This heat is NO joke, so let me keep my readers’ skin cool, clear, and glowing with 04 easy Homemade Beauty Tips.

* Cucumber and Rose Water Cooling Toner:

For: Sunburn, redness, and dehydration.

Blend ½ cucumber, strain the juice, and then mix it with 02 tablespoons of rose water. Keep in fridge and spray on face 03 times a day.

Why it works: Cucumber cools instantly. Rose water hydrates and calms angry, heat-irritated skin.

* Aloe Vera and Yoghurt Soothing Pack:

For: Prickly heat, rashes, and oily skin.

Mix 02 tablespoons of fresh aloe vera gel with 01 tablespoon plain yoghurt and a pinch of turmeric. Apply on clean face and neck with your fingers, or a brush. Avoid the eye area and lips. Leave for 15 minutes until it feels cool and slightly tight. Rinse with cold water, and pat dry.

If the prickly heat is on back, chest or arms, you can use it there, too! Aloe vera and yoghurt is gentle enough for anywhere the heat rash shows up.

Why it works: Aloe vera heals, yoghurt removes sweat and grime, while turmeric fights pimples.

* Mint and Green Tea Ice Cubes:

For: Puffy eyes and open pores.

Brew strong green tea, add crushed mint leaves, and then freeze in an ice tray. Wrap 01 cube in cloth and glide over face for 02 minutes.

Why it works: The cold shrinks pores and reduces puffiness, while mint and green tea are anti-bacterial and so refreshing.

* Coconut Water and Honey Hydration Mask:

For: Dry, tired, sun-exposed skin.

Mix 02 tablespoons of fresh coconut water and 01 teaspoon honey. Gently dab on clean face and neck, with cotton wool, avoiding eyes and lips. Leave for 10 minutes and then rinse with cool water, and pat dry.

By the way, always use fresh ingredients. Do a small patch test on your hand, first. And please drink lots of water, too — beauty starts from inside.

By Prof. Siril Wijesundara Research Professor
National Institute of Fundamental Studies

The government’s proposal to establish an endemic plant conservation centre and basic research laboratory at Hakgala Botanic Gardens is a timely and commendable initiative. Following a recent field inspection, Deputy Minister of Environment Anton Jayakody reportedly instructed officials to expedite the preparation of a formal proposal. Plans have also been discussed for promoting environmentally responsible tourism and developing Hakgala as a zero-emission zone.

This initiative is especially important because the government has already begun the process of establishing an Upper Watershed Area Management Authority. The proposed Authority is expected to protect environmentally sensitive highland areas, restore degraded watersheds, reduce soil erosion, safeguard natural water sources and strengthen resilience to climate change.

These two initiatives should be developed as complementary parts of a broader national programme to conserve Sri Lanka’s central highlands. The proposed Hakgala centre could provide the botanical knowledge, research, propagation methods and native planting material required to support species conservation and upper-watershed restoration.

Why Hakgala?

Hakgala Botanic Gardens is uniquely suited to undertake this national role. Established in 1861, it is one of Sri Lanka’s oldest botanic gardens. It covers approximately 28 hectares at an elevation of about 1,745 metres and experiences the cool, wet and misty conditions characteristic of the central highlands.

These conditions allow Hakgala to cultivate many montane plants that cannot be maintained successfully in lowland botanic gardens. It could therefore become the cool-climate conservation centre within the national botanic garden network, complementing the Royal Botanic Gardens at Peradeniya, the Wet Zone Botanic Gardens at Seethawaka and the Dry Zone Botanic Gardens at Mirijjawila.

Hakgala Botanic Gardens is also situated immediately below the Hakgala massif and adjacent to the Hakgala Strict Nature Reserve. This protected area contains an important remnant of Sri Lanka’s upper montane cloud forest. The close proximity of a professionally managed botanic garden to a legally protected natural forest creates an exceptional opportunity to combine ex-situ conservation, field research, propagation, ecological restoration, training and public education.

