When Kumara got the Aussies rattled
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West Indies great has his say on what went wrong in Australia
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Founder IIHS Dr. Kithsiri Edirisinghe receives global acclaim for visionary leadership in education
CDS facilitates the dispatch of e-warrants for ACL Cables PLC’s dividends
Asian Paints Causeway continues to support ‘Masterstrokes’
SLT-MOBITEL rewards winners of Laptop Fiesta
CSE’s main stock index dragged down by energy and financial sectors
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A serendipitous meeting! It demonstrated to me the skilful intelligence of one young man with his innovative and highly helpful project; which skills and innovation could very well be indicative of most Sri
Lankan youth. It also brought to focus the dire need to encourage such persons, first with publicity and then with assistance to have their projects materialize. I proposed I make wider known his brilliant concept and ways of achieving the project by writing about it to the Sunday Island. He accepted my proposal and agreed to be interviewed and share his ideas with me and thus the readership of this newspaper.
The young man is Chamith Rangana Dissanayake who has very recently graduated from the Department of Architecture of the General Sir John Kotelawala Defence University. I inquired about his thesis. His answer ignited serendipity in me and a rekindling of hope that all is not lost in this island of ours. Youth talent, zest and innovation given encouragement and assistance, could raise our land from the depths it has been driven to.
Chamith Dissanayake’s CDP Project
Chamith’s fifth year final project which he labored over for one year and presented as his CDP – Comprehensive Design Project – was Rejuvenating the Vedda Community. He said he had two projects in mind: Redesigning the Nugegoda Market incorporating better use of available space, increasing functionality etc. The second was the Vedda project.
The inspiration for this second idea was a paper he read and researched by Architect Diebedo Francis Kere who reconstructed, or rather had the villagers reconstruct, his home-village school from a ramshackle set of rooms to a spanking new complex in Gando, South Africa. The challenges to be considered and overcome were parameters of construction feasibility, cost, resource availability, climatic conditions. Greatly motivated, Chamith mentally transferred this reconstruction to the Vedda Community of Dambana.
In the two paged summary of his project Chamith states his research title as: Investigation on sustainable design strategies to conserve native tribal villages, with special reference to Dambana, Sri Lanka. His background info reads thus: “’Enforced primitivism’ is one of the popular practices and a policy which imposes to conserve native communities,…. Therefore it is important to investigate on sustainable design strategies to conserve native tribal villages and propose a dynamic mechanism to apply those strategies in an architectural design.”
In his Analysis of the Research Problems he writes: “Measures taken to conserve native indigenous tribes in Sri Lanka are too traditional, less effective and not functioning. There has been no dynamic mechanism, strategy or system to deliver indigenous native sustained knowledge to the outer modern society.” He says these indigenous cultures are decaying, thus his suggested and laid out intervention. And so the need to find a new updated architectural design solution to conserve native tribal villages, bridging the native tribal culture with modern society and a new perspective to motivate tourism in Sri Lanka.
He mentioned that when spending time with the Dambane Veddas he saw firsthand difficulties they suffered: being, if I may word it thus, still somewhat hunter-gatherers but settled down and absorbing village ways and social living. The children of Vedda communities often drop out of school, village schools which now they attend, due to poverty, difficulty in integrating and mixing with purely village living kids. Language too proves problematic; though they do not now speak pure Vedda dialect, they use words of their parents and grandparents which may sound strange to Sinhala and Tamil children and thus cause teasing and alienation. He points out that women and children are spoilt by the sex trade that has insidiously crept in; men imbibe intoxicants excessively and neglect their families; women seek jobs in villages, thus leaving their children uncared for.
His dissertation begins with the history and cultural identity of the Vedda Community; current phenomena regarding the Vedda Community cultural change; issue identification; and path to the master proposal; enhanced by colour photographs. He quotes others and the Socio-Anthropological Research Project on Vedda Community in Sri Lanka by Premakumara De Silva and Asitha G Punchihewa; Dept of Sociology, University of Colombo, August 2011, “Most of the problems and issues are based on the diversified economic situation of the Vedda Community.”
