Have you spoken to your cousins lately?

Three kids meant a small family in my parents’ generation. That vast cast of aunts and uncles is unthinkable now. In my generation, that crowd of siblings is replaced by cousins. Looking back, not being siblings made friendships easier. Our relationships escaped the inevitable frictions between siblings. In its place a sense of kinship through …

Kataragama Sri Lanka: photos late 20th century

Pilgrimage to Kataragama is a long tradition in my family. Goes back to my grandparents’ time. Perhaps beyond that (one of them is said to have origins in the area). I was taken there countless times during my childhood. The photos in this post are from that era. A Kataragama weekend somewhere in the late …

Funeral thoughts

We put small white flowers into the coffin. I feel the room darken. Stoic aunties start sobbing. Two men in sarongs and high collared shirts appear and lift up the side flaps. The lid is shuffled out from near the toilet. Its ornamental screws are quickly tightened to soft crying in the background. Final punctuations …

April New Year grumble from a civilian casualty

Yes yes its "hot and humid" in Colombo. It seems the recent bitter Colombo winter has made people forget that we are located a few degrees north of the equator. I'm trying not to be grumpy so I'm preventing the sarcasm from leaking out into the third sentence and beyond. After all its the new …

Junk email from relatives and elders

My mother and her friends (those aunties of road trips long ago) discovered email a few years back. This combined with retirement has resulted in regular waves of forwarded emails that are essentially junk mail. Invariably chain emails with the familiar Fwd: Fwd in the subject line. The topics are mostly sensationalist urban myths which …