Features

A singular modern Lankan mentor – Part II

Published

1 year ago

2025/02/3

Thilina Walpola

Prof. Obeyesekere

by Laleen Jayamanne and Namika Raby
(Part I of this article appeared in The Island on Friday (31 Jan.)

Women’s Mental Health: Trance/Dance in Folk Rituals

The lecture Namika heard on ‘pregnancy cravings’ (dola duka) among peasant women in a particular village, is one of Gananath’s earliest pieces of research which shows his turn of mind, originality, in taking seriously a compelling female desire which may not have been treated in the scholarly arena with the gravity and seriousness that it warranted. I associate a certain sense of cultural embarrassment on hearing the term ‘dola duka’ in Sinhala back in the day when a pregnant relative of mine craved to eat pieces from a freshly baked (navun) clay pot with its special fragrance. The film shows Gananath’s empathetic ability to pay careful ethnographic attention to a variety of gendered states of mental distress and trauma and their traditional ritualised ecstatic expressions, especially with regard to women, well before some feminist scholars in the West began to be interested in the topic of ‘Women and Madness’ from a Freudian psychoanalytic perspective. Psychoanalytic theory became methodologically important for Feminist Film Theory, which I used in my doctoral thesis on ‘Female Representation in the Lankan cinema’.

A sequence in Dimuthu’s film focuses on the subject of Gananath’s book Medusa’s Hair: An Essay on Personal Symbols and Religious Experience, which is a case history of an old woman called Karunawathi Maniyo (mother). She appears with her thickly matted, long snake-like grey locks which, we are told, were created by her as a mode of existence, entailing a ritualised daily practice of puja at an altar, with images of the fierce Kali with fangs and Durga Ashuramardani (a divine figure of combat capable of violence and great power), to express and assuage her mental distress. However, I did not see an image of Pattini, the ‘good mother’, on her altar.

It is worth noting that both Kali and Durga are not maternal figures and though they were incorporated into the Brahminical Hinduism, they have no consorts and were in origin folk goddesses, according to the historian of ancient India, D. D. Kosambi. It is worth remembering that the first feminist press in English, in India was called ‘Kali for Women’! There is here an evident externalisation of an unusual desire, intelligible within Karunawathi Manio’s social class/group and as such, acceptance of her idiosyncratic behaviour and appearance. It is impossible to imagine such a Medusa-like scary treatment of hair in a middle-class milieu.

Again, there are images of a possessed young woman, Nawala Maniyo, who participates in an exorcist ritual in a trance, eyes glistening between strands of her long tresses masking her face. This reminds me of Gananath’s extraordinarily gripping Case Study, ‘Psycho-Cultural Exegesis of a Case of Spirit Possession in Sri Lanka,’ which we dramatised for the soundtrack of my film A Song of Ceylon (Australian Film Commission, Sydney: 1985). Again, as an ethnographer he demonstrates how the Sinhala-Buddhist folk culture provided symbolic means of collective, public, theatricalised, somatic, expression of profound individual trauma registered in the unconscious of the young possessed woman, Somawathi, and the therapeutic value of these public, social forms of physical expression.

In the early 20^th Century Vienna, the Neurologist Sigmund Freud treated young bourgeoise female patients suffering from a new pathology named ‘Hysteria,’ which in turn led him to postulate a theory of the Unconscious and to develop his ‘Talking Cure’ through ‘free-association’, to assuage mental pain. This however was in a privatised and personalised setting in his study; the female patient lying down on a couch speaking in a ‘stream of consciousness’ mode, with Dr Freud as the silent listener, his gaze averted. Freud’s case studies of these patients are also gripping reading, like a 19^th Century novel, and they are also ‘ethnographic’ psychoanalytic interpretations of the pathology named Hysteria, a new medical category which entered the Diagnostic Manual.

A portrait sculpture of Prof. Gananath Obeysekera by Prof. Sarath Chandrajueewa

In contrast, while deeply interested and trained in psychoanalytic theory and methodology at the University of Washington, Seattle, by European specialists, Gananath appreciated and powerfully theorised the public, social nature of Exorcist Rituals (Bali Thovil) and other such therapeutic practices.

