King Sasanka – Sri Lankan Writer & Retired Aviation Professional.

 

We met a Greek family on our recent flight to the USA and had a long chat on the 10+ hour flight from Athens to the USA. I knew by looking at them they were in their retirement. I asked them what they were doing during their working life. The answer really surprised me. The gentleman had been working as a bartender all his life and his wife was a homemaker. They were going to the US to see their son and grandchildren, whom they had not seen for awhile due to travel restrictions imposed to combat the spread of the virus. And when they wanted to know where we were coming from, I was happy to say that we were from Sri Lanka, but unfortunately, they had never heard of a country called Sri Lanka before. Bringing the tea into the conversation would stir their memory of the famous Ceylon Tea brand name, too, was met with the same response. This made me think of two important things. The first one was, "Can a bartender from Sri Lanka afford to pay for airfare to visit someon...

Misconceived Notion of Some Tamils By Sasanka De Silva - Sultanate of Oman It is a common and general misconception that the Tamils in Sri Lanka took arms against the Sinhalese because of the discriminatory practices by the latter against the minority Tamils. There are two types of Tamils in Sri Lanka. One is the Sri Lankan Tamils and the others the Indian Tamils. The latter were brought to the island by the British to work in Tea plantations. They comprise 5.6% of the population. On the other hand, the Sri Lankan Tamils whom the LTTE terrorists claim that they are duty bound to liberate and are calling for the Eelam are 12.6%. Out of which, 6.5% live in the Northern part of Sri Lanka, 2.7% in the East and the rest, 3.4% live in the other parts of the country. If the discriminations against the minority were so prevalent then the numbers would have drastically been different. Almost half of the Sri Lankan Tamils are living side by side with the majority and other e...