There is a lot of talk about the present situation of Ravaya newspaper and its continuation with the financial difficulties it faces. There are stories saying that the paper would be bought by Milinda Moragoda in the same way the Sunday Leader was acquired by Asanga Seneviratne last year. Few weeks ago, Ravaya’s founding editor published an article explaining the situation of Ravaya from his perspective.
Whatever said and done, I don’t believe that Ravaya should die a natural death as some bloggers anticipate. Ravaya must be the only remaining alternative newspaper of the country and it is already doing a good job by targeting a special spectrum of readers. There are questions about its founding editor’s political biases but even with that, Ravaya is much better than other Sunday Newspapers that promote gossip, myth and fake patriotism.
I have enjoyed Ravaya since I was a schoolboy (when it was a magazine) since my Marxist eldest brother bought it on a regular basis. While educating us about the local and international politics, Ravaya also enhanced our knowledge in literature and current affairs too.
There will be not much use in Ravaya as a “news” paper anymore as we have already read around 90% of the Ravaya’s news items in the first page before Friday from other websites. But its columns and features are very valuable for us. Imagine the value of the paper for those folks who don’t read English and have no Internet.
I also don’t agree with some who say that market forces should decide of the existence of Ravaya. If that is the case, most of the libraries throughout the world would have been closed by now. Good things need support and subsidies to exist.
I read හත් පෙති මල, (The Flower with Seven Colours – Cvetik-Semicvetik) the famous Russian children’s story as a kid. It was so mesmerizing that I longed for reading it again after I became a grown-up but could not find a copy. (When I was a kid we had ample access to Sinhala translations of Russian literature as my late father was an ardent leftist.)
Since of late, my 4 year old son, Abhilash keeps demanding stories before sleeping. I have almost run out of stories I know and now have started looking for stories I read as a kid. Since it is difficult to find hard copies I search for them on the Net. While searching for හත් පෙති මල on the Net, I found three valuable links to the story. Find them below if you too are interested.
When I first met Major Dushyantha Yapa, an amazingly courageous totally blind soldier it was somewhere in 2007 at Ranaviru Sewana, Ragama. Some friends of mine from Australia and the USA had arranged some donations to Ranaviru Sevana and I was introduced to Dushyantha at one of the visits I made to Ranaviru Sevana.
Dushyantha was in army uniform and he had dark sunglasses covering his eyes. What attracted me most was his broad smile. I don’t know how someone in his circumstances can smile like that. He is totally blind as a result of his final battle with the LTTE at Mankulam in 1998.
Being blind has not affected his spirits. He is always positive minded and treat everyone with a warm smile and makes any newly introduced person very comfortable within a few minutes. He has got that proverbial never-say-die attitude and takes things easily.
He has been in the Sri Lanka Army since 1995 and has taken part in many a battle from “Edibala” to liberate Vaunia – Mannar Road, to the last phase of “Jaya Sikuruy” operation. He was injured before two days of the winding up of the operation Jaya Sikuruy.
Dushyantha’s dad is a retired army captain mother is a retired graduate teacher. One of his brothers died of cancer in 2004. His younger brother works in a shipping company.
Dushyantha was an active athlete before he was injured and the blindness did not become a big barrier for his sports as he took up blind archery and kept winning tournaments. He once went to England for a blind archery tournament. Dushyantha possesses the national and army records on 100m, 200m and long jump events under totally blind category. He has also taken part in 2 Asian para games one in Malaysia in 2006 and next one in China in 2010. Read more about his sporting talents at http://dushyapa.wordpress.com/2013/03/01/dushyantha-the-fastest-blind-runner-in-sri-lanka-part-1-2/
Major Dushyantha is best known within the army ranks for his computer skills. He has contributed a lot to Ranaviru Sewana with his computer expertise. He is adept in computer programs that are made for the blind. Computers and the Internet have helped him to immensely minimize his disability and be in touch with current developments in and around the world. (Read his post about how the blind use computers at http://dushyapa.wordpress.com/2013/02/27/how-do-blind-people-use-computers/)
Dushyantha now works at Abhimansala, Anuradhapura as a Special Education Officer.
Dushyantha recently became a blogger after I kept encouraging him to do so as I thought his blog would be an inspiration to others. His English is exceptional and the post he wrote about the battle he was injured in is a good example to see his English skills. He has more or less the same vocabulary the war correspondent Iqbal Athas has in the above mentioned post. (Read the post about how he was injured in his own writing at http://dushyapa.wordpress.com/2013/01/29/my-final-battle-as-an-infantry-officer-and-last-memories-of-the-sighted-life/.)
