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Man-eater crocodile in Mankulam

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5 years ago

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by Junglewallah

(Continued from last week)

Before leaving Mankulam area, I had an experience worth relating on one of my visits to Karupaddaimurippu . It was in July or August, the time of the drought. In a little hamlet called Olumadu, situated about a mile from Karupaddaimurippu, there was a tiny village tank that had dried down to about half its normal size. Visiting this village I was shown a villager who about a week earlier had been seized around his head by a small crocodile, approximately four feet long, whilst bathing. The wounds around his head had still not healed completely. The villager told Master and me that whilst ducking his head under the water, in the customary village style of bathing, he suddenly found himself gripped round his head.

Since the crocodile was small and he was close to the shore, he had struggled ashore with the crocodile still grimly gripping him by the head. The villagers who were close by had killed the animal. Its skin was shown to me, thus confirming both the story and the miniature size of the man-eater. One can only imagine that it was the absolute drought and scarcity of food that had made the crocodile attack a prey so much larger that itself. Since Olumadu is an isolated village tank, some 20 miles from the sea-coast and away from any estuarine river, the animal was almost certainly a marsh or tank crocodile (Crocodilus palustris) or geta kimbula. The skin shown to me was badly removed and too poorly preserved to make any definite identification possible, but for the reasons earlier stated it was in all probability a marsh or tank crocodile.

What was interesting is that the tank crocodile, unlike the estuarine one, is not reputed to be a man-eater but primarily a fish eater. It would appear, however, that hunger would make any animal forget its normal behavioral pattern and attempt to secure any kind of food that it thinks is edible.

 

Fishing in east coast

I had the good fortune, before the beautifully scenic east coast of our Island became a troubled area, to camp out and engage in fishing at practically all river and lagoon estuaries of the area. Starting from the north at Mullaitivu as far as I could recollect, they were Nayaru, Kokillai, Yan Oya, Puduvaikattumalai, Irakkakandy (Nilaweli), Salapai Aru (Kuchaveli), Kinniya, Kiliveddi, Genge (the main mouth of the Mahaveli), Ilangatturai (the mouth of the Ullakelle lagoon), Verugal, Vakarai, Batticaloa lagoon mouth, Oluvil (where the old Gal Oya flowed out to sea), Sinnamuttuvaram (where there was an idyllic little rest house, now alas no more), Komari lagoon, Kottakal,Arugam Bay lagoon, Heda Oya (or Naval Aru); Wila Oya (at Panama) Panakala, Kunukala, Andarakala, Itigala, Girikula, Yakala, Helawa and Kumana (where the Kumbukkan Oya flows out to sea). The other two estuaries on the east coast that I have visited but was unable to fish at, were Pottana in the Strict Natural Reserve (a lagoon mouth) and Pilinnawa, where the Menik Ganga flows out to sea. Both these estuaries lie within protected areas.

With regard to my experience as an angler, my mentor from schoolboy days and close friend in later years, from whom I learned virtually everything as an angler, was the late Lionel Gooneratne of the Excise Department. This Department had spawned a breed of outstanding anglers in addition to Lionel, such as Willie Obeysekera and Ronnie Grenier, but the one whom I knew most closely was Lionel. I have been his companion on trips to practically all the east coast estuaries named in the list, with the exception of Panakala, Kunukala, Andarakala, Itikala, Girikula, Yakala and Helawa, where my guide and mentor was the legendary Menika, de facto headman of the purana village of Kumana and jungle man par excellence. Menika had been presented with a fibreglass rod and a Penn 209 multiplier reel by one of his other jungle friends, Dr. Douglas de Zilwa (formerly Police Surgeon). When I came to know Menika, he was quite an adept at casting with that rod and reel. I learnt a great deal from him. Another close friend andngling companion from whom I gathered a lot about fishing was the late Frank Kelly of Trincomalee, who was employed in the Irrigation Department.

