Features

Shadows on the wall

Published

2 years ago

2024/11/24

Thilina Walpola

Sunday short story

by Rukmini Attygalle

The fever had left me and I felt much better. I lay under the quilt, facing the wall with my back to the window. I must have slept long, for it was already dark. Our crab apple tree projected its bare branches on to the wall with the aid of the street-light behind it. I looked at the shadow which made an interesting black and white abstract pattern on the wall. I was, of course, looking at the shadow with eyes dulled by knowledge and adulthood.

In my childhood, shadows held a much deeper significance. They had a reality of another dimension. They were scary, menacing, happy, sad – but never abstract. From the crab apple tree in our garden in London, my mind goes back to the mango tree of my childhood in Sri Lanka.

I must have been around six years of age, and my younger sister four, when she and I shared a room in our house at Shady Grove Avenue, Borella. My bed was pushed right up against the wall. As I was sleepwalker, a wet jute hessian sack was always placed at night on the floor by my bed, so that if I tried to get out of bed, I would step on the damp sack and wake up. On the wall opposite my bed, was a large window, outside which was a mango tree. During the day, the mango tree was our friend. My elder sister and I often played hopscotch under it.

There was a rope swing tied on to one of the low branches, on which younger sister and I happily swung. But at night, from my bed, the mango tree took on ominous overtones. It was at this time that our Podimenike’s stories of rakshayas (demons) and yakas (devils), came life. The dark and sombre shapes the mango tree created against the night sky were demon like and scary. The shadow it cast on the wall was even worse. Here, the demon heads were more discernible. Sometimes their I shaped teeth would bob up and down uncannily. Menacingly.

The demons on the wall would go away only after Podimenike put off kitchen lights. I would pull my sheet over my head and roll myself into a ball to get away from these demons. Perhaps if the tree had been a Nuga tree I may not have been so scared, because Podimenike said that c good devathavas (angels) inhabited Nuga trees.

On her nightly visits to our room, Amma had noticed on more than one occasion that I had fallen asleep with my head under the sheet. “Why do you cover your head with the sheet when you go to sleep?” she asked me once, when she came in to kiss us goodnight.

“Because I don’t like the mango tree demons,” I said.

“What demons?” she looked very surprised.

“There!” I pointed to the mango tree with its dark ominous shapes. “When the room light goes off, they even come on, to the wall! They have big teeth, Podimenike said that rakhayas’ teeth are red in colour of bloodstain. But of course, in the night they look black.”

Amma looked quite upset, and for a moment I thought that she was being frightened by the demons herself.

“There are no real demons” Amma said. “They exist only in stories!” But I was not convinced.

“Alright,” she said “Let’s put off the light and you show me your demons. I jumped out of bed and put out the light. With Amma next to me I was not all that afraid of the demons. The demons appeared on the wall. I pointed out the different parts of demon anatomy to Amma without actually placing my pointing finger on the wall.

She listened to me patiently. Cuddling me she said laughingly “They are not demons! They are just shadows on the wall!”

“The shaky teeth over there … ” I pointed.

“They are shadows of mango leaves,” she explained

She touched the wall to prove to me that there was nothing there except shadows. Then she took my hand gently. “Let’s touch these demon teeth, shall we? Just to see whether they will bite us?”

I was reluctant at first but we touched the wall together – Amma and I – demon teeth, heads, nostrils the lot. Our fingers remained intact. After that, the mango tree demons did not bother me too much. Later I heard Amma telling Podimenike off for “filling the children’s heads with nonsense.”

All three of us loved the shadows Thaththa made on the wall with his hands. They were happy shadows. By bending and twisting his hands and fingers he could make animal shadows. The rabbit shadow he made was my favourite. It could run or hop up and down, shake its paws, wiggle its ears. Thaththa taught me how to make the rabbit shadow but my rabbit’s ears would never stick up. They always drooped. The eagle shadow he made would come sweeping down and he made it disappear on the floor. The crocodile shadow was the easiest to make. All you had to do was to put your palms together and hold them parallel to the wall and open and close your hands like a crocodile opening and closing its mouth.

