Tobacco, alcohol and Women

Tobacco and alcohol harm men, women and children physically, mentally, socially and economically. In Sri Lanka the bulk of the social harm traceable to tobacco and alcohol is inflicted on and borne by women. On International Women's Day, it is salutary to focus attention on the load of silent suffering women have to endure because of addictive substance abuse by men. Much can be done and should be done to reduce this avoidable suffering.

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The most beautiful child lives in Roxywatte

About ten years ago, my friend Ayca Cubukcu, then an undergraduate at Cornell University and now a Professor in Anthropology, alerted me to a poem by the most celebrated poet from her native Turkey, Nazim Hikmet. It was about the most beautiful things. This was written 64 years ago.

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Sri Lanka's biggest-ever serial killer - Part I:

The birth of JVP fear psychosis

The JVP was led by Rohana Wijeweera, who once deceived himself to be a socialist revolutionary, but was finally revealed as a megalomaniac capitalist with a love for wine, women, luxurious cars and raucous speeches inciting death and destruction. Now, Wijeweera and the other leaders of the JVP had gone into hiding, but the Politburo held secret meetings, some of them in Colombo and the others in the provinces

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