FOSWAL SAARC Foundation of SAARC Writers and Literature (FOSWAL), the Apex body of SAARC, held the annual SAARC Festival of Literature in Lucknow, India, from March 16th to 19th. FOSWAL, the brain-child of Ajeet Cour, continues to be nursed by her and her daughter Arpana Cour. It was during the turbulent times of 1986, just [...]
Archive of entries posted on March 2012
Ravana
Ravana Revisited Ravana has come back to life. Just as he had been claimed to have ten heads, he has been re-created in as many forms. The latest reincarnation in the ‘Ravana Meheyuma’ (Ravana Mission) is by Susitha Ruwan, a doctor at Sri Jayawardenapura Hospital. It is a futuristic thriller with a historical background. In [...]
Nature’s miracles
Nature as Vishvakarma daya dissanayake As I was seated on the beach at Unawatuna on the South Coast, my mind went back to an evening many years ago, on the beach near the border of the Yala sanctuary. I recalled seeing before me a true work of art. Today it reminded me that nature is [...]
translating translations
Translating Translations daya dissanayake In 1865 Mark Twain wrote the ‘Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County’. A few years later he wrote another story with a longer title, ‘The Jumping Frog in English, Then in French, and then Clawed Back Into a Civilized Language Once More by Patient, Unremunerated Toil’. He says he found someone [...]
father of the eBook
A Man with a Heart daya dissanayake Michael Stern Hart was born in Tacoma, Washington, on March 8th 1947. Tomorrow is his 65th birth anniversary. On July 4th, 1971, he had typed the text of the U.S. Declaration of Independence into his computer and transmitted it to about 100 other users on the University of [...]