Mud Ghecko

its the book I have searched for all my life, from the guru I have longed to meet, about the mysteries I have longed to confront. its an ordinary looking paperback and it was in a cardboard box in VijithaYapa Bookstore (the Thurstan Branch) (but dont go rifling through their boxes I think there was only one copy) it cost a measly 400 rupees but I wont sell it to you for 4 laks if you ask. (although for 4 laks in GBP I may consider taking a photocopy and letting you have it) it is the ulitmate guide. and this book starts with the words NOW THAT YOU HAVE FOUND THIS BOOK, -DONT TELL ANYONE ABOUT IT!

Ok folks this is it, Ive decided to jettison a lot of nice new books (Wilbur Smith/ Alistair McClean etc) at half the price (how I got them is a long story) and bits of clothing that I picked up from sales which I cant fit into, plus a glitzy riding helmet(Unused) and some really useless electronic things which are lying around my house, and my daughters Nokia in preperation for an upgrade. It’s a charity sale – you heard me- this is really charity , and Im hoping to be able to pay at least in part for my dentures.. I mean, dental upgrades ...and next years' contact lenses and routine maintenance like that, so well, give me a chance.... No -seriously, I mean ...there will be other people there selling normal useful entirely legal things. ... NINTH DAY OF CHRISTMAS – A CHRISTMAS FAIR Date : 9th Sunday December 2007 Venue : Royal Collage Sports Complex (Rugby Grounds) off Stanley Tillekeratne Mawatha (just next to the Indian Restaurant) Time 10.00 am to 6.30 pm Stalkers be warned: ...

" Hit men always sneer. They follow a two-week course in Effective Sneering."... It was the year 18 hundred something and King Rajadi Rajasinghe got Malaria and asked for Chloroquine. Chloroquine had not yet been discovered so they gave him Koththamalli instead.(Even if Chloroquine had been invented the idiots in the Health Department would have had a shortage of it! The Director of Health Services and his yes men could not tell the difference between their chloroquine, arses and their elbows!) The King died. His last words were "AaaaaaH!" the rest of the story,which is not mine, can be found here http://www.crazylanka.com/historyrajasinghe.htm but this here illustration which is mine will be in Tuesday's Colombo Post . Enjoy.

yesterday of all days , on the way home,I forgot my wallet , meaning no ID (and no money...) plus two good friends of mine (who happen to be Tamil) were dropping me home... so I had this scarey experience of being on pins and needles all the way during the trip... of shuddering every time we passed an army uniform... of wondering what to say or do ... and mind you this is in spite of the fact that I have excellent contacts in the forces who will vouch for me and bail me out of any problem within minutes.... this got me thinking about my friends who dont have that security...who have to always worry each time they pass a checkpoint...who get stared at coldly... who even if they do have an ID card, get penalised and suspected because of their names... this is so sad, my friends , I know how you feel and I do feel for you.How do we solve this? when will it end? on a lighter note my buddies in the car were thankfully not too worried about the predicament I had put them in and were joking ...

and its in Nugegoda in what has always seemed to be the busiest crowdiest place a blast could possibly hope for; for those of you monitoring Sri Lankan websites from abroad, the stuff we see on TV is lots of people milling about and quite a lot of broken building plus a small half hearted fire. I also just saw two people walking really briskly and purposefully with the lower half of a person on a streatcher. Sometimes I wonder idly whether this is really the priority at a time like this. I think we should have a lot more First Aid Training on what to do in Energencies , instead of focusing on body parts which ostensiably cannot be resold( but then knowing Sri Lankans - anything could have been on their minds-) shouldnt we be doing more about the half dead... the official count is ten injured so far but i think I saw at least 3 dead on TV and this IS Nugegoda. sigh...

Last week I felt crushed. Really, I mean it- I don’t know what hit me. One day I was smiling, glowing, happy ,joking handling anything that came my way with the aplomb of an Amazon, my blog profile said “ contented, happy go lucky & placid” in description of me, then – suddenly I woke up at 3 am one night in a cold sweat of depression and panic, and it was officially the beginning of an all time low. My whole personality crumpled inwards as if its superstructure had collapsed. It was horrible. Before you direct me to the nearest reputed psychiatrist, or send me links on the subject please let me assure you I have handled this sort of thing perfectly well previously and emerged visibly unscathed but somewhat older, so from afar this isn’t as serious as I make it sound; but when Im in it, this is genuine tangible depression as black as tar and as scary as Voldemort – and, what’s more , I’ve noticed this is what happens to me each year around November! It’s when I realize anothe...

