Picturing the world with aday.org

Today,15 May is the day we were supposed to join thousands around the world to use the power of photography to create, share and compare perspectives on daily life. I had been following intermittently www.aday.org and knew it was today but other than charging the battery hastily in the morning there was little chance to pick up a camera and go wandering on a heavy work day.

Just after 5pm I made my escape – but by then chances of catching something new was slim — where and what to photograph. What should I remember of this day?

There were the visitors to the World Press Photo 2012 exhibition:

Visitors at the World Press Photo exhibition at Drik Gallery 2. Dhaka, Bangladesh. 15 May 2012. Photograph Chulie de Silva

Then the street outside the Drik office and my oft used environmentally friendly transport – the rickshaws;

Colourful rickshaws add to traffic woes on the street outside Drik office. Dhanmondi, Dhaka, Bangladesh. 15 May 2012. Photograph Chulie de Silva

I also met the talented duo of photographers just outside the gate at Drik. They were more than amused that I was even thinking of submitting photos to the aday.org.

Photographer friends Sayed Asif Mahmud and Arifur Rahman just outside the Drik Office. Dhanmondi, Dhaka, Bangladesh. 15 May, 2012. Photograph Chulie de Silva

The man at my favourite corner shop didn’t want to be photographed and as I walked past the new Apple computer shop, I saw this little girl so engrossed in her computer.

4 year old Rabita engrossed in her computer game at a her father’s shop. Dhanmondi, Dhaka, Bangladesh. 15 May, 2012. Photograph Chulie de Silva

As I looked at her through the glass door, she raised her head, winked at me and smiled. I met her Mum inside and asked for permission to take her photo. She politely greeted me, when requested by her Mum. But having done that, 4-year old Rabita was back at her computer in a jiffy. She completely immersed herself in her computer game, and scarcely gave me a glance as I struggled to catch a good shot of her. This was a truly a born into the techie world digital citizen, like my own granddaughter Tara. Well, the photos today will preserve the day in my memory.

Thanks aday.org for prodding us out with our cameras. Good memories to hold on to.

join thousands around the world in using the power of photography to create, share and compare perspectives on daily life! Don’t miss it! You can upload your

Mother’s Day and Father’s Day too!

My parents Manel and Bennie Kirtisinghe on the steps of the back verandah at Siriniwasa, Hikkaduwa, Sri Lanka. circa 1990. Photographer unknown.

The beep from the sms woke me up early.  Still submerged in my dreams I debated whether to ignore it and go back to sleep but out here in Dhaka my brain kept nudging me to wake up — an sms at an odd hour doesn’t normally bring good tidings.  Still half in a stupor I read it through bleary eyes –it was Mother’s Day greetings from my first born Suren and his partner Nickie in Oz.   It was 13 May —  Mother’s Day was not uppermost in my mind but the thought that it was my father’s birthday was.  If he was alive he would have said “nonsense, rubbish” to Mother’s Day, saying “it’s mother’s day every day here and with a wink would have added a comment about my (n)ever loving wife. Their constant jabs at each other was legendary but so was their love story.

This photo was a delightful surprise from the past and had arrived at my desk a few days ago from my sister Yasoja, from Brisbane.  She had ferreted away most of the family photos when she migrated in the 1980’s to Australia.  We grumbled but after the tsunami of 2004, when we lost most of our treasured photos, we were overjoyed that her Brisbane archives had kept safe quite a cache of the family photos.

Photos like these are both a point of connection and a point of separation.  It captures a moment that I might have witnessed many a times and is now played back in a slow review of a life gone past.  I am there, sharing the cup of tea my bare bodied father is enjoying. I too am bathed by the amber light of the evening setting sun seeping through the coconut leaves over the back verandah. I feel the wetness of the towel on my mother’s knee, smell the freshness of the cool silky swathe of long wet hair, the tangy salt on my lips . The tape being played back stops as I linger over memories of how my mother and I tired of the salty sea water leaving our long hair a tangled mess, would go for a fresh well bath into the interior of Hikkaduwa.  I smile quietly as they do and wonder who the photographer was – a family member, a friend, a tourist?

