The Colombo Telegraph and Uvindu Kurukulasuriya

 

A few days ago the website www.colombotelegraph.com ‘celebrated’ its 15ht birthday. Over the years dozens of political commentators have been featured on Colombo Telegraph (CT). They’ve mostly written about the political upheavals of the particular moment, but have for the most part drawn from longer histories and been framed by happier extrapolations. Eminently readable. As Carlo Fonseka might have put it, ‘even if you are not enthused by the substance, you could still read for style.’

Each piece inspired much commentary, not all of which could be saluted either for substance or style of course. My fellow journalist (at one point) and good friend Hafeel Farisz once made an observation about comments on my articles. He said he would be very upset. I told him that I don’t really care.  

There were times when I did scroll down and even engage. If it was downright stupid and caustic I would just say, ‘at least you read what I write, but I am sorry I don’t have time to indulge because I have other articles to write which of course you could rant about later….have a nice day.’ And I would add a smiley.  My hunch is that such a comment would irk the ‘offender’ no end. But I wouldn’t know. I didn’t go there. As I said, I had other things to do.

I haven’t written to CT in years. I haven’t written much anyway, not since the end of 2024. I haven’t visited CT much either, except when something pops up on my feed or if the evergreen curator, Uvindu Kurukulasuriya alerts me.  

Anyway, a few days ago, i.e. on CT’s birthday, I wrote a short appreciation. Uvindu’s comment was that it was like an appreciation written for someone who has died! That’s true. CT, at least for me, is more about Uvindu than anything else; the man’s energy, commitment, passion and relentlessness. Maintaining all that, almost single-handedly, for 15 years is no mean achievement.

Uvindu is still alive. For the record. And kicking too, in his own way if with less verve. I didn’t mean it to sound like an obituary, but then there’s so little praise and so much blame penned about people that encomiums of any kind tend to be read that way.

I remember writing about the veteran sports journalist R L Fernando for the Sunday Island. I had left that paper when ‘RL’ passed away. He had his idiosyncrasies of course but was quite a personality nevertheless. Rex Clementine’s voice broke when he called and said, ‘Sad news, RL has passed away.’ So I write and Manik De Silva, the Editor-in-Chief carried it the following Sunday.

He called me, probably on the Monday afterwards and said ‘I realised you hadn’t mentioned that RL had died!’

So, such things happen. We write of the dead as though they are alive and the living as though they’ve passed on.  

Be that as it may, it goes without saying that we can’t ever write a person fully, for we don’t know all or enough. People are seen in fragment; in terms of the particularities of encounter.

I have many Uvindu stories. That happens when you know or know about someone for many years. He and I have had our differences of opinion, which would be normal even among those who are in agreement politically and ideologically. We were not. But there was one equaliser that made it all ok: we were and are convinced that the other’s conduct was framed by ‘best interests for the country,’ and not personal gain.

Anyway, let me relate one Uvindu story. I can’t remember when it happened, probably more than 10 years ago, but I am not sure.

It had to do with something nefarious indulged in by someone on the same (broad) political/ideological boat. Now it is well known for people to be lenient on political fellow-travellers. ‘In the larger interest of the party,’ is the excuse frequently trotted out. Uvindu was and is different. He couldn’t turn the other way. He told me about it, not as a fellow-journalist but as a friend. The following is a rough translation of what he said:

‘He took money from innocent people who believed in him. There was a widow of a principal who had donated her widow’s pension. A small amount, but the whole pension! I am sure my mother would have or must have done the same.’

This…….(fill in the blank space with choice Sinhala expletives)!

It was a Skype call. He was sobbing.

That’s Uvindu Kurukulasuriya. And that I believe is why CT is what it is. All heart. And a lot of mind besides.

 

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Colombo Telegraph: the year 2011 and thereafter

What was Sri Lanka like in the year 2011? That’s fifteen years ago. Long before ‘The Aragalaya,’ before the crisis that was the logical end-point of decades long dabbling in patently flawed economic think and perhaps precipitated by key policy errors of the Gotabaya Rajapaksa government, not to mention the Covid pandemic and the Ukraine-Russia war.