Nevertheless, the conservation centre must remain within the managed areas of the Botanic Garden. It should not create new public access into the Strict Nature Reserve or disturb its natural vegetation.

The importance of montane forests

Sri Lanka’s upper montane forests generally occur above 1,500 metres. They are characterised by a relatively short canopy and gnarled, twisted trees with small, leathery leaves adapted to strong winds and low temperatures. Mosses, lichens, liverworts, ferns, orchids and other epiphytes grow abundantly on tree trunks and branches.

Characteristic trees include keena (Calophyllum walkeri), damba species such as Syzygium revolutum and Syzygium rotundifolium, wal sapu or Magnolia nilagirica, and mihiriya or Polyspora ceylanica. Species of Strobilanthes, commonly known as nelu, form a prominent component of the shrub layer. Endemic balsams, gentians, orchids, ferns and many other specialised plants occur beneath the forest canopy.

At the highest and most exposed locations, including the summit of Hakgala, the vegetation may develop into stunted “pygmy” or “elfin” forest. These unusual forests contain wind-shaped trees and shrubs belonging to genera such as Ilex, Eurya, Syzygium, Rhodomyrtus and Osbeckia.

The importance of these forests is not limited to their biodiversity. Montane forests perform an essential hydrological function. Mosses, lichens and epiphytes intercept moisture from mist, while forest soils absorb and gradually release water. These processes help maintain springs, streams and rivers originating in the central highlands.

Sri Lanka’s highlands form the headwaters of many major rivers. Their condition affects drinking-water supplies, agriculture, irrigation, hydropower generation, reservoirs and communities far downstream. Protecting montane plants and forests is therefore inseparable from protecting the country’s water security.

A threatened ecosystem

Montane forests once formed a more continuous cover over the central highlands. Large areas were cleared during the nineteenth century for plantation agriculture, particularly coffee and tea. The remaining forests are now fragmented and frequently surrounded by plantations, vegetable cultivation, settlements, roads and other infrastructure.

These forest remnants face numerous additional threats. They include encroachment, forest dieback, poor regeneration of canopy trees, invasive alien plants, pollution, fire, excessive extraction and climate change.

When mature forest trees die, the resulting gaps do not always return to their original condition. Dense stands of nelu, bracken fern or grasses may suppress the establishment of tree seedlings. Invasive alien species can also occupy disturbed areas and prevent the natural regeneration of montane forest.

Invasive plants recorded from the highlands include Ageratina riparia, Austroeupatorium inulifolium, Cestrum aurantiacum, Aristea ecklonii, Calliandra calothyrsus, Miconia calvescens, Psidium species and Cenchrus clandestinus. Many spread rapidly along roadsides, forest boundaries and disturbed gaps.

Climate change creates an additional and potentially irreversible threat. A lowland plant may sometimes shift towards a higher elevation as temperatures increase, provided that suitable habitats remain. A plant already restricted to a mountain summit has nowhere higher to move. Species confined to the uppermost elevations may therefore be among the first plants to experience severe climate-related range contraction or extinction.

The national conservation need

The National Red List 2020 evaluated 3,087 flowering plant species in Sri Lanka. Of these, 1,496—or approximately 48 per cent—were classified as threatened.

The situation among endemic plants is even more serious. Of the 863 endemic flowering plants recognised in the assessment, 625, or more than 72 per cent, were threatened. Nuwara Eliya, Badulla, Kandy and other wet-zone districts contain particularly high concentrations of threatened plants.

Hakgala is consequently not merely a convenient location for the proposed centre. It is situated within one of the country’s most important landscapes for endemic and threatened plant conservation.

More than a plant display

The proposed centre should not become simply a garden containing attractive endemic plants with nameboards. Such a collection would be educational, but it would not constitute a scientifically credible conservation programme.