Examples quoted
Chamith of course did much research, and studied closely other tribal cultural heritage and community centers, worldwide, and the Sri Lankan Purana Gama, Nochiyagama, Anuradhapura. His dissertation includes descriptions of community centers in British Columbia, Colorado, New Mexico, India, Cornwall, UK. He details the reconstructions and the architects involved in each case study. For example in the Purana Gama, the village was recreated as a living museum with Wadu, Hetti, Ridee, Yak and Nakaath Gederas. This concept project of B Chandrasiri was completed in 2018.
Chamith identifies three areas for development of the Veddha community while keeping intact their culture, indigenous ways, habits, beliefs et al. They are no longer pure hunters and gatherers; rather are they settled down whether in the forest or even in villages, integrating with these people. They are already, rudimentarily, into the three areas of activity identified.
His first suggested recommendation is to target tourism by organising regional or zonal development plans mapping potential areas that could attract local and foreign tourists. He promotes the Vakarai Veddas as the focus of the tourism angle. His second suggestion is developing agriculture, which the Veddas carry out, but with better management of produce. His third suggestion is to improve self employment by selecting the local case study of Dambana tribal village and investigating existing characteristics/issues/pros and cons to develop an economical model and apply strategies. He advocates the harnessing of the private sector for funding the project and makes clear government involvement is essential.
He has divided the development project into three phases.
Site A: selected for a Tribal development centre; museum and entry building to the village.
Site B: the agricultural zone with cultivable land, easily accessible water and buildings to facilitate correct storage of produce.
Site C: a tourist ‘hotspot’ close to the Maduruoya jungle accommodating familiarization with Vedda culture; their crafts. All buildings have been designed.
As I said before, the project and presentation as his dissertation are excellent. Chamith got an A+ grade for it. He mentioned specifically Dr (Archt.) F R Arooz who was his excellent guide and mentor who, he said, encouraged him to write a comprehensive dissertation.
THE LAST LAP: Zürich-München-Paris-London-Colombo
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By Dr. Chandana (Chandi) Jayawardena DPhil
President – Chandi J. Associates Inc. Consulting, Canada
Founder & Administrator – Global Hospitality Forum
chandij@sympatico.ca
The last lap of our six-week-long adventure in the midst of a brutal winter included my solo brief visits to a few cities in Switzerland. We also visited one city in West Germany and visited the capital of France, before returning to the United Kingdom. Soon after ending the trip, I needed to focus on re-commencing my career in hospitality management. The last week of the trip went fast.
Brig
I left my friend’s house in Zug early in the morning to catch a train to the Swiss capital city, Bern. I did a brief walk around this city which I had visited three years prior. My train from Bern to Brig took a little over two hours. Dr. Wolfgang D. Petri, the president of Hotelconsult (now, César Ritz Colleges Switzerland) was at the Brig train station to welcome me.
In 1982, he opened the first hotel school in Brig as part of the Hotelconsult Management Company. Soon afterwards, I secured a contract for our family business – Streamline Services, as their student recruitment agency in Sri Lanka. The school expanded rapidly. I was invited to spend a couple of days with Hotelconsult. “Welcome to Brig! Thank you very much for recruiting Sri Lankan students who are doing well here,” Dr. Petri said.
After a quick tour of their main campus in Brig, he hosted me, six of the Lankan students there and four of their Swiss lecturers to lunch at the training restaurant. They maintained very high standards. After lunch I attended a faculty meeting. Then he took me on a 30-minute drive to their new, second campus in a nearby village – Lax. This is the most beautiful location of a hotel school I have ever seen.
Since the opening of the oldest and the best-known hotel school in the world – École Hôtelière de Lausanne (EHL) in 1893, Switzerland created a reputation as the Mecca of hospitality management education in the world. In the early 1980s, a few Swiss hotel schools commenced programs in English to appeal to a wider canvas. Dr. Petri was one of those leaders who created a new, international vision for the Swiss hospitality management education.
