Sri Lanka’s tech landscape is going through an exciting growth period, as investors and entrepreneurs focus on building homegrown startups which have the potential for regional and global opportunities. We’ve been covering some of these stories which you can check out in the links at the bottom.

Today, we bring you the story of Senzmate, an Internet of Things (IoT) and Machine to Machine (M2M) solution company, founded by friends Jeyjenthan Tharmakulasingam and Johnirajh Antoncrises, which is one of the fastest growing startups in Sri Lanka. Their solutions help farmers become more efficient with their operations, through environment detection and automation.

TamilCulture (TC): Tell us a bit about yourself.

Jeyjenthan Tharmakulasingam & Johnirajh Antoncrises (Jeyjenthan & John): We lived in Jaffna throughout our childhood. Both of us had our secondary education in Hartley College, Point Pedro. We followed a maths stream for A/L and John became the Island 2nd while I was 35th. We started our engineering studies at the University of Moratuwa in 2010 and selected the Engineering of Electronic and Telecommunication stream as the specialization.

TC: How did you get into entrepreneurship?

Jeyjenthan & John: While we were on campus, we had the chance to work as volunteers with YarlIThub, which is an non profit organization working with the vision of making Jaffna the next Silicon Valley. We worked on a project called DIA [Digital Irrigation Automation], an Open Source Project of YarlIThub to enable automation for agricultural farms. It gave a lot of exposure for us both in new IoT based technologies and business insights. The project created a lot of opportunities to meet experts and investors. We were inspired by the vision of YarlIThub and It made us think- why can’t we give a try to make it a viable business? We were happy to be the pioneers to set the steps toward the vision.

TC: What specific steps did you take towards creating your company?

Jeyjenthan & John: We got to know a lot of potential applications around a new technology called Internet of Things (IoT). We pitched a new IoT application called EMS (Environment Monitoring System for cold storages and reefer trucks of Hotels, Hospitals and Logistics ) in YarlIThub’s senior session 3 in December 2014 and became second runner up.  We were still in university then and worked during our free time. We started planning out a business with DIA and EMS. We met potential customers and investors. We started working with experts to make our kits and cloud applications in industrial standards. When we tried to converge two applications into one, it turned out to be a platform for IoT applications. We named it “Magma”- the core of the earth. Immediately after we graduated, we started our own company and named it SenzMate.

TC: What are some challenges you’ve faced/are facing?

Jeyjenthan & John: SriLanka is in the early stages of its startup ecosystem. There is lack of potential investors for startups. Only some of them are willing to take the real risks in investing in innovative ideas. The available seed round funding range is very low in SriLanka, which is no way near the requirement of  hardware related startups. Nowadays, some foreign accelerator programmes reach Sri Lanka and those help a lot of  SriLankan entrepreneurs get exposed to large investor networks. The mindset of people also has to be changed to support the ecosystem. It’s very hard to convince a corporate organization to consider a startup’s solution.Most of the big corporates don’t have a supportive ecosystem for startups yet.

Also, there’s a lack of manufacturing facilities in Sri Lanka. So all of the hardware related manufacturing process has to be outsourced to a foreign company. The manufacturing and import, export process costs a lot. It makes the affordability of the kits/devices doubtful for a Sri Lankan market.

Sri Lanka’s market size is very small and its economy is relatively poor. So innovative technology products don’t have much market in the island. Building the business network all around the world to expand our market is essential.

TC: What are your short term and long term goals for your company?

Jeyjenthan & John: We mainly focus on IoT based solutions for agricultural and telematic sectors. Nowadays we are mainly focusing on Asian countries. We want to become a well regarded brand for IoT based products worldwide.

TC: How does your company fit in with the overall cultural and economic development occurring in Sri Lanka?

Jeyjenthan & John: Our one product line is for agriculture. As Sri Lanka is especially an agricultural country, we believe the new technology for farms will increase the productivity and efficiency. As is the case with other companies from Jaffna, it helps to boost the economic development of the Northern part of Sri Lanka, which has gone through three decades of war. It brings hope to the younger generation for a better future.

TC: What advice would you offer others trying to start their own company in tech?

Jeyjenthan & John: Follow your dreams. Do what inspires you. Running a company is not easy unless you are following your passion. Always be ready to face ups and downs.