Yet another close friend from whom I learnt a great deal about trolling for fish in the Eastern seas, ranging from the Great and Little Basses up to the mouth of the Mahaweli, was Cedric Martenstyn. Cedric’s knowledge of fish and their habits gained through years of diving and fishing, could not be surpassed.

I was also fortunate in associating very closely and camping with two professional fishermen, Manuel Silva alias Vedamahatmaya of Nayaru, whose home at Negombo was in Pitipana, and William Nanayakkara of Kallarawa Yan Oya, whose west coast home was at Bopitiya, Pamunugama.

Another close fishing and shooting companion on the east coast was M. Rajavorathiam, the sub-postmaster of Komari and known throughout the area as “Raju”. I learnt a great deal from him of wild boar shooting in the east coast areas, and fishing at Komari Kalapu. Last but not the least of my mentors was Peter Jayawardena, who retired as Game Ranger at Lahugala in the Eastern Province, whose knowledge of the east coast estuaries, particularly from Sinnamuttuvaram down to Kumana, was unparalleled. Peter was also a close friend of Lionel Gooneratne, and what I learned from these giants, both by discussions and by the camping trips we made together, could not have been gathered anywhere else.

At the outset, it must be explained that at any estuary mouth, the fishing is best within the first hour or so of the change of the tide, and at the time of slack water (mandiya) just before the change of the tide. At some estuaries fishing is most productive on the incoming tide and at others on the outgoing, and it is difficult to say which is the case until one tries a particular estuary. Generally however, both changes of tide at the early stage produce fish, and the fishing is much better during the evening tide change towards dusk. It must also be mentioned that fishing is best about three or four days before the full moon, when the tidal flows governed by the waxing moon are strong. Additionally, ,the moonlight in the water eliminates the luminous effects of the sea plankton (called kabba in Sinhala), which otherwise has a tendency to scare off any predatory fish that is tempted to attack the artificial bait that is cast and retrieved by the angler. The kabba makes the retrieved artificial bait look like a miniature comet and no fish would go near it.

A tide change takes place approximately every five hours 55 minutes each day with about a 10 minute period of slack water between tidal changes. The outgoing tide, where the river or lagoon water flows strongly out to sea (ba dhiya) is followed by an approximately 10 to 15 minute spell of slack water (mandiya) where it is neither flowing out nor flowing in. Then follows the five hour 55 minutes of incoming tide when the sea water flows into the river or lagoon (vada dhiya). Each day the tide changes about one hour later than the previous day, governed by the rising of the moon, which takes place an hour later each day. My most extensive east coast fishing and shooting experiences were at Nayaru, south of Mullaitivu where I camped for a continuous spell of about three months from around March 1961. I was looked after like a member of his family by Manuel Silva (Vedamahataya), who built a small wadiya for me to live in. I used to visit Nayaru subsequently as well, at regular intervals.

My next most intimate knowledge of east coast estuaries was of Yan Oya. I have camped there every year in March or April from about 1965 till the 1980s, when conditions in the east became unsettled; and at Kumana and Komari again, where I camped regularly till the 1980s. The incidents recounted hereafter relate to both fishing and shooting, and also contain bits of local history gleaned from my outdoor friends.

 

Nayaru

Dealing with Nayaru first, in the early days I used not only to fish at the estuary mouth, but frequently joined Manuel Silva and his two stalwart sons, Philip and Joseph when they went out to sea in their big sea-going outrigger sailing canoe, a ruwal oruwa to do their daily fishing (rakshava, as they termed it) by hand-lining. Manuel’s family were purist hook-and-hand-line fishermen. They moored their boat out at sea, sometimes as far as five to 10 miles from the shore, over submerged rocks, mud flats and old wrecks, catching fish by hand-lines on baited hooks. They never used nets, saying they caught water- logged and decomposing fish.

When shoals of seer moved in, they ran with trolling lines cast out either with dead baits or the few artificial baits they had, which I had given them. It may be mentioned that artificial baits were virtually unknown to the professional fisherman at Nayaru in the early 1960s.

