Features

Keynote Speech at the Launch of The Ceylon Journal, by Rohan Pethiyagoda

Published

1 year ago

2025/04/13

“How Rubber Shaped our Political Philosophy”

The Ceylon Journal was launched last August. Its first issue is already out of print. Only a handful of the second issue covering new perspectives of history, art, law, politics, folklore, and many other facets of Sri Lanka is available. To reserve your very own copy priced Rs. 2000 call on 0725830728.

Congratulations, Avishka [Senewiratne]. I am so proud of what you have done. Especially, Ladies and Gentlemen, to see and hear all of us stand up and actually sing the National Anthem was such a pleasure. Too often on occasions like this, the anthem is played, and no one sings. And we sang so beautifully this evening that it brought tears to my eyes. It is not often we get to think patriotic thoughts in Sri Lanka nowadays: this evening was a refreshing exception.

I’m never very sure what to say on an occasion like this, in which we celebrate history, especially given that I am a scientist and not a historian. It poses something of a challenge for me. Although we are often told that we must study history because it repeats itself, I don’t believe it ever does. But history certainly informs us: articles such as those in The Ceylon Journal, of which I read an advance copy, help us understand the context of our past and how it explains our present.

I want to take an example and explain what I am on about. I’m going to talk about rubber. Yes rubber, as in ‘eraser’, and how it crafted our national political identity, helping, even now seven decades later, to make ‘capitalism’ a pejorative.

As I think you know already, rubber came into general use in the middle of the 19^th century. Charles Macintosh invented the raincoat in 1824 by placing a thin sheet of rubber between two sheets of fabric and pressing them together. That invention transformed many things, not least warfare. Just think of Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in the winter of 1812. His troops did that without any kind of waterproof clothing. Some 200,000 of them perished, not from bullets but from hypothermia. Waterproof raincoats could have saved thousands of lives. Not long after rubber came to be used for waterproofing, we saw the first undersea telegraph cable connecting Europe to North America being laid in the 1850s. When the American civil war broke out in 1860, demand for rubber increased yet further: the troops needed raincoats and other items made from this miracle material.

At that time rubber, used to be collected from the wild in the province of Pará in Northern Brazil, across which the Amazon drains into the Atlantic. In 1866, steamers began plying thousands of kilometres upriver, to return with cargoes of rubber harvested from the rainforest. Soon, the wild trees were being tapped to exhaustion and the sustainability of supply became doubtful.

Meanwhile, England was at the zenith of its colonial power, and colonial strategists thought rather like corporate strategists do today. The director of the Kew Gardens at the time, Joseph Hooker, felt there might be one day be a greater potential for rubber. He decided to look into the possibility of cultivating the rubber tree, Hevea brasiliensis, in Britain’s Asian colonies. So, he dispatched a young man called Henry Wickham to the Amazon to try to secure some seeds. In 1876, Wickham returned to Kew with 70,000 rubber seeds. These were planted out in hothouses in Kew and by the end of that year, almost 2000 of them had germinated.

These were dispatched to Ceylon, only a few weeks’ voyage away now, thanks to steamships and the Suez Canal. The director of the Peradeniya Botanic Garden at the time was George Henry Kendrick Thwaites, a brilliant systematic botanist and horticulturalist. Thwaites received the seedlings and had to decide where to plant them. He read the available literature—remember, this was 1876: there was no internet—and managed to piece together a model of the climatic conditions in the region of the Amazonian rainforest to which rubber was native. He decided that the plants would need an elevation of less than 300 metres and a minimum annual rainfall of at least 2000mm. In other words, the most suitable region for rubber would be an arc about 30 kilometres wide, extending roughly from Ambalangoda to Matale. Despite his never having seen a rubber plant until then, astonishingly, he got it exactly right.