If you are working on a tech startup, you have to be continuously updated with related technologies. If you cannot run with world, you will go nowhere. Make sure your products create fans not customers.

TC: How have your parents/family reacted to your chosen career path?

Jeyjenthan & John: We are Engineers by profession. So we are actually expected to build new things. Here we build our own passion, not others’. So it wasn’t a big deal.

Keep up to date with Senzmate on their website.

Related articles:

New Fund Run By Prajeeth Balasubramaniam And Google Exec. Rajan Anandan Looks To Grow Sri Lankan Startups

An Insight into Jaffna’s Growing Startup Culture

The post How Two Friends from Jaffna are Transforming the Lives of Farmers using Tech appeared first on TamilCulture.com.

28-year-old Khamshajiny Gunaratnam, who goes by Kamzy, was born in Sri Lanka and moved to Norway when she was just three years old. Now, she has made history, becoming the youngest Deputy Mayor ever in Oslo. She became involved in politics as a teenager, and as of 2007, she has represented the Labour Party in Oslo City Council.

The Oslo Book, a lifestyle publication, recently sat down with the young politician to learn more.

Read her full interview at The Oslo Book.

Featured image courtesy of The Oslo Book.

Correction: A previous version of this article’s title indicated Kamzy was a ‘Deputy Minister’ which has been corrected to ‘Deputy Mayor’.

Related:

Meet the Mayor of Moreland, Australia: Samantha Ratnam

Neethan Shan: Toronto’s First Tamil-Canadian Councillor

The post Khamshajiny Gunaratnam is Oslo’s Youngest Deputy Mayor Ever appeared first on TamilCulture.com.

Every year as a Tamil, when I wake up and look at the date on May 1^st, a faint, yet distantly familiar pain begins to arise. It is somewhat like an echo, something that, to varying degrees and at varying times, I have tried to obscure. And yet it remains, it persists throughout the year and suddenly intensifies during the month of May. As the days roll on and single digits turn to double digits, the seemingly inexplicable sorrow begins to come into focus; the mists of my own creation begin to clear. May is a painful month, I recollect. Suddenly the flashbacks come faster and more vividly. Protests, screams of anguish, wails of agony, a sea of red and yellow banners fluttering among the mess of brown bodies camped out in Parliament Square in Westminster, London. The hunger strikers, the doctors looking after them, the students leading the protests. Still the veneer of a smokescreen remains and I try to pretend that May is a normal month, like any other in the year.

By May 18^th, however, that previously remote sorrow is an inescapable agony whose underlying cause has perfectly and unbearably crystallised. Conversations pass me by as colleagues are perplexed by my vacant stare. All I can picture is those images I saw sat in front of a television on this day eight years ago in 2009, as I watched the pictures flick across the screen. The smoke, the burnt out vehicles and them… the sobbing people, my sobbing Tamil people. Thousands of them, who had lost everything, and in many cases everyone, staggered across a sun-baked beach in Mullivaikal into the hands of a foreign, genocidal army that had rained death on them for the past six months (and several decades before that). Left behind were thousands more, their mangled bodies strewn among blown up schools and hospitals and showing evidence of chemical weapons and cluster bombs. Up to 75 000 Tamil civilians died in the 2009 genocide according to the United Nations including children queuing for food in so-called “No-Fire Zones” and many more according to Tamil sources on the ground. 146, 679 Tamil people living in the Vanni before 2009 remain unaccounted for to date, their relatives not having even been given the dignity of closure by the occupying state of Sri Lanka. Starved and dehydrated, they were herded like animals into open-air detention centres where many more died and thousands of Tamil women, children and even men were systematically raped and sexually tortured by the most depraved of methods.

Numbers are famously abstract and un-emotive. Most of the people reading this piece will have heard them before. My aim in writing this piece is not to remind people of what happened – deep down I think no Tamil could ever forget. But eight years on from, almost certainly, the worst thing that has ever happened to the Tamil people in our 2300-year-old recorded history, what does it all mean? Where are we now and where do we go from here?

In the aftermath of Rajapaksa’s historic election defeat in January 2015, diaspora activism has noticeably subsided. I am no exception. With the genocidal mass-murderer out of power and the opening of a small, yet significant breathing space for the Eelam Tamil people to exercise their democratic franchise, I chose to focus on my career, which had been in the passenger seat in the alcohol-filled years of depression that followed the month of May, 2009.

