Features

Making the Unseen Seen: Inside a Museum Built for the People We Overlook

Published

3 days ago

2026/09/20

Performance by Mr. Hirusha Sathsara

There is a particular kind of blindness that sets in around anything we depend on every day. We stop seeing the hands that make it possible. The tea leaf that becomes our morning cup, the swept corridor we walk down without a thought, the quiet skill of a healer working outside a hospital’s walls, the months of labour folded into a single framed artwork, all of it is easy to consume and easier still to forget was ever made by someone. It is this particular blindness that a new exhibition at the University of Peradeniya has set out to interrupt, and it does so with a seriousness of purpose that goes well beyond what one might expect of a student showcase.

Invisible Workers: A Museum of Unseen Labour

The audience at the panel discussion

Dr. Manoj Alawathukotuwa delivering the keynote address

opened on 1st September at the Department of Fine Arts, University of Peradeniya, and it announces itself, from its very first pages, as something more than a gallery of images. It is described by its own organisers as a live and ongoing act of looking, assembled by students under the department’s FNA 2025: Advanced Digital Technology for Fine Arts module, and built to hold four very different lives up to the light at once. Rather than closing a subject down with a tidy conclusion, the exhibition insists on treating research and process as the real substance of the work, with the finished installations offered as snapshots of something still unfolding rather than a final word.

Four Rooms, Four Kinds of Invisibility

Walk through the exhibition, and you move through four interconnected themes, each occupying its own dedicated space across the museum’s ground and first floor.

1. Invisible Labour of the Malayaga Community: Turns its attention to the tea-picking families of the Rangala plantation region, whose work has shaped Sri Lanka’s tea industry for generations even as the people themselves remain almost entirely absent from the story the country tells about that industry. Through photography, oral narratives, soundscapes, objects, and immersive installation, this section moves beyond the familiar image of a woman with a basket on her back to explore working conditions, economic and social struggle, cultural identity, memory, relationships, and the aspirations of a younger generation increasingly looking for a life beyond the estate. The section resists presenting the community only through hardship, choosing instead to foreground dignity, resilience, and culture, and it closes on a line that could stand as the exhibition’s own motto: “You know the taste. Now, know the story.”

2. Daily Struggles & Resilience of Disabled Labourers: Turns to workers who continue to contribute skilfully and independently despite physical, sensory, or cognitive challenges, and whose everyday negotiations with an unaccommodating world go almost entirely unremarked. Through photography, recorded voices, and personal narrative, this section deliberately steers away from the easy frame of sympathy, choosing instead to document strength, independence, and social recognition, or the frequent lack of it. It leaves visitors with a single, uncomfortable question: “What do we see first: the disability, or the person?”

3. Hidden Healers: Medicine Beyond Visibility: Widens the very definition of care and healing. It brings together four individuals whose labour quietly sustains the comfort, safety, and wellbeing of others: a flower seller, an Ayurveda practitioner, a hospital cleaner, and a departmental restroom cleaner, treating them not as background figures in someone else’s story of recovery, but as healers in their own right. Through photography, interviews, and immersive presentation, the section asks who it is that keeps us healthy, comfortable, and safe while we barely register their presence, concluding simply: *”Sometimes, the most essential care is the care we rarely see.”

4. Behind the Curtains: Artists as Invisible Labour: Turns the exhibition’s gaze inward, onto the very people making the exhibition possible. It explores the hidden world of time, research, experimentation, emotional investment, financial uncertainty, and personal sacrifice that sits behind every finished artwork, insisting that artists themselves are workers contributing to society, culture, and the creative economy, and not simply the source of finished objects to be admired. “Before the art is seen,” the section states, “the labour is lived.”