Further, he showed how the rituals, based on folk beliefs, were imaginative, performative public events with an ‘audience’ participating in them and their importance as witnesses, for the cure. In these, the female ‘patient’ or woman possessed of demons danced to drum beats in ecstatic trance, resisting through spirited dialogue, the Exorcist (Kattadirala), who embodied patriarchal authority and even physical violence. In these rituals the possessed woman is given a public arena to play (dance) in, and while the ritual has a familiar cultural ‘script’ so to speak, the possessed woman has every chance to improvise and play as she desires or as the demons (all male) possessing her desire.

It is clear through this work that, contra psychoanalysis, the unconscious is not structured like a language and the repressed is insighted to find expression through trance-dance and vocal expression which go against traditional notions of femininity. In ecstatic states the patient is animated by drum beats that touch her nervous system directly and thus the entire body, revealing deep registers of affective trauma, that a purely static, talking cure (while lying down on, what became, that famous couch, now preserved in the Freud Museum in London) could not possibly do.

Dimuthu brings all this out lucidly, not only with the questions he poses to Gananath but also by placing the relevant photographs or clips within the interview sequences themselves. This montage technique of placing carefully chosen stills and clips from Gananath’s very extensive ethnographic archive, interspersed with the ‘Talking Heads’ interviews, makes the film very lively and watchable. It also teaches us something about the complex theoretical ideas Gananath worked with in an accessible way because of his powers of ‘scientific’ rigorous ethnographic observation, tempered by a Buddhist Humanist empathy and engaging style of writing so rare in scholarship.

Perhaps the film would encourage young scholars to read Gananath’s writing as Dimuthu did even before he entered the University. And I hope it encourages the translation of at least some of his major work. The film is significant in this sense, too, because Gananath did not accept the orthodoxy in his field and questioned received methodologies and theories. His critical mind is truly dazzling in its generosity of spirit and sense of curiosity even so late in his retirement. We hear him say, ‘Even now (then in his 80s, soon to be 95!), I am learning something new every day in the Uva-Wellassa area’ and exhorts us also to make that a goal. Yes, let’s!

Gananath’s use of the idea of the unconscious, via Freudian Psychoanalysis, in his ethnographic theorisation of rituals was enabling methodologically. It provided a key theoretical concept for understanding the actions performed by men and women under immense mental and physical duress, which went against the mandated gender norms of the traditional culture. I remember in the 1980s how Gananath was severely criticised by Marxists for ‘indulging in and validating superstitious folk beliefs and practices’ among the so called, ‘ignorant peasantry’.

The whole nexus of folk beliefs and cultural practices, including aspects of Hinduism, and their integral articulation with Buddhism, practiced as a popular religion with rituals and dramatic enactments by these rural communities was dismissed in a simplistic rationalist critique, as myth, hence false. But what has survived time, as an anthropologically cogent theoretical analysis based on meticulous, imaginative ethnographic work, is Gananath’s central argument about the hybrid, generous, inclusive nature of Buddhism as a religion, practiced in the robust, open folk traditions, by the peasantry. Dinidu gives considerable time to Dr Kumudu Kusum Kumara, who explains Gananath’s very detailed, complex argument and research with clarity and imagination in the film.

Buddhist Humanism or ‘Protestant Buddhism’

Kumudu explains the significance of Gananath’s formulation of the concept of ‘Protestant Buddhism’ introduced by the Theosophist Colonel Olcott in the 19^th Century, who schooled the Buddhist revivalist Anagarika Dharmapala in constituting a Sinhala-Buddhist Catechism based on the Thripitakaya (the canonical Buddhist text), fit for school children in Daham Pasal modelled on Sunday School for Christian kids. He explains how this was a rationalising, westernising move, following Max Weber’s thinking here. Gananath’s brilliant coinage ‘Protestant Buddhism’, which was also strongly aligned with the Nationalist Anti-Colonial Movement, rationalised religious practices making them exclusive. A Victorian-English-Protestant-Puritanism thus entered Buddhism in Lanka, making it more akin to Protestantism in Europe which had a very severe moral code. Thereby the inclusive flexibility of the Buddhist folk tradition with its humour and sense of play, is lost along with, crucially, the story-telling tradition based on the Jataka Tales of the Buddha’s many rebirths, parables about ethical behaviour towards all living beings.