It was a time of political stability which of course doesn’t necessarily mean things were all rosy on the political front. Mahinda Rajapaksa had just won a second term on the strength of policy direction that ended a decades long war on terrorism. His main rival at that election, Sarath Fonseka, the former Army Commander who played a key role in the defeat of the LTTE, was behind bars for reasons of political expediency more than anything else.

The opposition was in disarray: the United National Party had to ‘borrow’ a candidate to face Rajapaksa. The JVP was just a tag-along political outfit. The people, at least going by the numbers, were not unhappy with a Rajapaksa second term. The economy was doing well, perhaps thanks to the ground being cleared for economic activity following the end of the war rather than any policy-magic of the political leadership.

In other news, Sri Lanka made it to the World Cup final. Things weren’t too bad. The year 2011, upon reflection, was another country in another century.

Things happen during any calendar year. Always. Of the political and economic ‘overall’ certain things stand out, but what’s remembered depends on what’s important and inconsequential for the person recollecting. Academics, especially economists and political scientists, on the other hand, would be better positioned to offer diagnosis and prognosis. The rest, for the most part, probably remember that which was too important to forget at a personal level.

Few would think ‘Colombo Telegraph’ if nudged to recall ‘2011.’ Understandable. Things such as newspapers and websites start slow. It takes years to secure a memory-slot in the minds of the readership. And even when this happens, it’s just one of those things taken for granted. When and how things started aren’t really important.

Uvindu Kurukulasuriya had to remind me. Uvindu didn’t exactly launch the website that’s known as ‘Colombo Telegraph’ and what came to be known as ‘CT.’ There was no elaborate or even modest launch. One might say ‘a whim’ but Uvindu isn’t your typical whimsical journalist. He was, even at that time, well-known and respected as a journalist who understood the importance of research-generated facts. He had the added advantage (or maybe ‘disadvantage’) of a conscience. Ethics were important to him. He knew the meaning of the dictum ‘facts are sacred, comment free.’ He had the ideological and political drive to comment, and the memory too, but for the most part he drew from established facts.  

Uvindu lived in the UK. Self-imposed exile and a generally laidback lifestyle sans any significant personal ambitions, materialistic or otherwise, offered him enabling ‘leisure.’ That said, the work was anything but leisurely, as anyone engaged in content-creation of a political kind would know. It’s relentless. He mined Wikileaks. He offered comments. And, by and by, people started contributing analytical pieces. FoC. Over time, I believe ‘getting it into CT’ did much for the personal/professional profiles of some authors; a clear indication that CT had risen to a certain degree of prominence in the firmament of online discourse.

I cannot remember how my association with CT began. I do remember visiting Uvindu or being invited to his place a few days before he left Sri Lanka. I can’t remember the year. We weren’t buddies. In fact, the first time I met him, at the Borella Kanatta. I can’t remember whose funeral it was. Uvindu punched me (in a good hearted way) for my involvement in a response-ad to a full page ad that the Free Media Movement had inserted in the Daily Mirror. He appreciated my political engagement and critiqued something I had written (I believe it was an article on H L Seneviratne). We became friends, even though ideologically and therefore politically we were in two different camps.

Anyway, at some point, Uvindu asked me to write to CT. I think he was kind enough to accommodate articles I wrote for newspapers. I may have written a few pieces just for CT, but they were exceptions. My recollection is that for the most part Uvindu wanted people to write fresh pieces for CT.

We communicated. He sometimes called. Sometimes there were Skype calls. It’s those conversations that told me how meticulous Uvindu was in processing content for CT. He insisted that I stop using double-space between sentences. I complied simply because I knew it was tedious for him to correct that particular error. And eventually I got used to ‘single-space.’ It was not just such technical things; like any good editor Uvindu would now and then get back to me on spelling and sentence structure, and at times even claims made.

