Mud Ghecko

Have you ever had a baby chipmunk on your hands? It’s a common situation I know in Sri Lanka where these tiny high-metabolism rodents get themselves into all kinds of trouble and then leave us wondering what to do. Sri Lankan mornings seem to be all about crows cawing, cocks crowing and chipmunks ting-ing to wake you up. At least since Im lucky enough to live in the suburbs. To be honest I am quite astounded at the sound a chipmunk makes in relation to its body size. Chipsy is our latest family member though she is much smaller than a regular rat, she commands incredible love from all of us. We hardly dare breath with the wonder of her tiny delicate existence. Outside, Itchy the cat and Foofy and Mucky , the stray dogs are breathless too, but sadly its mostly with insane amounts of jealousy and repeat murmurings of “just you wait” . Sadly orphaned when her mother was gobbled by one of our backyard dwelling stray mutts, Chipsy too is a tiny and very transient miracle. I have no ide...

Shores of Another sea Part Two part one was here The tsunami struck Matara at 9 23 on the morning of Sunday the 26th December 2004. I was in a small 30 seater inter-city bus on the coast, with my beloved father and a dear friend named Dieter. There were perhaps 3 minutes between us and a monstrous, 30 foot high, wall of destruction ploughing directly towards us at the speed of a runaway train. This was the most terrifying moment I have ever faced and perhaps ever will. Thousands of metric tonnes of churning, raging, impersonal annihilation was coming straight for us. We were staring certain death in the face. I could not move. Passengers in the bus had begun screaming in panic and grappling their way out. Human decency had given way to a sheer atavistic desperate race for survival. They had chosen, tragically for everyone of them, to outrun the wave. I felt screams locking up my throat but somehow I was too weak to even let them form. I was simply paralyzed. I knew we h...

Floats, displays, Buckets, lanterns, “pandols,” flags, posters, cutouts, banners and swathes of bulb vines were festooned in a bewildering, dizzying display of colour, this Vesak in Colombo. Loudspeakers were placed every few hundred yard, food outlets feeding not necessarily the hungry with offerings in little polythene bags, Halloween masks, music and disco lights expending copious amounts of electricity, polythene and plastic reminded any absentminded Buddhist who was unaware of it that we should be forcefully and effectively, and merrily and COMPULSORILY celebrating the birth of the Buddha. The UN has declared it a world wide national day, so we had kind of won in making other less civilized nations recognize us. No half hearted, quiet displays of contemplation were allowed, each home, each street each institution, competed raucously to put more orange and yellow polythene and more electricity out in the name of the Buddha. Apart from the sheer tonnage of colored polythene and ...

When you flush do you know how the soap and detergent goes into your land? What did people do before soap? Have you thought about how your day to day life affects the world? And can you just imagine how the invisible waves around us, the so called SIGNALs must be affecting our heads? Will the whole of humanity find out too late that the results of the greatest biological experiment of all time – is quite ugly ? who can tell? These are the interesting things I discussed in a chance interview with a fellow called Niranjana Wicremesinha the mind behind the striking, award winning CMEV NO TO VIOLENCE poster ("PRACHANDATWAYA EPA"), who heads his own Advertising gig called MEDIA PLAN. Niranjana seems an ordinary chap but in quite a few ways has extra ordinary thinking in that he dosnt think the way your “typical sri lankan” does and has a very questioning and creative mind capable of lateral thinking – very refreshing in the local atmosphere. You can contact him on mediaplansril...