We had interesting encounters with denizens of the deep on these trips. On a run south of Nayaru towards Kokillai, we passed through a large colony of what must have been close to a hundred sea snakes, banded with yellow and black rings round their bodies and with vertically compressed tails. I subsequently heard that sea snakes gather in swarms during the breeding season.

On other occasions I have seen giant manta rays pass quite close to the ruwal oruwa. Since it had no engine noise, it probably did not scare off these fish. On another occasion, some distance from the boat, one of these giant rays leapt into the air, as apparently they sometimes do, and landed with a tremendous splash. There are conflicting views as to whether this is a manifestation of high spirits or an endeavour to get rid of irritating parasites.

Whales were also sometimes seen breaching the water, and the professional fishermen took them for granted. It was only much later, in the 1970s, that a foreign marine research vessel from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute of the USA. along with our own famed marine zoologist, Rodney Jonklaas found that the area round Trincomalee was a gathering ground for whales, particularly humpback and blue whales.

According to Manuel Silva, his family from Pitipana, Negombo, at least from the time of his grandfather, belonged to that hardy breed of migrant fishermen. These fisherfolk migrate to the east coast in March each year, when the south-west monsoon sets in and makes the west coast seas rough. The east coast is then calm and there is a strong shore breeze, which is called goda sulang by the Sinhala fishermen, solaham by the east coast Tamil fishermen and kachchan by Wanni jungle villagers. At this time the fish are prolific in the eastern seas, affording good catches.

These migrant Sinhala fishing families were quite fluent in Tamil and used to live in complete harmony with their Tamil and Muslim brethren belonging to both fishing and farming communities. If at all they returned to their homes in the west coast, it was only for a short time during Christmas (they are mostly Roman Catholics). When the migrant fishermen returned for Christmas they sometimes stayed on until February and did fishing on the west coast when the seas were calm at this time. The north-east monsoon makes the east coast seas rough between November or December to February.

I found, however, that with the fishermen off the west coast becoming more numerous, an increasing number of migrant fishing families preferred to stay on in Nayaru and the other east coast encampments over Christmas and engage in lagoon fishing during this period (kalapu rakshava). Lagoon waters, being sheltered, remain calm and unaffected by the north-east monsoon that prevails at this time.

Among the anecdotes related to me by Manuel Silva of Nayaru during my camping days was an interesting account related to him by his grandfather.

During the days his grandfather was a pioneer among the fishermen in Nayaru, the area was desolate and thickly forested. The small group of fisherfolk used to walk from Nayaru to Kokkutudavai about four miles to the south, where there was a fresh water lake where they used to bathe and wash their clothes. The road ran through a deep cutting in a hilly area with brick-red soil (which still exists today); and the story goes that on top of the cutting in the forested cover there lived a leopard that used to periodically prey on the unwary fisherfolk who walked along the path. The leopard used to leap from the top of the cutting, seize its selected victim and take off into the opposite bank where the cutting was less steep. The fisherfolk had no defence except to go in numbers, shouting and beating drums. The leopard after taking a regular toll of victims, apparently vanished one day, possibly killed in some way by the resident Tamil villagers of Kokkutudavai, but how no one knew.

I counter checked this story with another old fishing family at Nayaru, and their account tallied. So, it seems that there were lesser-known man-eating leopards in our Island before those of Punani and Kataragama.

 


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Features

Ranking public services with AI — A roadmap to reviving institutions like SriLankan Airlines

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10 hours ago

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2026/03/13

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Efficacy measures an organisation’s capacity to achieve its mission and intended outcomes under planned or optimal conditions. It differs from efficiency, which focuses on achieving objectives with minimal resources, and effectiveness, which evaluates results in real-world conditions. Today, modern AI tools, using publicly available data, enable objective assessment of the efficacy of Sri Lanka’s government institutions.

