Ivan Attanayake was my classmate from grade 1 to AL’s at St. Peter’s Collage Colombo 4. He was a very good student and passed all exams with extensions. Both of us took part in sports and extra curriculum activities and joined the school cadet corps initially as cadets and later as troop sergeants.
I recall going to Diyatalawa for training, where we met late Denzil Kobbekaduwe, a cadet from Trinity College, Kandy. After his AL’s at the age of 19, he left for the UK for higher studies in Electrical Engineering and graduated in Electrical & Electronic Engineering from Mid-Essex Technical College UK.
Sri Lanka’s fame for some of world’s finest cocoa is threatened with the local production volumes declining sharply. Although an ideal inter-crop with coconut, promoting the ecological balance, the disinterest of many local landowners in this wonder crop considered the ‘food of the gods’ is declining at an accelerated pace. We spoke to several Sri Lankan Cocoa enthusiasts who warn that unless urgent interventions are made, Sri Lankan Cocoa is on the path to botanical antiquity.
by Randima Attygalle
Botanically termed
Theobroma cacao, the cocoa tree is believed to have originated in the Amazon basin and spread to Central America, largely to Mexico. The natives in this region including Mayans and Olmecs revered it as the ‘food of gods’. Cocoa seeds were used as currency by the Aztecs. By the beginning of the 19th Century, it was introduced to the colonies and was developed in Africa and Asia as a commercial plantation.
Remembered Yesterdays by J. Godwin Perera This year it was a quiet, subdued, Christmas. The restrictions imposed to control the Covid 19 pandemic made sure of that. We were confined, constrained and constricted. Such controls were absolutely necessary and no one but the pitifully ignorant or stubbornly indifferent would have protested. Even the Church endorsed […]
The Sunday Island of 20th December featured part one of the article captioned “Sir Donald Bradman and His Men in Ceylon” written by my late Uncle Neville Jayaweera (NJ). It was initially published as a guest essay in the book, Essaying Cricket – Sri Lanka and Beyond, authored by Michael Roberts in 2006. NJ has […]