In Asgi Akbarally’s family, a car is never just a car. Sitting in his office off Darley Road, Asgi tells us each car has a story. A collector and connoisseur, he is behind a beautiful new coffee table book titled ‘Classic and Vintage Automobiles of Ceylon’. He and his sons Hussain and Shiraz together selected … Continue reading
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
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
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 world of high fashion is divided into people who have worn a hat by Stephen Jones and those who have not. In the former camp are the aristocrats you’d spot at Ascot and a dozen actresses including Nicole Kidman, Keira Knightley and Cate Blanchett. There’s Carla Bruni Sarkozy and British Prime Minister David Cameron’s … Continue reading
Growing up Sri Lankan, Hindu and transgender in Lancaster, U.S.A would give D’Lo all the material he ever needed to be a comedian. His stories about a little boy “trapped” in the body of a girl born to conservative, immigrant Tamil parents are as hilarious as they’re heart wrenching; and they’re what he brought to … Continue reading
Though she was born in Sri Lanka, raised in Zambia and is currently resident in America, Dr. Neelika Jayawardane has long since resigned herself to being Indian. “In Africa, if you’re South Asian, you’re Indian,” she says. “They see us as one monolithic Indian, just as we see Africans the same way. Instead of being … Continue reading
Smriti Daniel 