Many are the photographs taken on that back verandah, many are memories of interesting visitors, even more interesting conversations.  My earliest recollections of a photo being taken and of course kept alive by the fact that a framed photograph of this one stood on the wooden radio set my uncle Vinnie had built at Siriniwasa.

My brother Prasanna and I. Siriniwasa, Hikkaduwa. circa 1950′s. Photograph by M.W. Indrasoma (Wimalatissa mama).

It was taken by my father’s bosom friend Uncle Wimalatissa on one of his visits to Hikkaduwa from Singapore.  My brother Prasanna and I were playing — he wearing the cap of a visitor who had gone for a dip in the sea.  I was trying out a swimming cap left by a lady who had finished her sea bath.

My mother said my father had cribbed this poem to me, but I didn’t care.  The scrawled handwritten letter is much treasured  –  written in 1981, after a visit home to see an ailing aunt and was  addressed to a Dear daughter

“What am I thinking of
this golden evening (of my life).
It is the daughter of my heart
who flits across my mind.
Her innocence
so like a lotus bloom.
She came to visit me just yesterday.
 
She left her darlings for awhile and came to savour
yet again (and again)
the love that spreads and smiles.
within her childhood home.
 
She writes to say
she loves both Ma and Pa.
I’m glad to see she had her priorities intact.
 
She had to go back to her kids and home (abroad)
She left with me her youthful happiness. 
She took with her
the love that Ma and Pa
will always give her.
Now I wait,
until she is home again
like the bursting glory
of the coming
of a flower in spring.”

At the end of this letter, my father had chided me for taking long to reply one of his letter, and said that “This account will be closed soon, and then you will have only memories
(ashes of thoughts).”

Family photos and letters my father wrote to me are my most treasured possessions, not just ashes of thoughts. More a kaleidoscope of love – I peer into —- my own private theatre to ruminate and enjoy yet again (and again) in the humid heat of Dhaka.

The Supermoon over Lalmatia, Dhaka.

This weekend brought the biggest, brightest full moon for 100 years and right on Vesak Day.  This moon’s closest approach to the earth in its elliptical orbit resulted in the largest apparent size as seen by us earthlings.  Legends of the full moon’s effect on humans have long been debated.  Interestingly the words “lunacy” and “lunatic” are derived from the same Latin root that gives us the word “lunar.” People have often attributed intermittent insanity to the phases of the moon.

A perigee moon, or supermoon, rises above the apartment buildings over Lalmatia, Dhaka. May 6, 2012. Photograph Chulie de Silva

The tsunami happened on a full moon day, and this last weekend astrologers were happily predicting an intense emotionally packed weekend.  Although increased risk of events such as earthquakes and volcanic eruptions were also predicted none of that came to pass.

Frescoe of the birth of Lord Buddha, Kumarakande Rajamaha Vihara, Dodanduwa, Sri Lanka. 21 January, 2012. Photograph Chulie de Silva

Here in Dhaka, they call it Buddha Purnima or Buddha’s birthday. Most here in Dhaka  have only a feint idea of Buddhism or what Vesak means to Buddhists. They are not that different from my co-workers in a library in Liverpool, UK. Many at that time knew little about Buddhism. I recalled how then my friend Angela tried to help me as I struggled to explain to a row of blank English faces what Buddhism was.  She butted in saying “To know what Buddhism is you need to understand what this Buddha fellow (pronounced fellah)  said….”

Buddhism thrived in Bangladesh region till the 12^th century AD, an officially it is the third major religion. In the Chittagong division Buddhists make up about 12% of the population. The supermoon probably had some effect because I ended up visiting the Basabo Buddhist Monastery in Dhaka. My visit was arranged by my friend and colleague  who is a Hindu and his wife a Muslim.  We  didn’t think of it then but as I write now I realise  that we three represented the three major religions in Bangladesh.

The bronze Buddha statue at Basabo Buddhist Monastery, Dhaka. May 6, 2012.

The upright large bronze statue was a gift from Myanmar (Burma) to the monastery. Dhaka, Bangladesh. May 6, 2012. Photograph Chulie de Silva.

There might be only a few Buddhists in Dhaka but the monastery was packed with people.  It reminded me of past Vesak’s in Sri Lanka when we used to walk across Colombo to see the pandals.

