Category: Personal
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Remembering; Forgetting; Apologising; Forgiving
What happened in 1983, I wasn’t there to see it – but of course, I, like many others of my generation who came after, are privy to a collective memory, an experience felt by association, by default; the muscle memory of our parents, relatives, their friends and their relatives, passed on through stories, recollections, little…
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We Will Never Know Her Name
Yesterday morning the young 23 year old woman who was raped and beaten in Delhi on December 16th, succumbed to her injuries, giving up the harrowing fight for her life in Singapore – far from her home, and removed, I presume, from many of her loved ones. While she was removed from her home, the…
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The Felling of a Tree
Originally published on Groundviews. When I heard that the large, beautiful trees that pave Reid Avenue in Colombo were being felled, my heart broke. I was so stirred inside – and it was hard to explain to anyone else why this particular incident had moved me so much. When I came to Bangalore, my first thought…
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Bombay
Within minutes, you know you’re in a big city – the real thing, I mean. No pale imitation, no wannabe, no fading erstwhile glory. A real, live, breathing, thumping, bumping big city. The kind of big city – they exist all around the world – that takes your breath away, the kind we all want…
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A Quarter-Century
To know you is a thing that makes my life what it is – the reason I am special, lucky, the reason I am myself. To have become who I am today with you, because of you, is among the things that I know for certain are true and real. To have passed through the phases…
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Living Alone
Who pins the fall of a sari, To the back of your sari blouse, Or zips up your dress, when the zipper is at the back? Cleaning up is a two-person job; Who spots that line of ants going into the cereal box when you’ve missed it? Who shuts the fridge door that you’ve accidentally…
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Expanse
An ocean between what we know, What we want to believe and what we need to have inside us, To go on. Vast. And I am here, now But if I stop telling myself that – even just for a second, Then I am overcome, Overcome. I am here, now. All that has changed, and…
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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…
Subha M Wijesiriwardena 