During the return drive from Lax to Brig, Dr. Petri briefed me about their plans to launch Switzerland’s first Bachelor of Arts program in Hotel Management in partnership with Washington State University in USA in 1985. I was very impressed with Dr. Petri’s vision, his focus on student success, his ambition for the school and his passion for excellence. He was an inspiration to me. The seed he planted in my mind that day resulted in creating the first international hotel school in Sri Lanka, with myself as the founding Managing Director in 1991.
Next morning, I was invited to deliver a guest lecture, which was popular with the students. Six years later, I realized that my 1985 guest lecture in Switzerland was also popular with the Swiss lecturers at Hotelconsult. One of them, Heinz Buerki, left Hotelconsult to set up a competitor hotels school – IMI International Management Institute near Lucerne, Switzerland, in 1991. Soon after that, he contacted me and appointed me a Visiting Professor of IMI. I did two teaching contracts in Switzerland in 1992 and 1993. IMI also appointed our family business – Streamline Services — as the exclusive student recruiting agency for IMI in Sri Lanka.
When I look back, I realize that I have been fortunate to get such opportunities around the world to open doors for further progress. In 2013, as the Associate Dean of the largest faculty for Hospitality Management and Culinary Arts in Canada, I signed an education pathway agreement between my employer, George Brown College and IMI. When Heinz Buerki met me in Toronto for that, he fondly remembered our long-established professional relationship since 1985.
I am not surprised that as of 2022, César Ritz Colleges Switzerland is ranked sixth in the world (just behind Lausanne, UNLV, SHMS, Glion and Les Roches) among the best hospitality and leisure schools, according to the QS World University Rankings. I am happy that I was able to make a small contribution to their success for a few years from their inception, 40 years ago.After two days in Brig, I took an early morning train to Lausanne with a short sight-seeing stop in a small town of 750 residents – Fiesch. I had breakfast there and reached Lausanne for lunch and a city tour. After that I took a three-hour train ride to Luzern, In time for a late dinner and overnight stay.
Next morning, I explored Luzern, a city which I visited several times in later years, during my teaching stints at IMI in the early 1990s in a nearby village – Weggis, in the canton of Lucerne. My first visit to Luzern was memorable. For fun, I crossed the river four times using the famous bridges of Luzern, including the Kapellbrücke (or the Chapel Bridge) a beautiful, covered, wooden footbridge spanning the river Reuss diagonally.
Next day I travelled to München in West Germany with an interesting stop in the largest city in Switzerland. Although my stop in Zürich was short, I was happy to visit the capital of the canton of Zürich, for the first time. Zürich is a hub for railways, roads, and air traffic. Both Zurich Airport and Zürich’s main railway station are the largest and busiest in the country. It was a cold day with snow and rain, but I did a walk around in the heart of the city to get a quick impression.
When I arrived in München in the evening, I was given a warm welcome by my wife, her mother and our West German family friends, Angelika and Gerhard. They insisted that we have a formal dinner in their house. It had been three years since we met them in München and five years since they last visited us in Sri Lanka when they did a special trip to attend our wedding in 1980. It was very nice catching up. Angelika worked as a flight attendant for Lufthansa Airline and Gerhard had a busy practice as a corporate lawyer.
As we visited most of the key attractions of München during the last visit, our hosts took us to an attraction we had missed the previous time – the Deutsches Museum, that had been established in 1903. We loved the main site of the Museum, which was on a small island in the Isar river. It had been used for rafting wood since the Middle Ages. This is the world’s largest museum of science and technology, with over 25,000 exhibited objects from 50 fields of science and technology. It receives nearly 1.5 million visitors per year. For a period of time the museum was also used as a venue to host pop and rock concerts.
We left München around 7:00 am and the train took 10 hours to reach our last key destination – Paris. We found an inexpensive, old hotel near the Gare de l’Est, one of the six large, mainline railway station terminals in Paris. We were happy with the room rate of FF150, but then they charged another FF70 for us to use the bathroom facilities!