The Minds Behind the Museum

The exhibition is the work of a large and carefully organised student team, but it was guided throughout by a consulting panel drawn from the teaching staff of the FNA 2025: Advanced Digital Technology for Fine Arts module: Prof. Sudesh Mantillake, Ms. Niroshi Senavirathne, and Mr. Tharaka Gunasekara, whose combined presence on the project reflects the department’s continuing commitment to pairing rigorous academic supervision with genuine creative freedom for its students. Their involvement, together with Priyantha Fonseka’s, gave the students both a scholarly anchor and the confidence to pursue an ambitious, multi-format exhibition rather than a more conventional and safer one.

The opening event on the first of September carried that same weight of thought and reflection. After a welcome address by Nimesha Kumarathunga and a message from Sue Ott Rowlands, President of Randolph College in Virginia, USA, Tharaka Gunasekara delivered the formal introduction to the museum, situating the exhibition within the department’s broader intellectual history before Niroshi Senavirathne, Head of the Department of Fine Arts, addressed the gathering. The screening of “Invoking Michel,” a performance by Sudesh Mantillake made in tribute to the department’s founding head, followed, before the keynote address was delivered by Dr. Manoj Alawathukotuwa, a keynote that, by all accounts, set the tone for an exhibition unwilling to treat unseen labour as a merely decorative theme.

The closing event brought the same seriousness to a wider public conversation. A panel discussion featuring Dr. Thamali Kithsiri, Dr. Maduranga Kalugampitiya, and Dr. Kalpa Rajapaksha, alongside student representatives Shamali Ganga, Hiruni Abhisheka, Yoshini Kaushalya, and Chamali Mathangadeera, and moderated by Priyantha Fonseka, interrogated the exhibition’s themes from academic and artistic perspectives alike^[2]. It was followed by “Blessing the Unseen,” a performance offered in honour of invisible workers everywhere, performed by Dhanushika Devindi, Sujeewa Nadeeshani, and Ms. Dinithi Thathsarani.

More Than an Exhibition

What sets this project apart is its refusal to stay still. The organising team, students working across curatorial, exhibition design, editorial, public engagement, and logistics committees, describe their intention as privileging process over product, treating each installation as a snapshot of a much larger and continuing inquiry rather than a closed conclusion. Photography, oral histories, soundscapes, objects, film, and immersive digital installation are woven together, so that visitors are not simply told about unseen labour but are placed, however briefly, inside its texture.

That ambition is matched by the range of voices the project has drawn into conversation. Randolph College in Virginia, USA, the Movement Rhizome Collective, the Department of History at the University of Colombo, and the ICTMD Sri Lanka Dance Studies Subcommittee all lent their support and reflection to the catalogue, each writing, in their own way, about what it means to notice a cleaner before a clean room, an artist before an artwork, a worker before a product. As Movement Rhizome’s message to the catalogue puts it, knowledge “does not always sit in books, galleries, institutions, or finished objects. It moves through bodies, hands, voices, gestures, memories, spaces, and everyday practices.”

Why This Kind of Work Matters

It would be easy to mistake a project like this for a student exercise, contained neatly within a semester and a syllabus. It is worth resisting that instinct. Sri Lanka’s economy, like most economies, runs on labour that rarely makes it into public narrative: plantation work, informal care, maintenance work, disability-inclusive work, and the precarious, undercompensated labour of art-making itself When that labour goes unseen, it also goes unprotected, undervalued, and underpaid.

A museum cannot change wages or working conditions on its own. But it can change what a visitor notices the next time they buy a packet of tea, walk past a cleaner, or admire a painting without asking what it cost the person who made it. That is the quiet, cumulative power of this kind of cultural work: it does not just document unseen labour; it trains its audience in a habit of attention that outlasts the exhibition itself.

A Museum Dedicated to Its Founder

Running through every page of the exhibition’s catalogue, and through the spirit of the exhibition itself, is a dedication to the memory of Dr. Michael Fernando, the founding Head of the Department of Fine Arts, University of Peradeniya. It was Dr. Fernando who, in the early 2000s, insisted that the study of fine arts could not be confined to a single discipline or a single medium, drawing scholars from archaeology, sociology, anthropology, and philosophy into the shaping of the department’s earliest syllabus, and who introduced digital technology into the curriculum years before the wider university considered it necessary. That founding insistence on interdisciplinary, technologically engaged, socially conscious art-making is, in a very real sense, the soil this exhibition grew from.