“But it has no teeth” I protested “Crocodiles have great big teeth!” I remembered the picture of the crocodile, which swallowed Captain Hook’s watch in the story of Peter Pan. He had huge teeth.

“It’s a crocodile with no teeth!” Amma said pulling a nightdress over my younger sister’s head.

“Then it must be a dying crocodile,” my elder sister conjectured. “If it has no teeth it can’t eat. If it can’t eat it will die.” She was four years older than I and very wise.

“Maybe,” I said changing my earlier stance, “maybe it has a pair of false teeth.” Amma and Thatha looked at each other and smiled.

“Where does it keep its false teeth?” asked my younger sister. Thaththa tousled my hair.

“Ask this Bola Vatuwa,” he was in the habit of using this name he made up for me. It was a type of bird he said, small and round. She should know the answer.”

Remembering my grandmother’s false teeth standing in a glass of water on her bedside table, I said in an authoritative tone, “in a large glass III size,” and stretched out my hands as far as they would stretch to indicate the size of the glass receptacle.

Thaththa said that he used to know how to make an elephant shadow but, he had now forgotten. He said that he would remember it eventually. The animal shadows Thaththa made were always happy shadows.

Once I noticed that the shadows that fell across my parent’s room had bars just like those on the windows. I pointed this out to Thaththa. “Yes,” he said, “they look like bars in a prison cell.”

“What is a prison cell?” I asked.

“It is a room where people who have done bad thing are locked up in,” he said.

“Has it got bars all round like the mynah’s cage?” I persisted.

“Well,” he said, rather thoughtfully “Yes, I suppose it could.”

Thaththa was fascinated by birds. One evening he had turned up with a cage with a mynah bird in it. The mynah cage was in the kitchen veranda and always stank of over ripe fruit.

“Is the mynah in prison then? Did he do something bad?”

“No,” Thaththa said, “Mynah has not done anything wrong.” The next day Thaththa took the mynah cage to the garden and called out to the three of us. We ran out and Amma joined us.

“Shall we let the mynah out of its prison?” he asked.

“He shouldn’t really be in jail because he has done nothing wrong.”

He put his hand in and brought out the mynah from the cage and set it free. It did not fly away immediately but hopped around the garden for while before it took off. Amma looked delighted. I don’t think she liked the mynah very much, so no sadness for her. But Podimenike cried because she said that her “putha” (son) had gone away.

Shortly after Thaththa fell ill, all of us were sent off to our grandmother’s home. Only Amma and Podimenike stayed behind to look after Thaththa.

Aachchi’s

house was very large and had a number of rooms. I liked her house but not all of its rooms. Some rooms were dark and shadowy even during the daytime. I liked the room we slept in because it was large and full of light.

In what seemed a long time, Amma joined us at Aachchi’s house. She somehow looked different. She seemed to have changed. She was very quiet. She hardly laughed or smiled. She did not play with us or tell us stories. She stayed in her room most of the time. She was in one of the gloomy rooms, which I disliked.

Aachchi said that Amma was very tired and needed to rest. Also, that she needed to be on her own. But Aachchi would go into her room and spend a lot of time with her quietly. Even when it was evening Amma stayed in her room, very often in darkness. One evening Amma’s room door was half-open and I peered in. The room was full of shadows of varying intensity. They were all sad shadows and they made me uneasy. It took me awhile to see Amma lying on the bed because the darkest shadows seemed to have swallowed her up.

“Amma,” I said creeping up to her, “are you awake?”

I sat on the bed. She did not answer but put her arm round me and drew me towards her. I bent down and kissed her. Her cheek was wet. It was too dark to see her face properly. I looked around the room. The shadows seemed to have got deeper. I didn’t like this room. I didn’t like the shadows They were sad shadows.

I wished Thaththa would come back soon. He always made Amma laugh. They used to laugh a lot together. Most of the time I did not know what they were laughing about, but their laughter always made me happy.

I said, “when is Thaththa coming?”

“He is not coming back vasthuwa,” she said. She often called us “vasthuwa” -she said that we were her three ‘Treasures’. Her voice was hoarse. She blew her nose into a handkerchief, which she seemed to take out from under her pillow.