As it was our fifth visit to Paris, we had previously seen most of the key tourist attractions there. After one of the most brutal, winter storms, the weather in France had improved and the snow had melted. We took the metro to the city centre and visited Palais Garnier, built in 1875 for the Paris Opera. We then walked along the beautifully illuminated Rue de la Paris – a fashionable shopping street in the centre of Paris and Boulevard des Capucines. As it was my mother-in-law’s first visit to Paris, the next day we did a three-hour city tour and re-visited the Eiffel Tower and Arc de Triomphe.
There is no better place than Paris to end a memorable, lengthy trip of Europe. Three years after that, in 1988, my employer then – Le Meridien hotel company owned by Air France, sent me for advanced, management training in Paris and Tours. I love visiting Paris.
After two days In Paris, we took a night coach around 9:00 pm. We arrived in Amiens around 1:00 am and then reached Boulogne-Sur-Mer around 3:00 am, to catch our ferry to Dover. In the ferry we analysed our last six weeks of travelling to 17 European countries. During that short period of time, my wife had visited 34 cities and I had visited 45 cities. To do that we travelled around 300 hours in trains, ferries and coaches. We were a little over budget and had spent a total of £1,500 including the cost of food. Still, it was a shoe-string budget, money well spent.
We concluded that the most pleasant surprises during the trip were Oporto and Budapest, and the most beautiful cities we ever visited were Venice and Paris. Around seven in the morning, we reached our favourite city in the world – London.
London was cold, rainy and snowy, but we were happy to be back. My wife went to work on the same day, and I had scheduled a few job interviews the very next day. The uncertainty of what the future held for us added to the sense of adventure during our long trip.Now it was the decision time, for a stable future. Having gained a long list of academic and professional qualifications and a wide range of experiences in most of the five-star hotels in the United Kingdom since 1983, I was optimistic.
We were prepared to go anywhere in the world, if I could secure a good job fulfilling my next two career goals. I was targeting to become the Food & Beverage Manager of a large, five-star international hotel by age 31. Then, after a few years, become the General Manager of such a hotel by age 34.
However, I was not successful in finding a suitable management position in any British company. I felt that earning the first ever MSc in International Hotel Management went against my suitability for certain jobs. The Vice Presidents who interviewed me in London, felt that I was over-qualified! In a hands-on industry, such as hoteliering, companies were not used to managers with master’s degrees. That was then, but 37 years later, today, having a master’s degree is fast becoming a prerequisite for an international hotel manager.
One Director of the Trust House Forte head office in London who interviewed me for the post of Food & Beverage Manager of their five-star hotel in Amman, Jordan, gave me a very practical suggestion. He said, “Why don’t you go back to Sri Lanka and attempt to join a five-star, international hotel there? After a couple of years’ management experience in a five-star hotel there, you should be able to launch your international hotel management career.”
I was disappointed when I was not hired for the job, but I took his advice seriously. Within a week, we packed our bags and left England to re-settle in Sri Lanka in search of a suitable opportunity to earn my Return on Investment (ROI) in Continuous Professional Development (CPD).
Colombo
Early morning
All are still sleeping
The house in total silence
The gate creaks as I leave home
To explore a city, I missed dearly
Good morning, sir, greets the neighbourhood thug
I commence a long nostalgic walk
Towards my alma mater
A Buddhist sermon in Pali on a radio played loudly
A Hindu mantra from a worshipper outside a kovil
An Arabic prayer from a nearby mosque
While a bell rings at an adjoining church
Gradually, the road gets louder
With sounds of crows, stray dogs, and tuk tuks
A bus conductor announcing next stops
Horns of cars stuck in a crazy traffic jam
A policeman loudly blows his whistle
School girls giggle near a crowded bus stand
A woman sweeping pavements while chatting
A devotee uttering gathas while worshipping a Bo tree
A beggar begging for a coin or two
A sweep ticket seller screaming for last day sales
A mother talks to a child in Sinhala
A boy yells at a buddy in Tamil
Two executives talk in English
A vendor speaks broken English trying to close a sale
All blend fleetingly like a symphony
But, unconducted
The scent of tea when passing an eating house
The aroma of sambar gravy when passing a thosai spot
The smell of freshly baked bread when passing a bakery
The perfume of joss sticks when passing a temple
The fragrance of flowers when passing a flower shop
Bring back memories from my good old school days
All seems to blend well in a city
Now more diverse than ever before
Giving a true cosmopolitan feel
Still a poor city with plenty security barriers
To protect from periodical terrorist attacks
Now back in my home town for good or bad
Nice to travel the world
Yet, there is no better place
Other than my birth place
Always there waiting patiently
Like a loving mother
To welcome me back
I simply love
My Colombo …
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By Prof V Suryanarayan
In a significant judgment in the case, S Abirami v. Union of India and others, delivered on October 11, 2022, Justice G R Swaminathan of the Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court declared that the principles of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), 2019 “can apply to the Sri Lankan Hindu Tamil refugees”. Though Sri Lanka is excluded from the countries mentioned in the CAA, Justice Swaminathan maintained that the same principles apply to Sri Lanka and that the “Hindu Tamils were the primary victims of racial strife”.