The catalogue’s tribute describes him as a man who “made space, not for hierarchy, but for dialogue; not for authority, but for love and possibility,” and it is fitting that a museum devoted to making the overlooked visible should itself be offered, first and foremost, in memory of him^[4]. A separate felicitation note contributed to the catalogue by Athula Samarakoon expands on that legacy in detail, recalling how Dr. Fernando built the department’s original syllabus with scholars from archaeology, sociology, anthropology, and philosophy rather than fine arts alone, championed a hiring philosophy that prized diversity of thought over a single academic pedigree, pushed the department into digital technology as early as 2001, when computing facilities on campus were scarce, and worked to connect students with industry long before such exposure became a standard expectation^[4]. Read alongside the exhibition itself, Athula Samarakoon’s tribute makes plain that the museum’s multidisciplinary, technologically ambitious character is not incidental but a direct inheritance of the founder it honours

Invisible Workers: A Museum of Unseen Labour

runs at the Department of Fine Arts, University of Peradeniya, closing with the panel discussion and the performance “Blessing the Unseen.”^[4] Visitors leave, if the exhibition succeeds at what it sets out to do, not simply informed but changed in a small and lasting way, trained, as its curators hope, to see the cleaner before the clean room, the artist before the artwork, and the person before the category.

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Features

Defend civic space upon which peace is built

Published

19 hours ago

2026/09/22

Sahan Weerasooriya

by Jehan Perera

International Peace Day was observed on 21 September. It finds Sri Lanka with a genuine achievement to record and a demanding test to meet. The UN’s theme this year was “Invest in Peace: For Everyone, Everywhere, Every Day.” It also honoured the “everyday architects of peace”—people driving local action and building a lasting peace from the ground up. In the 2026 Global Peace Index, Sri Lanka rose 30 places, from 97th to 67th among 163 countries. Over the same period, global peacefulness declined for the twelfth consecutive year to its lowest level since the index began, and South Asia suffered the sharpest regional deterioration. The test is whether the government will protect the civic space in which those architects of peace work.

Sri Lanka’s improvement is real and deserves acknowledgement. In this year’s review, issued a few weeks ago, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights acknowledged progress in the form of action against corruption, arrests and investigations linked to political killings, enforced disappearances and the 2019 Easter Sunday attacks, and continued official denunciation of racism. A ranking, however, records conditions at a particular moment. It does not guarantee that they will last. Sustainable peace will depend on three factors. These are whether the government addresses the unresolved causes of conflict, whether it strengthens accountability for past and present abuses, and whether it protects the civic space in which peace is built from below. On the first two the record is incomplete. On the third, the draft NGO law threatens to weaken the very organisations that press for the other two.

What holds Sri Lanka back from a higher place are the same things that fed the war at home and also feed international conflict that rages elsewhere in the world. These are racism or ethnic nationalism that is narrow-focused, corruption and lawlessness. Equality, accountability and the rule of law are their remedies. The present government has committed itself to these, and is a significant improvement over governments of the recent past. But these pillars are not held up by governments alone. Peace is made in villages, workplaces and university campuses. It is made by families who insist on the truth about their disappeared, by journalists and lawyers who expose abuse, and by community organisations that bring Tamils, Muslims and Sinhalese into practical cooperation.

Unfinished Work

The UN High Commissioner’s report to the current Human Rights Council session, covering October 2025 to July 2026, shows how much remains to be done. The Prevention of Terrorism Act is still being applied, producing arbitrary arrests and long detention without charge. The report calls for a moratorium pending repeal and for the release of long-term detainees. Military-occupied land has not been released, memorialisation lacks support, and tensions over land and religious sites persist. The Batticaloa district illustrates how such problems endure. In the past three years, two Presidents, Ranil Wickremesinghe and Anura Kumara Dissanayake, have visited and instructed that the dispute over grazing land in Mailaththamadu and Mathavanai be resolved. It is a dispute between Tamil cattle farmers and outside Sinhala cultivators, and it has not been resolved. When two Presidents issue instructions and nothing changes, the fault lies in the machinery of State. An unresolved dispute does not stand still. It hardens into the next grievance.

