Farah Zahir knows that for a parent, not knowing can sometimes be the heaviest of burdens. Still, she is often the last place they go looking for answers when their child isn’t developing normally. A post-doctoral fellow working at the Friedman lab and the British Columbia’s Genome Sciences Centre in Vancouver, Canada, Farah studies the … Continue reading
Where do Dr. David Young’s loyalties lie? Without missing a beat, the Sri Lankan cricket team’s honorary surgeon says, “always with individual athletes.” Dr. Young is a familiar face here – he’s been travelling to the island, sometimes several times a year, for 17 years now. An orthopaedic surgeon, his patients have included the likes … Continue reading
The crumbling remains of two forts (one Dutch, one British), an old barn once used to store arecanuts and some rare silver tokens bearing the legend Fanam are all that remain to tell the tale. They are all connected to Ruwanwella – one of the key points along the ancient road that once stretched all … Continue reading
The Indian government wanted its disabled citizens to vote. Faced with mounting social pressure, leading parties were debating disability issues in their stump speeches, vying for votes. Here was a departure from business as usual – the Disability Act, passed in 1995, guaranteed equal opportunities to disabled people but little had come of it. Tom … Continue reading
50 to 1: Those are the odds that a contestant will become Australia’s next Masterchef. As the season marches relentlessly on, the odds improve but the standards get tougher, the challenges increasingly impossible. The weak (or often the merely unlucky) are ruthlessly weeded out; amateur pastry chefs and makers of homemade pasta begin to disappear … Continue reading
There’s a dinosaur in the garden. His pedigree is somewhat confused though he’s clearly a carnivore – that much is obvious from his sharp, white teeth says Dr. Patricia Vickers-Rich, patting him affectionately on his green cement head. ‘Tyron’ has lived in the quiet house on Barnes Place for a while now and in fact … Continue reading
Madhubashini Dissanayake-Ratnayaka is on the run. Her colleague is on the phone with a question related to work, her younger daughter is waiting for a ride (they’re late for chess class), her elder daughter will need to be picked up soon and her usual parking spot was taken. The mother of two wouldn’t usually expect … Continue reading
Like so many little girls, 10-year-old Shehara Liyanage was fascinated by her mother’s wardrobe. Shey longed to be properly grown up and inside that cupboard were all the props she needed to pretend she already was: outsize heels to totter around in, make-up to be inexpertly slathered on and beautiful sarees to wind around herself. “It … Continue reading
2012 marks Charles Dickens’ Bicentennial. As part of a worldwide celebration, the British Council in Sri Lanka asked five people to imagine what Dickens would write today (if he were in Colombo.) Our answers are collected up on the Dickens Microwebsite. Charles Dickens is sweating profusely. He swelters, he cooks, he poaches gently in the heat … Continue reading
For Delon Weerasinghe, going grocery shopping is not unlike setting out on a treasure hunt. Many of the ingredients he keeps in his small pantry aren’t easily available and an adventurous spirit is a prerequisite for cooking with them. What comes out of his kitchen is, as a result, rather unusual – like the lotus … Continue reading
Smriti Daniel 