Random Rantings

“Oh…if only we had peace…”, “When are we ever going to have peace…”, “How can we do anything until we have peace…” Peace, peace, peace, peace, peace…for something so talked about and craved by so many, it’s quite ironic how few of us are actually prepared to face it when it actually comes into being…

If we are to go back in time to the days of our ancestors, way before colonisation…we would have seen a proud Sri Lanka, standing tall, united and independent with this almost inherent need to be self-reliant and communally productive, irrespective of superficial man-made boundaries! This is not to paint a naïve picture of the past but rather, to say that even though there was conflict it was not essentially ethnicity oriented. Needless to say, somehow, somewhere down the line this spirit of yesteryear seems to have died a natural death.

(more…)

Get good job, make lots of money, look after parents, build home of your dreams or apartment close to town, maintain ties with old friends while making new ones…hmmm oh yes… make mother happy – find good man and “settle down.”

(more…)

Note: Obviously written last Christmas…no idea why I didn’t post this earlier!!!

Thinking of Christmas now, the line from Band Aid’s “Do they know its Christmas time at all?” comes to mind. And not just in the sense they meant it but, in a whole different sense more relevant to “our times” you could say. It’s not just about the people in the war ridden parts of our land who would probably feel no different come Christmas or any other day for that matter, but rather, I refer to us all… Does Christmas mean nothing to us anymore? Can we officially announce the death of the ‘Christmas Spirit’?

(more…)

Note: Wrote this sometime end last year and thought I’d posted it then but, checked now and couldn’t find it so, I thought I’d re-post it just for good measure.

“We had just heard about the bomb down Green Path; an attempted assassination of the Pakistani Ambassador in Sri Lanka. The photographers had rushed to the site. After the initial phase of everyone making frantic phone calls to their families and friends to see if anyone had been affected, we all crowded around the TV to see what had really happened and get the “inside story” as it were. About half an hour later and none the wiser, I decided to take a stroll down to Green Path in the pouring rain. Why? I don’t really know…the closest I can come to explaining myself is that I wanted to (quite literally) get “hit” by reality! I wanted to feel something for once…I just needed to feel something…anything…it didn’t matter what…I was desperate to share in the pain, the suffering and the tears of my country…”

(more…)

“How many ICC officials does it take to change a light bulb? At least a committee of five, none of whom will have read the instruction manual, but each of whom will have a louder and more forthright opinion than the other about how best to do it. If that reads like the start of a bad joke, then it is nothing compared to its ending. Somehow a team of four of the most experienced officials in the game, plus a former Test captain in Jeff Crowe, managed to grab hold of the most luminous event in the world cricket calendar, and fumble so hopelessly that they ended up fusing the entire building.” – www.cricinfo.com

Well for disappointed Sri Lankan cricket fans the bungling by the ICC officials was only the tip of the ice-burg. Whilst we would have all loved it if our guys could have brought home the Cup, for me the bigger disappointment was that the Aussies made world cup history against us! A hat-trick win for the Aussies was just too much to bear. I mean, our guys have performed brilliantly throughout the series and fought their way to the final. That alone was achievement enough for me. If only we had lost to any other country on this planet! Sigh…but, I guess it was just not meant to be.

(more…)