With this loss, we are told, the tradition of Buddhist Humanism, with its values of compassion as exemplified in these stories teaming with natural life and animals, too, also disappeared. Further, through this loss the ethical values nurturing and sustaining ‘a Buddhist Conscience’ were also lost, he argues. We are shown (via images), how the painterly folk tradition in Temple Murals and the literary sources, song, poetry (kavi), trance-dance, drumming, dramatic enactments within the folk traditions (as distinct from the official chronicles of the Mahavamsa and Deepawams), offered an alternative vision of Buddhism as practiced by the peasantry.

We learn that in the folk tradition Dutthagamini repented killing Elare the Tamil king and conscience struck, he attempted reparation and contrition, unlike the patricidal king Kashyapa who escaped into a hedonist life in the rock fortress of Sigiriya. Kumudu says that Gananath argued his case by reading the folk archive, of images on Temple walls and anonymous folk texts (Panthis Kolmura, a large corpus of 35 long poems, some of which he translated and also sang, Kadaym poth or Boundry texts and Vitti poth or Event books), which were authorless and title less work of the people, for the people and by the people. The film helps us to understand that it is this folk tradition, cultivating empathy and an ethical conscience, a capacity to be contrite, that has been lost within the post-independent ethno-nationalist version of official Protestant-Sinhala-Buddhism, with state patronage. This imported ideology of the English speaking coloniser is then presented as the ‘pure original Buddhism’ shorn of local superstition, hybrid folk tales and beliefs and rituals, rejected as ‘unBuddhist’. Indologists in turn supported this rationalising move of creating a ‘pure, original Buddhism’.

A Case Study

Kareem, a young Muslim man hangs on hooks (attached to a swing-like structure on wheels in a religious procession), as penance at the Kataragama Hindu festival and is also seen dancing in a trance. Gananath explains in his Case Study of Kareem that he was imprisoned in 1961 for assisting in the Army Coup against the Government. One wonders how a humble young Muslim cook got caught up in and imprisoned for a foolish Coup staged by a select group of English-speaking bourgeois gentlemen of Colombo, who were all high up in the armed forces of that era. Daughters of three of these officials who were arrested and served sentences were close friends of mine in school during this time, which heightens a sense of the absurdity of this poor man’s plight. Gananath’s case study of his childhood revealed an authoritarian paternal figure who instilled fear in him. However, he seemed serene and happy in the photographs taken with Gananath after the ritual and even when swinging from the ritual hooks.

Here, I would like to cite Arjun Appadurai’s review of Gananath’s magnum opus, The Cult of the Goddess Pattini because it is not readily available to those outside the academy.

“This is a book of unusual scope, quality, and scholarly significance. Ostensibly a description and analysis of a single cult in Sri Lanka, it is in fact a major symbolic, psychological, and ethno-historical study of practical religion in Sri Lanka, and of the relationship of that island to Indic culture and society. It is the product of two decades of field research by Sri Lanka’s most distinguished anthropological interpreter, and its combination of textual analysis, ethnographic sensitivity, and methodological catholicity makes it something of a blockbuster”.

Dimuthu informed me that Gananath studied six different traditions of the Pattini Cult, starting in the 1950s. Dimuthu and his research team went looking for the priests of each of these traditions named in his book and found that they had died but they did meet a student of Yahonis Pattini Mahattaya of the Rabaliya tradition and of Podi Mahaththaya, H. D. Edwin Pattini Mahatthaya, who is now the only living informant of Gananath’s Pattini research. Edwin Pattini Mahattaya performed aspects of the Pattini Cult for Gananath at his request for the sake of photo documenting it for his book. His son Tilak is seen dancing as Pattini in the Dimuthu’s film. Seeing him becoming Pattini (after his ritual investiture), even in an all too short clip, is among the high points of this film for me, because we see a profound metamorphosis of this young male ritual dancer into a female archetype, Pattini, the only Mother goddess of Lanka, in an inspired rhythmic play with codes of gender and beyond to reach an ecstatic body and spirit – words fail me. What we can also see is the profound gestural, rhythmic, spiritual transmission of this syncretic tradition across generations, across the abyss of death itself.