With him went much of the anger of the diaspora. The thrill of seeing the corporate media berate Sri Lanka died down as the Western world achieved its aim of regime change from Rajapaksa’s embrace of China to a more pro-Western regime. And yet, very little has changed for the people of occupied Tamil Eelam. Hours ago, a Sri Lankan court issued a staying order banning the public commemoration of those who died at Mullivaikal. As the Sinhala nation will celebrate “Sri Lankan Victory Day” complete with military parades of the very same instruments of war that were used to extinguish thousands of Tamil lives, the Tamil nation will not even be allowed to grieve for their loved ones in public. We should be in no doubt that it takes a special type of barbarism to do this. Not even after the horrors of WWII were Nazi war graves destroyed by advancing Allied troops. And yet today, every last Thuyil Illam (LTTE cemetery) has been destroyed, with the occupying Sri Lankan army so callous and downright inhumane so as to build new army camps directly on top of where they used to stand and thousands of Tamil martyrs still lie.

There is a growing misguidedness, which seeks to paint the genocide as some sort of unfortunate conflict that is best forgotten about, that the best chance for the Tamil people now is to put the past behind us and forget about all the shells, rapes and rockets which maimed our people for so long and sought to deny us our sovereignty and right to self-determination. To pretend that this was a conflict between the Sri Lankan government and the LTTE and to ignore the fundamental incompatibility of the Tamil and Sinhala nations both residing in a unitary Sri Lankan state. To ignore the systematic oppression and massacring of the Tamil people (which enjoyed the popular support of the Sinhala electorate) that will one day, I have every faith, be proven to constitute genocide. Those who subscribe to this belief are ignorant of history. Stability and peace has only ever been achieved through accountability and justice.

Still today, thousands of Tamils search for their missing mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers and children. Only recently many of them went on hunger strike begging for answers from a Sri Lankan state that does not care for them. Thousands remain displaced, their land occupied by the army. Others are denied access to plentiful fishing grounds while Sinhala fishermen from the South are brought up to fish there or fertile land, which the occupying Sri Lankan army now farms. And state-sponsored colonisation, through military cantonments and the erection of Buddhist stupas, are accelerating. Such acts are not random, but calculated. By denying the Tamil people their livelihoods, the Sri Lankan state keeps the Tamil people out of employment and in poverty, many resorting to drug and alcohol abuse in the absence of any potential employment. By demographic re-engineering and removing the geographical continuity of the Tamil homeland they are systematically dismantling the Tamil Eelam nation. We are watching the fabric of our society be destroyed in front of our very eyes.

So why remind everyone of what, deep down, we know but are powerless to oppose? Because we are not powerless. Today there are 80 million Tamils living, breathing and flourishing around the world, the vast majority of who are beyond the malevolent reach of the Sri Lankan state. Given the natural dominance of Tamil Nadu, it is easy for Eelam Tamils to feel like a relatively unimportant section of the transnational Tamil nation. And yet, though many of us fail to recognise it, the growing pan-Tamil unity since 2009 is largely as a result of us, and our struggle for freedom. It was the genocide of Eelam Tamils that brought Tamils from every corner of the world together in 2009, from the tragic self-immolations in Tamil Nadu and the diaspora to the passionate protests in Malaysia and Mauritius, and the South African Tamils whose charismatic representatives have supported us since the beginning of our struggle. To date most Eelam Tamils do not realise that before 2009 the political landscape of Tamil Nadu was very different. There were the same major political parties but a near complete absence of grassroots activism that had been steadily eroding since the Dravidian movement in the 50’s and 60’s. Today the various grassroots organisations that inundate Tamil Nadu have been rejuvenated by or are splinters from groups formed to bring awareness to the atrocities being committed by the Sri Lankan armed forces on the Eelam Tamil people in 2009.

