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Text of my ‘When Worlds Collide’ column published in Ceylon Today Sunday broadsheet newspaper on 21 July 2013

When launching the column 18 months ago, I chose this theme because I am fascinated by worlds colliding all around us, all the time. It happens in both physical and metaphorical realms, I said, some of it so subtle and gradual that we really have to pay attention to notice.

Inter-generational tensions are nothing new, but there is one collision of worlds in Lankan society that I have been watching with much interest.

As I noted in my first column: “We have finally seen the end of our war, but the deeper forces of history, geography and ideology are locked in numerous slowly unfolding confrontations. Some would like to take us to the feudal times of the past. Others want unbridled fast-tracking to an uncertain future. The Children of ’56 are…

Text of my ‘When Worlds Collide’ column published in Ceylon Today Sunday broadsheet newspaper on 14 July 2013

My column last week, about the various slow movements that counter our fast paced modern life, elicited several responses. Many agreed that it’s an ideal worth pursuing in our frenzied lives. A few considered it ‘a luxury best suited for pampered Europeans’.

Although the slow movement is a loose network of like-minded people with no corporate style organisational structure, Italy has long been its spiritual epicentre. This, apparently, prompted some readers to presume Italians are laid back lotus eaters.

Well, they are not. Having been visiting Italy at regular intervals for nearly 25 years, I can confirm that Italians are a very colourful and energetic people.

By coincidence, I was back in Rome this week, on a fleeting visit, and felt quite at home once again. It reaffirmed my cumulative impression…

Text of my ‘When Worlds Collide’ column published in Ceylon Today Sunday broadsheet newspaper on 7 July 2013

I’m a slow reader of books. I do it deliberately hemin-hemin.

Oh, I can read fast when I really have to — and do so with newspapers, magazines and websites. It’s an essential survival skill in today’s information society.

But when reading books, I take my own cool time. Books are not to be rushed through; they are to be absorbed slowly, one chapter or one idea at a time. And I’m not (yet) a fan of e-books and haven’t got any e-book reader or tablet.

Those around me are amused and puzzled by this slow reading. They know my capacity to marshal new information and ideas, so they wonder why I sometimes spend weeks reading one book.

I’m not alone. There are others who cherish slow and reflective reading. There…

Text of my ‘When Worlds Collide’ column published in Ceylon Today Sunday broadsheet newspaper on 30 June 2013

“Let us drink to the success of our hopeless endeavour,” was a favourite toast of old Soviet dissidents. As things turned out, ‘people power’ of millions of exasperated individuals eventually brought down the system. It partly collapsed under its own weight.

Since the Iron Curtain crumbled, the former Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc countries continue to grapple with many challenges – such as enhancing real pluralism, safeguarding the public sphere and preventing a relapse to the bad old days of state diktats and propaganda.

Totalitarianism – in which the state holds total authority over a society and seeks to control all aspects of public and private life – isn’t quite dead. In the twenty first century, it has got a makeover and gone global.

And it keeps tripping open societies…

Text of my ‘When Worlds Collide’ column published in Ceylon Today Sunday broadsheet newspaper on 23 June 2013

“We’ll never allow satellite TV into our country! The minds of our youth must be shielded from those decadent western TV shows!”

Those words, uttered in private conversation by a top Bangladeshi government official in charge of youth affairs, have stuck in my mind even two decades after I heard them.

We were taking a bus ride from Bangkok to a beach resort in Cha-am, 200 km south of the Thai capital. As a young consultant working for UN-ESCAP, the United Nations regional arm, I was part of a team that ran an Asian consultative meeting on youth and sustainable development (such meetings mostly take place in exotic locations!).

Sharing our journey were permanent secretaries or additional secretaries of ministries covering youth or environmental affairs in over a dozen countries. Collectively, these…

Text of my ‘When Worlds Collide’ column published in Ceylon Today Sunday broadsheet newspaper on 9 June 2013

“Don’t we need permission to blog?” asked a bright and eager grassroots development worker during one of my new media training sessions in Sri Lanka a few months ago. When I assured her that none was required, she still didn’t seem convinced.

All her young life, she had played by our society’s hierarchical rules and looked for somebody’s consent (parent, teacher or boss) before expressing herself. She couldn’t believe it was now possible to do so online without any!

Indeed, thousands of Lankans already do, and our blogosphere – cyber space made up of all blogs and their interconnections — is alive with the voices of people from all walks of life (more diverse than you’d think).

Lankan bloggers regularly speak their mind, and discuss all sorts of issues both profound and…

Text of my ‘When Worlds Collide’ column published in Ceylon Today Sunday broadsheet newspaper on 2 June 2013

How should we respond to a rapidly spreading infectious disease like a particularly virulent form of influenza? What precautions are essential to safeguard ourselves? When do preventive actions go beyond the reasonable to disrupt social and economic systems? How to avoid run-away panic?

There are no easy answers, and we can only learn from experience. As the prospect of new influenza outbreaks looms on the horizon, some media discussions have recalled what happened with Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) a decade ago.

Public health professionals define a pandemic as “an epidemic occurring worldwide, or over a very wide area, crossing international boundaries and usually affecting a large number of people”.

Some pandemics, like HIV/AIDS, build up slowly over time. Others, like various types of flu, spread much faster. SARS was a good…

Text of my ‘When Worlds Collide’ column published in Ceylon Today Sunday broadsheet newspaper on 26 May 2013

Imagine and innovate to honour Sir Arthur C Clarke!

That was the central message in an op-ed I wrote in March 2009 to mark the first death anniversary of the late author and visionary.

Having worked with him for over 20 years, I know for a fact that Clarke never sought grand edifices in his memory. When a visiting journalist once asked him about monuments, he replied: “Go to any well-stocked library and look around…”

He knew his place in history was well assured by his ideas and imagination expressed in over 100 books, 1,000 essays and short stories, as well as numerous radio and television appearances. He achieved iconic status not just in literature, science and technology, but also in popular culture –- the latter largely thanks to the movie

Text of my ‘When Worlds Collide’ column published in Ceylon Today Sunday newspaper on 19 May 2013

“Hey Mom, Look! There’s a negro woman on TV — and she ain’t cooking dinner!”

So exclaimed a young Whoopi Goldberg when she saw an unusual kind of TV show which started airing on US network television in late 1966.

It featured a black woman character named Uhura in a technical position – as communications officer — on board an advanced starship exploring the universe in the twenty third century. This was unique at the time when minority women, if they appeared at all, were shown doing domestic work.

That show, named Star Trek, was well ahead of its time — not just in the technologies it featured, but also in the utopian ideals it projected.

Years later, Goldberg thanked the show for inspiring her to take to acting. Mae Jamison…

Text of my ‘When Worlds Collide’ column published in Ceylon Today Sunday newspaper on 12 May 2013

Tuna Wars are hotting up in the Indian Ocean.

At stake are the jobs of tens of thousands of fishermen, and nutrition of hundreds of millions of people living in Indian Ocean rim countries.

Last week, as government officials, scientists and fisheries managers from these countries converged in Mauritius for the annual meeting of the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission (IOTC), environmental groups again cautioned that overfishing is driving these fish stocks close to a collapse point.

Greenpeace, the most vocal among them, claimed that IOTC was not doing enough to control fishing fleets and prevent illegal fishing. The activist group reiterated the need for stricter controls to protect remaining tuna stocks.

IOTC, an inter-governmental body, covers the catch of 16 tuna and tuna-like fish species in the Indian Ocean. Their annual…