A conservation collection must preserve information as well as plants. Every plant should receive a permanent accession number. Its scientific name, source population, locality, elevation, habitat, collection date, collector, permits, propagation history and current location should be recorded.

The taxonomic identity of every accession must be verified. Whenever possible, a properly prepared voucher specimen should be deposited in the National Herbarium. Conservation records should be maintained in a modern database linked to herbarium specimens, field observations, photographs and geographical information.

Collections should represent several individuals and, where possible, several wild populations. Maintaining a single specimen of a threatened species may be useful for display, but it does little to preserve the genetic diversity required for its long-term survival and possible restoration.

Material collected from different populations should not be mixed casually. Its geographical origin or provenance must be preserved so that scientists can make informed decisions about propagation, genetic management and reintroduction.

Essential components

The centre should be organised around several interconnected scientific and conservation functions.

First, it needs a field-research and conservation-planning programme. A priority list of endemic montane plants should be prepared using their National Red List status, geographical range, number and size of remaining populations, immediate threats, ecological importance and representation in existing collections.

Field surveys should document population size, habitat conditions, regeneration, flowering and fruiting periods, associated species and threats. This information should be used to prepare conservation and recovery plans.

Second, the centre needs a seed-conservation and germination laboratory. Seeds that tolerate drying and low-temperature storage could be placed in a properly managed seed bank. Their viability should be tested periodically, and duplicate collections should be maintained at another secure institution to avoid losing everything through equipment failure, fire, disease or another disaster.

Not all plants produce seeds that can be stored conventionally. Species with recalcitrant or short-lived seeds may require living collections, repeated collection, vegetative propagation, tissue culture or, eventually, cryopreservation.

Third, Hakgala needs a specialised propagation and acclimatisation nursery. Separate areas should be provided for quarantine, seed germination, mist propagation, shaded cultivation, hardening and the production of plants for approved restoration programmes.

Facilities will also be required for difficult groups such as endemic orchids, ferns and epiphytes. Universities, the National Institute of Fundamental Studies and other research institutions could contribute expertise in genetics, seed biology, tissue culture, plant pathology, mycorrhizal relationships and restoration ecology.

Fourth, the centre should establish scientifically managed living collections. These could include a montane endemic arboretum, an endemic orchid and epiphyte house, a fern and cloud-forest garden, a specialised nelu collection and provenance-controlled recovery beds for highly threatened species.

Supporting upper-watershed conservation

The Government’s decision to establish an Upper Watershed Area Management Authority provides an important policy framework for the Hakgala initiative.

The proposed Authority would have a broad landscape-level responsibility covering land, water, forests, agriculture, communities and climate resilience. The Hakgala centre could provide specialised botanical and horticultural support.

The centre could study the propagation and establishment of montane canopy trees, understorey plants, shrubs, ferns and other functional groups. It could produce genetically appropriate planting material for carefully planned restoration programmes undertaken by the proposed Authority, Department of Wildlife Conservation, Forest Department and other agencies.

It could also help develop restoration approaches for landslide-affected slopes, degraded forest margins, abandoned agricultural land, invasive-species-dominated areas and damaged river headwaters.

Restoration should not be reduced to planting large numbers of a few readily available tree species. Such planting cannot recreate the diversity, structure and ecological functions of a natural montane forest. Species selection must be based on elevation, soils, rainfall, historical vegetation, reference ecosystems, ecological functions and genetic provenance.

The Hakgala centre should not become a commercial nursery distributing plants without ecological or genetic controls. Its primary purpose should be to produce scientifically appropriate material for research, conservation and restoration.

Returning plants to nature

Ex-situ conservation is not a substitute for protecting species in their natural habitats. Its ultimate purpose is to support the survival and recovery of wild populations.

The centre should collaborate with the Department of Wildlife Conservation, Forest Department, proposed Upper Watershed Area Management Authority, National Herbarium, universities and other scientific organisations.