He was kind. CT generates a lot of commentary and for the most part Uvindu doesn’t filter. On occasion, though, he would point out a particularly acerbic comment on something I had written (and there were many, by the way, for most of the readership were ideologically aligned with Uvindu’s positions and therefore opposed to mine!) and ask if it’s ok to go. I can’t remember saying ‘not ok,’ ever. Such courtesies there were.

From my first editor, Manik De Silva, I had learned that a good editor should have a liberal editorial policy. Uvindu accommodated me. Others may have not. And have not, actually.

It’s about friendship, but not only that. There were commonalities that counted. For example, our histories in that amorphous country called ‘left politics,’ particularly the LSSP. In my case, by association. There were values we shared.

We were friends and ideology and political preferences notwithstanding we supported each other. Sometimes he would get me to ‘fix’ a headline or ‘clean up’ some news item, even if the content or slant might be disagreeable.

He would often inquire about my financial situation, knowing well that it is never easy being an unemployed (and unemployable, perhaps) graduate. He has helped me with whatever he could afford at various points over the last 15 years. As he has many people. Millions, I am sure, if it were all added up. CT generates income, but not the kind of bucks that could be mined if Uvindu was that way inclined. He just did what he thought needed to be done. He just lived a modest life, satisfied with basic ‘necessities.’

I’ve seen it all. In 2017, when I visited the UK with my family, Uvindu took us on a rudimentary tourist-round. And invited us to his place for dinner. As always we talked politics, but more than that about just being, the lives we led, our friends (and political opponents). We laughed. We always do when we talk over the phone.  

I can’t think of a man more principled than Uvindu when it comes to ‘The Left.’ Unlike most ‘leftists’ he didn’t look the other way when ‘comrades’ erred. He held them to high standards and if they strayed he called them out.  The late Victor Ivan, for example.

There are things I know about Uvindu which I will not mention because it’s too personal. The emotions, I mean. He has a sharp, inquisitive and analytical mind, but the organ that endears him to me and which is what CT is all about, come to think of it, is Uvindu’s heart. I’ve seen it.
 
The year 2011. A lot of things may have happened in those 12 months. Uvindu Kurukulasuriya started the Colombo Telegraph. Whether CT precipitated or in some way contributed to the political unfolding of the past 15 years, I cannot say. Shaped thinking, that it did. And that’s good enough.

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No free passes to the Land of Integrity

['The Morning Inspection' is the title of a column I wrote for the Daily News from 2009 to 2011, one article a day, Monday through Saturday. This is the 226th article in the new series that began in December 2022. Links to previous articles are given below]     

 The late Professor Ashley Halpe, delivering the keynote address at the annual conference of the Sri Lanka Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies (SLACLALS) in 2011, pointed out the importance of ‘liberation from our complicities.’

Today, more than a decade later, in a discussion with Khury Petersen-Smith at Brookline Booksmith in Boston, Ru Freeman spoke about free passes.  

'Transformation requires us to be willing to say that just because you are Sri Lankan or Black or Trans, you don’t get a free pass on certain things. You don’t get to be a racist or classist or whatever or brute even. Everybody is like that’s ok because they are Black or South Asian or they are foreign.' 

She illustrated with an example. She said that on the way to the event with a friend, driving from Amherst to Boston, they had to deal with an erratic driver ahead of them. The vehicle must have belonged to some company for she said that she had called them up and complained. 

‘That erratic driving could kill someone. He shouldn’t get a free pass just because he looks like me.’  

And it comes down to the personal level as well, not just about ‘others who look like me,’ but in fact ‘me.’

 

‘My youngest daughter would say something and I would say “Oh, she’s a they.” And she’s like “No, it’s not a they, it’s they.” This is something I have to get used to and I am getting used to it.’

I have drawn extensively from Prof Halpe’s comment, both in writing and in life. It’s a check. It’s a call for self-examination, self-criticism.