The illuminated Buddha Statue on Vesak Day. Dhaka, Bangladesh. May 6, 2012. Photograph Chulie de Silva.

The lights came on as we left, with crowds still streaming in.  They came not dressed in white except for one elderly lady I saw lighting joss sticks. The clothes were colourful as always and there were plenty of cameras clicking away. My friends from Chittagong knew the young scholar priest Rev. Dharmananda and all of us joined another Buddhist who also came from Chittagong in a small ceremony to remember and bless our dead relatives. The monastery commenced in 1949 said another Buddhist dayaka who joined us and was pleased to know I was a Buddhist from Lanka. The priests chamber was a quiet haven amidst the throng of people outside.  However, this was not the day for a discussion. We promised the young scholar priest that we would come for another visit to learn more about Buddhism in Bangladesh.  I wanted to get back to the roof top of my apartment building to see the supermoon… Oops! I’ve come a full circle on this blog, so till next midnight blogging — bye.

Vesak musings in Dhaka

Women sell large pink lotus flowes near the Kalutara Temple. The gentle green sprouting bo -sapling on the concret pillar behind her and the white obituary notice on the concrete pillar saying life is transient sums up the cycle of birth and death. Significant in the the pali stanzas recited when flowers are offered is:
“Puppham malayati yatha idam me
kayoa tatha yati vinasa-bhavam.” — Even as these the flowers must fade, so does my body march to a state of destruction.” Kalutara, Sri Lanka. December 26, 2008. Photo Chulie de Silva

The street below me is slowly waking up. The coolness and the soft gentle night of Dhaka will slowly and surely be replaced by chatter, noise, blaring of horns, the cries of the street vendors and the harsh light bringing with it the sweltering heat. Peering out through a tangle of telephone and electricity wires on a still cool and balmy morning I see a vendor with a basin of mangoes on his head and a vegetable seller his rickshaw van piled with glistening vegetables. He stops the cha walla who sells tea from a large flask for an early morning cuppa and they both sit on their haunches and shares a smoke.  A daily maid in a brightly clad red saree with two lasses in equally bright salwars walk passes them, wrapped in their own chatter. The garbage cart with the two young boys is further up the street.  I had watched a street fight between these two young lads and a bigger guy a couple of days ago on the way to work. The young had fought ferociously guarding their territory to operate. This is Dhaka, my abode for the present – I am a stranger – a bideshi – I do not belong but yet am very much a part of it; they are not my family here but am already wrapped in the myriads of issues of my coworkers – so are they my karmic connections? I am not sure if this is a past karma or I am making new Karma – fragments of thoughts, vignettes of life flit across my mind this Vesak as I peer down at the street.

Joined in friendship at Drik Picture Agency (DPA) celebrating Valentine’s Day. Hands of Moinak, Tapu, Falan, Moly, Doli, Nargish, Shefali and I. February1 4, 2012. Drik, Dhaka, 2012. Photo Abul Kashem.

Back in Sri Lanka people will be trekking to temple– my family to the Katudampe temple.

Detail from a frescoe at Katudampe Rajamahavihara. Katudampe, Sri Lanka. August 31, 2008. Photo Chulie de Silva.

Today they say the moon will be the biggest, brightest full moon for 100 years. As the moon does the tango with earth, at times drawing close at times pulling apart, I reflect on how my life too has been a series of such dances where I have been close to some people on a daily basis and then moved away forming new circles of friendship.

The comfort and contentment that we take for granted from a happy family environment are poignantly missed by me in Dhaka. May, is also the birth month of my father and Vesak for me is intricately woven in with memories of him. One priest he had great respect was the scholar priest Rev. Thilaka fro the Katudampe temple. A serene temple set near the banks of a river, I too have good memories of the temple that does a great service to the village community. Paintings probably by late 19th century artists are not famous but is an important visual story telling for villages.

Part of the ceiling frescoes at Katudampe Rajamahavihara. Katudampe, Sri Lanka. August 31, 2008. Photo Chulie de Silva

Often emotional transactions are much more complicated than financial ones but there is one factor that is common to both  We need to speculate to gain.  Thankfully, unlike your purse the heart has the capacity to replenish itself.