Each priority species should have a conservation dossier covering its taxonomy, distribution, population status, threats, genetic considerations, propagation requirements and proposed recovery actions.

Depending on the species, intervention may involve protecting an existing population, controlling invasive plants, restoring its habitat, reinforcing a declining population or reintroducing it to a suitable historical locality.

Reintroduction should never consist merely of planting nursery-grown individuals and hoping that they survive. The original threats must first be addressed. The identity, health and provenance of the plants must be confirmed, genetic and disease risks evaluated, and survival, growth, flowering and natural regeneration monitored for many years.

A centre for research and training

The proposed basic research laboratory could become one of the most valuable elements of the project. Its work should extend beyond routine propagation.

Research is urgently needed on seed-storage behaviour, germination, vegetative propagation, plant–fungus relationships, population genetics, forest dieback, invasive alien species, pollination, natural regeneration and climate vulnerability.

Hakgala would also be an excellent location for long-term studies of flowering, fruiting, seed production and leaf emergence. Changes in these biological events can provide early evidence of climatic disruption.

The centre could prepare vegetation maps, threatened-species records, invasive-species maps and restoration guidelines for the Upper Watershed Area Management Authority. However, precise locations of extremely rare or commercially attractive plants should not be made publicly available.

Hakgala could also become a national training centre for botanic-garden staff, protected-area managers, university students, teachers and young scientists. Training could cover plant identification, seed conservation, propagation, accession management, invasive-species control, ecological restoration and species translocation.

Education and responsible tourism

The centre could substantially improve the visitor experience at Hakgala. An Endemic Plants Discovery Trail could explain why Sri Lanka possesses so many unique plants, how cloud forests capture water, why some plants are confined to a single mountain and how seed banks and nurseries help prevent extinction.

A small interpretation centre could present the story of montane forests, watersheds, threatened species, invasive plants, climate change and restoration. Visitors could observe selected propagation activities through a viewing area without entering secure conservation facilities.

The proposal to develop Hakgala as a zero-emission zone should also be encouraged. Electric internal transport, renewable energy, rainwater harvesting, reduction of single-use plastics, responsible waste management and carefully controlled visitor movement could demonstrate environmentally responsible tourism.

Nevertheless, conservation must remain the principal objective. Tourism facilities must be designed according to ecological limits. No new visitor access should be created through the adjoining Strict Nature Reserve.

Governance and sustainability

The centre should operate as a dedicated programme of the Department of National Botanic Gardens, with trained staff, an annual work plan, a clearly defined mandate and a protected budget. A multidisciplinary scientific advisory committee should guide species selection, collection policies, research and restoration.

A formal coordination mechanism should be established between the centre and the proposed Upper Watershed Area Management Authority. The National Herbarium, Department of Wildlife Conservation, Forest Department, universities, NIFS and other relevant institutions should participate in technical planning.

The Government must also recognise that a conservation collection creates a permanent responsibility. A building may be completed within a few years, but threatened plants may require care for generations. Capital investment must therefore be accompanied by recurrent funding for staff, utilities, fieldwork, collection maintenance, databases and monitoring.

An opportunity that should not be missed

Hakgala began as a colonial acclimatisation garden associated with cinchona and other introduced economic plants. More than 160 years later, it has an opportunity to assume a new national role: protecting the irreplaceable plants that evolved in Sri Lanka’s mountains.

At the same time, the proposed Upper Watershed Area Management Authority offers an opportunity to replace fragmented and short-term interventions with integrated management of the central highlands.

The Hakgala centre could become a national insurance policy against plant extinction, a source of scientifically appropriate material for watershed restoration, a centre for climate-change research, a training institution for future conservationists and a place where the public can appreciate Sri Lanka’s unique mountain flora.

Every endemic plant represents a unique branch of Sri Lanka’s evolutionary history. Once lost, it cannot be recreated. By linking the proposed Hakgala centre with the national programme to protect upper watersheds, Sri Lanka can convert two important government initiatives into coordinated and lasting conservation action.

