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Life of Pi

Do you believe in stories? Did you believe in stories when you were young? This book named Life of Pi (2001) written by Yann Martel made me want to believe in stories again. Margaret Atwood’s comment on the book cover itself “A terrific book” made me stop for a moment as I flipped through the pages curiously to find out what the book was about. It is a story of a young boy named Piscine Molitor Patel, first introduced to his classmates as Pissing Patel and later known as Pi Patel (π = the Greek letter Pi) after his desperate effort to change his first name from Pissing to Pi which in his ears sounds less-awkward. His father owns a zoo and the boy’s sole motive in life is to love God. Even though he is born to a Hindu family in India, after several encounters with a Catholic priest and an Islamic baker in the town, he becomes a Christian who goes to church on Sundays and a Muslim who prays at the mosque on Fridays and a devoted Hindu on a regular basis. As a zoo owner’s so

The Queen who Challenged the Symbolic Order of Ancient Egypt

Limestone statue of Hatshepsut as Pharaoh The Nile flows even today through the plains of Africa as she did thousands of years ago through the valley of the kings where a great woman once challenged the patrilineal throne. She is known as the first great woman in history of whom we are informed, a great Pharaoh who ruled Egypt during a time of great prosperity whose legacy could not be erased despite the attempts taken by one of her successors to eradicate her from history. Hatshepsut, meaning "the foremost of the noble women", was born into the 18th Dynasty of ancient Egypt’s new kingdom. She was the daughter of the great Thutmose the first and his primary wife Ahmose. Being of legitimate birth, had she not been a woman, she would have been next in line to the throne. However, after her father's death, young Hatshepsut was married to Thutmose the second, her half brother, in order to legitimate the throne and preserve the purity of the royal blood line. Thutmose the s

One Picture, One Million Memories

The group of girls in their white uniforms and purple blazers, standing on the sidelines of AstroTurf greeted me with an unexpected, bittersweet punch to the gut— it was a photograph from my school days. It opened a flood gate of memories that drowned me in nostalgia; it has had me longing for the good old days ever since I saw it. I vividly remember everything that happened on the day this photograph was taken. To begin with, it was taken at the LC (Ladies’ College) BC (Bishop’s College) Hockey Encounter. Now, this might sound like a regular event to you, but make no mistake! Think of it like SLUG, big match season, Bradby or Hayman-- it is an intrinsic part of the subculture within the two schools and is one of the most anticipated events on their respective calendars. The responsibility of organizing and hosting the event is generally alternated between the two schools. On this particular year, that responsibility fell on Bishop’s College. This meant that the

No Woman’s Land? Women and the Weight(s) Crisis

Bulking up, shredding and women may seem like three words thrown together begging for the odd one to be kicked out for good. Guess which? Women, of course! Progress is truly progress only if it is universal, which is hardly ever the case. Feminism since its conception has empowered women and shifted ideologies, and will continue to do so. However, the direct influences of feminism or any gender equality movement, notion or ideology aimed at empowering women or liberating the genders, are perhaps visible only in few of the world’s societies. Others are still on the shores of understanding what women’s freedom and autonomy truly are, and some others still quite far from boarding the ships of the turbulent sea of gender equality in its truest sense, which perhaps, will always be defeated by the need to define and specify its meanings, as has quite often been the aim of many an intellectual and political undertaking, only to dilute its initial fervour in the confli

Conquering the Wild: In the Land of the Elephant God.

In the mid 1960s, the Sri Lankan government initiated the Mahaweli Development Project with the aim of using the water of the Mahaweli river for irrigation and hydraulic power generation. As part of the project, farmers were given lands for cultivation in the North Central province of the country. This is their story who went up north to conquer the wild. It was the end of August, 1985. The August sky was clear and blue, and faded at the outline of a long range of mountains. The patches of land stripped naked by the big bull dozers cracked under the feet when walked over because the sun was not easy on the freshly upturned earth. Newly made sandy roads ran through the plains in one straight line towards the far north like one big white snake. Those patches were meant to be paddy fields in the near future. If not for the plots of bare land, the whole plains would be an infinite mesh of thorny bushes and tall big trees. Kohomba, Diwul, Palu and Weera trees stood like tall, skinn