Yesterday, my bearded boss Shahidul Alam, writing from Berlin had introduced me virtually to a photojournalist and film maker Zin Myoe Sett  in Myanmar (Burma). My first contact in Myanmar!  Responding to Zin’s mail and thinking that he might be a Buddhist and thoughts of Vesak foremost in my mind, I had ended my email to him wishing him for Vesak and said “Buddhu Saranai” (May Buddha protect you) in closing.  Zin replied saying we add “Metta” (loving kindness) to it.  So this blog where I muse about teachings and recollect past events with a varied collection of photos and my ramblings is for my new friend Zin with Metta. And to all of you who have followed my blog and encouraged me to write more. …

A temple close to my village Hikkaduwa is the Sailabimbaramaya Temple in Dodanduwa. It is well known for the  giant granite Buddha statue which had eyes set with blue sapphires.  But the gems that were there are no more.  They were stolen.  Obviously the Buddha’s benevolent smile or the teachings did not matter a tot to the robbers.

The temple itself got the name from the granite statue which was brought to Dodanduwa from India.  The story is that the incumbent monks had heard of the granite statues in a region in India called “Kaveripattam” and a Governor had intervened to send one to Sri Lanka by ship. Dodanduwa, then did a brisk trade in salted fish, earthenware and salt with Maldives and India. People of the area says the  statue was taken from the harbour at Dodanduwa to the temple up the river on a raft.

A boy fishing on the first anniversay of tsunami where the river flows into the sea at Dodanduwa. I was on my way to the Katudampe temple for the offering of alms when I stopped to take this photo. I have passed many a times this place but has never seen this tranquil beauty ever. Dodanduwa, Sri Lanka. December 26, 2005. Photo Chulie de Silva.

The first Buddhist School in Sri Lanka by the name ‘Jinalabdhi Vishodaka’ was started by in the premises of Sailabimbaramaya Temple by Venerable Dodanduwe Piyarathana Maha Nayaka Thera.

Interestingly, as I roam around these temples with my camera comes the realisation that  rejection of the not so perfect is universal. I found these rejected statues tucked away at the Kataluwa temple.

Damaged and discarded Buddha statues at Kataluwa temple. Kataluwa, Sri Lanka. September 10, 2011. Photo Chulie de Silva

The perfect is worshipped thus;

“Ye cha Buddha atita cha-ye cha Buddha anagata,
Pachchuppnanna cha ye Buddha-aham vandani sabbada.”
The Buddhas of the ages past,
The Buddhas that are yet to come
The Buddhas of the present age,
Lowly , I, each day adore!

A modern Buddha Statue at the Katudampe Rajamaha Vihare.
Katudampe, Sri Lanka. August 31, 2008. Photo Chulie de Silva

To my life’s end the Buddha and his teaching will be my refuge. Sadly. as recent news reaching me from Sri Lanka shows that the difference between paying lip service to the teachings and practicing them is profound.

Dogs take refuge at Kataluwa Temple. Kataluwa, Sri Lanka. September 10, 2011. Photo Chulie de Silva

I have carried with me when I lived abroad a little book called the “The Mirror of Dhamma” by venerables Narada Maha Thera and Kassapa Maha Thera. I was introduced to this book by my sister-in-law Swineetha Fernando way back in 1965. I have in turn given copies to my sons and I hear my granddaughter Tara, can get her tongue around some of the Pali gathas with an interesting twist. I have thumbed this book many times and  today I leave a you a wish for Vesak from this book.

“Visible, invisible too
Those dwelling near or far away.
The born, and those seeking birth
May every being live happily.”

See also

A Salutary Poem at Vesak from Rabindranath Tagore

Bangladeshi blogger wins “Reporters without Borders” category awards” at BoBs

Hot off the WordPress of blogger Shahidul Alam is the news of the Bangladeshi journalist Abu Sufian’s blog about extrajudicial executions and other kinds of injustice is the jury choice in the “Reporters Without Borders” category of this year’s BOBs (Best of Blogs competition), organized by the German radio station Deutsche Welle. It was chosen from 11 finalists by an international jury consisting of bloggers and a Reporters Without Borders representative.

In addition to the User Prizes, the jury of bloggers, media experts and activists also got shut into a conference room for a day to cure the best blogs, and campaigns and media project in the main six multilingual categories.