“Why not?” I asked in surprise because Thaththa always came back even when he went to ‘a-far-away-country-called-India’, or to “a-place-called-Narammala”. In fact, when he went to ‘a-far-away-country-called-India’ he always brought us presents.

“Why is Thaththa not coming back Amma?” I asked again. I felt her body momentarily stiffen.

“Because he died,” she said very softly, almost in a whisper.

I remembered Podimenike saying that when good people died, they were reborn in the heavenly worlds as ‘devathavas’ who would sometimes come down to the human world to help us, and rest in Nuga trees. When bad people died, they went to hell where devils and demons lived. Some people, she said, were born again in the human world. I hoped that father would be born in the human world so that he could come back and live with us. But I had a sinking feeling that he would have been born, as a `devathava’ because I had heard people say that he was a good man. How I wished that we had a Nuga tree in our garden so that he could come and live in it!

“Amma,” I said softly. We seemed to be almost whispering as if telling secrets. “Will Thaththa live in a house in heaven? Will it have walls like in our house?”

“l don’t know vasthuwa,” she said sitting up and kissing the top of my head. She wiped her face with her handkerchief and pushed back her hair, “Let’s go and see what your sisters are doing shall we?”

She got up and put the light on. The dark shadows disappeared and I felt much happier. As we walked out of the room hand-in hand I wondered whether Thaththa had remembered how to make the elephant shape shadow. Perhaps he was already making the elephant shadow on the wall of his house in heaven.

Realization of the finality of death came to me only much later.

The wind was howling outside. I stretched out, pushed the quilt aside and got out of bed. I walked to the window and looked out. It had begun to snow. The tall dark conifer across the road towering above the shrubs stood like a giant witch with a pointed hat. I drew the heavy curtains together shutting out the witches, demons, and the shadows on the wall and switched on the light.

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Features

Addressing human rights needs multi-pronged approach

Published

11 hours ago

2026/09/15

Sahan Weerasooriya

Volker Türk

by Jehan Perera

The ongoing 63rd session of the United Nations Human Rights Council, which runs from September 7 to October 7, 2026, in Geneva is important to Sri Lanka. Its outcome will send a signal to other international actors, including the European Union, as to whether Sri Lanka’s reform policy is on track. The written update on Sri Lanka, prepared by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights under High Commissioner Volker Türk and presented by Deputy High Commissioner Nada Al-Nashif, has taken a more holistic approach to the government’s performance over the past year. It acknowledged the progress Sri Lanka has made under the NPP government in relation to accountability for financial fraud and other economic crimes. At the same time, the High Commissioner’s update made clear that progress in relation to economic crime cannot be equated with progress in relation to accountability for grave human rights violations committed during the armed conflict and in other periods of political violence.

The government may have felt sufficiently confident that its response to the High Commissioner’s update could be handled by its representative in Geneva and did not require the attendance of Foreign Minister Vijitha Herath. Sri Lanka’s representative Sumith Dassanayake called for a fundamental review of country-specific mandates within the UN Human Rights Council. Sri Lanka has been facing repeated scrutiny in the form of successive UNHRC resolutions from 2012 onwards. Ambassador Dassanayake argued that such mandates should not continue indefinitely and must be regularly assessed against measurable objectives and tangible outcomes. This may reflect confidence that its record of reform is beginning to receive recognition internationally. The reports and statements at the Human Rights Council acknowledged progress in the government’s efforts to address corruption and economic crime.

The government’s anti-corruption drive has included investigations into allegations involving individuals who held the highest political offices in the country. The arrest of former President Ranil Wickremesinghe in connection with alleged misuse of public funds, and the investigation into the controversial SriLankan Airlines Airbus transaction involving former President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s son, are examples of the reach of these investigations. The arrest of SLPP National Organiser and Member of Parliament Namal Rajapaksa in connection with allegations relating to the Airbus purchase scandal has also demonstrated that the government is willing to pursue cases involving politically powerful figures.