Among key public bodies, the Supreme Court of Sri Lanka emerges as the most efficacious, outperforming the Department of Inland Revenue, Sri Lanka Customs, the Election Commission, and Parliament. In the financial and regulatory sector, the Central Bank of Sri Lanka (CBSL) ranks highest, ahead of the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Public Utilities Commission, the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission, the Insurance Regulatory Commission, and the Sri Lanka Standards Institution.

Among state-owned enterprises, the Sri Lanka Ports Authority (SLPA) leads in efficacy, followed by Bank of Ceylon and People’s Bank. Other institutions assessed included the State Pharmaceuticals Corporation, the National Water Supply and Drainage Board, the Ceylon Electricity Board, the Ceylon Petroleum Corporation, and the Sri Lanka Transport Board. At the lower end of the spectrum were Lanka Sathosa and Sri Lankan Airlines, highlighting a critical challenge for the national economy.

Sri Lankan Airlines, consistently ranked at the bottom, has long been a financial drain. Despite successive governments’ reform attempts, sustainable solutions remain elusive.

Globally, the most profitable airlines operate as highly integrated, technology-enabled ecosystems rather than as fragmented departments. Operations, finance, fleet management, route planning, engineering, marketing, and customer service are closely coordinated, sharing real-time data to maximise efficiency, safety, and profitability.

The challenge for Sri Lankan Airlines is structural. Its operations are fragmented, overly hierarchical, and poorly aligned. Simply replacing the CEO or senior leadership will not address these deep-seated weaknesses. What the airline needs is a cohesive, integrated organisational ecosystem that leverages technology for cross-functional planning and real-time decision-making.

The government must urgently consider restructuring Sri Lankan Airlines to encourage:

=Joint planning across operational divisions

=Data-driven, evidence-based decision-making

=Continuous cross-functional consultation

=Collaborative strategic decisions on route rationalisation, fleet renewal, partnerships, and cost management, rather than exclusive top-down mandates

Sustainable reform requires systemic change. Without modernised organisational structures, stronger accountability, and aligned incentives across divisions, financial recovery will remain out of reach. An integrated, performance-oriented model offers the most realistic path to operational efficiency and long-term viability.

Reforming loss-making institutions like Sri Lankan Airlines is not merely a matter of leadership change — it is a structural overhaul essential to ensuring these entities contribute productively to the national economy rather than remain perpetual burdens.

By Chula Goonasekera – Citizen Analyst

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Features

Why Pi Day?

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10 hours ago

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2026/03/13

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International Day of Mathematics falls tomorrow

The approximate value of Pi (π) is 3.14 in mathematics. Therefore, the day 14 March is celebrated as the Pi Day. In 2019, UNESCO proclaimed 14 March as the International Day of Mathematics.

Ancient Babylonians and Egyptians figured out that the circumference of a circle is slightly more than three times its diameter. But they could not come up with an exact value for this ratio although they knew that it is a constant. This constant was later named as π which is a letter in the Greek alphabet.

Archimedes

It was the Greek mathematician Archimedes (250 BC) who was able to find an upper bound and a lower bound for this constant. He drew a circle of diameter one unit and drew hexagons inside and outside the circle such that the sides of each hexagon touch the sides of the circle. In mathematics the circle passing through all vertices of a polygon is called a ‘circumcircle’ and the largest circle that fits inside a polygon tangent to all its sides is called an ‘incircle’. The total length of the smaller hexagon then becomes the lower bound of π and the length of the hexagon outside the circle is the upper bound. He realised that by increasing the number of sides of the polygon can make the bounds get closer to the value of Pi and increased the number of sides to 12,24,48 and 60. He argued that by increasing the number of sides will ultimately result in obtaining the original circle, thereby laying the foundation for the theory of limits. He ended up with the lower bound as 22/7 and the upper bound 223/71. He could not continue his research as his hometown Syracuse was invaded by Romans and was killed by one of the soldiers. His last words were ‘do not disturb my circles’, perhaps a reference to his continuing efforts to find the value of π to a greater accuracy.

