Author: subhamw
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Why I Care Whether Obama Wins Or Not
People keep asking me why I still care about Obama – they say ‘still’ as though they all cared at one point, every one in the world, but it is simply not in fashion anymore (‘Why do you still wear those ghastly hot-pink tights that you wore in the ’80s?’). Why do I still care…
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Thoughts on Gnosis (Akram Khan): A Wake-Up Call for ‘Contemporary Dance’ in the Region
There still exist some myths, particularly in the classical dance circles in our region that contemporary dance has no substance and contemporary dance artists can’t really dance. This is perhaps mainly due to the fact that in our part of the world, what we see as ‘contemporary dance’ is not really contemporary dance at all,…
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Happy Birthday, Mother
Happy Birthday, Ammi. Thank you for Pedro Almodovar. Thank you for T.S Elliot and Virginia Woolf and Germaine Greer. Thank you for that time you woke us up at 2 AM in order to watch the sun rise over Konark, in Orissa. Thank you for always believing that life is worth living, that it is…
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In India
No one asks you ‘Are you Tamil?’ when you wear a pottu It doesn’t bother people – make them uncomfortable It’s very commonplace to wear flowers in your hair – all sorts: Jasmine, Frangipani, Gardenia It’s not bad-ass for women to have piercings on their noses or men to have piercings on their ears (even…
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What Kind of Country is That?
Picture the stereotype: masses starve and are pushed further and further down into the depths of despair and impoverishment as gun-toting politicians take all they can and their bouncer-like thugs drive around in jeeps with tinted windows threatening/assaulting/assassinating anyone that dares to stand up to them. The economy plunges into an abyss of darkness, and…
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Remembering Bids and Bombs
I was in London when they won the bid for the 2012 Olympic Games. I remember it vividly – well, it’s hard to forget Brits losing their cool and jumping into fountains fully-clothed. The delight was infectious. I have not often seen that city express its mood quite so robustly – quite so overtly. People…
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Scrutinizing The Dark Knight Rises, and an Ode to Nolan
The Dark Knight Rises finally opened on the 20 July 2012, surrounded by much hype and expectation – it is the final installment of Christopher Nolan’s epic Batman trilogy. Does Nolan succeed in bringing to close the story of Gotham just as brilliantly as he began it, just as brilliantly as he so carefully tread the…
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July 1983
On the 23rd of July 1983, irrational, hot-blooded, brutal and violent mobs that were made up of Sinhalese civilians – uncles, fathers, brothers, shop-keepers, businessmen, tailors, drivers, teachers, who knows – sought out and attacked Tamil civilians, killing them, injuring them, looting their property and burning their homes. The riots, which began in Colombo, in…
Subha M Wijesiriwardena 