Abirami was the petitioner; her parents were Sri Lankan citizens and had come to India as refugees due to ethnic fratricide back home, and they did not have valid travel documents. She was born in Trichy in 1993 and has been living in India since then. She is not a Sri Lankan citizen. She wants to make India her permanent home. She was issued an Aadhar card, but her efforts to obtain Indian citizenship have gone in vain.
To quote from the judgment, the Sri Lankan refugees are “genealogically rooted to this soil and who speak our language and who belong to our culture”. To add, “Keeping them under surveillance and severely restricted conditions and in a state of statelessness for such a long period certainly offends their right under Article 21 of the Constitution of India.”The CAA marked a welcome change in India’s refugee policy. I was one of the first to welcome the Act, though I had opposed certain provisions. The exclusion of Sri Lanka from the list of countries was the main objection.
Secondly, I argued that the spelling out of non-Muslims in the three countries and subsequent criticism could have been avoided if the term “persecuted minorities” had been used. This would have shown India’s concern about the tragic plight of Muslim sub-sects like Shia and Ahmadiyya in Sunni-dominated countries. The Act also did not consider the Madhesis in Nepal, the Rohingyas in Myanmar, and the Hui and the Uyghurs in China, who have been persecuted.
New Delhi has not, for justifiable reasons, ratified the 1951 Refugee Convention nor the 1967 Protocol. These two instruments are based on the experience of the Western world and do not reflect the problems and prospects of refugees in the developing world. Moreover, according to UNHCR, the determination of the refugee status has to be made on an individual basis. Our experience had been a mass exodus from Tibet in 1959, from East Pakistan in the late 1960s, and from Sri Lanka since 1983. What is more, despite the presence of diverse groups of refugees, New Delhi has not enacted a national refugee law. Decisions are, therefore, taken on an ad hoc basis.
For example, thanks to the forward-looking approach of former Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M G Ramachandran, Sri Lankan refugees were permitted to work to supplement the doles given by the state government. On the other hand, the Chakmas, who came from Bangladesh, were not given that right.In the absence of a national refugee law, judicial decisions have become extremely important. Certain judgments need to be highlighted.
In the famous case, NHRC v. State of Arunachal Pradesh, the Supreme Court held, “The State is bound to protect the life and liberty of every human being, he be a citizen or otherwise.” The National Human Rights Commission also acts as a watchdog as far as refugee rights are concerned. In the famous case, P Nedumaran v. Union of India, delivered by Justice Srinivasan of the Madras High Court, an “interim injunction” was granted, restraining the Government of India from repatriating the refugees.
It may be recalled that following Rajiv Gandhi’s assassination, then Chief Minister Jayalalithaa wanted to repatriate Sri Lankan refugees, and the government officials used “strong-arm tactics” to get their consent in forms that were printed in the English language. To save embarrassment, then Prime Minister P V Narasimha Rao, on the advice of then Foreign Secretary Muchkund Dubey, allowed the UNHCR to open an office in Chennai to certify the “voluntariness” of repatriation.
Thus, in a crucial moment, the Government of India upheld non-refoulement, the basic principle of International Humanitarian and Refugee Law. Article 33 (D) of the UN Convention states: “No contracting State shall expel or return (refouler) a refugee in any manner whatsoever to the frontiers of territories where his (or her) life or freedom would be threatened on account of his race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.”
