'Cause Pigs can Fly

It’s easier to be a travel blogger than it is to take public transport in Sri Lanka. And this is saying a lot since I absolutely love taking the bus or train. Photoshop skills help because then you don’t actually have to visit a place to blog about it (and by blog, I do also mean Instagram Stories and whatever else the kids are up to these days). It helps to have a personal photographer, preferably someone who knows a thing or two about filters. But besides a few basic skills, you don’t really need much to become a travel blogger. Because I’m supposed to be putting more effort into doing things I love (writing) and I consider myself quite the expert travel blogger (don’t challenge this. I’ve looked at a minimum of two dozen travel destinations this year alone), I thought of sharing some of my wisdom with you. Travelling by train is an excellent way to reduce the cost of a trip and drastically increase travel time. Trains can take you to a lot of places and the rest can be tra...

I remember talking with a friend about why we drink and the reason was that for those few hours, we don’t have to be in control of our lives. We forget whatever is taking up space in our minds. We forget work and shitty people and everything that makes life difficult. For those few hours, we can float around and say whatever without worrying about every little thing. This giving up of control is something I yearn for sometimes. I look for that feeling of not being me anymore. But this isn’t something I want all the time, which is why I flip out whenever I don’t have control of a situation at any other time. This is why the moment I had to sign a contract at work, I felt like I could no longer control my relationship with my place of employment. When I have to sit still for a long time, I start to freak out because I can’t just walk away. And then there is control over my emotions. There are times when my thoughts keep crashing into each other. When I can’t help but be sad for n...

One of the worst things we do, I think, is convincing ourselves that our problems are all part and parcel of being an adult. I tweeted recently about how tired I was and someone left a reply along the lines of ‘welcome to adulthood’. They didn’t mean anything by it, but I thought, “no!” We need to stop convincing ourselves that being an adult means killing ourselves, because it shouldn’t be. These past few days have been exhausting. I’ve been physically and mentally drained. Last week, I remember waiting for a bus and biting my lip to stop it from trembling. I remember blinking away tears. I remember not talking because I couldn’t stop my voice from doing that weird thing it does before you start crying. I remember waking up hating myself. Thinking about all the different ways my life could just end and hating myself for hating the universe for not putting me in the wrong place at the wrong time. I hated myself. I hated that I couldn’t love going to work. I hated that word...

I don’t read a lot of Sinhala novels and it’s mostly because the language can get super confusing. I know Sinhala, I can read it without any issue but dialect plays a huge role in novels. If we talk about English novels for a second, novels by Irvine Welsh, for instance, can’t be easily understood if you aren’t familiar with accents. The same applies to Sinhala novels, to an extent. Words and phrases depend on what the author is used to or the region or era the story is based on. This puts me off Sinhala novels because I quite honestly don’t have the patience to dissect language. This is perhaps why I found Appachchi Awith to be an easy read and also a hard to put down book. The storyline had a lot to do with it too, and it’s a book I would recommend to anyone. I was talking about the book with a friend and they mentioned something along the lines of people not liking the book because the psychological elements may have put them off. And in a way, I get it. The book can...

We taught our boys and men that women are not only the fairer sex but also the weaker sex. We taught them that women are playthings to look at, stare at, and ogle. We taught them that they had a right to inspect every inch of a woman’s body and shout from across the street about every unspeakable act they’d like to use this woman’s body for. We taught them that they can hit their sisters, wives and daughters. Their hand across a woman’s cheek was a favour done to the woman. To discipline them. Teach them a lesson. “She’s too young to have a boyfriend,” he says, pulling her by her hair. “But you were out there having sex when you were younger than I am,” she thinks. We taught our men to measure our value. A good wife is one that obeys her husband. Is at his beck and call. Looks away when he sleeps with other women. A good wife is one that keeps the food warm for when he staggers home at 2 in the morning. Brought with her a good dowry. Is a virgin until her wedding night. We ta...

If you know me, you will know that I hate weddings and don’t understand why people get married in this day and age. I could go on for hours about marriage, but yesterday, I forgot about all that and attended a wedding of a classmate. I hate admitting this sort of this but I am glad I went. The wedding was wonderful and I got to spend time with classmates I hadn’t seen since we left school in 2012. Excuse any incorrect words used in this paragraph but I’m not familiar with what’s what in a church. The service was held in a beautiful church and the sermon was quite good and pretty funny. But then he said something like, “*bride’s name* you have to now be a mother to your husband.” And I thought, “no, fuck that shit.” If you are a woman, you will be all too familiar with your lifelong role as a caretaker of men. From your father to brothers to husband to sons to grandsons, a woman is expected to take care of the men in her life. Women aren’t taught (mostly by their own mother...

Whenever people ask me about work and I tell them I work from home, their response is some variation of, ‘omg you are so lucky!’ And when I first started working from home, in September 2016, I was over the moon about it. I was discovering the joys of working in my PJs, from bed, while stuffing my face with unhealthy snacks. I haven’t asked people who have never worked from home what they think it’s like, but I’m assuming these are included in the package Not having to wake up at some ungodly hour to go to work Not having to sit in traffic for hours Not having to deal with annoying coworkers Not getting tangled in office politics Working in the nude and not having anyone know At first, it worked a bit like this. The magazine we were working on was new so we were still figuring out deadlines and how to get things done. We were used to working at an office. We couldn’t wrap our heads around how to get the same work done without ever meeting the people we ...