Pattini’s origins are in Kannagi, a heroic human figure from the Tamil Epic Silappadikaram, who is worshiped as a mother goddess, Kannagi-Amman, in India and in the East coast of Lanka by Tamils who still observe matrilineal descent (a system of tracing kinship through a person’s female ancestors), according to Gananath. The significance of this for gender and family relationships would be of particular interest to feminists. There is a large modern Bronze statue celebrating Kannagi in Chennai, India and colourful plaster ones and paintings in Hindu temples in Lanka, seen carrying her iconic anklet. (To be concluded)

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Features

Viktor Orban, Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump: The Terrible Threes of the 21st Century

Published

15 hours ago

2026/04/19

Thilina Walpola

Orban (center) Trump and Netanyahu

In the autumn of 1956, Hungary staged the first uprising against the 20^th century Soviet behemoth. Seventy years later, in the spring of 2026 Hungary has delivered the first electoral thrashing against 21^st century right wing populism in Europe. The 1956 uprising was crushed after seven days. But the opposition scored a landslide victory in Hungary’s parliamentary election held on Sunday, April 12 and^. Viktor Orban, Prime Minister since 2010 and the architect of what he proudly called “the illiberal state”, was resoundingly defeated. Orban who has been a pain in the neck for the European Union was a close ally of US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Trump even dispatched his Vice President JD Vance to Budapest to campaign for Orban. After Orban’s defeat, Trump and his MAGA followers may be having nightmares about the US midterm elections in November. Similarly, Orban’s defeat has reportedly caused “great concern in the halls of power in Jerusalem.” Netanyahu has lost his only ally in the European Union and the opposition victory in Hungary does not augur well for his own electoral prospects in the Israeli elections due in October.

Ceasefire Hopes

Trump and Netanyahu have bigger things to worry about in the Middle East and among their own political bases. Trump is going bonkers, blasphemously imitating Christ and badmouthing the Pope, launching a blockade in the Strait of Hormuz and strong arming more talks in Islamabad. Netanyahu has been forced to sit on his hands, pausing his fight against Iran while pursuing peace talks with Lebanon. The leaders and diplomats from Pakistan, Egypt and Turkey are shuttling around drumming up support for another round of talks in Islamabad and a prolonged extension of the ceasefire.

Further talks in Islamabad and potential extension of the ceasefire received a new boost by Trump’s announcement of a new 10-day ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon. The background to this development appears to be Iran’s insistence on having this secondary ceasefire, and Trump insisting on ceasefire abidance by Hezbollah in return for his ordering Netanyahu to stop his brutal ‘lawn mowing’ in Lebanon. All of this might seem to augur well for a potential extension of the primary ceasefire between the US and Iran. There are also reports of the narrowing of gap between the two parties – involving a potential moratorium on Iran’s uranium enrichment, the opening of the Strait of Hormuz, and Iran’s access to its frozen assets estimated to be $100 billion.

Meanwhile the IMF has released its latest World Economic Outlook with a grim forecast. “Once again, says the report, “the global economy is threatened with being thrown off the course – this time by the outbreak of war in the Middle East.” Before the war, the IMF was expected to upgrade its growth forecasts for the global economy. Now it is going to be weaker growth and higher inflation with oil price optimistically stabilizing around $100 a barrel in 2026 and $75 a barrel in 2027. In a worst case scenario, if the oil prices were to hit $110 in 2026 and $125 in 2027, growth everywhere will further weaken and inflation will go further up in countries big and small.

In a joint statement on the Middle East, the Finance Ministers of the United Kingdom, Australia, Japan, Sweden, Netherlands, Finland, Spain, Norway, Republic of Ireland, Poland and New Zealand have called on the IMF and World Bank “to provide a coordinated emergency support offer for countries in need, tailored to country circumstances and drawing on the full range and flexibility of their tool kits.” They have also welcomed “advice on domestic responses that are temporary, targeted, and effective, and encourage work to identify steps needed to protect long-term growth.”

Subversion from the Right

The two men, Trump and Netanyahu, who started the war and precipitated the current crisis are not being held accountable by anyone and they are still free to do what they want and as they please. The third man, Victor Orban, who did not have anything to do with the war but extended wholehearted ideological and political support as a faithful apprentice to the two older sorcerers, has been democratically defeated. Together, they formed the terrible threes of the 21^st century, spearheading a subversion from the right of the emerging liberal status quo of the post Cold War world. Orban’s defeat is a significant setback to the illiberal right, but it is not the end of it.

