'Cause Pigs can Fly

What makes a woman a lady? What with the lack of ladies, I’ve started to list out things that make a woman a lady. Those short and tight dresses that leave very little for one’s imagination certainly doesn’t make a woman a lady. Of course it makes her something else, but I’m not going to comment on that. Cursing is also not very ladylike, nor is sarcasm. Language doesn’t make a woman a lady. Just because you can’t speak English doesn’t mean you are just a woman. Yet, how you speak what ever language you use can make you at least seem like a lady. Since facebook and instagram make models out of nearly everyone, there are more and more photographs being uploaded. While the poses only confuse your mind, (I mean, how do they manage to do all that while wearing the highest of all heals and a dress that will blow away at the slightest breeze?) the ‘models’ feel no shame at all to expose what little they have to the entire world. A profile picture of a girl that left very litt...

We rode into the future in search of the past. Desperately trying to remember that first ride on a bike, with a boy, if you could call him that, who is as distant from my memories as that bike ride. It was when I wore my hair in a long plait, when dresses were puff sleeved and covered more than they do now. It was also a time when games weren’t about slicing fruits or running away from a monster while collecting gold. These were days of playhouses and run and catches. They were the days I love the most, when I was just a little girl. Today, I’m grown up. Not as grown up as most people, but older than I was when Kumara broke all rules to win our hearts. I don’t remember that day, and the fragments of that memory will now never, count as my first bike ride. The first for me would be the one I went on recently. Too recent for me to be able to forget the tiniest details about that day. I didn’t care if my memory of Kumara will get lost behind this mem...

Recently I was contacted by the author of a book I had just reviews. Now, I’m not a great reviewer, I just give my honest opinion. This particular author had a stroke a decade or so ago, and his autobiography was lacking of quite a few things. So what he said was that knowing about his stroke, I shouldn’t expect a grammatically correct text. He said something like, “you can’t expect me to look into all that.” Now when I blog no one goes through my post before I ‘publish’ it. No one corrects the spelling or grammar, and I rarely ever read through what I write. When I write articles, it’s a completely different story. I read through it, and so do many others. A text, anything at all, that gets published must be good enough to be published. A blog requires just a single click to be published; it doesn’t count as a text as such. I’m not a writer just because I blog, it doesn’t make me read-worthy. And yet, when I see a spelling mistake, thanks to spell-check, I correct it. But ...

The last time a death made me cry was somewhere last year, when Alfie, our baby squirrel died. Since then quite a lot of people and animals have left this world; my cousins’ dog, my grandaunt’s husband, a relative, someone who lived two roads away from me and yesterday I started the day with some terrible news. So this was a man I had seen once, on the day of his wedding. He got married to someone who wasn’t a relative, but who proved that water can be thicker than blood. His name always slipped my mind, and just a few days ago I tried and tried to remember his name, was it Ranjith? Ranjitha? Well, it was Ajith. And Ajith is dead now, no more. I didn’t cry though. The tears gathered, threatening to spill down my cheeks, but they never did. I tried to get them out of me, but I couldn’t. Not when I heard about the dog’s death, or even my granduncle’s death. I felt sad, and something hurt inside, but I’m still waiting for those damn tears! So last night I wondered if these dea...

Kumara is only a name in my memories. I think he was dark, and not that tall. I think he wore shorts, but I can’t be sure. What I do remember about him is related to bikes. Since my brother was the leader of the pack, even though the pack had three girls and only one boy, we were mostly tomboys. We never had Barbies and tea sets to play with. Among our various treasures were our bikes. Since the pack of cousins was nearly all the same age, we went through the same phases together. The most excited phase for me was the bike phase. Each of us had a cycle and we loved racing each other around the heart shaped lawn in my uncle’s garden. We never spent too much time with the training wheels, and had our knees scraped too many times. I still remember the time I fell off, my bike landing on me. The sun was setting, and my body was covered in sweat. I knew my knee was bleeding and dreaded the moment the adults would clean the wound. When my uncle and aunt rushed to me, I told ...