Wide Range

The ongoing investigations appear to encompass a wide range of parliamentarians and government members, both past and present. They suggest that accountability for corruption is not being confined to lower-level officials or to individuals who lack political influence. This is precisely the kind of accountability that the public has long demanded and that previous governments have too often failed to deliver. The government is also reaching into the upper levels of the military hierarchies of the past. The case in which 11 young men, most of them Tamil, disappeared after being abducted in Colombo between 2008 and 2009 involved allegations that some families were asked to pay ransoms. The investigation into this case has reached senior military figures. The willingness to pursue such cases is important because it challenges the assumption that those who exercised power during the war are beyond the reach of the law. Such cases would provide a practical test of whether the government’s commitment to accountability for economic crimes is part of a broader commitment to the rule of law.

Success in prosecuting corruption cannot substitute for justice for those who were unlawfully killed, disappeared, tortured or otherwise victimised. The UN report noted that there had been no recognition or accountability for crimes under international law, gross human rights violations and serious violations of international humanitarian law committed by all parties during the war. The government has yet to establish a credible and effective process to address the many cases of enforced disappearance, extrajudicial killing, torture and other serious violations. The government needs to take the international commitments it has inherited on human rights issues seriously. It needs to adopt a multi-pronged approach and go beyond focusing primarily on financial and corruption-related accountability.

Need Action

As a member of the international community, Sri Lanka has a responsibility to abide by the commitments it has made. It cannot selectively uphold international obligations postponing those that are politically difficult. Also, as a small country, Sri Lanka has a self-interest in ensuring the survival of international law, which is all that it has to protect it from the depredations of the bigger international actors. The erosion of international law by powerful states makes it all the more important that smaller states uphold the principles on which the international system is based. Sri Lanka cannot credibly appeal to international law when it is threatened from outside while disregarding its own obligations within. Sri Lanka also needs to win the confidence of its own population that it is committed to justice and equality for all. Public opinion polls and community-level research have disclosed that ethnic and religious minorities are appreciative of the sense of greater security they enjoy under the present government from ethnic or religious extremists.

But a sense of security is not the same as the fulfilment of rights. As far as the Tamil people are concerned, the government has yet to deliver on several of its specific promises. These include the long-standing problems of missing persons, the release of political prisoners who have been members of Tamil militant organisations, and the return of land taken over for military purposes during the war. The issue of Buddhist statues and archaeological sites found on their properties which are then taken from their control continue to trouble them especially as they see no signs of resolution of those disputes. The issue of pastureland in the east of the country in Mylathamadu is particularly concerning to them as they see orders by successive presidents, both President Ranil Wickremesinghe and President Anura Kumara Dissanayake, being disregarded on the ground. The Mylathamadu pastureland dispute is where traditional Tamil dairy farmers have engaged in multi-year protests against the ongoing encroachment of their ancestral grazing lands by Sinhalese crop cultivators relocated under government development schemes.

The government’s failure to hold Provincial Council elections is particularly troubling. The provincial council system is the only one that can provide the Tamil people and other ethnic minorities the opportunity to wield political power and exercise a measure of self-determination in the areas in which they are the numerical majority. The continued postponement of Provincial Council elections therefore has consequences that go beyond an ordinary electoral delay. It deprives communities of an important constitutional avenue for democratic participation and power-sharing. The ethnic and religious minorities appreciate what the government is doing in the larger national interest, but they must not be made to feel that their special concerns are being ignored. The government cannot resolve Sri Lanka’s entire legacy of rights violations overnight. But it does need to demonstrate that it is willing to move forward on multiple fronts, not only on a few.

Features

The emptying university: why are academics leaving?

Published

11 hours ago

2026/09/15

Sahan Weerasooriya

by Hasini Lecamwasam

Brain drain in Sri Lanka is at an all-time high. The latest Human Flight and Brain Drain Index for 2024 shows that we are 16^th of 175 countries on this count, and first in South Asia. That this is a crisis goes without saying. Brain drain affects all sectors, and is a huge strain on the resources of a developing country. Particularly in Sri Lanka, where considerable public investment is made in the moulding of professionals through the system of free education, this amounts to transferring the resources of poorer countries to richer ones with top migration destinations. It is, therefore, important to consider the push and pull factors behind skilled outmigration, specifically from the public university system of Sri Lanka, a key focus of the Kuppi column.