Thwaites settled on a site in the middle of the arc, at Henarathgoda near Gampaha. That became the world’s first rubber nursery: the first successful cultivation of this tree outside Brazil. The trees grew well and, eight years later, came into seed. Henry Trimen, Thwaites’ successor, used the seeds to establish an experimental plantation near Polgahawela and also shared seeds with the Singapore Botanic Garden. Those would later become the foundation of the great Malaysian rubber industry.

But up to that time, Sri Lanka’s rubber plantation remained a solution looking for a problem. Then, in 1888, the problem arrived, and from a completely unexpected quarter: John Dunlop invented the pneumatic tire. Soon, bicycles came to be fitted with air-filled tires, followed by motorcars. In 1900, the US produced just 5,000 motorcars; by 1915, production had risen to half a million. The great rubber boom had begun.

Meanwhile, the colonial administration in Ceylon had invited investors to buy land and start cultivating rubber to feed the growing international demand. But by the early 1890s, three unusual things had happened. First, with the collapse of the coffee industry in the mid-1870s, many British investors had been bankrupted. Those who survived had to divert all their available capital into transitioning their failing coffee plantations into tea. They were understandably averse to risk. As a result, the British showed little interest in this strange tree called rubber that had been bought from Brazil.

Second, a native Sri Lankan middle class had by then emerged. The Colebrooke-Cameron reforms had led to the establishment of the Royal academy, later Royal College, by 1835. Other great schools followed in quick succession. From the middle of the 19^th century, it was possible for Sri Lankans to get an education and get employment in government service, become professionals, doctors, lawyers, engineers, civil servants, clerks, and so on. And so, by the 1890s, a solid native middle class had emerged. The feature that defines a middle class, of course, is savings, and these savings now came to be translated into the capital that founded the rubber industry.

Third, the British had by then established a rail and road network and created the legal and commercial institutions for managing credit and doing business—institutions like banks, financial services, contract law and laws that regulated bankruptcy. They had made the rules, but by now, Sri Lankans had learned to play the game. And so, it came to be that Sri Lankans came to own a substantial part of the rubber-plantation industry very early in the game. By 1911, almost 200,000 acres of rubber had been planted and world demand was growing exponentially.

In just one generation, investors in rubber were reaping eye-watering returns that in today’s money would equate to Rs 3.6 million per acre per year. It was these people who, together with the coconut barons, came to own the grand mansions that adorn the poshest roads in Cinnamon Gardens: Ward Place, Rosmead Place, Barnes Place, Horton Place, and so on. There was an astonishingly rapid creation of indigenous wealth. By 1911, the tonnage at shipping calling in Sri Lankan ports—Colombo and Trincomalee—exceeded nine million tons, making them collectively the third busiest in the British Empire and the seventh busiest in the world. By comparison, the busiest port in Europe is now Rotterdam, which ranks tenth in the world.

We often blame politicians for things that go wrong in our country and God knows they are responsible for most of it. But unfortunately for us, the first six years of independence, from 1948 to 1954, were really unlucky years for Sri Lanka. As if successive failed monsoons and falling rice crops weren’t bad enough, along came the Korean war. In the meantime, the Sri Lankan people had got used to the idea of food rations during the war and they wanted rations to be continued as free handouts. Those demands climaxed in the ‘Hartal’ of 1953, a general strike demanding something for nothing. Politicians were being forced to keep the promises they had made when before independence, that they would deliver greater prosperity than under the British.

So, by 1949, D. S. Senanayake was forced to devalue the rupee, leading to rapid price inflation. Thankfully we didn’t have significant foreign debt then, or we might have had to declare insolvency much earlier than we finally did, in 2022. And then, because of failing paddy harvests, we were forced to buy rice

from China, which was in turn buying our rubber. But as luck would have it, China entered the Korean war, causing the UN, at the behest of the US, to embargo rubber exports to China.