(The writer was the former Curator of Hakgala Botanic Gardens and Director General of National Botanic Gardens)

by Prof. C. A. Saliya

The first of a five-part series on the business of gambling: legal, illegal, and everything murky in between.

It is a Friday evening in Colombo. On the waterfront, a queue of well-dressed tourists files past a doorman and into the blinking lights of a casino floor, where a croupier is dealing baccarat to a table of high rollers. A few kilometres away, under an awning strung with festival lights, reading a racing paper from dawn to dusk, a group of neighbours sit cross-legged around a well-worn deck of cards, playing a fast, noisy game called Buruwa, small notes changing hands with every round. And in a bedroom somewhere between the two, a 19-year-old is staring at his phone, watching a candlestick chart jump up and down, one thumb hovering over a “Buy” button on a trading app he downloaded because a friend said it was “basically like the stock market, but faster.”

Four completely different scenes. Three completely different legal statuses, one fully licensed, one technically a legal offence, one not even classified as gambling at all. And yet, underneath the silk shirts, looking at the odds and potential winner of a sports event such as horse racing, the card mat/table, and the trading screen, all four people are doing exactly the same thing: putting money at risk on an outcome they don’t control, against a system built to take more from them than it gives back.

That is what this five-part series is about. Not whether gambling is right or wrong, readers can decide that for themselves, but what it actually is, as a business. How big is it? Who really profits from it? Why do some countries embrace it while others jail you for it? And why does something as old as dice and as new as a forex app keep reinventing itself, generation after generation, under different names?

A business bigger than most countries

Start with the numbers, because they are almost too large to take in.

The part of the gambling industry that operates in the open, licensed casinos, regulated sportsbooks, state lotteries, officially approved betting apps, is itself enormous. The global casino industry alone was worth an estimated $328 billion last year, and is expected to grow to nearly $580 billion within the decade. Just one city, Macau, generates more casino revenue in a year than most countries collect in total tax. Online betting and gaming, taken together, is projected to be worth well over $200 billion by the early 2030s.

But that is only the legal half of the picture, and it may not even be the bigger half.

According to a recent industry study, the world’s unregulated online gambling market, offshore casinos, unlicensed sportsbooks, betting apps operating without a licence anywhere near their customers, was worth an estimated $5.9 trillion in 2025. Trillion, not billion. The same report described this shadow industry as effectively the third-largest economy on Earth, behind only the United States and China, with unlicensed operators now taking in roughly three-quarters of all the money wagered online worldwide. In the United States alone, a country with plenty of legal, regulated betting options, illegal gambling operators reportedly pulled in nearly $100 billion last year, and that figure has been growing even as more American states legalise betting, not shrinking.

That last point is worth sitting with for a moment, because it cuts against the assumption most people make: that legalising something automatically starves the black market that grew up around it. Sometimes it does. But sometimes, and gambling seems to be one of those times, legalising a small, taxed, tightly-regulated slice of the market just makes the whole pie bigger, and the illegal operators simply grow alongside the legal ones, competing for the customers the legal market doesn’t reach or doesn’t satisfy.

Why is gambling illegal here,  but legal there?

Roughly 40 countries ban gambling outright, no casinos, no betting shops, no lottery tickets, nothing. Most of them are in the Middle East and North Africa, where the ban traces back to Islamic teaching that treats games of pure chance as a kind of theft dressed up as entertainment, taking someone’s money without giving them anything of real value in return. Saudi Arabia can jail you for years for running an illegal gambling operation. Places like Qatar and Kuwait actively block gambling websites at the national internet level.

Then there is a much larger, blurrier middle ground, countries where gambling is technically restricted but everybody does it anyway, more or less in plain sight, because enforcement is patchy or simply not a government priority. Sri Lanka, as we’ll see across this series, sits partly in this middle ground itself: horse racing and licensed casinos are legal, a village card game played at every second festival is technically not, and online betting occupies a grey zone the government is only now trying to define properly.

