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Text of my ‘When Worlds Collide’ column published in Ceylon Today Sunday broadsheet newspaper on 22 September 2013

A dozen years ago, a leading tele-drama director and I had a friendly debate live on national TV Rupavahini’s breakfast show. He argued that our island was being visited by alien beings who, he said, were making contact with ‘chosen individuals’ in certain remote locations.

I kept asking: show us some real evidence! Unidentified flying objects (UFOs) are spotted from time to time, I agreed. But further investigations reveal these to be natural phenomena or human-operated objects that had first observers failed to make out. There is no proven connection between such UFOs and intelligent life in the universe (which most scientists agree must exist).

I had argued many times with other peddlers of UFO myths, but wasn’t prepared for our artiste’s next argument. “Alien visitations are not my imagination. There’s plenty…

Text of my ‘When Worlds Collide’ column published in Ceylon Today Sunday broadsheet newspaper on 15 September 2013

What makes real cities?

Beyond urban infrastructure and administrative designations, what turns an urban area into a city proper? Is it bohemian lifestyle, bustling nightlife, a certain defiance of authority, secularism or something else? How are these qualities nurtured, and by whom – the elite, merchant class, artistes or intellectuals?

I posed these harmless questions in a column last April, arguing: “A city, at its most basic, is a collective state of mind. And by that philosophical definition, we cannot find a single city in today’s Sri Lanka!”

I also asked: what made Anuradhapura a great (and proper) city of the ancient world? And how come subsequent seats of government all failed to match that high standard?

I received some predictable reactions. What’s wrong with villages, I was asked. (Nothing —…

Text of my ‘When Worlds Collide’ column published in Ceylon Today Sunday broadsheet newspaper on 8 September 2013

“Remember me!”

With those words — and with a mischievous smile — entrepreneur and activist Anita Roddick (1942 – 2007) once autographed a book for me.

You’re hard to forget, I told her. Indeed, the maverick founder of The Body Shop is one of the most unforgettable persons I have met in a quarter century of global travels.

Our two close encounters — a dozen years apart, and on two continents – are among my precious memories.

When Anita died six years ago this week, aged 64, media obituaries described her as one of the world’s most successful women entrepreneurs and also as the ‘Queen of Green’.

She was much more than just green. We remember her as a formidable one-woman cheering squad for a range of social, humanitarian and environmental…

Text of my ‘When Worlds Collide’ column published in Ceylon Today Sunday broadsheet newspaper on 1 September 2013

After nearly a month of confusion and panic, the government now says it “probably overreacted” in its response to stories of contamination in milk powder imported from New Zealand.

“There was a debate that built up in the country over this issue,” information minister Keheliya Rambukwelle told reporters on August 30. “I personally think our response was beyond the actual need. There was an overreaction when thinking in technical terms.”

The minister added, however, that a government always erred on the side of caution in trying to protect consumers.

In early August, Sri Lanka stopped the import of milk from New Zealand after discovering trace amounts of dicyanamide (DCD) a fertilizer additive, in four batches of milk sold by several firms. Concerns were also expressed on the presence of whey protein…

Text of my ‘When Worlds Collide’ column published in Ceylon Today Sunday broadsheet newspaper on 25 August 2013

“For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert!”

With those tongue-in-cheek words, Sir Arthur C Clarke opened a June 1998 op-ed essay published in Science, journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. It probably struck a chord, and he soon added it as a fourth to his better known Three Laws.

The dilemma he highlighted is even more acute today. How can politicians make the best possible public policies when there is no scientific consensus in many technically complex issues?

And what can the public do when politicians in office are using scientific evidence only when it suits them, and ignore all the inconvenient truths? In other words, when governments are being expediently ‘evidence-based’?

Responsible governments have to balance the short and long term public…

Text of my ‘When Worlds Collide’ column published in Ceylon Today Sunday broadsheet newspaper on 18 August 2013

“If this flight is a waste of my time, you’re going to pay for it,” Julian Manning, managing director of Ceylon Tobacco Company (CTC) told Ray Wijewardene as they took a helicopter ride over the Mahaweli river valley in Sri Lanka’s hill country one day in the late 1980s.

“It’s not, and I’m right – and you’ll pay for it,” said a confident Ray, who wanted to show how haphazard farming on steep slopes was causing large scale soil erosion and environmental damage.

An engineer turned farmer, Ray knew how to take the ‘toad’s eye view’ of ground realities. As an avid aviator, he also had the ‘bird’s eye view’ – which is what he wanted to show the tobacco chief.

It worked. Pointing to the denuded hillsides, Ray emphasised the…

Text of my ‘When Worlds Collide’ column published in Ceylon Today Sunday broadsheet newspaper on 11 August 2013

Everybody lives downstream of somebody else!

That was the core message in a column I wrote a year ago (26 August 2012) about agricultural runoff causing major environmental and public health problems.

One such impact in Sri Lanka, mass scale chronic kidney failure (CKDu), has received much attention in recent months. One of several hypotheses for this medical emergency implicates chemical pesticides.

Some environmentalists have demanded action as a precautionary measure. In April 2013, the Health Ministry said it would ban the import of three pesticides (Chlorpynphos, Propanyl and Caboryl): apparently chemicals in these pesticides were found in urine samples of CKDu patients.

Banning rarely solves problems. But tightening the 90% state subsidy on chemical fertilisers, (which in 2009 cost 0.6% of total GDP) can reduce overuse and the…

Text of my ‘When Worlds Collide’ column published in Ceylon Today Sunday broadsheet newspaper on 4 August 2013

There was a memorable scene in the film Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986). Chief Engineer Scotty, having time-travelled 200 years back to late 20th century San Francisco with his crew mates, encounters an early Personal Computer (PC).

Sitting in front of it, he addresses the machine affably as “Computer!” Nothing happens. Scotty repeats himself; still no response. He doesn’t realise that voice recognition capability hadn’t arrived yet.

Exasperated, he picks up the mouse and speaks into it: “Hello, computer?” The computer’s owner offers helpful advice: “Just use the keyboard.”

Scotty looks astonished. “A keyboard?” he asks, and adds in a sarcastic tone: “How quaint!”

He then proceeds to use the keyboard with amazing dexterity — too good to be true for someone raised in a future world where human-computer interactions…

Text of my ‘When Worlds Collide’ column published in Ceylon Today Sunday broadsheet newspaper on 28 July 2013

“I’m everything you lost. You won’t forgive me. 

My memory keeps getting in the way of your history.”

So wrote Agha Shahid Ali (1949 – 2001), Kashmiri-American poet, in a famous poem called “Farewell” where he grappled with memories and histories that were both intertwined and warring.

This has been a week of reminiscences, mostly unpleasant or outright horrific, relating to Sri Lanka’s worst communal riots of July 1983. People from across the ethnic spectrum have recalled, in public media, a range of emotions they experienced — from trauma and anguish to shame and helplessness. This mosaic of collective memories is part of the legacy of Black July.

Memories matter, at both private and public levels. But not everyone agrees on the cathartic value of memories. A few argue…