This placed the D. S. Senanayake and John Kotelawala governments in an impossible predicament. There was a rice shortage; people were demanding free rice, and without rubber exports, there was no foreign exchange with which to buy rice. Kotelawala flew to Washington, D.C., to meet with President Eisenhower and plead for either an exemption from the embargo or else, for the US to buy our rubber. Despite Sri Lanka having provided rubber to the Allies at concessionary prices during the war and having supported the Allies, Eisenhower refused. British and American memories were short indeed. In India, Mahatma Gandhi and the Congress Party had chosen the moment, in August 1942 when Japan invaded Southeast Asia and were poised to invade Bengal, to demand that the British quit India, threatening in the alternative that they would throw their lot in with the Japanese. The Sri Lankan government, by contrast, had stood solidly by the Allies. But now, those same allies stabbed the fledgling nation in the chest. Gratitude, it seemed, was a concept alien to the West.

In these circumstances, Sri Lanka had no choice but to break the UN embargo and enter into a rice-for-rubber barter agreement with China. This resulted not only in the US suspending aid and the supply of agricultural chemicals to Sri Lanka, but also invoking the Battle Act and placing restrictions on US and UK ships calling at the island’s ports.

Understandably, by 1948, Sri Lankans entertained a strong disdain for colonialism. With the Cold War now under way, the USSR and China did all they could to split countries like Sri Lana away not just from their erstwhile colonial masters but also the capitalist system. If any doubt persisted in the minds of Sri Lankan politicians, Western sanctions put an end to that. The country fell into the warm embrace of the communist powers. China and the USSR were quick to fill the void left by the West, and especially in the 1950s, there was good reason to believe that the communist system was working. The Soviet economy was seeing unprecedented growth, and that decade saw them producing hydrogen bombs and putting the first satellite, dog and man in space.

As a consequence of the West’s perfidy in the early 1950s, ‘Capitalism’ continues to have pejorative connotations in Sri Lanka to this day. And it resulted in us becoming more insular, more inward looking, and anxious to assert our nationalism even when it cost us dearly.

Soon, we abolished the use of English, and we nationalized Western oil companies and the plantations. None of these things did us the slightest bit of good. We even changed the name of the country in English from Ceylon to Sri Lanka. Most countries in the world have an international name in addition to the name they call themselves. Sri Lanka had been ‘Lanka’ in Sinhala throughout the colonial period, even as its name had been Ceylon in English. The Japanese don’t call themselves Japan in their own language, neither do the Germans call themselves Germany. These are international names for Nihon and Deutschland, just like Baharat or Hindustan is what Indians call India. But we insisted that little Sri Lanka will assert itself and insist what the world would call us, the classic symptom of a massive inferiority complex. While countries like Singapore built on the brand value of their colonial names, we erased ours from the books. Now, no one knows where Ceylon tea or Ceylon cinnamon comes from.

Singapore is itself a British name: it should be Sinha Pura, the Lion City, a Sanskrit name. But Singapore values its bottom line more than its commitment to terminological exactitude. Even the name of its first British governor, Sir Stamford Raffles, has become a valued national brand. But here in Sri Lanka, rather than build on our colonial heritage, not the least liberal values the British engendered in us, together with democracy and a moderately regulated economy, we have chosen to deny it and seek to expunge it from our memory. We rejected the good values of the West along with the bad: like courtesy, queuing, and the idea that corruption is wrong.

We have stopped fighting for the dignity of our land, and I hope that as you read the articles in The Ceylon Journal that are published in the future, we will be reminded time and time again of the beautiful heritage of our country and how we can once again find it in ourselves to be proud of this wonderful land.