We are artists and entrepreneurs, scientists and engineers, politicians and lawyers. While the Tamil people should never succumb to the same xenophobic and exclusive nationalism that characterises the society of our Sinhala neighbours, we have punched well above our weight in numbers when compared to other South Asian groups. Of the four Nobel prizes in sciences awarded to people of South Asian descent, three of them have been Tamil. While the international establishment seek to delegitimise the Tamil resistance as terrorists, the LTTE are the most successful group in South Asian history at challenging and removing caste from society. While women were raped and subjected to violence in (almost) all corners of South Asia, in the LTTE-controlled areas, uniquely, Tamil women were free from rape and consequently they rose to power in politics and administration as freedom fighters and intellectuals. Just a cursory look at the pathetic situation of Tamil women in Eelam today and their absence from politics is a reminder that they are the subset of Tamil society who has suffered the most. While both Sri Lankan and Indian armed forces aimed sexual violence at the LTTE’s ranks, the LTTE never once resorted to the same tactic. That is a remarkable fact, regardless of the genuine crimes committed by the LTTE (which however pale in comparison to those committed by the SLA). Even today people in Tamil Nadu and around the diaspora admire and continue to dream of re-creating the egalitarian nature of Eelam Tamil society under the LTTE. It was not a utopia, especially given the lack of freedom of speech, but the LTTE were well ahead of their time on social issues.

We have consistently overcome oppression whether it is in Sri Lanka, India, Malaysia or elsewhere and excelled in our personal lives. We have also been at the forefront of the socially progressive fight against oppressive systems, whether it is in the form of the Bhakthi movement in 7^th century or the modern Dravidian movement, both of which sought to eradicate the evils of caste and gender oppression. Today, in the aftermath and as another effect of the May 2009 Mullivaikal genocide, caste and gender based oppression is once again being carefully examined throughout the Tamil world. Mullivaikal has also led to a reassertion of the Tamil identity and a renewed interest in Tamil culture, particularly in the folk arts and the formerly stigmatised and beautiful instrument of parai.

What do we do from here? I have some ideas, which I hope to discuss in a follow-up article. But during this painful time, this month of May, remember the Tamil people who lost their lives in defence of an ideal, the ideal of self-determination and a separate Tamil homeland, for the majority of those killed in May 2009 were those who refused to leave as they had strong links to Tamil nationalism. Remember the victims and the resistance. The Sun will shine, the rain will fall and we will rise. When the Tamil people realise their collective potential and strength, we will achieve our freedom. For over 2300 years there has been a thriving Tamil civilisation and even a powerful unifying Tamil identity if you read the famous poem by Kaṉiyan Pūngunṟanār in the Puṟanāṉūṟu. And in another 2300 years, I am confident that the Tamil language and identity will still be thriving in the two Tamil homelands and around the world.

In the words of one of the survivors of Mullivaikal,

“This is the time for us to give them our shoulders for them to climb upon. We have to fight for the rights together with our people who are remaining in the homeland.

We raise our heads, which had been lowered for a moment to respect the people who had been slaughtered in Eelam and continue the struggle for peace and freedom.

Remember! The method of our struggle may vary but the ultimate aim remains the same.”

Remember the dead and fight for the living, this month of May.

-This piece was submitted by a TC reader who has requested to remain anonymous.

The post The Month of May appeared first on TamilCulture.com.

In Sri Lanka, Sari Connection is making a powerful fashion statement through recycling for empowerment and sustainable peace.

Sari Connection is a unique fashion brand that supports women-headed households in Sri Lanka’s war affected Northern region. Launched in 2012 by the Pacific Asia Resource Center Interpeoples’ Cooperation (PARCIC) from Japan, the project involves training women to be seamstresses in Jaffna and Mullaitivu, and the upcycling of saris to create unique designs.

The saris are sourced from around the country and the recycled fashion products, carefully handcrafted with a unique blend of colours and textures, are marketed in select stores island-wide.

The proceeds are distributed back to the seamstresses who sustain themselves and their families through this supportive livelihood.

Since mid-2015 the project has served as a first step to rebuilding lives through economic empowerment for over 100 women, and their families, in post-war communities. Given the wider issues of abuse, marginalization, poverty and resultant breakdown of the psychosocial well-being of survivors, this initiative carries immense hope for fashioning a future where all individuals can realize their full potential.

One of the seamstresses, Ms.Ranjanidevi had to say:

“During the war, we displaced to Vanni and faced a lot of difficulties. I have three children, [and] my husband has been missing since 2010. My family has been suffering from unstable income after that. After joining this project, I’m stitching clothes for the sari project as well as private orders from the neighbors. With the income from stitching, I manage my family needs.”