Accountability shows the same pattern. The report documents torture and deaths in custody, and surveillance and intimidation of activists, journalists and civil society. Serious cases remain stalled for years, among them the killing of seventeen aid workers of Action Contre la Faim in Muttur two decades ago. Sharper still is the case of the Eastern University refugee camp at Vantharamoolai, where in 1990 the army took away 158 persons in a single day. They were never seen again. The camp’s officer-in-charge, Dr T. Jayasingam, later Vice Chancellor of the university, identified the officers responsible. More than three decades on, those officers have not been questioned. These cases are still remembered because families, survivors and independent witnesses have refused to let them be forgotten. Meanwhile several commissions of inquiry have completed their investigations but nothing further has happened.

What South Africa, Argentina and other post-conflict societies have found indispensable are four pillars of what is called “Transitional Justice” which are truth, accountability, reparations and non-recurrence. In Sri Lanka’s circumstances, truth means credible, independent investigation of what happened to the disappeared, and support for memorialisation. Accountability means prosecuting Muttur, Vantharamoolai and comparable cases, and removing credibly accused persons from senior office. Reparations mean compensation for victims and the return of military-held land. Non-recurrence means repealing the Prevention of Terrorism Act, releasing those held under it in the meantime, and resolving local disputes such as Mailaththamadu before delay hardens them. A country that buries its past does not escape it. The past returns in the next generation.

Civil Society

It is against this background that the draft NGO law is most troubling. The proposed legislation contains sweeping provisions for State oversight and control of civil society organisations. Among these are enforcing a licensing requirement on NGOs, which is to be renewed every three years, and severe penalties for not submitting reports on time, or for spending on emergency flood relief (for instance) when the NGOs mandate is peacebuilding (as an example) with possible sanctions including deregistration and having to shut down. Civil society groups have warned that it would confer excessive discretion over their registration and operations. Officials in Sri Lanka have abused such powers in the past. Additional power without effective checks invites further abuse. Sound regulation would have clear criteria for registration, an independent registrar and a right of appeal to the courts. What cannot be justified is a regime in which registration becomes a licence to be withheld from organisations that scrutinise policy, expose abuses or advocate for the rights of citizens.

Democracy is based on checks and balances. Those who press for accountability are part of those checks. The contradiction is plain. A government that has pledged accountability, equality and the rule of law ought not to be preparing to weaken the very organisations that press for their fulfilment. The organisations most exposed are those working on disappearances, land, memorialisation and reconciliation in the North and East, where the State’s record is weakest and the need for independent witnesses greatest. Silencing them would not remove the grievances they document. It would remove the channel through which those grievances are addressed peacefully. The government appears to be relenting, which is welcome, but a pause is not a withdrawal. The bill should be withdrawn and any replacement drafted in genuine consultation with those it would govern.

Investment in peace as called for by the UN in its International Peace Day theme implies commitment over time, with returns that come slowly. Sri Lanka’s 30-place rise on the Global Peace Index is a first dividend and nothing more. It can be built upon only if the government matches its commitments with action: withdrawing or fundamentally redrafting the NGO law, repealing or suspending the Prevention of Terrorism Act, and bringing Muttur, Vantharamoolai and Mailaththamadu to resolution. A higher place in a global index is not a certificate of success. Sri Lanka’s higher ranking is an encouraging start, but it will endure only if the space in which citizens speak, question and organise is protected. Peace is built from below, and a government that is serious about it will treat civil society as a partner rather than a threat.