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Features

Beyond traditional jobs: Why Sri Lanka needs to facilitate the gig economy

Published

1 day ago

2026/09/25

Thilina Walpola

Image courtesy Oxford University

by Kapila Chinthaka Premarathne
Head of the Department of Agricultural Systems and a Senior Lecturer in Agricultural Economics at the Faculty of Agriculture,
Rajarata University of Sri Lanka

Beyond the Graduate Unemployment Number

Sri Lanka’s economic recovery has improved macroeconomic stability, but youth unemployment remains a significant labour-market concern. Around 43% of Sri Lankan youth aged 15–24 with postsecondary education are unemployed, the highest among the Asian economies compared in the IMF analysis, compared with about 36% in Bangladesh and 13.2% in Thailand. This reflects a problem of skills mismatches and the difficulty of connecting higher education with changing labour-market demand. The concern goes beyond unemployment itself. Sri Lanka has invested heavily in educating its younger population, yet the conventional labour market is not creating enough opportunities to convert these qualifications into income. Many young people possess degrees, technical knowledge and growing digital familiarity, but remain outside formal employment because suitable jobs may not exist in the right place, at the right time or under conditions compatible with their circumstances. This makes it necessary to think beyond traditional employment models and explore new ways of connecting Sri Lanka’s educated youth with economic opportunities.

This is where Sri Lanka needs to reconsider how it understands employment

Employment has traditionally been viewed through the employer–employee relationship, with qualifications leading to a formal job and regular salary. While this model remains important, digital platforms are creating new ways to generate income, allowing individuals to work for multiple clients across geographical boundaries without permanent employment. Sri Lanka therefore needs to look beyond simply creating conventional jobs and consider whether it is building the conditions for its educated population to participate in the growing global market for digital services.

The Opportunity of the Gig Economy

The gig economy extends far beyond ride-hailing and delivery services. Digital platforms increasingly connect skilled individuals with opportunities in software development, design, accounting, data analysis, digital marketing, translation, online education, research and consultancy. This is particularly relevant to Sri Lanka, where a highly educated population faces a relatively limited domestic market for specialised skills. Digital platforms can overcome geographical constraints by connecting Sri Lankan workers directly with international clients.

As highlighted in my previous LSE South Asia article on women and the gig economy, such work should not replace formal employment but can create additional income opportunities when supported by appropriate skills, digital infrastructure, training and institutional support. A skilled person in Anuradhapura, Jaffna, Batticaloa or Monaragala could potentially serve clients in London, Melbourne or Dubai without first relocating to Colombo. This makes the gig economy relevant not only to employment but also to Sri Lanka’s emerging digital services-export strategy.

A Digitally Familiar Generation

Sri Lanka’s younger generation is growing up with smartphones, social media, online learning, digital applications and digital financial services, giving them a level of digital familiarity that previous generations did not have. However, digital familiarity does not automatically translate into digital employability. The challenge is to transform everyday digital use into productive skills such as data analysis, artificial intelligence, software development, digital marketing, financial analysis and online professional services.

Sri Lanka therefore needs to move young people from being consumers of digital services to producers of digital value. Universities, vocational institutions and training providers can play an important role in converting existing digital familiarity into marketable skills that connect young people with both domestic and international opportunities. This is increasingly important as technological change and AI reshape labour markets and intensify the need for skills that match emerging forms of work.

The Gender Dimension

The gig economy may be particularly relevant to women, who often face barriers to conventional employment arising from childcare, eldercare, mobility, social expectations and rigid working arrangements. For mothers and women living outside major urban centres, fixed working hours and daily commuting can make formal employment difficult even when suitable jobs exist.

Digital gig work can provide greater flexibility, allowing women to undertake professional assignments from home or their communities and potentially serve international clients without relocating. As discussed in my earlier LSE South Asia article, this opportunity is most meaningful when supported by digital infrastructure, skills training, virtual work hubs, mentorship and appropriate institutional support. However, flexibility should expand women’s economic choices rather than simply add paid work to existing unpaid household responsibilities.

Pressure on Labour-Market Opportunity

The value of a job cannot be judged by salary alone, as commuting, working hours and household responsibilities can significantly affect its real economic value. Flexible digital work can potentially reduce some of these costs by allowing people to work from home or nearby digital hubs and participate in employment on a part-time or project basis. While gig work cannot solve all household pressures, a more flexible organisation of work can create additional employment opportunities while helping households manage their limited time and resources more effectively.