By choosing a Sari Connection product for yourself, your home or as a gift for a loved one, you empower a marginalized family and contribute to environmental sustainability by upcycling.

Sari Connection products which bear their trademark, irreplicable designs, are carried by more than 20 vendor partners island wide. By strengthening and expanding this network, PARCIC envisions this initiative to be a bridge that will continue to connect communities through economic, social and cultural cooperation for sustainable peace and harmony.

To expand the scope of their work, and to ensure sustainability of the business, Sari Connection is currently seeking wholesale distributers, around the world. If you would be interested in learning more, please call +94711918252 or email sariconnection@parcic.org.

The post How A Japanese NGO’s Sari Connection Is Fashioning the Future appeared first on TamilCulture.com.

The South Asian Autism Awareness Centre’s Vocational and Employment Skills Program encourages the development of a range of skills that help individuals with varying abilities find employment.

The program is funded by Employment and Social Development Canada, and is completely free for participants. Eligibility for the program includes being above the age of 18 and having a confirmed diagnosis of autism or related developmental disorder.

Program Overview:

8 weeks of in-centre training led by experts in a particular industry (culinary skills and food preparation; design & decor; office administration). The in-centre training is fun, educational, and above all, geared towards developing specific skills that employers are looking for.

8 weeks paid job placements. The program will help secure placements in the community and also pay wages for the first eight weeks. This subsidy is to encourage employers to work with individuals with varying abilities and see how much these workers can improve an organization’s culture.

Industries of Focus:

Office Administration
10 weeks – Up to 12 hours/week
Students are introduced to basic office administration duties. Lessons include filing, data entry, and bookkeeping.

Culinary Skills & Food Preparation
10 weeks – Up to 12 hours/week
Students learn basic concepts, skills, and techniques of food preparation, safety and hygiene.

Design & Decor
10 weeks – Up to 12 hours/week
Students are taught various aspects of event decor. Lessons include table setup, centre piece assembly, and inventory and packaging.

Want to find out more? Join SAAAC for their Employer Awareness Seminar this Wednesday!

The post Transformative Employment For Individuals With Autism appeared first on TamilCulture.com.

What happens when 3 artists collaborate for one cause? A beautiful vision comes to life.

From the Artist, Thiviyaa Sehasothy:

The Cause: This collaboration was the result of a complete domino effect that all started with an organization, ‘ANBU’ (Abuse Never Becomes Us). ANBU does important work focused on childhood sexual abuse. They are abolishing the taboo and stigma associated with abuse and the effect of abuse growing rampant within the Tamil community, as it is in many others.

As of March 2016, ANBU marked their 1 year anniversary with a special newsletter and here’s how I collaborated with 3 artists to create one special painting for this edition. I am proud to have been worked with such a talented women to create a peice that evokes empowerment, awareness and feminism. Here’s to all you, Female Warriors. This one is for you.

The Poet: When a talented poet comes to you to create a piece inspired by her words, how do you even hesitate. Even if it was with less than 24 hours notice.

I had the privilege of joining forces with the talented poet behind ‘My Poetic Heart’, Manivillie Kanagasabapathy. She wrote a beautiful poem about violence against women and reached out to me to see how I could join the collaboration.

The magic Manivillie creates with her words, take me to another place. That feeling when a good book can create perfect imagery to know where the character is standing and what the breeze even feels like, well that’s Manivillie with her poems. Her poetry is moving, inspirational, emotional and dripping with gold. 

Trigger warning.

The Artist: My first painting created completely inspired by just words. To create this piece, I immersed myself completely in the emotions evoked in the poem, and it was not an easy feat. Here is my painting about violence against women. Dedicated to women everywhere. You are not alone. We stand with you. You are a Warrior. Women of Colour. Goddess. Gentle Soul. #FeministArt

The Photographer: This painting would not have been possible without the inspiration of a dear friend of mine, the light magician, Dilani Bala. Her work captures such raw emotions, movement, narratives and simple beauty that has always caught my eye. When you can hear sound and words through a photo, that’s an extraordinary piece of art and Dilani does it time and time again.