Long long ago , Egyptians actually worshipped us as Gods. …I’m lucky in this day and age, to find a nice, amendable biped. So folks, if Ive heard it once, Ive heard it a hundred times. The account of how I was found. On a roof of all places. After two days of mewling and almost getting croaky and incoherent in the throat. How I got there no one knows (we suspect it had something to do with Colombo crows, evil , devious critters aren’t they ) but I guess something sad had already happened to my dear old mother, god rest her soul. Luckily I was picked up by a biped (that’s a two legged upright walking anthropoid of primate descendent, in case you don’t get the word ). A nice warm blooded, gullible one. Between you and me , when you pick a biped, or, as they think , allow one to pick you, there are a few things you have to consider. Does he live alone, and does he wear baggy pants and does he look like a doggy person. See, if he has a mate, one that doesn’t like cats , you’ve had it from ...

As of late all we seem to be able to talk about is the alarmingly rising cost of powdered milk; whose direct “fault” this is we have yet to stay up late nights to figure out –and in quite a few homesteads this may indeed be the scenario if a sizeable percentage of the population is below the age of two, due to the time honored traditional emphasis on reproducing first and then worrying about financial stability later… Ah , Sri Lankans…, Anyway ,dear Citizen, neither the wails of the milk-less mites nor the profusion of cartoons and media critiques on the subject, nor late night political chat shows ,nor ranting nor raving nor whining nor kutukutu is going to make a jot of difference here (as if it ever has! ) so as a nation we might as well buckle up, and resign ourselves to being compulsorily weaned of the glorious substance in future . And hey, maybe that isn’t such a bad idea after all. In time honored sour grapes tradition lets blast a few of those myths about that lovely liquid sy...

ok , if the photo is spooky, wait till you read the story...its in WOW of Daily Mirror this week. and what I havnt mentioned there is that this is a true story. This story revolves around an average house in Modera which is one of three houses belonging to siblings now long dead and gone. In the left of the row of houses there had lived a ravishingly beautiful but somewhat vain Sinhala woman named Sriyankanthi, who unfortunately had a personality totally in contrast to her name and angelic appearance. Neither more nor less vicious than the average Ceylonese woman she appears by all accounts to have been obsessed with the usual shallow local pastimes of comparing peoples wealth, status ,castes , race and judgmental gossiping, and back biting. Her son was one of the most good looking young colts in the whole area at the time and the apple of her proud maternal eye, although his personality turned out different and he selected for his wife a woman of less social standing and little wealth...

OCTOBER 16th 2004 Al Juhara writes… …unfortunately for you, gentle readers, quite compulsively. Be it dairies, letters, emails or heck, even the odd “To Do” list, I find an entire waffle of literary produce emerges when I lay pen to paper. Or finger to keyboard. I remember when I was eleven and the subject at school was “My Ambition” I waxed eloquent about wanting to be a writer. How I filled a three-page essay with that basic decision is currently a mystery to me, but it must have worked as I know I consistently got marks like 99 for English. What being a writer actually entailed I had not bothered about and still do not and the dream continued as you can see from a page out of my 2004 dairy. 7am Have decided I must write a book to surpass “God of Small Things,” ”Harry Potter,” and “Lord of the Rings,” combined, which will shoot me to Instant Fame and Riches, so that I can buy a house, but have not decided what exactly to write, or if its actually easier to instead dictate into borro...

IF ONLY someone had broken the silence- by Kamla Bhasin (illustrated by Bindia Thapar) 50/- available at Social Scientists Bookshop, Col 5 or online at http://shtriishakti.org/booksonsale.html As adults we know that pedophiles lurk everywhere, in buses, schools, family gatherings...you name it, we are paranoid; but like the little girl in the book says “ why didn’t the people who loved me warn me about people like this?” IF ONLY someone had broken the silence is a poignant little booklet, ably illustrated with adorable caricatures, on one of the most sensitive subjects in Asian society today- sexual violence against children. Sensitive, professionally written books for children , on sexuality are generally limited to very expensive imports from USA and UK and available in upscale outlets mostly unaffordable by the average middle income family anyway. So I must say I have been searching for this sort of a book for ages, and its disappointing that there doesn’t seem to be any like thi...

in fact I kept bursting into laughter whenever I saw it or even remembered it - its just so speechless...