Blogger and journalist Arash Sigarchi was this year’s big winner, taking the Jury Award for Best Blog with “Window of Anguish,” where he writes about human rights, social and political topics about his homeland. Window of Anguish is widely read inside and outside of Iran for its objective view of current events. Currently in Washington, Sigarchi maintains close connections to many sources in Iran.

It’s a pity that some of us can’t enjoy reading all the blog pieces and hope someone will translate the winning pieces into English. But its great to see bloggers being recognised for their work.

Link to Shahiduls Post  for more.

Go check out the winners:

http://thebobs.com/english/category/2012/?only_winners=true

You have a Voice at BoBs

Was your blog one of the submissions for the Deutsche Welle International Blog Awards – the BOBs.

The Jury has whittled down the 3,200 submissions to just 187 candidates in 17 categories and 11 languages. Voting 2012 has commenced.

See profile of Bangladeshi blogger from Chittagong, Sabrina Sultana short listed for the Best Blog category.  Physically handicapped by muscular dystrophy, she shows that a handicap doesn’t mean the end of the world.  She uses her blog to share her experiences and is a vocal proponent for more rights and facilities for the handicapped in Bangladesh. see and vote online: http://thebobs.com/english/category/2012/best-blog-2012/

See her blog in Bengali: http://www.sachalayatan.com/sabrina_sultana

World Press Photo12 at Drik, Bangladesh

Photo Samuel Aranda, Spain for New York Times

Drik where I work is a happening place.  As one of my young colleagues said we breath, dream and live on photographs.  Famous photographers, curators, videographers, budding artists, poets, authors wander in and out of the ever open doors of Drik. In the past year or so I have seen exhibitions that have ranged from miniatures painted on grains of rice to major work by celebrated artists and photographers. This April 26th Drik Gallery doors will open for the World Press Photo 12 exhibition.  Do join us for this rare visual treat.

Drik in cooperation with the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, Dhaka, have pleasure in inviting you to the opening of the World Press Photo 12 exhibition at Drik Gallery, on Thursday, 26 April 2012, 5.30 pm.

Watch the inauguration ceremony live at www.drik.tv

The exhibition honours the prizewinners of World Press Photo’s 55th Photo Contest.

The exhibition will be on at Drik Gallery till 18 May 2012, everyday from 3-8 pm.

 Drik Gallery

House 58, Road 15A (New)

Dhanmondi, Dhaka-1209, Bangladesh

Tel: 880-2-9120125, 8112954, 8123412

Email: office@drik.net

Programme

5:30        Welcome Address by Shahidul Alam, Managing Director, Drik

5:40        Address by H.M. Ambassador Alphons Hennekens, Kingdom of the Netherlands

5:50        Address by Femke van der Valk, Coordinator Exhibitions, World Press Photo

6:00        Address by Nurul Kabir, Editor, New Age, Guest of Honour

6:10        Vote of Thanks by Abir Abdullah, The Jury Member, World Press Photo 2011

About World Press Photo

World Press Photo is an independent, nonprofit organisation based in Amsterdam, committed to supporting and advancing high standards in photojournalism and documentary photography worldwide.

Each year, an independent international jury, consisting of nineteen members, judges the entries in nine different categories, submitted by photojournalists, agencies, newspapers and magazines from all corners of the world. This year’s competition attracted 5,247 photographers from 124 countries. In total 101,254 images were entered in the contest.

The annual exhibition is shown this year at about 100 venues all over the world. This year’s exhibition contains over 160 photographs. It is an annual public showcase for photojournalism comprising the year’s winning photo, together with award-winning images from each of the nine contest categories.

About Drik

Opening Ceremony of Chobi Mela VI International Festival of Photography, Dhaka Bangladesh. 21 January, 2011. Photo Saikat Mojumder

Drik, Bangladesh is a distinctive multimedia organisation that has made challenging social inequality its central driving force.  Established in 1989, Drik has successfully partnered with national and international organisations using the power of the visual medium to educate, inform and draw powerful emotional responses to influence public opinion. The Drik Picture Library, the Photography, Publications, Audio-Visual and Gallery departments work in synergy to carry out the work of the company.  It’s ability and influence is strengthened by its initiatives, the Pathshala South Asian Media Academy, DrikICT, Chobi Mela International Festival of Photography and the Majority World Photo Agency.

