Features

Lorna

Published

1 month ago

2026/08/23

Thilina Walpola

(A Campus Tale)

P Canagaratnam (1958)

We had gone up to Peradeniya at the end of June but it wasn’t till the beginning of August that I met her for the first time. The Campus is too full of other life for the fresher in those first weeks to leave him much time to observe ‘the female of the species’. Anyway, I was nervous of girls.

The “rag” had ended with much ceremony. We had learnt to march with dignity to the lecture hall to the graceful rhythm of the goose step and had saluted the working-class in the form of the two bulls who uneasily draw the refuse carts of that corrupt institution the University Supply Organization, the USO.

We had diluted the sacred waters of the Mahaweli to the ceremonial bellow of the rag-master’s trumpet.

We had tramped down the darkened corridors and trudged up the stairs to kneel before the bearded oath-taker and, repeating after him the solemn and semi-literate words of allegiance into the mysteries of life in that “precious jewel set in a silver C, that fortress built by Nature for herself (not to mention him, her paramour), that seat of Marrs, that dummy paradise, that University.”

Politics is never very far from the life of the fresher, least of all in the rag week. He is in turn wooed and cajoled by one “group” and another: the humiliations he is subjected to in the course of the rag are balanced by a vague awareness of his power at voting-time. Some fall for it, others are more guarded, a few aren’t interested. All are flattered by the attention.

It did not long before I was absorbed into the “movement”. My initial scepticism made me for some time a valued acquisition of the group. I did not remain such for long and my acquaintance with Lorna dates from my first fall from grace.

“You said many rude things at the Freshers’ debate last night.”

“Did I?” We had been introduced while I was up at her Hall rehearsing a One Act Play. “Do you really think that Campus women are painted dolls?” she smiled.

We had argued the proposition that University women were artificial to the point of absurdity.

“The seniors supplied the jokes.”

“If you see us without the paint,” said Myrtle, (co-producer of the play and my

aunt in it), with maternal charm, “you’d ask us to put it on double-quick.”

“Take your word for it!”

“Keytsian beauties, indeed!” burst out an ebullient young lady, also a Senior, “you should be ashamed of yourself. You have no eye at all for a work of art! Myrtle!” she turned impetuously, “where ever did you pick up this barbarian?”

“Barbarian?” inquired my “aunt”, “rather unsafe ground for you, Carmen?”

There was a burst of laughter, and the wronged young lady crooned a bit hysterically:

“God, I’m the original sinner ‘cos I want a man for dinner”

“Don’t corrupt the youth!” said Myrtle as she called us away for our rehearsal.

I did not stay long in the play. My part in it which had always been insignificant was gradually made superfluous and I was more or less gracefully dropped. Thereafter I had no occasion to go up to her Hall and when I next met Lorna we were all in the thick of a campus strike.

On the day the decision to go on strike was taken, I noticed her at the back of the hall, apparently arguing heatedly with her friends. The next morning, when I came down with the others to picket at the entrance to the lecture theatres, I learnt that she had gone in for lectures through the picket line. All kinds of epithets were drifting across the compound. She was mentioned by name and otherwise. I was chagrined.

In the afternoon was an informal discussion with an eccentric but friendly don which I attended sometimes. I found Lorna there and went in. She thought for a moment that I had broken strike too. I told her she was making a mistake. She shrugged, though I could see she was not all composure. Neither was I. The lecturer sensed the situation and called off the class. The theatres were deserted. She was pale with anger, bridling like a young ass. I came away.

The second day of the strike opened with a meeting. By this time about a dozen students had broken strike. An action committee was set up to conduct negotiations with the authorities. I too was on it. On my way back from the meeting I met her. She was still adamant. There had been hooliganism, admitted, but those punished for it were innocent. My argument was correct, but it drove her wild.

Those on strike were behaving like hooligans: don’t they respect one’s right to dissent? She was like a copper wire, drawn tight from end to end so much, it had lost itself, quivering under the tension. Her face pink as her dress, she tells me I’m confused. I am too preoccupied even to smile.

“Ado, Rama! What’s this, men? You an action committee man, and now you go hob-nobbing with the blacklegs!”

“Stooge!”

“Resign from the Action Committee!”

“What, machang!”

“What the hell do you idiots know about picketing?” I go in for lunch.

On the third day they wanted to call off the strike pending “negotiations”. It was generally known that the Vice-Chancellor, being an obstetrician, tended to see things upside-down. Nothing came of the negotiations. The innocence of the victims of an administrative inefficiency made up for by a corresponding vindictiveness had, by then, ceased to be an issue. The final year students wanted to get back to work; the women weren’t particularly interested anyway; the leftist groups weren’t anxious to associate themselves with an unsuccessful strike: the men gave way.
I proposed a counter resolution publicly reserving our option to resume the strike; my would-be seconder withdrew. The strike was called off with a flourish.

Another man might have been perturbed by an association which opened in such circumstances. She had been among the first to break strike and I among the last to accept its failure. Nevertheless, it reassured me. It seemed to indicate a congruency of spirit that would make for harmony. I was not aware at the time that she was a Roman Catholic and even if I had known I would not have foreseen how that would infect our relationship.