Let’s talk about Thileepan, the LTTE member who died during a ‘fast unto death.’ Some claim that he was dying anyway; some claim from some kidney ailment and others from wounds sustained in battle. Either way, the decision to engage in that particular form of protest (if indeed it was his and not a directive from the rather rigid and unforgiving politico-military apparatus he identified with) itself shows commitment to the cause he was fighting for.

 

That it was a terrorist organisation, that he identified with an ideology which considered killing unarmed civilians acceptable, that he was a trained militant and may have himself been guilty of crimes against humanity, that during that very time the LTTE had decimated rival Tamil militant organizations, and that it was little more than an exercise of making the best out of a bad situation etc., should not detract from the affirmation of commitment and loyalty.

Celebrating commitment to a cause and loyalty, however, should not blind anyone to the unmistakable truth that Thileepan was no Gandhi. Celebrating commitment and loyalty with scant regard to context and the larger truths about the LTTE is irresponsible. If it is all a product of ignorance, it is not hard to understand. On the other hand, many who are championing Thileepan today, are certainly not babes in the woods. They know. They choose to abstract an act out of all relevant contexts. That’s giving Thileepan, the LTTE and themselves a free pass. There’s complicity in all of that. Free passes. 

All of this reminds me of Uvindu Kurukulasuriya who runs the Colombo Telegraph, a website  (www.colombotelegraph.com). We have ideological differences. We attach different values to different things. We could accuse each other of making mountains out of molehills, reducing mountains to molehills, seeing mountain and molehill as monolithic entities, missing nuance and forgetting context, but I believe we trust each other to be honest in intention and also to have enough humility to admit error.

 

 

Uvindu, more than anyone I know, is acutely aware of the possibility of complicity. He knows about free passes and how easily they are given to friends and political fellow-travellers. This is why he is detested by those who one would expect to be in his political and ideological camp. So he is dismissed as a traitor by those who call themselves leftists even as he is vilified by those who take issue with his political convictions.

The Brookline Booksmith discussion was a celebration of Ru Freeman’s book ‘Bon Courage.’ Khury Petersen-Smith made the observation that courage is not the same thing as fearlessness. ‘Fearlessness, he said, ‘can be uninformed, maybe in a placid way.’ Maybe this is why we talk of ‘the courage of his/her/their convictions’ but not ‘the fearlessness of his/her/their convictions.’

Being informed. That’s the key. Wanting to be informed, doing the hard yards in obtaining all necessary information, sifting them, analysing them and drawing conclusions are therefore prerequisites for integrity in action.

It is easy to make sweeping statements which are essentially preceded by the sweeping away of that which is uncomfortable and disconcerting, The relevant denial may help advance a political project but if a more civilised outcome is envisaged, it distracts and detracts. Simply put, we don't have the right to be erratic drivers and would do well to call out erratic drivers and driving. We just can't afford to, really.

It takes courage to be conscious of and informed by the possibility of complicity. It takes courage to be conscious that there can be no free passes if integrity is to be affirmed. There’s a price one has to pay to be courageous. Uvindu pays that price. He knows that there are no free passes to the borderless territory called ‘Integrity.'

So, a thank you goes to Uvindu, to Prof Ashley Halpe, my sister Ru Freeman, Khury Petersen-Smith, Brookline Booksmith. 

malindadocs@gmail.com.

Other articles in this series: 

Hector Kobbekaduwa is not a building, statue, street or stamp

Rajagala and the Parable of the Panner

Let's show love to Starbucks employees!

You've got mail?

Octavio Paz and Arthur C Clarke in the stratosphere 

Enduring solidarities 

Coco 'Quotes' Gauff!

9/11 and the calm metal instrument of Salvador Allende's voice 

What a memory-keeper foregoes 

Whitman, Neruda and things that wait in all things

Thilina Kaluthotage's eyes keep watch

Those made of love will fly

Profit: the peragamankaru of major wars

Helplessness and innocence

The parameters of entirety

In loving memory of Carrie Lee (1956-2020)

Mobsters on and off the screen

Transfixing and freeing dawns

We're here because we're here because we're here

Life signatures

Sha'Carri Richardson versus and with Sha'Carri Richardson  

A canvas for a mind-brush

Sybil Wettasinghe's shoes

Love is...

