To anyone who knows her, it is clear Jean Arasanayagam is her own most penetrating, most persistent interrogator. In a dance that her readers are familiar with, Jean asks the questions and then finds the answers in her poetry and prose, in fact and fiction. This is nowhere more evident than in latest collection of … Continue reading
The tragic suicide of a friend when he was 13 years old inspired Arun Ravi to develop Mevoked. He remembers his friend’s parents wishing they had only known of the despair their son was feeling. Decades in the making, Arun’s new app is an answer to them. When you install it – a basic version … Continue reading
There are 54 in all – some names you will know, others you will not. The author whose seminal novel is described as the ‘starting point of Sinhala literature’; the poet, disappeared in the last phase of the war, who imagines her own ‘fearless death,’; there are the writers who stand astride multiple cultures, born … Continue reading
Considering the timing, it’s a pity Salman Rushdie isn’t giving interviews. It’s been 25 years since the fatwa that turned his life inside out was issued by the Ayatollah, it’s been 10 years since he founded PEN World of Voices Festival in response to 9/11 and it’s been two years since ‘Joseph Anton’, a memoir … Continue reading
To Ajit P. Yoganathan a malfunctioning heart is also an engineering problem. To a select group of surgeons, he is the man they visit before they enter the operating theatre. They are looking to him to understand what to expect and to help them make the smartest possible choice. Currently the Regents’ Professor in the … Continue reading
There are strangers in Slave Island tonight and they are, well, acting strange. As we walk toward Rio Cinema, we see a woman running the opposite way. She appears to be talking furiously to herself until you see a camera, perched on a contraption supported by a band around her waist. She is past us … 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
What do you say to a man who has kept you waiting for five years? Before us stands author and poet Vikram Seth; shirt open to the waist, hair tousled by hands and breeze, he’s uncertain of who we are and why we have come to intrude on him. I’m wet from the hips down, … Continue reading
Surrounded by masons at work, Tristan Al-Haddad is laying bricks. His white t-shirt isn’t quite as pristine as it was a few hours ago, his hands are coated in dust, grime and sweat beads on his brow. People driving by on Horton Place need only glance over into the grounds of the Lakshman Kadirgamar Institute … Continue reading
The first face I see belongs to Lord Ganesh. As is traditional, the Remover of Obstacles greets every devotee who arrives at the newly opened temple in Wellawatte. Inside, three goddesses await but this space is dedicated primarily to one of the eight forms of the goddess Luxshmi – from the benevolent hand of Aishwarya-Luxshmi … Continue reading
Smriti Daniel 