national team, going back to the 1970s, always had one or more school going players. If you prefer a quantitative argument, consider the fact that over 27,000 kids take part in the age group tournaments organized by the Schools Chess Association. And that’s from all provinces, all districts and all educational zones! Sri Lanka boasts of the highest percentage of chess players in the region.

That said, the FIDE/ISCF move is timely and significant.  Today it is widely recognised that chess is not an extracurricular activity for schoolchildren. It is co-curricular for many reasons. Let’s consider.

Chess develops critical thinking. It is a game, certainly, and has all the attributes one associates with competition of any kind. And yet, it also trains students to assess situations, anticipate consequences and make informed and rational decisions, all of which are core aspects of analytical education.

Chess enhances problem-solving skills. Yes, every move offers a player a problem to be solved. So they assess options and pick the most effective way forward. That’s essentially what mathematical and scientific reasoning is all about.

Chess develops concentration and focus. The players have to demonstrate sustained attention and patience. They must learn to quell distraction of any and every kind. They have to reduce the dimensions of the universe to 64 squares and the innumerable permutations therein. Such traits invariably get applied in all classroom/learning environments, making for better learning and greater efficiency in the application of knowledge acquired.

Chess encourages strategic planning. Players have to think ahead, consider multiple move-sequences and also adapt to the unexpected, be it pleasant or unpleasant.

Chess encourages responsibility and accountability. Since every move has consequences, they have to live with the choices they make, reflect on thinking-errors, adjust preparation and correct flawed ways of thinking. They can’t pass the buck, so to speak.

Chess strengthens memory and cognitive capacity. It is a game where pattern-recognition plays an important role. It is a tactical game that boosts short and long term memory as well as general learning ability.

 

Chess promotes creativity and imagination. One has to visualise piece combinations and relevant squares for the pieces that make for a better position and thereby improve the chances of winning. The player has to then come up with strategies that can deliver the ‘visual’ that is desired. And here, imagination and innovation come into play. That’s ‘thinking outside the box’ long before they encounter the phrase in the classroom. That’s science and also the arts. It’s poetry.

Chess instills patience and resilience. Players have to cope with mistakes and continue to look for ways of recovery. They have to grind out wins from seemingly equal positions, pushing a tiny advantage, making it bigger incrementally until the aggregate yields a clear and winning edge. Takes time. Requires patience.

Chess supports mathematical and logical reasoning. There’s geometry involved. There’s pattern-recognition as mentioned above. There’s calculation too. In short the reinforcing of foundational STEM skills.

Chess helps bridge cultures and foster social learning. It is a universal language, in fact, and as such helps connect peoples across age, background and culture, fostering communication, respect and the worth of shared learning experiences.

One could add more.

Now, it is true that some of the above are not entirely absent in other sports. There’s problem-solving, analysis, patience, resilience and even geometry that can be  learned in rugby, cricket, soccer or any other sport. And yet, it would be quite a challenge to think of any discipline that requires players, especially children as young as 4 or 5, to ‘problem-solve’ for 3-4 hours at a stretch and sometimes 2-3 in a single day. 

Chess in education is an excellent idea. Chess in education is an old idea, yes. Chess IS education. That’s something educationists are fast learning and if Sri Lanka wishes to be ahead of the curve then it would be remarkable for the Ministry of Education to consider introducing chess to the formal curriculum. It’s a fun way of learning skills that will be with the learner for life. 

Let's extrapolate: since almost 300,000 kids unroll in grade one in a given year, just imagine what that number of young people armed with the above-mentioned skills could do for the country and the world 15-20 years down the road. Remember that the education system will continue to generate similar numbers every year thereafter.

Chess is education. It’s time we learned this.  

 

[This article was published in the Daily News under the weekly column title 'The Recurrent Thursday']

 

Malinda Seneviratne is a FIDE Instructor and a long-time mentor of chess players at his alma mater, Royal College. He was the Manager/Captain of the Sri Lanka team that won a category gold medal at the Tromso Olympiad in 2014.  

Read more

The length and breath of time

 

Long years ago, there were people who measured distance in terms of the number of cassettes that the bus driver would play from point of departure to the destination. Others measure distance in hours. So many hours from A to B. Today, if you use Google Maps, for example, you can find out not only the distance, in kilometers or miles, but how long it would take you, depending on your  mode of transport.  

Time. We measure it in years in the case of a person’s age for example. Time. We measure it in weeks or days, for example how long it would take to apply for and obtain a national identity card or passport, how long it would take to complete a degree etc.

‘How long,’ is an interesting term.

I calculate at times. I check how long it’s been since I was in Grade One, how long since I entered university, how long since I graduated, how long since I worked in a newspaper office, how long since I first met someone, how long since the British conquered our nation, and how long since they left (and of course the inevitable postcolonial follow-up, ‘did “they” ever leave?’

How long has it been since my mother passed away? My grandmothers, grandfathers, friends from school and university: how long has it been since they died?  Years. Exact dates. These are usually associated with answers to such questions.  

I have been asked by my late mother’s former students who have been too busy with their lives to check on such things, how she’s doing.

‘She passed away,’ I answered.

‘Really? That’s sad. When?’

‘Sixteen years ago.’  

‘Such a long time ago; I am sorry, I didn’t know.’

Such exchanges there have been.  

But ‘such a long time ago,’ is an observation that invariably takes me to something said by Wijerupage Wijesoma, the irrepressible and self-effacing cartoonist who created witty, insightful and telling political commentary with a few lines and words for decades.

It happened more than twenty years ago when we both worked for Upali Newspapers. Wijesoma drew for both the Island and the Divaina. At the time I was writing a series of articles on people his age who had excelled in their chosen field. During the course of the interview, I asked him about his family. I wrote,  ‘he is also a family man, and has raised 6 children with his wife, Mallica Gunatilleke, whom he describes as a wonderful woman, who was always very supportive.’

And quoted him: ‘She was a good sport, and was willing to drop all her work and take off with me if I suggested some out of the ordinary expedition such as going to Horton Plains.’

He told me that she had passed away some 16 years previously.

‘A long time,’ I said.

Yes, that familiar response. His rejoinder wasn’t common.

 ‘It is not long for me,’ he said softly.

Sixteen years to a seventeen year old is almost all the time he’s been on this planet. Sixteen years to someone who is 64 is a quarter of his life. The true length of sixteen years or seventy five for that matter or rather perception of that duration depends on what’s being talked about and by whom.

My paternal grandmother died 33 years ago. At her funeral my father said, ‘today would have been my late sister’s fiftieth birthday.’ She had died when she was just 10 years old. He added, ‘It took me this long to understand how much I missed her.’  

He remembered.

‘The doctor misdiagnosed. She got worse. She was in Mother’s arms and simply said, ‘Ammi, mama yanawa (mother, I am going).’

How long is an hour? How many days are there in a year? Do we really know and even if we did, does it have the same meaning for two different people?

‘You will not be able to meet her as often from now on,’ someone told a friend who was much younger, again more than 25 years ago.  His friend responded, ‘I know how to turn moments into eternities.’

They both laughed.

Time is longer than life, some communities in Africa say and they are right. ‘Time is a coat,’ was the title of a Master’s Thesis written by a sociologist who studied the political economy of the garment industry, a line that resonates with Marx’s Labour Theory of Value.

Time is long. Sixteen years is long.

‘Not for me,’ Wijesoma said softly.

He took my breath away then. And each time I remember, I forget to breathe. 

 

 [This article was published in the Daily News under the weekly column title 'The Recurrent Thursday']

Read more