Im often being asked, by otherwise completely normal and stable characters , in what they probably think are flashes of blindening witticism and humour, whether I am "not Bandaranaiyeke, no?" when I say that my name is Chandrika, over the phone. ....to this my cold and somewhat scathing reply is "I should think not,” because considering my reputation for spending time blogging, drawing cartoons, making Facebook entries and lurking on Kapuwa, I should think she had better things to do in life , such as for example... run the frikking place ....but just last week I got to seriously thinking what life would have been like if I was indeed the president of the Republic. ....hm. in a word...if I wus the President of Sri Lanka it would be a much odder place... for example: Cable TV would be subsidized. Research down the ages has proven that mind numbing addiction to Hallmark and HBO will keep the citizenry off the streets and unaware of the real political implications of the...

Last week, dear readers, I’m proud to say I watched a Meaningful and Intellectually Relevant film, as opposed to the trashy special-effect-laced exorcism films I usually unwind with. It is a film about an Indian lady in England who gets assaulted, humiliated, raped and generally treated very badly around her own home, by the guy who was supposed to care for her (that would be her husband). A common tale as ever, you would say but this time it had been handled by British film makers and Aishwarya Rai took the lead part; which unfortunately very nearly prevented me from watching it in the first place, although I have nothing against her, bless her cotton socks; it was just that her name at the start hinted at lots of gaudy and frivolous scenes by default and so it was difficult to imagine how this would turn out and whether I could actually stomach it. But, since I had nothing much to do on Sunday evening I took the dare and managed to sit myself down with fruit juice, peanuts and...

Im not a great one for Jataka Tales - but i got a chance to read a translation this evening and heres how it goes The Sambula Jatakaya may be taken here as an example (Amaramoli 1962: 250-258) source http://www.lines-magazine.org/Art_Nov04/Bindun.htm King Bambadat of Varanasi appoints his grown son to succeed him, and makes the princess, Sambula, his consort. She is most beautiful, with skin so lovely it glows like a lantern in a dark unlit place. They live happily together for some time. The heir-apparent then breaks out in a terrible rash. Informing the King it is better to die alone, he leaves his harem behind, yet as he tries his best to take leave of his wife Sambula, he finds he cannot not do so, and takes her with him. He builds a temple in a beautiful forest, and resides there. Saying, “My Lord! Do not fear, I shall attend to all your needs,” Sambula worships him and goes into the forest with a basket and tools to pull out roots and pluck fruit. She brings a basket of fruit t...

Husband Sells Wife's Kidney thats a good headline and its really old news but I really wonderd how it was done, dont you? and what we women could possibly market of our husbands if we set our minds to it... ok heres the long and short of it and of course it happened because some people think that women are chattel(or was the word cattle?) of course we are chattel/cattle if we sit around and wait while our organs are sold on the open market. youd think one would notice ourselves a little LIGHTER and the guys bank account a little HEAVIER...gnnnn I like to think of the dialogue which would have gone on after that say about ten years down the line, when they are old and grey and the guy is all mellow and contrite W: you hopeless louse you, you took my thingy and sold cheap- its worth more than ruddy tractor see it doenst even have proper accelerator and its all rusty now H : but honeypie I was thinking of our future...why you always harping on this , ok so I made a mistake , ok so I s...

“ I went for my riding test today, I really must blog about it!” “Why, what happened?!” “Nothing. It was all very efficient.” “You’re right; you definitely should blog about it!” Well, dear Readers, at last, at the ripe old age of , well, a few years away from forty anyway, yours truly went for her driving test. Or to be precise a riding test, since I am actually aiming modestly low for the class D license so that I can legally operate my hot Caballo Negro, on the wonderful action packed streets of Colombo, and a little further out too, if possible… So, I’ve changed my spectacles, dyed my hair, registered the bike, taken it out on practice runs, and last but not least filled my organ donar card and kept it in a easily accessible place in my wallet so that if Im found brain dead they can salvage the rest, and here I am ready to hit the streets , well hopefully not literally but , you get the picture… Why unprotected? The written test itself was rather an eye-opener. I have never actuall...