Recently she did a portraiture series that has always been on my mind.

‘The Exquisite Mind, Body and Soul Series’ that did such a stunning justice of the woman’s body with her creative director and beautiful model, Chadell Andrea Philip. The lines, curves, the use of light against the body, empowerment, the raw emotions… truly one her best works.

For more on these artists, and their roles in this collab, check out the blog post in its entirety on Art By Thiviyaa!

The post 3 Artists, 1 Cause, 1 Canvas – Unseen Darkness appeared first on TamilCulture.com.

It was almost a year ago that I sat my parents down and delivered the news to them. They were stunned and could not quite understand what I was saying. There were a few seconds of silence that felt like an eternity, followed by some melodrama that was reminiscent of of the TV serials that my mother indulges in. I had just told my parents that I was thinking of moving out of home and getting a place of my own. Being a man who just broke into his thirties, I thought this was a reasonable thing to do – but no, not in the eyes of my parents, especially my mother; it felt like the end of the world to her. She wanted to know why. Why do I want to leave home? Well, there were a number of reasons…

When I was 18, with my parents’ blessings, I moved out of home to go to university. My parents were happy for me to fly the nest TEMPORARILY as I was fulfilling one of their parental objectives – their son gaining a respectable degree. For me, this was my first experience of liberation from the day-to-day confines of my parent’s expectations of me as a son. As you can imagine, I fully embraced this freedom and immersed myself in my newfound shackle-free existence. Those four years away from home had a significant impact on the development of me as a person. All of a sudden, my world became bigger. I met people from all walks of life that helped broaden my understanding of life and helped me empathise with other mind-sets. I experienced my first ever alcohol fuelled night, followed by my first ever hangover. I experienced the feeling of falling in love for the first time and the physical intimacy that came with it. With this freedom, came one mistake after another – teaching me the valuable life lesson that freedom without responsibility is like sky diving without a parachute. At the end of the four eventful years, pardon the cliché, I graduated as a man.

After years of living in a utopian world that is student life, moving back home was a shock to the system. I once again walked into the confines of my parents’ expectations of me as a son. The first 6 months were difficult for me as well as them. My parents struggled to adapt to their ‘new’ son who had moved back home. They were yearning for the same boy who had left home four years ago but now they were faced with a man who had changed beyond recognition. As I wanted to live with the same freedom as I had become accustomed to, my parents struggled with imposing their will on a rebelling son. As time went by, we found a happy medium that allowed us to co-exist with compromises becoming the staple diet in our household.

In the Tamil community, it is common for children to live at home in their twenties. The children live at home until they get married. In some cases, the children live at home even after marriage. However, living in the west, we are exposed to a culture where leaving home in your late teens/ early twenties is the norm. The expectation is that you are an adult at the age of 18 and you are expected to be able to fend for yourself. This liberates the parents from their parental duties, enabling them to re-ignite their passions and explore more adventures that they had to put on hold while raising children.

Living at home in your twenties is a tricky situation to manage. My mother always wanted to know what time I would be back and if I was late even by 5 minutes, I was inundated with phone calls. I lost count of the number of times that my phone on the table would ring and flash ‘Amma’ when I was on a date. Coming home drunk was always eventful, as my father will choose those nights to bond with his inebriated son. The peak of my ‘living at home’ pain always came when I was on dates and I will be asked ‘So where do you live?’ I would breakout into a sweat before I embarrassingly reveal that I was still at home and yes, my mum still washes my clothes. In later years, as I became more familiar with ‘Date FAQs’, I would go on dates fully prepared with a lie, which normally would go like ‘ I just sold my flat, so living with my parents until I find the right penthouse’. The other conundrum was when the girl wanted to come back to ‘my place’ (just to talk of course) – this always resulted in some very creative lies or the biting of the bullet and telling the truth. As you can imagine, this was never the recipe for long-lasting relationships. The truth is most women (including Tamil women who live at home) like independent Men – Men who are able to survive without their mother’s supervision. So living at home, does put you at a disadvantage when trying to find ‘love’.

Moving back at home also meant that I regained my place at the centre of my mother’s universe. She began to neglect many of the things that she enjoyed doing, so she can make sure her son is always well fed and all his needs are taken care of. She would refuse to take a holiday without her son, as she was worried that he would not cope. My mother and father’s outings together became less frequent – which began to have a negative effect on their relationship. As their relationship deteriorated, it became clear to me that I needed to be selfish to be selfless.