About Drik Gallery

Drik Gallery, Drik, Bangladesh. 2 March, 2011. Photo Mahbub Alam Khan

Drik Gallery holding David Burnett's 44 Days -Iran and the Remaking of the World Exhibition, January, 2011. Photo Mahbub Alam Khan

Drik Gallery was opened in August 1993 with the first showing of World Press Photo in Bangladesh, there is a story behind the scenes. Bangladesh was in the midst of a massive democratic movement in the late eighties. On the streets, through curfews and through tear gas, Drik was documenting events in their entirety. Throughout this period, the major galleries, either state owned or belonging to foreign embassies, were not prepared to exhibit Drik’s work, since it was ‘political’. Drik knew it had to build its own gallery. The first ever staging of World Press provided the perfect opportunity. Drik gathered our resources and built what is now, one of the finest galleries in South Asia and the largest private gallery in Bangladesh.

Remembering Lisa with love

Portrait of

Rezwana Chowdhury Monalisa

Photograph by Saikat Mojumder

 

“When my days are done, my leave-taking hushed in a final silence, my voice will linger in the autumn light and rain laden-clouds with the message that we had met.” — Rabindranath Tagore.

Lisa my dear colleague at Drik passed away in Dhaka on 30 March 2012 after a bravely fought battle with cancer.

Lisa was the first one to come running out of Drik to greet me when I first arrived in 2010 September.  The first to come to see me when I fell sick soon after arriving in Dhaka.  First to take me shopping and the first to buy me a gift of my first Dhaka saree. First to teach me the Bangla phrase “Chole Jabo Sri Lanka” meaning I am going back to Sri Lanka — my oft repeated Bangla phrase. Her caring love and laughter was the balm to my homesickness. But I never thought that the first funeral I would attend in Dhaka would be hers.

Fragments of the old Johnny Mathias song haunt me  ”…. You try to hide the tears inside with a cheerful pose. But in the hush of night exactly like a bittersweet refrain Comes that certain smile to haunt your heart again.”

Many faces of war 1971

1971 is carved in my memory as a personal year of joy. The year I enjoyed being pregnant and feeling the thrill of a life growing inside me and then later in the year giving birth to my son.  For me 1971 brought significant and momentous changes to my life as a mother. For the Sri Lanka’s People’s Liberation Front, or Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP), 1971 was a painful birth of a short lived youth rebellion. For millions in Bangladesh 1971 was a painful long labour for the birth of their nation.

On April 5, 1971, we had attended a faculty party at the Colombo University campus and the talk had turned to growing political unrest among the youth.  Some were concerned but others dismissed the rumours as nonsense. Coming home, the streets of Colombo was quiet.  Two cops stopped us and had a brief chat with us asking where we were going but it was a friendly chat – nothing to get alarmed about.

The same evening my father after a visit to Colombo had taken the last train to Hikkaduwa.  From the railway station, he had walked behind a young group of students with sports bags, and he thought they were a school cricket team returning after a match in Colombo. About an hour or so afterwards when my father heard gunfire, he and my brother-in-law had come out on to the porch to find out what was happening. They thought it was either a continuation of a local village conflict or the police setting off some hand bombs they had recovered from the local thugs. Only when a bullet whizzed past their heads did they scramble in to the house, and gather the family under the dining table.  This was the start of the JVP’s  1971 uprising and the attack on the Hikkaduwa police station.

We woke up in Colombo to a 24 hour curfew and listened avidly to the radio for news. There was no TV and no newspapers that day. The words insurgent and insurgency entered our vocabulary. The government of Sirimavo Bandaranaike gained control of all but a few remote areas within about two weeks but an estimated 15,000 insurgents- -many of them in their teens—died in the conflict.

While we in our little island state bounced back to a normal life after the insurgency, across the seas in then East Pakistan one of the bloodiest wars of this century was erupting.  April 1971 was the commencement of a mass human displacement hitherto unseen when 10 million refugees fled to India from then East Pakistan, trudging through monsoonal rains.