Archimedes can be considered as the father of geometry. His contributions revolutionised geometry and his methods anticipated integral calculus. He invented the pulley and the hydraulic screw for drawing water from a well. He also discovered the law of hydrostatics. He formulated the law of levers which states that a smaller weight placed farther from a pivot can balance a much heavier weight closer to it. He famously said “Give me a lever long enough and a place to stand and I will move the earth”.

Mathematicians have found many expressions for π as a sum of infinite series that converge to its value. One such famous series is the Leibniz Series found in 1674 by the German mathematician Gottfried Leibniz, which is given below.

π = 4 ( 1 – 1/3 + 1/5 – 1/7 + 1/9 – ………….)

The Indian mathematical genius Ramanujan came up with a magnificent formula in 1910. The short form of the formula is as follows.

π = 9801/(1103 √8)

For practical applications an approximation is sufficient. Even NASA uses only the approximation 3.141592653589793 for its interplanetary navigation calculations.

It is not just an interesting and curious number. It is used for calculations in navigation, encryption, space exploration, video game development and even in medicine. As π is fundamental to spherical geometry, it is at the heart of positioning systems in GPS navigations. It also contributes significantly to cybersecurity. As it is an irrational number it is an excellent foundation for generating randomness required in encryption and securing communications. In the medical field, it helps to calculate blood flow rates and pressure differentials. In diagnostic tools such as CT scans and MRI, pi is an important component in mathematical algorithms and signal processing techniques.

This elegant, never-ending number demonstrates how mathematics transforms into practical applications that shape our world. The possibilities of what it can do are infinite as the number itself. It has become a symbol of beauty and complexity in mathematics. “It matters little who first arrives at an idea, rather what is significant is how far that idea can go.” said Sophie Germain.

Mathematics fans are intrigued by this irrational number and attempt to calculate it as far as they can. In March 2022, Emma Haruka Iwao of Japan calculated it to 100 trillion decimal places in Google Cloud. It had taken 157 days. The Guinness World Record for reciting the number from memory is held by Rajveer Meena of India for 70000 decimal places over 10 hours.

Happy Pi Day!

The author is a senior examiner of the International Baccalaureate in the UK and an educational consultant at the Overseas School of Colombo.

by R N A de Silva

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Features

Sheer rise of Realpolitik making the world see the brink

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1 day ago

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2026/03/12

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A combined US-Israel attack on Iran.(BBC)

The recent humanly costly torpedoing of an Iranian naval vessel in Sri Lanka’s Exclusive Economic Zone by a US submarine has raised a number of issues of great importance to international political discourse and law that call for elucidation. It is best that enlightened commentary is brought to bear in such discussions because at present misleading and uninformed speculation on questions arising from the incident are being aired by particularly jingoistic politicians of Sri Lanka’s South which could prove deleterious.

As matters stand, there seems to be no credible evidence that the Indian state was aware of the impending torpedoing of the Iranian vessel but these acerbic-tongued politicians of Sri Lanka’s South would have the local public believe that the tragedy was triggered with India’s connivance. Likewise, India is accused of ‘embroiling’ Sri Lanka in the incident on account of seemingly having prior knowledge of it and not warning Sri Lanka about the impending disaster.

It is plain that a process is once again afoot to raise anti-India hysteria in Sri Lanka. An obligation is cast on the Sri Lankan government to ensure that incendiary speculation of the above kind is defeated and India-Sri Lanka relations are prevented from being in any way harmed. Proactive measures are needed by the Sri Lankan government and well meaning quarters to ensure that public discourse in such matters have a factual and rational basis. ‘Knowledge gaps’ could prove hazardous.

