“A committee is not a structure but a plant. It takes root and grows, it flowers, it wilts and dies scattering the seed from which other committees will bloom in turn.” This is the demystification of that bureaucratic and political panacea for most of political and bureaucratic ills - a committee – by Northcoate Parkinson [...]
While Sri Lanka’s literati were paying their ‘salaams’ to the visiting literati and glitterati at the Galle Lit festival, our ‘Salaams’ go to a group of intrepid schoolboy actors of a school at Labuduwa, not far from Galle town, where the international literary festival was held. The school, Labuduwa Sri Dhamma Vidyalaya a ‘national school’ [...]
The usual reaction when a vehicle crashes on the road injuring and even killing others is: Hang the driver. This seems to be the response to the accident that took place on Thursday morning when a school van crashed into and oncoming bus injuring 9 children in the vehicle, some of them seriously. Certainly the [...]
A politician’s desire to be remembered is only natural. To be remembered forever would be the acme of political desires. What better way would a Sri Lankan desire be remembered than for his name be inscribed in the Mahavamsa. (The Mahavamsa we have to explain to those uninitiated in our history is the record of [...]
Nikang Kangkendiriya B.A. (Unemployed) was in a deep depression. ‘Tell me uncle, the best way of committing suicide’, he asked. How I became his uncle, I am completely unaware of, but in these days men with grey stubble on their chin and women with missing teeth keep ‘uncle-ing’ me. I let Nikang’s reference to his [...]
Soon after President Percy Mahinda Rajapaksa issued the proclamation on May 16, 2010 appointing the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission, we wrote in this column that the whole idea of Sri Lankans learning lessons on anything from anyone was a misconception. We Sri Lankans do not learn lessons but love to teach others, we said. [...]
UNP stalwarts who had virtually written off Ranil Wickremasinghe from party leadership would have visualized his emerging ghost in the Siri Kotha counting room when his pile of votes kept mounting. Wickremasinghe was expected to be knocked out at Tuesday’s vote but the spunky fighter came back in the traditions of his ancestor J. R. [...]
Keeping up with the Joneses (or as we Sri Lankans say, Pereras or Silvas) is perfectly natural. The Caveman would have no doubt been harangued by Mrs. Caveman to have the granite grinding stone in her kitchen replaced by white quartz which her neighbour had. Today, Mrs. Silva wants her ‘luxury’ re-conditioned Japanese car replaced [...]
In 1996 Sri Lankans were proclaimed the World Champions of Cricket when that buccaneering captain Arjuna Ranatunga lifted the World Cup from the dazzling Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto at the Gaddafi Stadium after thrashing the Australians who were considered to be invincible, in a bruising battle. It was the greatest achievement for this little [...]
It was Percy Mahinda Rajapaksa in Wonderland when the much celebrated Southern Highway was ceremonially declared open. Alice (in Lewis Carroll’s book) who fell down a rabbit hole into a wonderful new world found it getting ‘curioser and curioser’. To Mahinda Rajapaksa the unfolding scenario would have made him think he was becoming greater and [...]
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