The three emerged in the specific historical contexts of their own polities that are both vastly different and yet share powerful ingredients that have proved to be politically potent. The broader context has been the end of the Cold War and the removal of the perceived external threat which opened up the domestic political space in the US, for locking horns over primarily cultural standpoints and climate politics. This era began with the Clinton presidency in 1992 and the election of Barack Obama 16 years later, in 2008, created the illusion of a post-racial America.

In reality, the right was able to push back – first with the younger Bush presidency (2000-2008) pursuing compassionate conservatism, and later with the foray of Trump (2016-2020) threatening to end what he called the “American Carnage.” Of the 32 years since the election of Bill Clinton, Democrats have controlled the White House for 20 years over five presidential terms (Clinton – two, Obama – two, and Biden -one), while the Republicans won three terms (Bush – two, Trump – one) spanning 12 years.

Trump has since won a second term for another four years, but already in his five+ years in office he has issued executive orders to roll back almost all of the liberal advancements in the realms of civil rights, equality, diversity and inclusion. All that the celebrated acronym DEI (Diversity, Equality and Inclusion) stands for has been executively ordered to be banished from the state, its agencies and its programs.

In Europe, the European Union became the champion and bulwark of liberalism and subsidiarity, which in turn provoked the rise of right wing populism in every member country. Brexit was the loudest manifestation against what was considered to be EU’s overreach, but after Britain’s bitter Brexit experience the populists in the European countries gave up on demanding their own exit and limited themselves to fighting the EU from their national bases.

Viktor Orban became the face and voice of anti-EU nationalists. But he and his political party, the Christian Nationalist Fidesz – Hungarian Civic Alliance, are not the only one. Nigel Farage’s Reform UK in Britain and Marine Le Pen’s National Rally Party in France are becoming real electoral contenders, while right wing presidents have been elected in Argentina and Chile.

The rise and fall of Viktor Orban

Of the three terribles, Orban is the youngest but with the longest involvement in politics. Born in 1963, Viktor Orban became a political activist as a 15-year old high schooler, becoming secretary of a Young Communist League local. He continued his activism while studying law in Budapest, visiting Poland and writing his thesis on the Polish Solidarity movement, giving lectures in West Germany and the US as a potential future Hungarian leader, and undertaking research on European civil society at Pembroke College, Oxford.

At the age of 26, Orban gained national prominence with a speech he delivered on June 16, 1989 in Budapest’s Heroes’ Square to mark the reburial of Imre Nagy and other Hungarians killed in the 1956 uprising. Imre Nagy was the leader of the 1956 Hungarian uprising against the puppet Soviet Union outpost in Budapest.

To digress and make a local connection – the pages of Sri Lanka’s parliamentary Hansard of 1956, contain an impressive record of the political debate in Sri Lanka over the events in Hungary. The LSSP’s Colvin R de Silva eloquently led the Trotskyite prosecution of the Soviet invasion of Hungary and the suppression of its freedoms. Pieter Keuneman of the Communist Party used his wit and debating skills to defend the indefensible. GG Ponnambalam, the unrepentant anti-communist, used the opportunity to take swipes on both sides. Finally, for the government, Prime Minister SWRD Bandaranaike deployed his own oratorical skills to empathize with the uprising without condemning the USSR. The four men were Sri Lanka’s foremost verbal gladiators and they used the occasion to put on quite a display of their talents.

Back to Hungary, where Orban began his political vocation identifying himself with Imre Nagy and demanding the withdrawal of the Soviet army from Hungary and calling for free elections in that country to elect a new government. That same year in 1989, Fidesz was recognized as a political party; Orban became its leader four years later in 1993 and led the party and its allies to their first victory and formed a new government in 1998. At age 35 Orban became the second youngest Prime Minister in Hungary’s history.

During his first term, Orban started well on the economy, reducing inflation and the budget deficit, was welcomed to the White House by President George W. Bush, and led Hungary to join NATO overruling Russian objections. But the slide into authoritarianism and corruption was just as quick, including the attempt to replace the two-thirds parliamentary majority requirement by a simple majority. By the end of the term the ruling coalition disintegrated and Orban lost the 2002 election and became the leader of the opposition over the next two terms till 2010.