A stroll with Pragg and Arjun along a boulevard in Baku

Meditation on tree-art

Daya Sahabandu ran out of partners but must have smiled to the end

Gentle intrusions 

Sleeping well

The unleashing of inspiration

Write, for Pete's sake

Autumn Leaves Safeness

 Sapan and voices that erase borders

Problem elephants and problem humans

Songs from the vaekanda

The 'inhuman' elephant in a human zoo

Ivan Art: Ivanthi Fernando's efforts to align meaning

Arwa Turra, heart-stitcher

Let's help Jagana Krishnakumar rebuild our ancestral home

True national anthems

Do you have a friend in Pennsylvania (or anywhere?)

A gateway to illumination in West Virginia

Through strange fissures into magical orchards

There's sea glass love few will see 

Re-residencing Lakdasa Wikkramasinha

Poisoning poets and shredding books of verse

The responsible will not be broken

Home worlds

Ownership and tenuriality of the Wissahickon

Did you notice the 'tiny, tiny wayside flowers'?

Gifts, gifting and their rubbishing

History is new(s)

Journalism inadvertently learned

Reflections on the young poetic heart

Wordaholic, trynasty and other portmanteaus

The 'Loku Aiya' of all 'Paththara Mallis'

Subverting the indecency of the mind

Character theft and the perennial question 'who am I?'

Innocence

A degree in people

Faces dripping with time

Saji Coomaraswamy and rewards that matter

Revolutionary unburdening

Seeing, unseeing and seeing again

Alex Carey and the (small) matter of legacy

The Edelweiss of Mirissa 

The insomnial dreams of Kapila Kumara Kalinga 

The clothes we wear and the clothes that wear us (down) 

Every mountain, every rock, is sacred 

Manufacturing passivity and obedience 

Precept and practice 

Sanjeew Lonliyes: rawness unplugged, unlimited 

In praise of courage, determination and insanity 

The relative values of life and death 

Feet that walk 

Sarinda's eyes 

Poetry and poets will not be buried 

Sunny Dayananda 

Reunion Peradeniya (1980-1990) 

What makes Oxygen breathable?  

Sorrowing and delighting the world 

The greatest fallacy  

Encounters with Liyanage Amarakeerthi 

Beyond praise and blame 

Letters that cut and heal the heart 

Vanished and vanishing trails 

Blue-blueness 

A forgotten dawn song from Embilipitiya 

The soft rain of neighbourliness  

The Gold Medals of being 

Jaya Sri Ratna Sri 

All those we've loved before 

Reflections on waves and markings 

A chorus of National Anthems 

Saying what and how 

'Say when' 

Respond to insults in line with the Akkosa Sutra 

The loves of our lives 

The right time, the right person 

The silent equivalent of a thousand words 

Crazy cousins are besties for life 

Unities, free and endearing 

Free verse and the return key

"Sorry, Earth!" 

The lost lyrics of Premakeerthi de Alwis 

The revolution is the song 

Consolation prizes in competitions no one ever wins 

The day I won a Pulitzer 

Ko? 

Ella Deloria's silences 

Blackness, whiteness and black-whiteness 

Inscriptions: stubborn and erasable  

Thursday! 

Deveni: a priceless one-word koan 

Enlightening geometries 

Let's meet at 'The Commons' 

It all begins with a dot 

Recovering run-on lines and lost punctuation 

'Wetness' is not the preserve of the Dry Zone 

On sweeping close to one's feet 

Kumkum Fernando installs Sri Lanka in Coachella, California

To be an island like the Roberts... 

Debts that can never be repaid in full

An island which no flood can overwhelm 

Who really wrote 'Mother'? 

