In late 2011, a 28 year old Sohan Dharmaraja was just wrapping up his PhD thesis in Computational Mathematics at Stanford. With a Masters from MIT in the subject already under his belt, his current interest was in how excruciatingly accurate high fidelity real world simulations could be played out on computers – if you crashed a Prius into a … Continue reading
For Joanna Luloff, the author of ‘The Beach at Galle Road,’ travelling had to be about more than just tourism. As a student, she had worked at a local prison, tutoring the inmates in English and after she graduated joining the Peace Corp seemed like the best way to merge her interest in teaching, volunteer … Continue reading
Enter Mahen Chanmugam’s house and you will find it impossible to escape the scrutiny of Lord Ganesh. Lord of Beginnings and Remover of Obstacles, the elephant-headed son of Parvathi is everywhere: a dozen tiny Lords cast in metal observe you from their spot on the dining table and another one sits wreathed in incense by … Continue reading
Ravibandu Vidyapathi dances alongside the ghost of his father. Their shadows follow the two dancers as they leap and twist and then fold into each other. A little later, when Somabandu Vidyapathi’s sketches are projected onto the large screen at the Punchi theatre, they fill the space with dancers dressed in glorious costumes, frozen as … Continue reading
Prof. Gehan Amaratunga is fond of quoting the Irish statesman and philosopher Edmund Burke in his classes at Cambridge University: “Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.” In Prof. Amaratunga’s field of nanotechnology, however, little is littler than Burke could have ever conceived. Prof. Amaratunga … Continue reading
Among the Zoroastrians, a small community united in their faith in the God Ahura Mazda, it is traditional to adopt one’s profession as a family name. This was why when Jimmy, the eldest son of a prominent Pakistani Parsi family, decided to follow in his father’s footsteps and study engineering, his surname was decided for … Continue reading
Julian Fellowes, the creator of the acclaimed British period drama Downton Abbey, once called his costume designer Susannah Buxton a “sculptress in cloth”. Her designs for the show’s first two seasons won her an Emmy Award for ‘Outstanding Costumes for a Series’ in 2011 (one of the record breaking 27 Emmy’s the show has garnered) … Continue reading
When Mahé Drysdale pulls his beautiful Olympic gold medal out of the back pocket of his jeans, it is greeted by a happy gasp from all the journalists in the room. It’s been just over 10 weeks since New Zealand’s legendary rower stood on the winner’s podium in London and the heavy, gold medal suspended … Continue reading
The 12 women in Venuri Perera’s weekly movement class at the Halfway Home in Mulleriyawa are getting used to dancing without music. Diagnosed and treated for mental illnesses, they are in recovery from conditions that range from schizophrenia and depression to the milder learning disorders. Venuri is only a few classes in, but she knows … Continue reading
Sulochana Dissanayake lives in a crowded house. There’s an elephant on her porch and the decapitated head of a giant on her dining room table. There’s a herd of animals – a zebra, chimpanzee, a ‘gangster’ penguin and another, smaller elephant – and a host of characters right out of Sri Lankan folklore (old Mahadanamutta … Continue reading
Smriti Daniel 