It was widely published that the makers of the movie Sri Siddhartha Gautama spent a colossal sum of money on the epic film but I am confused as to what areas in the film the money was spent. Film looks like a low budget miscarriage of a movie rather than an epic movie. I regret the decision I took to watch the movie though I expected this type of a disappointment after seeing the list of names of the movie cast in the papers.
First, the movie was directed on a very weak script. Though it is mentioned at the beginning of the film that the script was approved by a large number of learned Buddhist dignitaries including monks, the script has many a flaw distorting the accepted story of the Prince Siddhartha on one hand and by creating a mess of a story without a natural flow on the other hand. I am not sure who to be blamed for this, either the script writer or the so called high class advisers.
There is no flow in the story which has a lot of abrupt incidents that are not connected well, similar to Professor Sunil Ariyarathna’s Kristhu Charithaya. Now that our filmmakers have made mockeries of both the Christ’s story and that of the Prince Siddhartha, they are left with only few other religious leaders’ life stories to mess up with.
Makeup and clothes don’t look attractive and I am curious if the clothes for the movie were bought at Pettah cloth sellers to cut the budget. The clothes don’t look suitable for a royal family at all.
So is the music of the movie. The background music is disastrous and there is not a single song in the movie that became a hit showing how poor the music composer was. Same can be said about the amateurish dance items of the film. I didn’t see the beauties that were in the history books in the royal dancing troupes. They were ordinary women with very poor dancing skills.
I don’t see the director taking any advantage by bringing second part of the movie up to the Prince’s renunciation of worldly pleasures and leaving the palace forward and then coming back to the birth of the prince.
Camera angles are so hopeless that they cut off heads of the main characters in many scenes. The same can be said about the weak lighting of the movie. The whole movie was filmed in darkness. Even the day scenes were not bright enough.
I don’t see a reason why the producers drafted in Indian cast for the film as there are enough local actors to make this disaster without the help of the Indian actors. Indians don’t add any value to the movie. The Indian actor who casts Siddhartha looks very lethargic, passive and dull and I wonder what happened to the handsome Prince Siddhartha who was supposed to be majestic, yet humble. It is a shame that Yashodhara had to be imported from India as if we can’t find someone prettier with better acting skills. Bringing in Ranjan Ramanayake has not damaged the film as much as I expected it to be. He doesn’t age throughout the film as in his real life. Prince Nanda, casted by Roshan Ranawana is in yet another childish performance as he has done throughout his career. Other Sri Lankan cast like Jeevan Kumaratunga, Wilson Gunarathne, Edwin Ariyadasa, Buddhdasa Vithanachchi, etc. hasn’t done any justice to the movie or the director hasn’t been able to get what is needed from them. Devadaththa, casted by an Indian actor is the only decent performance in the movie. It would have been better if he casted Siddhartha’s role as he has the right body built of a strong prince.
In most of the scenes where Indian actors perform, the dialogues are heard as if dubbed for a stupid Indian teledrama to Sinhala. The voices are so unnatural and they are breaking words in sentences in wrong places.
The makeup artists have failed to depict a natural pregnant Queen Maya. They have made her belly look like a football. Even at the scene of the childbirth the sal tree doesn’t have a single flower. In the story we had learnt that seven lotus flowers were bloomed in the first seven steps of the prince but this is not so in the film. One can see this scene done superbly in the Hollywood movie Little Buddha where Keanu Reevesplays Siddhartha. The director could have taken some good help from this movie.
The death of Kanthaka, the horse is very unnatural. The director hasn’t been able to do even simple things like these. Rather than taking the camera to the story, the director harps on too much discussion within the palace walls making the movie boring.
Fight scenes are so ridiculous at the so called showing off of the talents of the prince so much so that I feel like they are the scenes of a Blackadder movie.
Not showing Prince Rahula while he was the main focus of the scene is another big flaw. Nobody sees any reasons of doing that.
There is no excitement or climax at any stage of the film. This is one of the most boring films I have ever watched.
My friend Wasantha Samarakkody who helped me by giving his feedback on the movie says that he could make a better film than the director of Siddhartha.
Since I cannot be as harsh as Sri Siddhartha Gautama – A Mockery of Buddhism, I tried my best to keep a polite language while writing my review though I was even angrier than The Angry Cinephile who wrote this wonderful review.
I started my blog somewhere in 2007. By now there are over 77,000 hits for it. That is not a big number of hits for an active blog. That is not a bad number either. I don’t get that many comments though. But I do get a considerable number of telephone calls. I have put my contact details in the Contact Me page hence the telephone calls.