A melody faint and yet not beyond hearing 

Heart dances that cannot be choreographed 

Remembering to forget and forgetting to remember 

On loving, always 

Authors are assassinated, readers are immortal 

When you turn 80... 

It is good to be conscious of nudities  

Saturday slides in after Monday and Sunday somersaults into Friday  

There's a one in a million and a one in ten 

Gunadasa Kapuge is calling 

Kumkum Fernando installs Sri Lanka in Coachella, California 

Hemantha Gunawardena's signature 

Pathways missed 

Architectures of the demolished 

The exotic lunacy of parting gifts 

Who the heck do you think I am? 

Those fascinating 'Chitra Katha' 

The Mangala Sabhava 

So how are things in Sri Lanka? 

The most beautiful father 

Palmam qui meruit ferat 

The sweetest three-letter poem 

Buddhangala Kamatahan 

An Irish and Sri Lankan Hello 

Teams, team-thinking, team-spirit and leadership 

The songs we could sing in lifeboats when we are shipwrecked 

Pure-Rathna, a class act 

Jekhan Aruliah set a ball rolling in Jaffna 

Awaiting arrivals unlike any other 

Teachers and students sometimes reverse roles 

Matters of honor and dignity 

Yet another Mother's Day 

A cockroach named 'Don't' 

Colombo, Colombo, Colombo and so forth 

The slowest road to Kumarigama, Ampara 

Sweeping the clutter away 

Some play music, others listen 

Completing unfinished texts 

Mind and hearts, loquacious and taciturn 

I am at Jaga Food, where are you? 

On separating the missing from the disappeared 

Moments without tenses 

And intangible republics will save the day (as they always have) 

The world is made of waves 

'Sentinelity' 

The circuitous logic of Tony Muller 

Rohana Kalyanaratne, an unforgettable 'Loku Aiya' 

Mowgli, the Greatest Archaeologist 

Figures and disfigurement, rocks and roses 

Sujith Rathnayake and incarcerations imposed and embraced 

Some stories are written on the covers themselves 

A poetic enclave in the Republic of Literature 

Landcapes of gone-time and going-time  

The best insurance against the loud and repeated lie 

So what if the best flutes will not go to the best flautists? 

There's dust and words awaiting us at crossroads and crosswords 

The books of disquiet 

A song of terraced paddy fields 

Of ants, bridges and possibilities 

From A through Aardvark to Zyzzyva  

World's End 

Words, their potency, appropriation and abuse 

Street corner stories 

Who did not listen, who's not listening still? 

The book of layering 

If you remember Kobe, visit GOAT Mountain 

The world is made for re-colouring 

The gift and yoke of bastardy 

The 'English Smile' 

No 27, Dickman's Road, Colombo 5 

Visual cartographers and cartography 

Ithaca from a long ago and right now 

Lessons written in invisible ink 

The amazing quality of 'equal-kindness' 

A tea-maker story seldom told 

On academic activism 

The interchangeability of light and darkness 

Back to TRADITIONAL rice 

Sisterhood: moments, just moments 

Chess is my life and perhaps your too

Reflections on ownership and belonging 

The integrity of Nadeesha Rajapaksha 

Signatures in the seasons of love

To Maceo Martinet as he flies over rainbows 

Sirith, like pirith, persist 

Fragrances that will not be bottled  

Colours and textures of living heritage 

Countries of the past, present and future 

A degree in creative excuses

Books launched and not-yet-launched 

The sunrise as viewed from sacred mountains 

The ways of the lotus 

Isaiah 58: 12-16 and the true meaning of grace 

The age of Frederick Algernon Trotteville 

Live and tell the tale as you will 

Between struggle and cooperation 

Of love and other intangibles 

Neruda, Sekara and literary dimensions 

The universe of smallness 

Paul Christopher's heart of many chambers 

Calmness gracefully cascades in the Dumbara Hills 

Serendipitous amber rules the world 

Continents of the heart

  

The allegory of the slow road

 

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