And then there are the countries, an increasingly long list, that have gone the other way entirely: from banning gambling to actively licensing and taxing it, because they decided a controlled, visible industry was easier to manage than an invisible one they couldn’t tax or police at all. The United Arab Emirates, historically one of the strictest prohibition states in the Gulf, is in the middle of exactly this pivot right now, setting up its first licensed casinos and a national regulator from scratch.

Older than money itself

Gambling did not arrive with casinos, and it certainly did not arrive with smartphones. Archaeologists have found dice carved from animal bone in Mesopotamian ruins thousands of years old. One of the oldest stories in Indian literature, the Mahabharata, turns on a disastrous game of dice that costs a king his kingdom, his brothers’ freedom, and very nearly his wife’s dignity, a three-thousand-year-old cautionary tale about exactly the kind of “one more hand” thinking that still ruins people today. Renaissance Venice opened what many historians consider the first true public casino, the Ridotto, in 1638, a government-sanctioned gambling house, tellingly, set up specifically so the state could control and tax an activity it had already failed to stamp out through banning it.

Sri Lanka’s own relationship with gambling follows a similar, very human pattern: the activities favoured by the wealthy and the colonially connected, racecourses, private clubs, card games played for high stakes behind closed doors (in five-star hotel rooms), tended to be tolerated or quietly legalised, while the games played by ordinary people in villages and back streets were the ones written into law as crimes. That gap opened under British rule with horse racing on one side and an 1889 law criminalising “unlawful gaming” on the other, and in many ways it has never fully closed. Sri Lanka is now in the middle of its biggest gambling law shake-up in decades, with a new Bill working through Parliament that would scrap three separate old ordinances, on horse racing, general gambling, and casinos, and replace them with a single modern regulator responsible for everything, from a Colombo casino floor to an online betting app. Whether that new regulator actually closes the old gap between “gambling the wealthy do” and “gambling everyone else does” is a question we’ll come back to throughout this series, and especially in our final instalment.

What’s coming next

Over the next four weeks, this column will go deep into each corner of the gambling world:

Part 2

takes us inside the casino business itself, from the glittering, foreign-passport-only casinos of the Colombo waterfront, down to the humble village card game Buruwa (sometimes called “Baby Cutting”), which has been technically illegal since 1889 and is played completely openly at almost every festival (and in funeral houses) in the country anyway.

Part 3

looks at a form of gambling that doesn’t call itself gambling at all: online trading apps that let ordinary people bet on currencies, gold, and oil prices, often marketed as “investing,” even though the industry’s own disclosures show the overwhelming majority of users lose money. However, there are restrictions imposed by the Central Bank of Sri Lanka under the foreign exchange control.

Part 4

turns to sport, and specifically the oldest continuously legal form of betting almost everywhere in the world, horse racing, to explain, in plain terms, exactly how a bookmaker guarantees itself a profit no matter which horse wins.

Part 5

brings it all together, asking what fair, honest regulation of all these forms of gambling would actually look like, and whether Sri Lanka’s new law is close to getting there, or still years away.

Every one of these industries, the casino, the card circle, the trading app, the racecourse, shares the exact same mathematical backbone: a built-in edge that belongs to the house, dressed up in whatever costume makes it feel like something else, sport, investment, tradition, entertainment. The rest, as we’ll spend the next four weeks proving, is just packaging.

Next week: Part 2, From Bally’s to the Backstreet, inside the business of casinos and cards.

(Prof. C. A. Saliya, is a charted accountant, academic, researcher and former banker. He is the author of SAMAJA GAVESHAKAYA and Springer Publication DOING SOCIAL RESEARCH. He can be contacted at . The views expressed in this article are his own and do not necessarily represent those of the organisations with which he is affiliated.)