Two other judgments delivered by Justice Swaminathan deserve mention. In the first judgment delivered on June 17, 2019, Justice Swaminathan instructed the Government of India to consider applications for citizenship submitted by the Tamil refugees of Indian origin. The Government of India maintained the legal status of these people was that of illegal immigrants.In the second judgment in another case, Justice Swaminathan pointed out that under the Citizenship Act, 1955, Section (3) (1) (a), “a person born in India on or after the 26th day of January 1950, but before the 1st day of July 1987 shall be a citizen of India”.
The petitioner was born in India after January 26, 1950, and, therefore, is an Indian citizen. The petitioner produced his birth certificate, and his genuineness is not in doubt. The learned judge referred to a similar case in the Delhi High Court where the petitioner was conferred Indian citizenship.
The petitioners should take up one task immediately. Many refugees follow the Christian faith and are also subjected to discrimination and persecution in predominantly Buddhist Sri Lanka. Justice Swaminathan should be requested to also include Christians as a persecuted group who deserve Indian citizenship. (Indian Express)
Prof V Suryanarayan
is the Founding Director, Centre for South and Southeast Asian Studies, University of Madras
(suryageeth@gmail.com)
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Many architects and artists worked with the Aluwihare Heritage Centre which Ena set up in her ancestral home, to commemorate her 100th birth anniversary. She wanted to serve her village by employing many of the area, passing her artistic skills to them. They created batik and embroidered household linen, saris, blouses, sarongs and shirts. A foundry was opened by her so brass artifacts were made; a pottery workshop to turn out clay pots and suchlike. A display of these was held in several venues in Colombo.
The commemorative days (some exhibitions from 22 October to November 3) started with the Preview held at Barefoot Gallery on Saturday October 22, when Ismeth Rahim’s son and Archt. Channa Daswatte spoke of Ena, her life and work. Male and female models displayed her clothes ranging from batik and embroidered saris to sarongs, shirts and beach wear. The pouring rain did not spoil the event, though the models had to walk holding umbrellas.
On Saturday I went to the Crooked House in Battaramulla where Archt C Anjalendran had on display his collection of Ena sarongs – a truly vast and most exotic collection. He also spoke on Ena to those gathered at the time scheduled – her life and contribution to the cultural heritage of Sri Lanka
Rithi displayed her batik saris, which unfortunately I could not visit. But I spent time walking around in the Loft of Barefoot feasting my eyes on a vast array of Ena’s art work by her and the workers of Aluwihare. There were a couple of marvellously sewn saris with batilk and embroidered borders and panels, to be worn Kandyan style. Remembered were pictures of Ena exotically dressed captured by camera and included in Rajiva Wijesinghe’s edited coffee table book – Gilding the Lily.
Included in the Barefoot display were purses and of all sizes and design – embroidered. Also bags, table cloths, cushion covers and a large clay pot exquisitely designed over in white.These celebrations, commemoration and exhibition of what she produced or directed her workers in Aluwihare to turn out, being open to the public was an excellent gesture of remembering with gratitude a truly great artist of this country.
Ena was born in Aluwihare on October 23, 1922. She died in her ancestral home on September 29, 2015. She most definitely was a lily that needed no gilding; no enhancement. She was a elegant lady that radiated real beauty, that surpassed all in dress and elegance; who needed not to toil, but worked tirelessly improving the lives of others by creating beauty – gilding so many hotels, homes and people with her exquisite creations. Such a Sri Lankan should be celebrated and remembered for long years to come, as was done this last week.
Nanda Pethiyagoda
The Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Sri Lanka launches exhibition titled ‘Encounters’
Katina Kathina Civara ceremony held in New Delhi
First-ever Miss Sri Lanka New York pageant held on Staten Island
Passage of 22A: Jayasumana asks Speaker to remove dual citizens from Parliament
The meteoric rise of Rishi Sunak!
SLPP politicians’ son, nephew led-group wreaked havoc in Yala
22A and Basil’s Catch-22
It ain’t over …