As Tamils, it is important that we preserve the core family values that sets us apart. However, it is also important that we are not restricted by the invisible chain that is culture – to be more specific, our definition of culture. Culture, like anything else, is constantly changing. Culture is a reflection of social norms, not the driver of social norms

It has now been over a year since I moved out of home and I am pleased to say that it has worked out well. I have become fully domesticated (take note ladies), and feel relieved that I do not have to suffer those awkward moments on dates any more. I have also been surprised by how quickly my parents have adapted, especially my mother. She is now content with daily phone calls and weekend visits to verify that I am still maintaining a level of hygiene that is acceptable to her high standards. My parents have started some new hobbies, spending time with friends, and going on holidays. And, these days, I am not the only one going on dates.

The post Flying the Nest: A Story of a Tamil Man Who Moved Out of Home appeared first on TamilCulture.com.

When the civil war took place in Sri Lanka, a large number of Tamils fled their homeland in search of a better life.  A life without violence and discrimination. One would assume after facing discrimination and unfair treatment, the Tamil community would put the outdated caste system behind them.  However, behind closed doors this system is still very prevalent in our community.

Marriage should be the union of two people who care deeply for each other. However, in the Tamil community, the caste system skews what should be a simple and beautiful thing. Older generations care more about caste and less about whether a person is kind and genuine. This ideology however, doesn’t stop at the older generations. It still continues to be a major factor when younger generations decide to take the next step in their relationships.

This system serves to divide us rather than unite us. This system takes away individuals’ achievements by beating them down into a one-dimensional category.  This system stands in the way of our community’s growth, and set us back to where we started.

The Basement Reels team continues to challenge the traditions of our community by bringing you short films like “Sex Before Marriage” or “Can’t Tell Anyone.” Today, we bring you “Casted Away.” A story far too many of us can relate to. A story of how the caste system stands in the way of a positive future.

Story: Tharshan Raj
Direction, Cinematography, Editing: Krusan
Cast: Vinuja X, Tharshan Raj, Krusan
Key Grip/ Audio: Dushan N.

Are you single? Are you interested in creating your own love story by meeting Tamil singles in your city and across the world? Join myTamilDate.com!

Related articles:
TC Talks (Episode 01): Wedding, Marriage and Social Media: A Male Perspective
Observations of a Happily Married Tamil Man
Love Can Be Better the Second Time Around
The Seven Year Spark

The post Casted Away: Ending Discrimination appeared first on TamilCulture.com.

Born and raised in Singapore, Lady Kash has been enamoured with poetry from a young age.

Drawn to rhythms, more than melodies, and desiring to create her own, Kash began writing them in Tamil by the age of 9.

Over the years poetry led her to rap and the award-winning artist has continued evolving her craft by immersing herself in its origins and traditions, from around the world.

She is especially driven by a desire to delve into little known, ancient Indian forms, and to create music inspired by them. Kash shared that she’s working on increasing how much she incorporates both Tamil and English into her songs, recognizing what’s gained when you use both languages, to convey all that they each can emotionally.

Much like languages, borders and boundaries are things she crosses with ease; Kash balances creating her own music, and sound, with taking on collaborations within the film industry, bringing to life the visions of the music directors she works with.

Fast forward to 2017 and she has now been in the music industry for 10 years, and will be hitting the stage at Toronto’s desiFEST for the very first time on June 3rd.

The first decade of her journey as a solo, independent artist, has been filled with many milestones including collaborating with world renowned Maestro, A.R. Rahman, who has become an invaluable mentor.

ARR’s immense faith in her has remained a constant source of inspiration and a reminder to take each opportunity like it’s her first, and give it everything she has.

Of course there are also challenges, but Kash is adept at transforming them into opportunities.

Lacking mentors and sounding boards in an industry that is male dominated and not always keen on taking risks with something new, she turns inward to push herself to stay motivated and focused on growing as an artist.

Endlessly curious, Kash loves dabbling in photography and videography, following her instincts when it comes to songwriting and storytelling, across mediums; mediums which are increasingly disrupting the music industry.