I get the most number of telephone calls for the post I wrote about VIP Radio. The problem here is that the callers think I am the one who runs the radio station. I don’t think most of these callers actually read the post I wrote. They just browse for the radio’s website and through the search results they come to my blog post and without reading it, they call me to request songs, complain about weak radio signals, etc. It takes a while to convince them I am just a writer and I have no relationship with the station.
I think I get a big number of hits for the simple book reviews I wrote after reading various books and Shakespeare dramas. It is surprising that my blog gets enlisted in their search results because there are hundreds of links in search engines to other more academic links for those books.
Some kids call me and ask if they can play computer games with Singer SINX-243AT laptop after reading my post on Singer SINX-243AT laptop. I feel sorry for the kids as I have to disappoint by answering in the negative as I am not a big game fan and don’t try that many games with my laptop.
After my post on selling my Bajaj Pulsar 200 bike through ikman.lk sometime back, people started calling me and asking if I can sell the bike to them. I can’t tell them today I regret selling it as the new Pulsar 150 I bought after selling the Pulsar 200 doesn’t give me the same pleasure as the latter.
During my last visit to Jaffna, on the invitation of Ms Gowri Ananthan, one of the founder members of Yarl IT Hub of Jaffna, I had the pleasure of attending the Yarl IT Hub’s January 2013 meeting with my friend Wasantha Wijewardhana. The event was held on Saturday, January 26, 2013 at IIS (Institute of Informatics Studies) City Campus.
Gowri is trying to make a prototype under the name of Himalaya Creations, so that there would be a proof of success and it could give courage for others to come back and form an industry in Jaffna, Gowri believes.
She further says that the Silicon Valley / an Industry will not form by itself, and someone should work on it. As per the vision states, Yarl IT Hub is formed to make Jaffna the next Silicon Valley.
There were around 50 youth at the meeting, mostly from ICT institutes in Jaffna. The organization’s vision is “To make Jaffna the next Silicon Valley.” There is nothing wrong in dreaming big.
This is the agenda of the meeting.
Introduction to mobile computing
Presenter: Bala
Team Lead
Student answers to 4 questions with respect to future of mobile computing – Gowthami from IIS
Introduction to Android Programming
Presenter: Vanjikumaran
Senior Software Engineer
Augmented Reality
Presenter: Vimal
Senior Software Engineer
Demo: Sujeewan (Demonstrated his final year under graduate project)
Arimaa team update – on the progress of the implementation of their concept)
Presenter: Jayakrishnan Rajagopalasarma (Leader of the team which won Yarl Geek Challenge – Season 1)
Yarl IT Hub Update
Presenter: Sarveswaran
Lecturer
We listened to the first 4 presentations and out of them only the first two sessions were in English. I wished the rest of the programs also would be in English. But if the youth are more comfortable with Tamil, presenting in Tamil can be justified. I found the participants’ English was good enough though.
The presenters were very energetic and knew their subject areas well and the attendees also were very enthusiastic and actively participated in the sessions.
Their blog is quite resourceful and you can download past presentation slides and articles as well. I think they should also upload the presentations of the January event also as quickly as possible.
It is high time that Refresh Colombo people invited members of Yarl IT Hub for their presentations and vise versa. We can achieve a lot together.
I read inside two days. (Apparently the author also has written the entire book inside two days.) It is a short but inspirational novel written by Brazilian writer Paulo Coelho. It was first published in 1988 and originally written in Portuguese. As of September 2012 it has been translated into 56 languages and sold 30 million copies worldwide.
The book is about a young Andalusian shepherd called Santiago who tries to go after the treasure shown to him in a recurring dream. He first dreams of marrying a merchant’s daughter and in his trip to pyramids in Egypt, he meets an Arabian beauty and he immediately falls in love with her. She also returns her love. Santiago continues his journey to the pyramids and meets with many a danger on the way and even at the pyramids. Since he holds onto his dream till the last moment and he finally gets the desired treasure and returns to his love.
More than the literature value, the book is admired by positive thinking promoters as an inspirational story to go for one’s destiny without waiting for it to happen. The book says how “omens” help one reach the ultimate goal.
Last Friday (25th of January, 2013) I went to Jaffna with Nirrosion. Er.. it’s not a spelling mistake, that’s how he writes his name. We started from Ja-Ela at around 10 pm in his car and I don’t remember anything beyond Nochchiyagama till I reached Nallur in Jaffna as I fell fast asleep. It was around 6 am when we reached Jaffna. Nirrosion’s wife and daughter, a three-year-old also joined the trip as her first reading of alphabet ceremony had been arranged at Krishna’s house in Jaffna.
After reaching Krishna’s house in Jaffna I had a cup of tea. I was introduced to Wasantha, another friend of Nirrosion’s from Rathnapura. We had a chat and I retired to bed to have some more sleep.
