Panorama: Geoffrey Bawa’s 33rd lane house roof top

The only evidence of my clandestine visit to Geoffrey Bawa’s Colombo house at No 11, 33rd lane is the panorama pictured below. Its made up of photos I quickly shot from the upper level of the roof top terrace - “The Tower” as its called. An interactive version is on my profile at dermandar.com - …

3 interesting Sri Lankan geo bloggers

Geo blogging humanises geography. It does by plugging in tools like geo tagged photography, Google Earth or Google Maps with blogging to share personal/human context/meaning of places that are otherwise just impersonal symbols on a map. It adds (hopefully) a human/cultural layer into maps. Something that's been impossible at a pre internet/social media scale. I've …

Where do you lunch?

Usually at my desk. Where I savour the delights so lovingly cooked and packed for me by spousal unit. I prefer to eat and work. Otherwise returning to the keyboard after a rice and curry in the afternoon is a powerful anaesthetic. I could easily pass out with my face in the keys and be …

Buddhist Hindu bi-cultural life Sri Lanka

Sri Ponnambalavaneswarar Hindu temple (Kovil), has always been referred to as the “Gal Kovila" (literal translation: "Stone Kovil") in my family’s short hand. The term is most likely due to the granite which is the primary material used in its construction. The granite exterior is matched by the restrained exquisite stonework inside which gives the …

Family Kovil Colombo Sri Lanka

Buddhist and Hindu cultures have coexisted seamlessly in my family. It extends to relationships with religious institutions as well. On the Buddhist side there is Asokaramaya, which has a long presence in family history. For more regular religious maters there's the smaller temple down our road. Palaya Kadiresan Kovil (pictured in the Google Earth screen …