Features

Africa is buying: Sri Lanka must start selling

Published

19 hours ago

2026/09/22

Sahan Weerasooriya

A call to Sri Lankan exporters and agencies: Can Sri Lanka compete with China and India in Africa?

By Kana V. Kananathan
Former Ambassador

Sri Lanka has spent decades concentrating its exports on traditional markets in Europe, North America and Asia. Yet across the Indian Ocean lies a rapidly expanding market that remains significantly underdeveloped by Sri Lankan exporters: Africa.

The opportunity is not theoretical. Sri Lanka already exports packaging, textiles, rubber products, pharmaceuticals, paper, machinery and electrical goods to African markets. The question is whether these modest beginnings can be transformed into a serious export strategy—and whether Sri Lanka can compete against the enormous commercial presence of China and India.

The answer is yes—but Sri Lanka must compete differently.

Kenya: Gateway to East Africa

Kenya should be the starting point.

Sri Lanka exported approximately US$32.08 million to Kenya in 2025, while importing US$11.41 million. But US$32 million is tiny compared with the opportunity: Kenya imported more than US$24 billion in 2025. Even a 1% share of that market would represent nearly US$240 million in annual exports.

And the commercial base already exists. Sri Lanka’s 2025 exports to Kenya included approximately US$9.99 million in paper and paperboard products, US$9.73 million in knitted fabrics, US$3.64 million in pharmaceuticals, US$1.24 million in rubber products and US$1.20 million in machinery.

Kenya’s import structure is equally revealing. In the third quarter of 2025, industrial supplies represented 34.4% of imports, machinery and capital equipment 19.2%, food and beverages 9.0%, and consumer goods 7.3%. The opportunity for Sri Lanka, therefore, extends well beyond consumer goods—we can become a supplier to African industry.

But competition is fierce. Asia supplied around 70% of Kenya’s imports in 2025, with imports from China rising 16.5% and those from India 11.3%.

Sri Lanka cannot challenge China and India across every product category. Nor should it try. We must target sectors where quality, specialisation, reliability, technical capability, smaller production runs and flexibility matter more than simply offering the lowest price.

Where Can Sri Lanka Compete?

Packaging is an obvious starting point. Cartons, boxes, bags and labels are already among Sri Lanka’s exports to Kenya. Importantly, some Sri Lankan companies operating in Kenya are themselves importing these products from Sri Lanka. The market already exists; the challenge is to scale it.

As Africa’s food-processing, pharmaceutical, apparel and consumer-goods industries expand, demand for sophisticated packaging will grow with them. Sri Lanka already possesses the manufacturing capability and industry experience to capture a larger share.

Industrial rubber products, tyres, gloves and specialised rubber components offer another opportunity where Sri Lanka has established manufacturing expertise.

The apparel supply chain is equally promising. Rather than competing directly with African garment factories, Sri Lanka can supply fabrics, elastics, labels, packaging and specialised textile inputs.

Some Sri Lankan apparel manufacturing and export companies already established in Kenya, Togo, Ghana and Ethiopia are importing several of these inputs from Sri Lanka. The supply chain, therefore, already exists. The next step is to move beyond supplying Sri Lankan-owned factories and become a competitive input supplier to the wider African apparel industry.

Other sectors deserving systematic market development include pharmaceuticals and medical consumables, processed foods, biscuits and confectionery, coconut products, cinnamon and spices, electrical products and cables, industrial chemicals, ceramics, light engineering, agricultural equipment and food-processing machinery.

Sri Lanka should also look beyond physical goods. IT, fintech, banking technology, engineering, healthcare, hospitality management and professional services largely escape the freight disadvantage confronting merchandise exports.

The Tariff Problem Can Become an Opportunity

Market access cannot be discussed without tariffs.The East African Community applies a Common External Tariff with bands of 0%, 10%, 25% and 35%, while certain sensitive products attract still higher protection. Simply filling containers in Colombo with finished consumer goods will therefore not always be commercially competitive.

But that obstacle points towards a bigger opportunity: manufacture in Africa.