A Possible Third Option Between Unemployment and Migration

Sri Lanka’s migration and brain-drain concerns highlight the need to explore employment opportunities beyond the domestic labour market. While overseas migration will remain an important individual and economic choice, digital work can provide another pathway by allowing skilled Sri Lankans to serve international clients without physically leaving the country. Software developers, designers, analysts, researchers, translators and consultants can potentially earn from global markets while remaining in Sri Lanka. Digital gig work cannot eliminate migration or reverse brain drain, but it can create an additional option between domestic unemployment and physical migration—working for the world while remaining in Sri Lanka.

Recognising and Making Digital Work Reputable

A major institutional gap is that conventional systems are designed around salaried employment, while a freelancer may earn from multiple clients without a single employer or salary certificate. This can make legitimate digital workers difficult to recognise when they seek loans, leasing, insurance or business finance. Sri Lanka could address this through a voluntary digital-worker or independent-professional registration mechanism, providing a recognised economic identity based on qualifications, verified skills, platform activity and documented income, without creating unnecessary bureaucracy.

Such recognition should also make digital income bankable. Banks could assess verified platform earnings, bank transactions, contracts, invoices, tax records, savings and repayment history alongside conventional employment documents. A standardised digital income statement could further help workers demonstrate their financial capacity. The key shift is from asking “Who is your employer?” to asking “Can your income be verified and is it sufficiently stable?”. This would allow successful digital workers to build financial credibility and use their earnings to access credit, acquire assets and develop their own businesses.

Digital Payments Are Part of the Labour Market

Access to reliable international payment systems is essential if Sri Lankans are to participate effectively in the global digital economy. Recent developments in PayPal’s local banking arrangements, including its partnerships with Sampath Bank and Commercial Bank, indicate progress in this direction. However, the broader priority should be a regulated and efficient digital-payment ecosystem that allows workers to receive international earnings, transfer them to Sri Lankan bank accounts, document their income and meet relevant financial and tax requirements with minimal friction. International payment infrastructure is therefore not simply a technology issue; it is an essential component of Sri Lanka’s emerging services-export economy.

Building Infrastructure Outside Colombo

Digital familiarity alone is insufficient without reliable internet, electricity, computers, software and suitable working environments, particularly in rural and underserved areas. To ensure that the gig economy supports regional development rather than becoming another Colombo-centred opportunity, Sri Lanka could establish regional digital-work hubs through universities, vocational institutions, libraries and public-private partnerships. These hubs could provide connectivity, equipment, training, mentoring and assistance with platform registration and international payments. If graduates must migrate to Colombo simply to access such infrastructure, the geographical advantage of digital work is significantly reduced.

From Freelancer to Entrepreneur

Gig work should not be viewed as an end in itself. A person may begin with small online assignments, develop regular clients and professional credibility, and eventually establish a small digital enterprise. This creates a potential pathway from graduate to freelancer, professional service provider and entrepreneur, allowing individuals to create markets around their own skills rather than waiting for conventional vacancies. Universities can support this transition by teaching students not only subject knowledge but also portfolio development, market identification, client communication, digital platforms and contract management. A degree demonstrates educational attainment, while a professional portfolio demonstrates what a graduate can offer to the market.

Facilitation Must Be Matched by Protection

Promoting the gig economy without appropriate safeguards could simply transfer employment risks from institutions to individuals. Digital workers may face uncertain incomes, weak bargaining power and limited social protection. Sri Lanka should therefore facilitate digital work while also ensuring opportunities for independent workers to build savings, access insurance and participate in portable social-protection mechanisms. Flexibility should create greater economic choice without compromising long-term financial security, particularly for women.

A regional Example from India: Think Globally and act Locally

India provides a useful regional example of how the gig economy can be approached as a policy issue rather than simply as informal or temporary work. NITI Aayog has estimated the size and future employment potential of India’s gig and platform economy and has developed recommendations covering employment generation, skills, financial inclusion and social protection. More importantly, India has begun creating institutional mechanisms around these workers. Its e-Shram portal provides a national database of unorganised workers, including gig and platform workers, creating a recognised identity through which workers can potentially access employment, skills development and social-security services. India has also explored platform-led skills development through skill certificates, skill passports and on-the-job training, while NITI Aayog has proposed cash-flow-based lending models that could allow platform workers to demonstrate creditworthiness through their earnings rather than conventional employment or collateral.

