Features

Reading and the Classics

Published

1 year ago

2025/01/19

Books are uniquely portable magic –Stephen King

A friend sent me an article on the study of reading patterns of American males by Constance Grady in a magazine called Vox. She writes: “Here’s where we ended up: men are slightly less likely to read than women are and less likely to read fiction, although the margin is not the yawning gap it’s usually presented as. Male authors continue to sell well and win awards. They won the National Award in four of five past years and many top bestseller lists. While it’s true that women make up the vast majority of publishing staff, men are over-represented at the executive level. At the same time, the problem of men who no longer read is presented as one that is urgent for the culture to address. So how did we get here? Are men’s reading habits truly a national crisis?”

And came the summation: “male readers are around 20% of book readers and women 80%, while graduate males read more. Reading’s role as a therapy food for mental and emotional health”, and the mention of Trump who probably never holds a book in his hand to read! According to the article, novels are considered feminine frivolities coming down from the Victorian Era.

I almost laughed outright. Give it to the Americans to spend time and money on researching the reading habits of adults, and males at that. Very intractable phenomenon or habit. Also to treat the seen decline in reading as an urgent problem, national crisis. Without eliminating Trump they vote him into the presidency! What is the national significance that males are reading less fiction?

If the reading habit of children declines it is a problem as it surely must be in America with its diversity of entertainment avenues. With much less such ‘delights’ to eat into precious leisure time, children in this land too read so much less. And hardly do they read good books in English – many reasons: Sinhala Only, poor teaching staff, cost of books.

I got to writing this because my friend Leelananda De Silva, a retired senior public servant and UN consultant, has expressed his disappointment and accompanying alarm, several times, that our school children do not have even a nodding recognition of the classics of English fiction, leave alone read them. And these should be introduced to them so they read them. I agree with him but judging by the standard of English of the majority of children, it is impossible to expect them to read Charles Dickens.

Which brings me to the question of what a literary classic is. Here is one definition:

“|A classic is a book accepted as being exemplary or particularly noteworthy.” In 1850 Charles Augustine Sainte-Beuve (1840-69) defined thus: “The idea of a classic implies something that has continuance and consistence, and which produces unity and tradition, fashions and transmits itself, and endures.” The author of a classic: “has enriched the human mind, increased its treasure, and caused it to advance a step; has discovered some moral and unequivocal truth or revealed some internal passion in that heart…”

T S Eliot did not define but said: “A classic can only occur when civilization is mature; when a language and a literature are mature; and it must be the work of a mature mind.” He added that a book to qualify as a classic has to be comprehensive and “within its formal limitations, express the maximum possible of the whole range of feeling which represents the character of the people who speak that language.” To Eliot, only Virgil wrote classics.

For many years I believed, as heard or read, that Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights was considered the best novel in the English Language with Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen and Great Expectations by Charles Dickens close followers. In Sri Lanka for long Leonard Woolf’s Village in the Jungle was the best local book in English. The above was just off my mind. Here are books selected by Britannia as ten of the greatest works of literature down the ages. Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, F Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Gabriel Garzia Marquez’s One hundred years of solitude, E M Forster’s A passage to India, Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, Miguel Cervantes’ Don Quixote, Tony Morrison’s Beloved, Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dolloway. Chinua Achebe’s Things fall apart, Jane Eyre and Alice Walker’s Colour Purple. The list is interesting for the range of its authors and the inclusion of non British and women of colour novelists.

Types of books read in life’s stages

Coming to my personal life with books, I need to say first and foremost that with age the reading habit has waned; time spent curled up with a book is far far less; choosy about fiction read and biographies much preferred. I presume it’s the same with other seniors. Leelananda has a vast collection of books which he bought over the years to read. While fully employed he would have read most but now he says he reads much less.

I remember with sweet nostalgia starting off with Enid Blyton who catered for the five plus to the young teen. Then it was moving to school stories and girl stories such as Anne of Green Gables, Richmal Crompton’s books on the crazy escapades of William, Ginger and the Outlaws. I never was into true romance paperbacks and Barbara Cartland. This mostly because I school holidayed in my brother’s home and a couple of miles away lived a ‘squire’ with a vast collection of books whom my sister-in-law borrowed from – Somerset Maugham, James Hilton and such like. So it was a straight jump from Blyton to adult fiction for me as a teenager. Later, appreciated much were Indian writers – Picor Iyer, Vikram Seth, Anita and daughter Kiran Desai and others.

I admit I was not into the classics of Dickens et al. Appreciated and loved a classic when done in class as text but preference was always for the more modern and easier reads. I loved Wuthering Heights, but Thomas Hardy only read as a text – Trumpet Major in Form Four. Down with measles and confined to a room when 16, I took to hand The Complete Works of Jane Austen won as a prize. Opened to me was excellent writing that overrode the slowness of the narratives. Austen’s ‘carving on ivory’ engrossed and enthralled me. Dickens was most appreciated when his Great Expectations was done as a text for the GAQ under Mr Kuruwila.

Its stunning symbolism was appreciated: the escaped convict holding Pip by the feet so he was turned upside down and Pip seeing every issue topsy turvy like believing Ms Havisham was his benefactor.

The men in my life meaning brothers, husband, and later sons were all devoured books. Time was when I would forego household chores, supervision of children’s homework, even meals to complete reading the novel in hand. No more now.

Thus the consequent thought: we benefited because English was, in the older generation like mine, first language and though my sons studied in the Sinhala medium, they grew up with English books around and frequent visits, at first with me and then alone, to the British Council and American Center libraries. And thus, Leelananda agreeing, I thank the British colonialists who introduced English to us.

Children of now and the classics

I voice Leelananda De Silva’s plea that children of today be introduced and encouraged to read the classics – the late teenagers. Those in schools in the big cities may be proficient in their English so they could cope, with difficultly of course, Dickens, Austen et al. English in even rural schools is being given greater emphasis but are teachers in these schools competent to even suggest a book for reading or better read it out to the class? I emphasize that standards of English in school children in general is far far inadequate to even tackle the simpler classics. Of course the abridged versions of great books can be a starter for kids. They may be bored with Austen but Dickens should appeal and so also Arthur C Clarke and other more recent writers. We have some good books written by local authors but not Shehan Karunatilake’s Booker Prize winner which will be tackled by even a Colombo 7 student!

Leelananda De Silva made another succinct point. Local publishers should publish books considered classics to be sold cheap since copyright for most would have lapsed by now. Our people, known to venerate books and never sit or tread on them, will buy classics at affordable prices in the hope their kids will one day read them if they are reluctant to do so as yet another chore. They must be led to the classics.

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Features

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

Published

2 days ago

2026/03/13

Thilina Walpola

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

=Joint planning across operational divisions

=Data-driven, evidence-based decision-making

=Continuous cross-functional consultation

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

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

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

By Chula Goonasekera – Citizen Analyst

Features

Why Pi Day?

Published

2 days ago

2026/03/13

Thilina Walpola

International Day of Mathematics falls tomorrow

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

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

Archimedes

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

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

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

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

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

π = 9801/(1103 √8)

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

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

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

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

Happy Pi Day!

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

by R N A de Silva

Features

Sheer rise of Realpolitik making the world see the brink

Published

3 days ago

2026/03/12

Sahan Weerasooriya

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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