Meanwhile, there could be no doubt that Sri Lanka’s sovereignty was violated by the US because the sinking of the Iranian vessel took place in Sri Lanka’s Exclusive Economic Zone. While there is no international decrying of the incident, and this is to be regretted, Sri Lanka’s helplessness and small player status would enable the US to ‘get away with it’.

Could anything be done by the international community to hold the US to account over the act of lawlessness in question? None is the answer at present. This is because in the current ‘Global Disorder’ major powers could commit the gravest international irregularities with impunity. As the threadbare cliché declares, ‘Might is Right’….. or so it seems.

Unfortunately, the UN could only merely verbally denounce any violations of International Law by the world’s foremost powers. It cannot use countervailing force against violators of the law, for example, on account of the divided nature of the UN Security Council, whose permanent members have shown incapability of seeing eye-to-eye on grave matters relating to International Law and order over the decades.

The foregoing considerations could force the conclusion on uncritical sections that Political Realism or Realpolitik has won out in the end. A basic premise of the school of thought known as Political Realism is that power or force wielded by states and international actors determine the shape, direction and substance of international relations. This school stands in marked contrast to political idealists who essentially proclaim that moral norms and values determine the nature of local and international politics.

While, British political scientist Thomas Hobbes, for instance, was a proponent of Political Realism, political idealism has its roots in the teachings of Socrates, Plato and latterly Friedrich Hegel of Germany, to name just few such notables.

On the face of it, therefore, there is no getting way from the conclusion that coercive force is the deciding factor in international politics. If this were not so, US President Donald Trump in collaboration with Israeli Rightist Premier Benjamin Natanyahu could not have wielded the ‘big stick’, so to speak, on Iran, killed its Supreme Head of State, terrorized the Iranian public and gone ‘scot-free’. That is, currently, the US’ impunity seems to be limitless.

Moreover, the evidence is that the Western bloc is reuniting in the face of Iran’s threats to stymie the flow of oil from West Asia to the rest of the world. The recent G7 summit witnessed a coming together of the foremost powers of the global North to ensure that the West does not suffer grave negative consequences from any future blocking of western oil supplies.

Meanwhile, Israel is having a ‘free run’ of the Middle East, so to speak, picking out perceived adversarial powers, such as Lebanon, and militarily neutralizing them; once again with impunity. On the other hand, Iran has been bringing under assault, with no questions asked, Gulf states that are seen as allying with the US and Israel. West Asia is facing a compounded crisis and International Law seems to be helplessly silent.

Wittingly or unwittingly, matters at the heart of International Law and peace are being obfuscated by some pro-Trump administration commentators meanwhile. For example, retired US Navy Captain Brent Sadler has cited Article 51 of the UN Charter, which provides for the right to self or collective self-defence of UN member states in the face of armed attacks, as justifying the US sinking of the Iranian vessel (See page 2 of The Island of March 10, 2026). But the Article makes it clear that such measures could be resorted to by UN members only ‘ if an armed attack occurs’ against them and under no other circumstances. But no such thing happened in the incident in question and the US acted under a sheer threat perception.

Clearly, the US has violated the Article through its action and has once again demonstrated its tendency to arbitrarily use military might. The general drift of Sadler’s thinking is that in the face of pressing national priorities, obligations of a state under International Law could be side-stepped. This is a sure recipe for international anarchy because in such a policy environment states could pursue their national interests, irrespective of their merits, disregarding in the process their obligations towards the international community.

Moreover, Article 51 repeatedly reiterates the authority of the UN Security Council and the obligation of those states that act in self-defence to report to the Council and be guided by it. Sadler, therefore, could be said to have cited the Article very selectively, whereas, right along member states’ commitments to the UNSC are stressed.

However, it is beyond doubt that international anarchy has strengthened its grip over the world. While the US set destabilizing precedents after the crumbling of the Cold War that paved the way for the current anarchic situation, Russia further aggravated these degenerative trends through its invasion of Ukraine. Stepping back from anarchy has thus emerged as the prime challenge for the world community.

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