Orban returned to power with a two-thirds majority in 2010 and immediately introduced a new constitution that set the stage for ushering in the illiberal state. What had been previously a communist state now became a Christian state where ‘traditional values’ of gender rights, sexuality, and exclusive nationalism were constitutionally enshrined. The electoral system was changed reducing the number parliamentarians from 386 to 199 – with 103 of them directly elected and 93 assigned proportionately. Orban went on to win three more elections over 16 years – in 2014, 2018 and 2022 – each with a two-thirds majority, and used the time and power to transform Hungary into a conservative fortress in Europe.

The new constitution and its frequent amendments were used to centralize legislative and executive power, curb civil liberties, restrict freedom of speech and the media, and to weaken the constitutional court and judiciary. It was his opposition to non-white immigration that made him “the talisman of Europe’s mainstream right”. He described immigration as the West’s answer to its declining population and flatly rejected it as a solution for Hungary. Instead, he told his compatriots, “we need Hungarian children.” His ‘Orbanomics’ policies restricted abortion and encouraged family formation – forgiving student debt for female students having or adopting children, life-long tax holiday for women with four or more children, and sponsoring fixed-rate mortgages for married couples.

Orban wanted to make Hungary an “ideological center for … an international conservative movement”. Orban heaped praise on Jair Bolsonaro for making Brazil the best example of a “modern Christian democracy.” He endorsed Trump in every one of Trump’s three presidential elections, the only European leader to do so. In return, Orban has been described by US MAGA ideologue Steve Bannon as “Trump before Trump.” Orban’s attack on universities for being the citadels of liberalism have found their echoes in Trump’s America and Modi’s India.

For all his efforts in making Hungary a conservative ideological centre, Viktor Orban’s undoing came about because of Hungary’s growing economic crises and the depth of corruption and systemic nepotism that engulfed the government. The economy has tanked over the last three years with rising prices and the national debt reaching 75% of the GDP – the highest among East European countries. Orban’s critics have exposed and the people have experienced systemic corruption that enabled the siphoning of public wealth into private accounts, the creation of a ‘neo-feudal capitalist class’, and the enrichment of family and friends. Orban’s corruption became the central plank of the opposition platform that Peter Magyar and his Tisza Party presented to the voters and caused his ouster after 16 years.

The Prime Minister elect is not a dyed in the wool liberal, but a member of a conservative Budapest family, and a politician cut from the old Orban cloth. Magyar (literally meaning “Hungarian”) was once a “powerful insider” in the Fidesz government – notably active in foreign affairs, while his ex-wife was once the Minister of Justice in Orban’s cabinet. Mr. Magyar may not fully roll back all of Orban’s illiberalism, but he has committed himself to eliminating corruption, increasing social welfare spending, limiting the prime ministerial tenure to two terms, and being more pro-European, EU and NATO.

EU and European leaders have openly welcomed the change in Hungary, and may be looking for the new government to change Orban’s vetoing of a number of EU initiatives, especially those involving assistance to Ukraine. In return, the new government in Hungary will be expecting the unfreezing of as much as $33 billion funds that the EU extraordinarily chose to freeze as punishment for Orban’s illiberal initiatives in Hungary. For Trump and Netanyahu, the defeat of Viktor Orban removes their only ally and supporter in all of Europe.

by Rajan Philips

Features

ICONS:A Dialogue Across Centuries

Published

15 hours ago

2026/04/19

Thilina Walpola

Sky Gallery of the Fareed Uduman Art Forum is dedicated to bringing audiences, cultures, and time periods together through meaningful and accessible art experiences to create the closest possible encounters with the world’s greatest paintings. Previous exhibitions include, Gustav Klimt, Frida Kahlo, Paul Gauguin, Vincent Van Gogh, Salvador Dali.

ICONS is conceived as “a dialogue across centuries” bringing together over a dozen artistic geniuses whose works span the Renaissance to the modern era. These works at their original scales of creation changes the conversation. You can finally stand in front of a life-size Vermeer or a monumental Monet and feel the dialogue between artists who never met but shaped each other across time. Each exhibit is meticulously presented on canvas, hand-framed, and finished at the exact dimensions of the original masterpieces, preserving the integrity of composition, texture, brushwork, color and scale.