Social protection has also entered the policy framework. India’s Code on Social Security, 2020 formally recognises gig and platform workers and provides a basis for schemes covering areas such as accident insurance, health, maternity, disability and old-age protection. India is still developing and refining these arrangements, and Sri Lanka need not replicate the Indian model.

However, the experience demonstrates an important policy lesson: the gig economy can be supported through a system that identifies workers, develops their skills, makes their income more visible to financial institutions and extends appropriate social protection. Sri Lanka could develop its own simpler framework suited to its smaller economy, beginning with recognising digital workers and building the institutional conditions that allow their skills and earnings to become part of the formal economy.

Rethinking Employment and the Next Opportunity

The 43 percent figure for educated young Sri Lankans should encourage a wider discussion about the changing nature of work. Sri Lanka will continue to need conventional employment through firms, industries, farms, professional organisations and public institutions, but the changing labour market also requires new opportunities to connect educated Sri Lankans with global digital markets. The gig economy can provide an additional pathway to increase female labour-force participation, reduce the pressure for migration and brain drain, and connect Sri Lankan skills with markets beyond geographical boundaries.

This does not require a complicated bureaucracy. It requires recognising legitimate digital workers, facilitating access to international platforms and payment systems, allowing verified digital income to support credit assessment, developing portable social protection, and strengthening digital infrastructure and skills beyond major urban centres. Better data on digital workers would also help policymakers develop evidence-based interventions.

The future of work is therefore not only about creating more jobs, but about creating more ways for Sri Lankans to work, earn and build livelihoods while continuing to live and contribute in Sri Lanka. The gig economy should be recognised as part of an emerging digital labour market and services-export economy, where workers can build professional identities, earn internationally, access finance and eventually develop their own enterprises.

Features

Are religions getting redundant in the modern world?

Published

1 day ago

2026/09/25

Thilina Walpola

by Dr Upul Wijayawardhana

We are living in an era of astonishingly rapid scientific advancement. From the time Apple launched the ‘iPhone’ in January 2007, the first targeting the mass market, smartphones have taken over the world, making them indispensable. According to the latest statistics, there are around 8.1 billion mobile phones with 7.4 billion active smartphones, for the world population of 8.25 billion. Except for a tiny minority of the very poor, most people have at least one smartphone.

We are now entering the era of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and smart robots. Recently, a ‘Chinese’ robot ran 100 metres faster than Usain Bolt! Though Alan Turing proposed the idea of ‘Thinking Machines’ way back in 1950, the real AI boom commenced with the release of the generative AI chatbot, ChatGPT, by OpenAI in November 2020. Number of technology firms in the US as well as in China have joined the race, China catching up very fast, quite unexpectedly. There is a frenzy at the moment, raising expectations, as the imminent floating of these companies is likely to value the two leaders, OpenAI and Anthropic, trillion dollars each!

However, trouble is brewing in the AI field. On top of the concerns raised by environmentalists regarding the huge power drain by AI centres, there are recent reports of some AI models hacking independently into other systems, without human input. Worse still, a senior researcher at Anthropic, who has previously worked for OpenAI as well, resigned in early September on ethical grounds stating that the way the two companies are fast-tracking AI poses an existential threat to humanity. Surprisingly, instead of a rebuttal the head of Anthropic supported his view, soon joined by three more heads of leading AI developers. Whilst they agreed on slowing progress, President Trump has claimed that slowing is totally unnecessary as long as a super intelligent President like himself is at the helm! There does not seem to be an end to Trump’s grandiosity! He was joined by Tony Blair. In contrast, King Charles held a summit with representatives of all AI developers to find a way AI could be developed without a threat to humanity. That is how wise leaders act!

