Text of my ‘When Worlds Collide’ column published in Ceylon Today Sunday newspaper on 29 April 2012

As I lie awake in the wee hours of the morning struggling to breathe, I remember Saneeya Hussain.

And when I see yet another road accident on our increasingly mean streets, I think of Sachitra Silva.

It is now seven years since both these lives were snuffed out, on opposite sides of the planet, within a couple of weeks. The shock and grief have subsided; the memories linger.

I knew and worked with both these committed journalists. I connect their premature deaths to the inter-related urban scourges of our own making that are now running amok: crazy traffic and fouled air.

Saneeya was an ebullient, passionate journalist who blazed new trails in empathetic media coverage of social, political and development issues – initially in her native Pakistan, and then at South Asian…