At the heart of the exhibition is Jan van Eyck’s ‘Arnolfini Portrait’, a work that epitomizes the detail, symbolism, and human intimacy that have inspired generations of artists. Alongside it, visitors will encounter paintings that shaped the renaissance, impressionism, modernism, and the evolution of visual storytelling by Munch, Matisse, Monet, Degas, Da Vinci, Renoir, Vermeer, Rembrandt, Cézanne, Caravaggio, and more. The exhibition invites audiences to experience a rare conversation across centuries of artistic brilliance.

By bringing together works that are geographically and historically dispersed, ICONS creates a compelling space for comparison, reflection, and discovery. Visitors are invited to move beyond passive viewing into a more engaged encounter—tracing artistic influence, identifying stylistic shifts, and uncovering unexpected connections between artists who never shared the same physical space, yet remain deeply interconnected across time.

Designed and curated for both seasoned art enthusiasts and first-time visitors, ICONS offers an experience that is at once educational, immersive, and accessible—removing many of the traditional barriers associated with global museum-going.

Exhibition Details:

Dates: April 24 – May 3
Time: 10:00 AM – 5:00 PM (Monday – Sunday)
Venue: Sky Gallery Colombo 5

Features

Our Teardrop

Published

15 hours ago

2026/04/19

Thilina Walpola

BOOK REVIEW

Ranoukh Wijesinha (2026)

Published by Jam Fruit Tree Publications.
82 pages. Softcover. ISBN 978-624-6633-81-3

The author is a graduate teacher at St. Thomas’ College, Mount Lavinia; his alma mater. On leaving school he read for a Bachelor of Arts Degree in English Language and English Literature at the University of Nottingham (Malaysia). On graduating, in 2024, he went back to his old school to teach these same disciplines. There seems to be a historic logic to this as his grandfather, a notable Thomian of his day, also started his working career as a teacher at the College before moving on to the world of publishing; as a newspaper journalist and sub-editor.

On his maternal side, Wijesinha’s grandfather was an accomplished journalist, thespian and playwright of his day, and his mother is also a much sought after teacher of English and English Literature and, as acknowledged by him, his first, and foremost, English teacher.

Ranoukh Wijesinha and friends at STC

Though there are some well-written, almost lyrical, pieces of prose in this publication, it is the poetry that dominates. Written with a sensitivity to people and events he has either observed himself, or as described to him by those who did, it also encompasses all genres of poetic verse, from the classical to the modern, including sonnets, acrostics, haiku to free and blank verse, the latter more in vogue today. All in all, it presents as a celebration of English poetry and its ability to, sometimes, express depth of thought and feeling far better than prose.

Dedicated to his mentor at St. Thomas’, his Drama and Singing Master had been a great influence on Wijesinha His sudden, premature, death understandably came as a shock to the still developing student under his tutelage. The poems “The Man who Made Me” and “The Curtain Called” best demonstrate this. In addition, it is apparent that Wijesinha has endured much mental trauma in his young life. Spending much time on his own, the questions these moments have raised are expressed in “When No One is Listening”, “There was a Time”, “Midnight Walks” and the prose “A Ramble through Colombo”.

However, the majority of the poems concern ‘Our Teardrop’, Sri Lanka, for whom the writer has a great love. He explores its history, its natural wonders, its people, its tragedies, its corruption and the hope that things will get better for all its people. “Bala’ and “Dicky” address a time of violence from days gone by when there were few glories, just victims. “Easter Sunday” brings this almost to the present time.

There also is humour. “Ado, Machang, Bro, Dude” celebrates his friends and friendships in a way that will reverberate with all the present and previous generations of those who are, or were once, in their late teens and early twenties.

There is little to criticise in this first of the writer’s forays into published works except, as referred to previously, to re-state that the prose quails in the face of the power of the poetry. It is all well written, filled with passion and compassion, and gives comfort that there still are young Sri Lankan writers who can be this brave, and write so powerfully, and profoundly, in English. It is hoped that this is just the first of many from the pen of this young writer.

L S M Pillai