In early 1996, when Geoffrey Bawa first asked Pradip Jayewardene what kind of home he wanted, he replied: “My perfect house would be a garden.” Pradip knew that if anyone could do this, it would be Bawa. He had visited the architect’s Lunuganga estate in Bentota, and had fallen instantly in love with what was … Continue reading
Colombo, Sri Lanka – In 2006, a Russell’s viper sank one fang into Sanath Weeraratne’s left hand. Weeraratne immediately started to bleed profusely as the anticoagulant properties in the venom took effect. He knew what could come next: more bleeding from the rectum and the gums and blood-stained vomit. The blood could seep into the … Continue reading
Let it keep, the moment when Katherine Boo found herself lying on the floor with a punctured lung and three broken ribs in a spreading pool of Diet Dr. Pepper. Rewind, see her tripping over the unabridged dictionary, her body breaking as it met the floor. Keep rewinding, back over a decade to the beginnings … Continue reading
Philippa Gregory found Mary Boleyn when she was hunting for a female pirate. It was in a book about the Tudor navy that she discovered a ship named after Anne Boleyn’s sister. For a moment Gregory was certain there must have been a mistake. But there in the footnotes was Mary, and in her the … Continue reading
Sri Lankan activists will tell you that the island has a commission culture. In the last 15 years alone, people have stood up and testified before dozens of committees – some, such as the Udalagama Commission, investigating human rights abuses, and others, such as the Mahanama Tilakaratne and Paranagama Commissions, looking into abductions and … Continue reading
Wilpattu, Sri Lanka’s oldest and largest national park, was once a warzone. The fighting between the Sri Lankan state and the militant separatist group Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) that began in the 1980s had spilled over into these wild lands. Wildlife researchers Anjali Watson and Andrew Kittle remember hearing stories from soldiers stationed … Continue reading
The raucous troupe of monkeys that visit Dr. Jinie Dela’s house in Panadura do not realize how closely they are being studied. Dr.Dela, a biologist, with a doctoral degree in primate ecology and behaviour, treats her sprawling one-acre garden like an enormous, open laboratory. The primates who come visiting, sometimes on a daily basis, have … Continue reading
For a change, Kevin Sanders has decided to let someone, or more accurately, something else count the apples in his orchard. This isn’t the first time his idyllic farm down in Australia’s Yarra Valley has played host to robots and their handlers, so Sanders knows what to expect. Moving soundlessly down the corridors between trees, … Continue reading
When Ahilan Arulanantham heard that the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation had named him a recipient of the $625,000 “Genius Grant,” one of the first things he thought about was how much he would like to spend some of it on supporting human rights work in Sri Lanka. Since the announcement was made … Continue reading
Ruvan Ranatunga and Shihan Anthony John did not know quite what to make of the Japanese team. It was early October and they were in the middle of one of the most demanding of the 4 Desert Races – a 6 day-long, 242 km crossing of the Atacama on foot.The plateau in Chile stretches 960 … Continue reading
Smriti Daniel 