In my thirty sixth year , so the planets dictate, I am to publish my first book. Now that’s big news I just cant ignore, as fanatical as I am about the whole subject of reading , books and the Written Word. I have to then grudgingly acknowledge that many of the milestones in my humble life have in fact been previously dictated by the same bunch of nine regular suspects that affects everyone else only at a slightly different angle. Birth , Childhood illnesses, a fore doomed marriage and the exact number of offspring I will finally produce , you name it, the same set of interstellar gas balls was at the bottom of how they turned out. I objected. I scoffed. For the last thirty six years I have successfully dismissed the entire lot of predications as the improbable , impossible rantings of ganga dazed tribal witch doctors (which for the most part they probably all were, except for my darling mum who is a qualified architect, and the best in her predictions) – but now I am forced to cringe...

Stuttgart 2006 then, it is winter and I’m came watching the hippie art students paint on the cobbled streets holding brushes in mittened hands. The sun shines coldly in this beautiful ancient city of art and here I sit in a very modern hair salon with a haute-couture fashion magazine on my lap, listening to my favorite music on a marvelous little gadget I was given for my 30th birthday. “The usual, Dr Rumenegge?” inquires the tomboy hair dressing assistant, by the way, and she knows I will nod. She begins to spray my hair with sweet smelling stuff and I settle into the comfort of being pampered and petted. I ask her about her degree, her mother, her latest companion. This is my favorite place when it comes to getting my hair done and they know exactly how I like it – half way between lady Diana’s and Demi Moore, in the 80s, it’s a style that never becomes outdated : short, crisp and chic. Business like hair, no nonsense hair because I am a modern woman in a world I have in the palm of...

My grandma was afraid of electric irons. Mortally afraid and simply because, she explained, they made clicking noises which she didn’t like. She spent years insisting on using polkatu irons, which are very quaint, and don’t click, I imagine. My youngest aunt is paranoid that people will hack her yahoo email and unravel her personal details; although one realistically wonders what levels of desperation would necessitate such intervention-I don’t really blame her the unease: the more we seem to evolve as a race and make things simple, the more difficulty we have in staying calm; apart from the recurrent nightmares of waking up with no broadband, I suffer from morbid modern phobias for : Hotel Taps Gone are those basic uncomplicated cold (blue) and hot (red) taps :the modern arrangement is a complex joy stick type of device which swivels on a plain of 360 degrees in four dimensions. To obtain water that is still constant at a humanly tolerable temperature you need to think laterally an...

good local governance is apparently the in thing,the hot topic,the absolute buzz word these days- if you dont attend one of those seminars -take a look at what you are missing : " we came at 5 but no one called us so we didnt know the seminar had started - thats why we missed yesterdays sessions " PS lady looking fresh as a rose, surfacing from her hotel room on morning of Day Two and asking for the publications she had missed " Working group? um, we missed that ...we went for a walk.-just got back: sorry " Deputy Mayor dude and male colleague when i asked them how the working group had gone (at 11 am on day two mind you - )(going for a walk with another guy? how sad can you get?) " This loch ness monster fellow, is he dangerous ? " one senior LA representative trying to chat up Ian, the intern from Scotland...(this is the same guy who went for a walk with the Deputy mayor -Ian,watch out) and last but not least Deputy Mayor trying to make polite...

From a rather unexpected source, Chatty learns three little tricks, which definitely helped make one marriage work I have a clay water jar in my kitchen and whenever I see it I remember a long journey and a special and interesting character I met. About two month’s back, in the course of duty I was instructed to visit Ampara which since I hardly get the chance to travel was a thrill to even contemplate. Ive seen many photographs of this dusty outback territory and these always seem to give the impression of stubborn survival amongst rather desperate odds and a desolate environment. I have sat and painted the barren landscapes and dusty ruins I saw in some photos and I really wanted to see those places for myself. Names like Ninthavur and Sainthamaruthu have, to my thinking, a wonderfully exotic ring to them, and I had practiced rolling them off my tongue while writing (admittedly arm chair based) progress reports from Colombo : so I really wanted to experience the dust, heat and live a...

is available at http://www.dailymirror.lk/sections/supp/w@w/120607/03.asp some people have told me they could not stop thinking about this story for days, it had moved them so deeply.