Sri Lankan businesses could export intermediate materials while undertaking final assembly, manufacturing, processing or packaging in Kenya. Packaging companies could establish converting plants; electrical manufacturers could assemble locally; pharmaceutical companies could explore manufacturing or packaging partnerships; and food companies could undertake final processing closer to consumers.

Kenya would then become more than an export destination. It could become Sri Lanka’s manufacturing and distribution gateway into East and Central Africa.

With the East African Community now comprising eight partner states and extending geographically from the Indian Ocean towards the Atlantic, establishing a regional presence is increasingly more important than viewing each African country in isolation.

West Africa Cannot Be Ignored

Sri Lanka simultaneously needs a West African strategy.

Ghana offers potential as an English-speaking commercial gateway and host of the AfCFTA Secretariat. Nigeria, with its enormous population and consumer economy, should be approached as a major market in its own right, despite its greater regulatory, currency and operational complexity.

ECOWAS tariff bands of 0%, 5%, 10%, 20% and 35% again make product selection critical. Sri Lanka should concentrate on products with sufficient differentiation and margins to absorb freight, tariffs and distributor costs.

Pharmaceuticals demonstrate both the opportunity and the challenge. Nigeria imported approximately US$766 million in pharmaceuticals in 2025, with India supplying roughly US$394 million and China US$131 million. Ghana imported approximately US$301 million, with India supplying about US$140 million.

Sri Lanka cannot simply offer another generic product and expect to beat India on price. We must identify specialised products, reliable supply arrangements, partnerships and, where commercially justified, local production or packaging.

Stop Promoting Sectors—Identify Products

Sri Lanka now needs an Africa Export Opportunity Study based on individual products, not broad sectors.

The Export Development Board, Foreign Ministry, chambers and private sector should jointly identify 15–20 priority products. For each product, Sri Lanka should calculate the HS code, African annual import demand, principal suppliers, Chinese and Indian market shares, applicable duties, freight from Colombo, regulatory requirements, distributor margins and final landed price.

That will tell us where Sri Lanka genuinely has a competitive advantage.

The Commercial Test

Before spending resources promoting a product, apply one simple test:

African import demand + Sri Lankan production capability + tariff + freight + distributor margin + regulatory cost = final landed competitiveness against China, India and local African production.

Only products that pass this test should receive concentrated export-promotion resources.

This would move Sri Lanka away from exhibitions, delegations and general discussions towards what ultimately matters: specific products, specific buyers, specific distributors and actual export orders.

Give Our Missions Targets

Commercial diplomacy must become results-driven. The Government should set clear annual trade and investment targets for every Sri Lankan mission in Africa.

Missions should be evaluated not merely on diplomatic activity, but on buyers and distributors identified, business introductions made, investments facilitated, market barriers resolved and measurable exports generated.

In a competitive Africa, our missions must become active economic frontlines not merely diplomatic outposts.

A practical strategy could operate through three commercial gateways: Nairobi for East and Central Africa, Accra for selected West African markets and Lagos for Nigeria.

Sri Lanka’s total exports of goods and services reached approximately US$17.25 billion in 2025. Capturing even a small additional share of Africa’s enormous import market could, therefore, make a meaningful contribution to export earnings, investment and foreign-exchange generation.

Africa Will Not Wait

Sri Lankan exporters must stop looking at Africa as a distant or difficult market and start treating it as a strategic growth market.

We cannot compete with China and India on scale, but we can compete on quality, specialisation, flexibility and reliability. Exporters must identify country-specific opportunities, establish strong local distributors, build partnerships with African businesses and use Sri Lankan companies already operating on the continent as gateways into regional supply chains.

Where freight and tariffs weaken competitiveness, businesses must be prepared to move towards local assembly, joint ventures and manufacturing in Africa. Exporters cannot do it alone. They need aggressive, measurable and results-driven commercial diplomacy from Sri Lanka’s missions.