Less sophisticated AI tools are already in widespread use and installed in computers, laptops and smartphones. Some of us are using these automatically. However, the more advanced AI tools like ChatGPT can change even reality. For instance, AI can generate videos hardly distinguishable from real ones. What you enjoy watching on YouTube may be just the creations of AI! Some people use AI to write articles; only a few of them admit that they do so. Very soon we may be reading stories AI creates and listening to music, courtesy of AI. Technology seems to be fast becoming the new religion? Or, will the existential threat move us more towards religion?

Religion, perhaps, is as old as humanity itself; various belief systems evolving and disappearing coupled with the fortunes of the associated civilizations. Just like AI, religion is also a creation of the human mind which our ancestors did to explain many phenomena which appeared, at that time, to be supernatural. Starting with Animism, perceiving the divine in the natural world around, humans went on to Polytheism, believing in many gods like in Hinduism, culminating in the concept of Monotheism.

World’s oldest religion, Hinduism, still in wide practice, is devoid of a founder or a single text. The earliest scriptures, Rigveda, is considered to be around 3,500 years old but archaeologists have discovered symbols of importance to Hinduism as far back as 7,000 BCE. Though it is considered to be Polytheistic, it can be argued that it was the precursor of Monotheism, the concept of a creator God, as Brahma was the creator in the triad, Trimurti, Vishnu being the preserver and Shiva being the destroyer. It seems to be a sensible balancing act; create, destroy and repair with improvements.

It is pretty obvious that as science expands, the importance of religion contracts but it is hardly likely religions would be totally redundant. We have no choice as to which family we are born to and that invariably determines what your religion would be, if any. Religion is the first brainwashing a child encounters and most remain in the same faith, often trying to defend even the indefensible, but some change through conviction or conversion due to one of many reasons. Further, religious rituals have social values and religious practices often come to one’s solace at times of distress. Therefore, many will continue with the religion they were born to but with declining enthusiasm, at times. However, some religions seem to be facing problems like falling attendances in places of worship. With education and tech savviness expanding, one would expect the youth to be less enthusiastic about religion but the converse is true in some religions, some youth becoming very militant unfortunately.

While most religions make you subservient to a supernatural power, the Buddha was wise and bold enough to remove those shackles. He proclaimed that one’s destiny is in one’s own hands. However, many Buddhists appear to attach greater significance to rituals than to practising the Dhamma.

Buddhism as a religion may become less relevant as the frontiers of science expands but the Buddha Dhamma, especially Abhidhamma and Vipassana, would receive increasing recognition, the Buddha remaining an authority on consciousness and the mind.

Scientific progress should be for the betterment of society but AI developers are taking huge risks, taking massive loans threatening the world economy, for one aim: profit! Some do not seem to care even if their actions pose an existential threat to humanity.

Perhaps, if the Four Sublime Attitudes (Sathara Brahma Vihara) expounded by the Buddha; loving kindness (Metta), compassion (Karuna), empathetic joy (Muditha) and equanimity (Upekkha) are adopted as universal values, the world would become a safer place to live in, with or without AI.

Features

‘The Bullet that Missed’

Published

1 day ago

2026/09/25

Thilina Walpola

Tales of Mystery and Suspense 21

by Prof. Rajiva Wijesinha

Another book that is part of a series, today—one that is fun without the brooding concentration on criminality in different forms that marks the Rebus novels. This one about the Thursday Murder Club, is a romp as its two predecessors were interspersed with deaths and what might be deaths.

The Bullet that Missed

begins with a meeting with the presenter of ‘South East Tonight’, a programme about the area, in which Coopers Chase is situated. The meeting is held because the club has decided to look into the murder of the producer’s assistant, Bethany Waites, whose car was found at the bottom of a cliff ten years ago. There was blood in it, but the body was never found.