I was myself an orthodox Hindu then though I am not one now. She never spoke slightingly of the elders of her Church but she was perceptibly more liberal than her friends with whom, evidently, I had made no great hit myself. The question did not trouble us much and when we did consider it of an evening it seemed irrelevant. We were content to shelve it and when, finally, it hit us, it caught me almost unawares.

One evening I was walking back to Peiris Hall with her when we ran into some of her friends near Kissing Bend. Myrtle was among them.

“So, so, Rama, when do you propose to come for Mass?”

“Why, what would you give me if I do?”

“Lorna. Maybe.”

This was a frontal attack, unexpected, and I barely caught up with her. “Well, you might as well offer me to me: that’s the lesser half.” I continued to smile.

“So you say. Bye, bye, Lorna!”

I did not like Myrtle’s cryptic talk; it was not her style at all. It occurred to me that she was something in the Newman Soc. To hell with it, I thought, and dismissed the matter.

That was the first shock and a few more followed rapidly. Lorna left me that evening with a queer nervous fervor. I was not conscious enough of it at the time to note its significance. That night Myrtle had sounded her more directly about our attitude. A violent argument had ensued and Lorna had gone to bed in tears. She had missed Mass the following day- for the first time. Before the day was out she had been summoned by the chaplain. I met her on her way back from Church. She seemed scared to leave her friends and come away with me. I could see the tears behind her eyes and, not wishing to expose her to the taunts of Myrtle, did not press her.

I met her at lectures the next morning and coming away after them, she asked me timidly but with distracting directness, whether I would object to marrying her in Church.

I said, “No, not if it’s a form, to have it right by you. Not as long as the priests don’t try any theological tricks with me.”

She was silent. “They tell me I can’t marry you in church unless you become a Roman Catholic,” she said after a pause. “They are going to write to my parents.”

“Who are?”

“The Father.”

“What’s he to do with us? He’s a celibate, or should be, let him look after himself.”

I ran into Myrtle that afternoon. “I didn’t quite catch your point the other day,” I told her. “Will you please leave Lorna alone?”

“Will you please do the same by her?”

“She’s my girl,” I smiled.

“Well, for your information, she’s also a member of the Legion of Mary, of which I am in charge.”

“She was, you mean.” I was getting hot under the collar, but made no effort to check myself. “You can remain true to your saint if you like and wait for God to wait upon you.”

Myrtle went white to the lips despite the paint. She turned away without a word and stumbled up the stairs. I was too furious to apologize.

Lorna’s parents carne up two days later and removed her. I could not make contact with her. None of her friends who were known to be partial to me were permitted to see her. I wrote to her. My letters were returned to me in fresh envelopes; evidently her parents had found no hint in them of the compromise they were waiting for. My appeal was directed to her against them and could hardly have got through.

I saw the chaplain. Nothing, I thought, could wipe the smile of condescension from his face. He had the finesse of a salesman: “It’s your choice,” he said, “you are not being compelled to marry Miss Richards.”

“What of her choice?” I asked, “what if she chooses to marry me outside the Church?”

“Yes, certainly. Make her.”

His eyes smiled down at me as from a great height.

“I could, if you would persuade her parents to let us meet.”

He emitted a few notes of the most hideous laugh I’d heard but came down suavely at once. “What do you take me for, a marriage-broker?”

I grinned through him at the pun that suggested itself.

Lorna returned to the Campus two weeks later. My first attempt to get in touch with her was also my last. My friend the watcher who tried to smuggle in a note to her was rebuffed. I had to conclude that she had acquiesced in the decision of her elders. Lorna was taken back to Jaffna the following day.

They say that I went to the dogs after that and would utter only a bitter wish that I had escaped the bitches altogether. I suffered something like a nervous breakdown but I avoided the chaplain. Between bouts of liquor I had written an essay organized about my pre-occupations, “D. H. Lawrence is not a fraud”, and dispatched it to a lecturer who had dismissed him as one. That was the last “tutorial” I ever wrote. I was brought home not long afterwards, a nervous wreck. I was then in my second year.

I do not know whether Lorna ever went back to the campus. I have not inquired. I do not know whether things would have been different had I been less headstrong. I imagine my attitude finally alienated her too. I myself have recovered sufficiently to be able to refer to it as I have done.

I now hold a job with a well-known mercantile establishment. It keeps me moving much of the time. Travelling soothes the raw edges of my nerves but it is not all to the good. Last week I drove into a rest-house in a remote district. In the act of removing my driving glasses as I stepped out of the van, I saw her. She was at lunch with a man who was facing away from the entrance. Startled, she involuntarily half rose from her chair. I ducked back into the van and drove off. The man turned round as I banged the door to.

I drove on and out of the district that afternoon. There’s nothing soothes one as a night in a lonely circuit bungalow. I was sufficiently composed by morning, as I drove back, to risk a meeting with them. I could not avoid the rest house as I had to take some orders for my firm.

I knew only the slightest tremor of nervousness as I walked in and asked for the manager. The verandah was deserted. While I was relaxing over a glass of beer the waiter brought in the visitors’ register. There in a violent scrawl was recorded the reassuringly Portuguese name: ‘.’Mr. & Mrs. Santiago.” They had left.

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Features

Defend civic space upon which peace is built

Published

8 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

8 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

8 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.