From frustration to exit

Several bitter realities in our crumbling public university system act as push factors in the migration decisions of academics. Many essays on this column have, over several years, attempted to highlight numerous aspects of this erosion. Perhaps, primary among them is the lack of adequate funding, which has debilitating ramifications for the system: very little investment is made in the up-keep of infrastructure (and even less in its expansion), resulting in serious constraints in accommodating growing batches of students and the wellbeing of the staff (particularly in regional universities); research funding is negligible, severely curtailing academics’ ability to effectively discharge their primary duty of teaching which should ideally be informed by their research (and the research of others, access to which is also, unfortunately, mediated by funding); a funding crunch also means a slash in (or greater constraints on) recruitments, increasing the workloads of academics, currently in service, and eating into the quality of their teaching and research.

What recruitments are done frustrate those with any faith in merit. As many of our interventions in this column have shown, recruitment processes are characterised by archaic selection criteria that place very little weight on a candidate’s postgraduate growth and the advantages of interdisciplinary training. Added to this is the general preference for ‘culturally compliant’ candidates who would not rock the boat too much. The combined effect is that those with the capacity and spirit to try out innovations in education are discouraged from joining or staying on in the public university system. Some, or many, of them may instead seek appointments abroad.

A thread that binds all of these problems together is pervasive hierarchy which, again, many interventions on this column have sought to highlight. It is the interest in preserving hierarchy that leads to the preference for alumni in recruitment processes. Hierarchy within universities can be particularly frustrating for younger faculty and women, who typically have to bear the brunt of the workload of their senior, often male, colleagues. In a context of funding, and, therefore, recruitment, restrictions, this translates into a disproportionate burden being placed on junior (usually female) faculty, seriously hindering their prospects of growing into successful academics due to the time constraints within which they have to operate. Junior academics, therefore, are more likely to look to educational institutions abroad for what they hope would be a different work culture that respects them more.

Ideological ruses

On top of these structural frustrations are also the workings of neoliberal ideology. For one, the nature of relations between the global metropole and peripheral countries like Sri Lanka largely dictates what is desirable and what is not. The apparent lifestyles of Western countries – from food to clothing, housing, appliances, and so on – have continued to lure people from the periphery with the promise of a ‘better’ life, alongside better career advancement opportunities. This, of course, masks much of the struggle that goes on behind the scenes to survive in Western societies. For instance, in most cases highly attractive public infrastructure such as roads, public transport, clean air, quality control of food, and so on belie the astronomical privatised costs of healthcare and education. Health insurance is usually mandatory and steep in most high-income settings, while even subsidised education (for which eligibility criteria are strict) creates a serious dent in household earnings. Of course, the happy images of glossy trams and gleeful international travellers don’t convey this.

A second ideological ruse is the myth of greater opportunities and recognition abroad. While there is no denying that local skilled sectors – be it higher education, health, civil service, or private white-collar positions – are replete with issues that inhibit merit-based professional advancement, the notion that things are fundamentally different in Western countries stems from an uninformed optimism. As is now increasingly known and discussed, Western labour markets are notoriously racialised, and equivalent skills are rarely treated as such. Instead, it is usually demanded that skilled migrants clear certain formal examinations in their host countries. In fields like medicine, this is followed by an interview that may also be racially prejudiced. Once these initial steps are cleared, remuneration reverts to square one irrespective of experience accumulated abroad, not to mention the many subtle aggressions, rejections, and trials one has to go through in the negotiation of everyday life. In the many cases where professional qualifications are used as leverage for a move abroad, sights are set on a better future for one’s children, which again is informed by the misplaced faith in greater opportunities and a lack of awareness of the factors outlined above. Needless to say, in the global swing to the Right, things have become even more challenging. In such a context, considering the few rare cases where skilled migrants live extremely comfortable lives as the norm becomes a dangerous misconception.

