Warning: The following story contains confronting images, which may offend or disturb some readers. Wayan Juli likes to invite tourists to visit the dead. “The people of Trunyan actually practice a spiritual custom that you are unable to find in other parts of Bali. It is unique,” Bali-based tour guide Juli told ABC RN’s Return Ticket. … Continue reading
Archive of Memory, launched this month, is made up of voices from across seven decades of independence. In the introduction to the book – edited and curated by Malathi de Alwis and Hasini Haputhanthri, with the accompanying photographs by Sharni Jayawardena – the editors note that the publication is as representative of the diversity of … Continue reading
Exciting research based on finds at the Fa-Hien Lena (cave) in Kalutara are transforming anthropologists’ understanding of how Homo sapiens moved through our world some 45,000 years ago, while offering an explanation for why we are today the solitary survivors from a family tree that once included other hominins such as Neanderthals and Homo erectus. … Continue reading
The town of Gampola in Sri Lanka’s Kandy district houses a 100-year-old structure comprising five “line rooms”—each windowless square, just ten by 12 feet in size, was once home to an entire family of estate workers. Though elsewhere people still live in such cramped accommodations, this particular row of rooms has been turned into … Continue reading
The hot, dry month of March is particularly sacred to the devotees who flock to the Kannaki Amman kovils in Sri Lanka’s Northern Peninsula. The auspicious days of Panguni Thingal or ‘Mondays in March’ will come to an end somewhere in Mid-April but for her people, this Amman will always have something to offer. … Continue reading
There is a time in the wake of her great rage – after she has torn her left breast out, after she has called fire down on the city of Madurai – when a widowed Kannaki finds a moment of quiet by the banks of a river. Across from her boys are tussling, engaged in … Continue reading
Some of the most interesting moments in Aaron Burton’s film ‘My Mother’s Village,’ come when people sit watching themselves. There, captured on the screen, they are as they were over 30 years ago. The passing of time solidifies in that moment, etched in to the very lines of people’s faces. Chandrawathie’s face now, for instance, … Continue reading
Under a blazing sun, a forest of metal towers shimmer. The constant rumble of heavy machinery fills the air, as clouds of dust are kicked up by bulldozers and big trucks. When it’s complete, the New Chilaw Grid Substation currently under construction will supply the island’s North Western Province with an estimated 450MW of power. In … Continue reading
There was nothing about Karen Lee’s early life that destined her for the job she has now, that of a curator with the Smithsonian Institution’s National Numismatic Collection in Washington D.C. “We’re Czechoslovak immigrants and my family didn’t feel comfortable in museums,” she says, “We were a lower middle class family. I was not taken … Continue reading
It begins in Kotte and ends in Kanda Uda Rata. Along the way, it passes through Hanwella, Ruwanwella, Hettimula, Ganethenna and Balana. The ancient Colombo Kandy route is 13 miles longer than its modern counterpart but it is not the added miles that would have defeated modern motorists. The palanquins and elephants that moved along … Continue reading
Smriti Daniel 