It was 40 years later that I discovered the full horror of the genocide of 1971, the pain and suffering of the refugees while working at Drik.  Today I watched my colleagues Reza and Mahbub carefully getting images of this period ready for the forthcoming exhibition “Many faces of war 1971.” I look at the decapitated heads and bodies in canals, the girl who has died of cholera, the little boy leading a street march who was gunned down a little while after the photo was taken, and wonder at how these images speak to us even though their voices are silenced for ever.

Drik has made several attempts to piece together the scattered history of 1971 with an initial publication on Bangladesh’s 25^th anniversary in Drik’s 1996 calendar, an exhibition in the first Chobi Mela International Festival of Photography in 2000, followed by the publication of the book and a film on refugees in 2011, titled “The Birth Pangs of a Nation.”

This year Drik has commenced “Archiving 1971” a programme to collect oral, textual and visual resources to establish a one stop repository of the historical 1971 year of liberation for Bangladesh.

An outcome of the Archiving 1971 program is a photography exhibition at Suhrawardi Uddan, Dhaka (in front of Shikha Chironton) on 26 March 2012  at 11:00 am.

The exhibition will remain open to the public till 31 March, 2012.  Please join us if you are in Dhaka.

Detour to the Church of Our Lady of the Rosary Madhu

As far as the eye could see there were no other vehicles, neither were there many people on the road.  The heat arose from the tar, playing little tricks on the eyes.  The once lush paddy fields lay fallow, and occasionally a solitary cow sat ruminating under a tree.  We were up in the north.  As we rumbled along the dusty road the excitement of actually being there was palpable.  Many in Sri Lanka then didn’t have the opportunity we had to visit the north.  A little detour, after a sweltering day out on the field to a cool sanctuary of a church seemed justifiable.  Except for me others in our group were devout Catholics. But all of us were full of glee like kids out on their first school trip for the first glimpse of this most hallowed place of worship.

The beautiful Statue above the entrance to the Madhu Church, Sri Lanka. 24 March, 2010.Photograph©Chulie de Silva

This Church had played its own role during the the long drawn out Sri Lankan civil war, but today there  was only one man who sought refuge.

A monkey watches over a man sleeping on the Madhu Church grounds. Sri Lanka, March 2010. Photograph Chulie de Silva

The Madhu shrine traces its origins to the invasion of the Dutch in 1670, which led 20 Catholic families to flee from Mantai, along with the statue of Mary in that church to a safer locale in Madhu. During that time around 700 Catholics from Jaffna peninsula too migrated to Wanni forests. These two communities met in Madhu, and built this new Shrine to install the statue, that is most revered to this day.

The statue of Our Lady of Madhu, in the Roman Catholic shrine in the Mannar district of Sri Lanka.24 March 2010. Photograph©Chulie de Silva.

As the afternoon cooled we wandered around admiring the beauty of the church, but were careful not to disturb the lone man praying earnestly.

A man prays at the Madhu church, Sri Lanka. 24 March, 2010. Photograph©Chulie de Silva

Two nuns deep in conversation on the steps leading to the Madhu Church. Photograph©Chulie de Silva

Past the nuns to the left is a marble plaque  commemorating the Consecration in 1944. Papal recognition came with the historic solemn coronation of the Statue of Our Lady of Madhu in 1924, when it was officially crowned by the Papal Legate, who came in the name of Pope Pius XI.

The history of the church says “in preparation for the consecration ceremony by Bishop J. A. Guyomar, the old wooden structure and the whole sanctuary was replaced with Blue and White Marble. In spite of travel restrictions and difficulties finding conveyance during World War II, more than 30,000 people came to the jungle shrine of Our Lady of Madhu for the Consecration in 1944.”

The Plaque commemorating the Consecration in 1944. 24 March 2010. Photograph©Chulie de Silva

The shrine is a place for pilgrimage, miraculous healings and worship.

Stained glass window Madhu church, Sri Lanka. 24 March 2010. Photograph©Chulie de Silva

Evening shadows had lengthened by the time we left.  Candles flickerd, the young soldiers outside were busy photographing their comrades with mobile phones.

Candles at Madhu Church, Sri Lanka. 24 March 2010.Photograph©Chulie de Silva

Reference: A Look at Madhu Church from its Inception to date: http://madhuchurch.org/