The two ideological pull factors mentioned above are complemented by a push factor, which has to do with a highly classed understanding of what a white-collar professional is due in their society. Many of these aspirations are clearly articulated in academic trade union action demanding separate quotas for school entry, increased fuel allowances, winning back the presently stalled vehicle permit scheme, salary hikes, and so on. While working people have every right to agitate for better material conditions, insofar as it remains unconnected to a broader movement for improving the conditions of the lot of the working class, it remains self-serving and very much within the class logic of capitalist society. Since these demands are articulated as a means of maintaining distinction, it is clear that they are not envisaged as part of a class movement. The frustration of not having these needs for distinction satisfied may push some to seek greener pastures abroad, at least financially, (perhaps as a means of social mobility based on it), only to be disappointed on most occasions.

What is to be done?

Addressing the systemic push factors listed above requires, first and foremost, greater allocations for free public higher education. This would immediately translate into more recruitments and less work per academic, and better research and teaching in the long haul. An increase in funding would also ideally lead to greater infrastructural investments, especially including improving the living conditions of those who work in regional universities amid untold hardships. Next, fairer, more creative, and, therefore, more effective recruitment policies are badly needed to attract talented individuals to university positions. Rather than carving out a ‘special category’ for academics to achieve this purpose, which is informed by a classed logic, this needs to be done through fundamental reforms in recruitment processes. Third, a persistent attack on the entrenched hierarchy within universities through internal reform is much called for. Reforming recruitment practices will go a long way towards addressing this. Measures should also be taken to introduce more stringent policies against SGBV (not to mention ragging, even though it is not directly connected to brain drain). Such measures would create a safer, fairer, and more attractive workplace, which would give more reasons for people to stay.

On top of greater allocations, we also need a transformation of our aspirations themselves if this situation is to change. That necessitates a kind of education capable of questioning the ‘paradise’ conception of Western societies, and lays bare their colonial material and ideological dimensions, in both their historical and contemporary manifestations. These colonial understandings of the ‘good life’, moreover, have devastating ecological implications for the planet, not to mention social justice. An education with the ability to transform this mindset would hopefully prove to be more than a mere path to social mobility, rather being a tool of social emancipation that renders mobility moot.

(Hasini Lecamwasam is with the Department of Political Science, University of Peradeniya)

Kuppi is a politics and pedagogy happening on the margins of the lecture hall that parodies, subverts, and simultaneously reaffirms social hierarchies.

Features

Friends favourite Suzi Croner returns for Oktoberfest 2026

Published

11 hours ago

2026/09/15

Sahan Weerasooriya

Charming audiences in Switzerland as Suzi Flückiger, Sri Lanka’s own Suzi Croner is coming home… for a very special occasion.

The bubbly former frontline vocalist of 90s band Friends will take the stage at a popular venue in Colombo for Oktoberfest 2026.

Known in Europe for her country and classic hits, Suzi has remained a much-loved name back home. This will be a rare chance for local fans to see her live and celebrate the voice behind so many Friends memories.

Oktoberfest 2026 in Colombo promises an evening of live music, traditional Bavarian food and beer, colourful dirndls and lederhosen, folk dancing, and plenty of community cheer.

Suzi Croner (Flückiger)

Against this lively backdrop, Suzi will take the stage for a special solo set, featuring her own pre-recorded music. She performed at the event last year too, as a solo artiste, but a German band providing the music.

This year, however she says, it’s a different scene.

“The novel attraction will be the dancers from Germany — all girls, clad in German outfits,” Suzi said. She added that the event will also highlight the activities generally connected with Oktoberfest, which should generate a lot of fun and excitement for those who join her in Colombo next month.

Suzi has become a much-in-demand artiste in Europe, and has even performed Down Under, in Melbourne.

In Switzerland, where she has been based for the past 42 years, she continues to charm audiences with country and classic hits, performing at private events and community nights across Europe.

“My weekends are generally loaded with my work as a singer,” she said. “And I also play tennis three times a week, because I need to keep fit to entertain my audience in an active way.”

Her repertoire is made up mainly of Swiss, German and English songs.

And true to form, Suzi loves springing surprises.

“So watch out when you join me at Oktoberfest 2026, in Colombo!” she said.