I will not forget Dieter, in many ways he made me who I am. . He was different, so different and although he touched my life only comparatively briefly, he made impressions that will never be lost. To say that I owe a lot of what I learnt in life to him, would not be enough. I owe him my life. Christmas Day 2004. When I was at home by the beach ,in Matara, with my father and Dieter, they would be discussing philosophy as usual, and I would sit watching their faces at the dinner table , listening not to the words but to the comforting cadence of their tones. Dieter was soon to leave our country, to go back to his own, to gracefully relinquish a dream that could have been, because we knew it should not. Dieter was leaving me tomorrow and we knew this. We loved each other, we knew this, but we had never spoken about this. There would be too much upheaval caused in the lives of the people I loved. He did not want to cause this. Although I was his student in a language and in his way of th...

from wikipedia, a simplified explaination of what happened, in case any of us have forgotton.. Rajapaksa offers less autonomy than Wickremasinghe to the northeast , home to most of Sri Lanka's 3.2 million ethnic Tamils . His narrow victory was arguably engineered by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) who want Tamil Eelam to be an independent country. The LTTE boycotted the election, thereby preventing thousands of Tamils from voting, and so Wickremasinghe, whose election promises included a Federal state to the North and East, from taking power. thoughtprovoking to say the least. makes you wonder what would have happened if the LTTE had not done what they had done...perhaps we would all have gotton SOMEWHERE?instead of goin round and round ?

thats when some large oily female sits next to you in the bus and excavates for change in her humongous purse, all the while digging you in the boobs with her elbow. She stoicly pretends she has no idea of the substantial mammary irritation she is causing, and the search for change, is followed by a search for a kerchief, or for that mobile phone etc etc . I used to think that, that sort were frustrated lesbians , but it cant be since it has happened to me so MANY TIMES ! Guys are way better because 1) when they reach for their wallets they side swivel out of their seats and avoid too much contact and 2) you can hit them if you want... * the term ELBOOB is copyright Urban Dictionary

"There is a Creature here called Kobberaguion, resembling an Alligator. The biggest may be five or six feet long, speckled black and white. He lives most upon the Land, but will take the water and dive under it: hath a long blew forked tongue like a sting, which he puts forth and hisseth and gapeth, but doth not bite nor sting, tho the appearance of him would scare those that knew not what he was. He is not afraid of people, but will ly gaping and hissing at them in the way, and will scarce stir out of it. He will come and eat Carrion with the Dogs and Jackals, and will not be scared away by them, but if they come near to bark or snap at him, with his tayl, which is about an Ell long like a whip, he will so slash them, that they will run away and howl. This Creature is not eatable." Robert Knox from - An Historical Relation of Ceylon

below is a pic of my new set of wheels. and this is a real bike at last. Yamaha Crux S to be precise. Ive never experianced something like this before .... this thing seems to have a life of its own and Im very bad at shifting gears... I practiced a bit on my road yesterday and the natives all took their kids indoors /stray dogs disappeared-

The Most Reverend Rowan Williams Archbishop of Canterbury By telefax to: 44.20.7261.1765 and 44.20.7898.1369 Most Reverend Sir: International Educational Development (IED) and the Association of Humanitarian Lawyers (AHL) write to express our profound shock over your comment of 11 May 2007 that “ surgical military actions against terrorism should take place” in Sri Lanka . Besides evincing opprobrious ignorance of humanitarian law, this comment will surely encourage Sri Lankan President M. Rajapakse in his genocidal assault on the Tamil people in Sri Lanka, and, in turn will forward the geopolitical interests of the United States and other international actors who eye the port of Trincomalee, the airfield at Palaly and the exploitation of resources in the Tamil part of the island. Sinhala policies have oppressed the Tamil people from the day the British flag was lowered and the Tamils were taken by surprise when the new flag was raised featuring the Sinhala lion. Early protests by the ...