I woke up and had Pittu Kottu, a novelty for me, for breakfast. I met a young man called Thuwaragan who runs a small video creation company called Himalaya Creations He took Wasantha and me to his house and we were shown the short documentaries and TV commercials a they had created. Those are fairly impressive for a young team like his. We also met the CEO of the company a young lady called Gowri, the elder sister of Thuwaragan, who had come from Singapore for a short visit. She also is originally from Jaffna and works in Singapore now. She invited us to take part in Yarl IT Hub meeting held at IIS (Institute of Informatics Studies) that day. I had read about Yarl IT Hub from Indi http://indi.ca/2012/02/jaffna-as-an-it-hub/ and I didn’t think I would be able to attend a meeting of theirs.
We were invited to see a videoing of a dance item for an advertisement by the same video company I mentioned earlier and we went to St. John’s College, Jaffna in the evening. The boys I met there could converse with good English but they said the same standard cannot be expected elsewhere as only few city schools produce good English results.
Boys’ Dance
Completed video of the song.
We came back home and I started reading Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist novel given by Wasantha. It is an inspiring story.
The next day we had lunch with a couple from Jaffna at Krishna’s house. It was a mix of a Jaffna and Down South curries and they were tasty.
In the evening we went to Velanai in the island of Kayts, around 10-15 kms away from Jaffna peninsula. The road was not so bad. We first went to the small beach and spent some time there and then went to a village in Velanai. Only a part of the village has electricity and there is a primary school and a community hall to start the project. We also met the Thalaivar (leader) of the village and he is keen to start the project in his village.
It is a small fishing village and Nirrosion and Wasantha plan to start an ICT and English education project in here. My mission was to do a simple feasibility study and help them write a project proposal in this regard to be handed over to funding agencies.
I finished reading Ernesto Che Guevara’s Bolivian Diary. It is an exciting book about the guerilla life and how Che enjoys the very hardships he comes across in the mountainous jungles of Bolivia. He admits once he had a bath after 6 months despite continuous presence of streams and rivers. Che and his guerilla cadres eat horsemeat by killing the very horses that helped them to take their stuff, kill birds, fish, cows, and what not! They steal corns from corn farms and take farmers hostages till they take their supplies. Though Che wants to maintain discipline in the team, there are instances of some cadres going against the rule and eat beyond the approved quota in secret. Che gets very angry in such instances. There are silly in fights among the cadres too. Suffering from asthma and running out of medicines, Che finds it extremely difficult to continue but never gives up the struggle.
Though most of the fights are limited to just setting ambushes and killing few soldiers, the team’s bravery in fighting the government army that was assisted by the Americans is unbelievable. But I feel that fighting a conventional government army with around 100 guerillas is a losing battle from the inception. Besides, the movement is not well trained and they are not committed enough to the goal. The revolution takes place before the time is ripe. Che must have been greatly inspired by the revolution against Batista in Cuba which he played a great part but his involvement in the Bolivian revolution is not an intelligent move. After reading his own accounts of the events in Bolivia what I feel is that Che is an adventurist more than a revolutionary in Bolivia and that very sentiment cost him his valuable life too. He should have been involved in a better revolution elsewhere and if there wasn’t one he should have remained in Cuba and helped develop it.
Hope many would be against my remarks in this post and I welcome the counter points. I wrote this just by reading the Bolivian Diary and I have not read in detail about Che or Cuban revolution. I have read only one Sinhala translation about Che before and that didn’t help me much to understand Che better.
A friend of mine recommended me The Buddhist radio station. I have watched The Buddhist TV both on satellite and terrestrial TV but was fed up with repetition of programs that appear former Chief Justice. I never liked the channel and did not recommend it to anyone either. When my friend recommended me the radio station, I didn’t expect much.
But I listened to The Buddhist radio for few days since January 01st. It turned out to be a good station. It broadcasts songs that are related to Buddhism. I like them because the songs sound pretty good since they had been recorded before octopads came into the scene. Male voices of the announcers are deep while the female voices are sweet. Announcers sound intelligent and don’t chatter like in other FM stations.
As for the sermons, they have selected not-so-famous Buddhist monks most of the times. The monks who dominate the TV channels on Poya days are hardly heard on The Buddhist. Sermons sound good and on different topics. They repeat the same sermon thrice within three days. Station runs on 24/7 basis.
The Buddhist radio is broadcasted from Sambodhi Viharaya, Gregory’s Road, Colombo 7. The frequencies of the broadcast are 101.3 MHz FM (Colombo & Kandy) and 101.5 MHz FM (Down South.) They also have a webcast through http://www.thebuddhist.tv/liveradio.php. The programs are broadcast on Sinhala, Tamil and English.