Change is such a simple thing and yet, change can take away a lot with it. I find it difficult to accept change and yet, I’ve changed so much. I’ve gone from being a talkative and active girl, to a depressed and quiet teen to the person I am now. More in control of my feelings and more accepting of other people. There was a time when I hated those who drank, or smoked. Now, well, I still hate it when people I love do those things, but I’m more accepting of them. Even with all this, I was still shaken when a friend accused me of having changed. Then my grandmother said I’ve changed. And I realized that I have indeed changed. The days where all that mattered were people you have been friends with forever, and everything can easily be forgiven, where you had a best friend you told everything to, those days are gone. So long gone that they are but fragments of my memory. So yes, I’ve moved away from the people I loved with all my heart even as recent as last year. Not on purpose though...

Kandy. The city of the Temple of the Tooth Relic. Also a city of an amazing lake, nice buildings and too many birds. Not to forget the palm readers, promising you that marriage is just around the corner for you. Kandy. A city of unforgettable memories. Simple yet, awesome times and innocent fun. I've been to Kandy by train before. So going by train wasn't a brand new experience. Yet, it was still a new experience. Three girls, three guys. Six friends. The trip really proved that you may know a person, but you really know them once you have spent a long time together with them. About the people, I realized many things. Speaking to them, talking about various issues. Or just making jokes. Even when we were silent, things seemed to fit in. We weren't pieces of the same puzzle, though we did some how fit in. We had our differences, but differences don't always matter. During the return trip, and for me, this is what I loved the most, one of the group and I abandoned...

Leaving something behind By Shailendree Wickrama Adittiya Dogs mark their territory by urinating on them. Maybe not always with that intention, but those stains are evidence of ownership. We too are like dogs, we keep marking our territory. Only in a less raw manner. We instead stamp our names on what we own. My room is strictly mine. Not just my name pinned to the door, or the paintings and drawing I have decorated my walls with. The room that was once someone else’s is now mine in the way my clothes are scattered about, my books crowd the room and how an assortment of items cling on to whatever space they find. When entering that room, you don’t just enter any bedroom, but my bedroom. And besides the emotional attachments I have to that room, there is also materialistic attachment. We have somehow marked everything we own, clothes, books, shoes, places and even memories. We add things, we forget certain other things, and we make those memories ours. Table and chairs ...

Reading the paper this morning, I read about protests about Sun newspaper. Sun has a huge readership, though I think they do very little reading, due to these picture of nude or semi-nude women the paper publishes. So basically these feminists want to put a stop to this. Now the issues! Who is a feminist? Someone who fights for the rights of women. Equal rights as men. Women still can't go about without at least one comment from a man. Not a simple compliment but some insulting or crude remark. There's also the issue that many communities still limit what women can do. They are payed less, exploited more often and are still very much discriminated. So why not take up these issue to protest about? The pictures! Now its hard to believe that these pictures are taken by force. Most of these models have lots of money, so they can't use that as an excuse, unlike certain prostitutes and strippers. These pictures are of girls willingly posing, not being tortured and forced to...

During my school years, we had a science exhibition. The group I was in discussed Carbon Dating, which a method of guessing the age of ancient items. Somewhere during the exhibition an elderly gent posed the most feared question humans have to deal with, “Can you guess my age?” he asked with a shrewd smile. I blinked a few times before doing a few mental calculations. His grey hair and the fact that he was with a younger couple meant he was a student’s grandfather. Not an older student though so he must be at least sixty years. I guessed his age to be fifty, just to be safe. He laughed and thanked me for thinking he was so young. Truth though is that guessing someone’s age isn’t as easy as it seems. A child wants to look older, an adolescent their real age, an adult, a year or two younger, someone in their naughty forties wants to look twenty years younger and an elderly person wants to look middle aged. One wrong answer to the dreaded question and it’s awkward and embarrass...