Africa is buying. Its markets are being captured now. Sri Lanka must stop watching from the sidelines. We must enter, compete, build our presence and secure our share.

(Ambassador Kana Kananathan is a businessman, Diplomat, lobbyist and an expert in African affairs, with over four decades of experience on the African continent. A long-time resident of Africa, he served as Sri Lanka’s envoy to Uganda and Kenya, with concurrent accreditation to 22 African Nations, and was the permanent representative to UN Habitat and UN environmental Programme. Over the years, he has been the Elections Monitor across the continent, working closely with African governments, and built enduring partnerships with African leaders. He also served as Economic and Investments Advisor to former President Professor Alpha Condé of the Republic of Guinea)

Features

Memories and Midnight Magic: Recipe for a perfect 31st Night dance

Published

19 hours ago

2026/09/22

Sahan Weerasooriya

The heart of a great 31st Night dance is memory, and memories come rushing back when those 70s, 80s and 90s golden oldies begin to play — those timeless tunes that make revellers, young and old, rush to the floor and dance the night away.

A perfect 31st Night is not just a party. It is a journey. A journey through time.

The music should flow like a love story. Start slow, start soft. Let couples glide into a waltz for romance. Let the floor come alive with a twist, a rock ‘n’ roll, a jive. Let nostalgia build with beautiful sing-along oldies generally associated with a New Year’s Eve dance.

This is the art that many of our entertainers seem to have forgotten.

The final hour, before midnight, is sacred. It should be collective energy at its peak. The entire crowd, on the dance floor, linking arms, swaying together, singing, at the top of their voices, those sing-along favourites.

Yes, I’m referring to those immortal, nostalgic favourites that unite the world: ‘This Land Is Your Land,’ ‘You Are My Sunshine,’ ‘When The Saints Go Marching In,’ ‘Roll Out The Barrel,’ ‘Celebration,’ ‘She’ll Be Coming Round The Mountain,’ ‘Happy Days Are Here Again,’ and so many more.

One wonders if some of our modern entertainers have even heard of these nostalgia anthems that traditionally lead up to the dawning of the New Year! This is not just music; this is ritual.

Then comes THE moment: Lights dim. Music pauses. A hush falls. The countdown begins — 10, 9, 8… — hugs, wishes, tears of joy, and then … ‘Auld Lang Syne.’ Hands crossed, voices united, bidding farewell to the old and welcoming the new. That moment makes or breaks the night.

Here is the truth that many genuine 31st Night revellers feel but hesitate to say — an overdose of baila music at New Year’s Eve events is NOT welcome.

Of course, baila is required. Baila is our Sri Lankan heartbeat! But a 31st Night dance is for everyone.

When it’s ONLY baila, the twist and rock n’ roll lovers, the waltz kings and queens feel left out. And they are the very people who MADE nostalgia! They are the die-hard revellers who have kept the 31st Night spirit alive for decades.

A family mentioned to me that they went along with friends for a 31st Night dance, in the city, to usher in 2026, and were thoroughly disappointed with the setup.

The bands in attendance, they said, failed to generate the excitement generally associated with a 31st Night event.

If given a free hand, the music at certain Colombo venues will be mostly baila, and that is going to disappoint many. Some are already worried that it will be just a baila scene this year, as well.

A memorable 31st Night respects all rhythms … yes, a waltz for romance, a twist and rock n’ roll for that 60s magic, a cha-cha, a slow foxtrot, and then the baila, after the countdown anthem.

That balance is what makes it inclusive, classy, and truly fun-filled.

Organisers, especially in Colombo, should keep this in mind: let it be 70% nostalgia – Western, and 30% baila, with the last hour left for pure baila madness, after the New Year is in!

Organisers must work out the programme for their 31st Night and instruct the entertainers to follow those instructions. The band should not dictate the night; the spirit of nostalgia should.

This New Year, let’s give Colombo what it truly wants — memories, midnight magic, and music for every soul on the floor.

Let’s dance into 2027 with class.