Or, rather, the book begins with an account of Bethany Waites deciding, on the night she vanished, to meet someone in connection with a case of massive fraud that she had been investigating, after sending the producer, Mike Waghorn, a message that she had found new evidence though he had no idea what it was. The night she died, she sent him another message: “I don’t say this often enough, but thank you.”

CCTV cameras showed her leaving her place, but then the vehicle vanished, before being sighted near the cliff, with two people in it. Investigation of the fraud had led to the imprisonment of a woman, Heather Garbutt, though it proved impossible to pin anything on Jack Mason, the mastermind for whom she had worked.

The Club conducts investigations on several fronts, including through Connie Johnson, the drug dealer they had helped imprison in the earlier book. The psychiatrist Ibrahim, the most respectable member of the Club, interviews her in an attempt to get her to find out more from Heather, who is in the same prison as she. They also investigate the CCTV record of the night Bethany vanished, and deduce that she went to an apartment block and exited from its other side, and that is why she was not seen leaving the town. But some time had elapsed between her being seen in the town and then on the cliff.

Meanwhile, Elizabeth has been kidnapped, along with her husband, and taken to a house in Staffordshire, where she is told by a man called the Viking that she must kill a former KGB agent now in London, who has a profitable career in money laundering. The Viking tells her he will inform Viktor that she was responsible for stealing the diamonds, the story of which is told in the previous Murder Club Mystery, and Viktor will then kill her.

Elizabeth, who has an affair with Viktor, knows he will not kill her, but when the Viking says he will also send Viktor a picture of Joyce, she decides she must act, and goes to see Viktor, and fires when she gets him in the bathroom. But, of course, she fired into the ceiling, and Viktor is then taken to Coopers Chase, to stay with Joyce until they have dealt with the Viking. And Viktor then enjoys the camaraderie of the retirement home so much that he wonders whether he too should settle there.

Elizabeth does trace the Viking, or rather her husband does, for he has noticed rare books on the shelves in his library, and an antiquarian book dealer friend managed to find out who bought them. But before they could confront him, he comes to Coopers Chase, for he has seen the bullet hole in the bathroom of Viktor’s flat and realized he was fooled.

But he cannot bring himself to kill Joyce straight away, and she knocks him out with a drug in a cup of tea. When he meets Viktor, they both decide to fall in with the plans of the Club.

Before this, Heather has been found dead in her cell, with a note saying that ‘they’ were going to kill her, and only Connie could help. Before that she had admitted that she was frightened to name the man behind the fraud. Jack Mason said the same, after Ron had won his confidence. The Club had deduced by then that the body was buried in the garden of Heather’s house which Jack had bought, after she had been jailed, and digging reveals a gun and money, but no body. Jack tells them that the mastermind had said that Bethany was buried with a bullet with his DNA on it.

The Club is now working with the Chief Constable of Kent, Andrew Everton, who writes thrillers himself, but in the form of e-books. He is in search of a publisher, and delighted when Mike Waghorn puts him on his programme, as is Donna, who is substituted at the last minute for Chris.

The Club finds out whom Bethany visited in the apartment block—Mike’s assistant Pauline, who tells them later what she and Bethany had been doing. But this is after the man behind the fraud has been unmasked up in the house in Staffordshire, where he was trying to hire the Viking and Viktor to find the money that he had stashed away, using accounts that he could no longer trace. He has also confessed to murdering Bethany, hoping this will persuade the two money launderers to help him, but it turns out that he did not do this. Nor did he kill Heather, the incriminating note having been placed in her room by Connie, who decided that Heather’s suicide should be treated as murder so that the person who had been blackmailing her should be found out.

It was Jack Mason’s murder that was brought home to the crook. It turns out that Bethany, her appearance altered by Pauline, has vanished, to a new life in Dubai, where she has taken control of the missing millions. She has gone there because the threat, she received through the bullet she was looking at in the preamble, was to Mike and she wanted him out of danger.

Yet another whimsical conclusion to a whimsical book with enough loose ends left hanging for another sequel.