With the possibility of reaching the masses, with or without the support of industry influencers, Kash is excited by how much is possible in this era of music. And she’s hoping to see more female rappers come up as a result.

Looking forward to producing her own music one day, she’s steadily building up her skillset and experiences until she can take the reins completely.

One of those experiences to look forward to is a project about villu pattu, an ancient form of story-telling, set to the music of the villu, or bow, as the primary musical instrument.

Kash has created an original song for this project, which she’ll be debuting at desiFEST when she hits the stage. Be sure to be there by 8pm on June 3rd to catch her performance.

When she returns to Chennai, where she recently relocated, Kash will be working on the visual component of her villu pattu project, travelling to the parts of India where it originated to film.

You can follow Lady Kash’s journey via Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter.

This interview was completed courtesy of AKASHIK, founded by Lady Kash, to create without labels and limits, while fostering collaborations, arts and culture.

To connect with Lady Kash’s team to learn more about her future projects, opportunities to collaborate or support, reach out to contact@akashik.co.

The post Award-Winning International Rapper and Songwriter, Lady Kash appeared first on TamilCulture.com.

Started in 2015 by independent producer and artist, Steve Cliff, MeloFunk Music brings together singers and musicians through creative interpretations of songs.

Born and raised in Germany, and having been a part of the thriving independent music scene in Europe for some time, Steve was particularly attuned to the gaps that exist for artists in Canada.

When he moved to Toronto, creating platforms to raise the profile of local artists, in the city, and around the world became a passion project.

Over the past 2 years since MeloFunk was formed, the group has worked with a number of talented artists and has a permanent membership of InFuze (Sarika Navanathan, Magisha Baheerathan, Sofia Rahul and Shrutikaa Rajkumar) The Silly Chickens (Gobiraj Sivalingam, Kirishan Suresh, Suveathan Velauthar and Birithivy Yogaratnam), as well as Prabha Balakrishnan and Luksimi Sivaneswaralingam.

Going beyond covers, the collective takes melodic tunes and reimagines them, bringing the music to life with a little bit of genre-bending funk.

Though there have been many performances to date, Steve shared that the very first time he received an inquiry about booking MeloFunk, is still something he considers a matter of pride. In chatting with him about MeloFunk, and his career in music, it was clear just how much he appreciates every part of the journey.

In his view “If you have a passion for music, you should keep fighting for it and working for it. If you inspire one person, keep creating work for that one person. 1 will become 10 and it’ll keep picking up from there.”

Having seen all the years of work put in by artists who are treated as “overnight sensations”, Steve also shared that more often than not, the talent is there. It’s the recognition and support which can take time to appear and catapult someone to fame—sometimes in moments, sometimes in years.

The commitment to an art form regardless, is what differentiates those who are poised and ready when opportunity arises. And he’s doing his best to create as many of those opportunities as he can.

Each MeloFunk collaboration requires about 7-8 hours of recording time, a couple of hours for the video shoot and then a few more hours spent in editing. This is of course above and beyond rehearsals for videos and for live performances.

This year MeloFunk is going one step further with an album of original songs and mashups to be released later this year. Those interested in learning more, making booking inquiries or supporting the project can connect with Steve at stevecliffmusic@gmail.com.

Catch the group live, this Saturday, June 3rd, when they hit the stage at Toronto’s desiFEST!

The post Melody Meets Funk In Toronto’s MeloFunk Music appeared first on TamilCulture.com.

Yes, your parents too were once children just a few decades ago. The most acute issues facing them were political disarray and ethnic discord,  all caused by the misjudgements of their parents, grandparents and their forbearers.

The country we came from, Sri Lanka, had managed to meet many of the world’s social indicators in raising life expectancy, decreasing infant mortality, decreasing poverty, improving literacy and empowering women to participate in the economy.

Yet although the country had managed to level many of the prevailing social inequalities, issues related to caste, religion and ethnic identities were left to fester. Yes, it was a beautiful house but with a rotten foundation. It was on the cusp of becoming an economic tiger like Singapore. But it all unraveled in an abyss of murder, rape, war and displacement.

From this cataclysm sprang the seed of a people who traversed the world in search of refuge. Many died along the way. Others found their moorings as tenacious refugees. They hung on for life and built a society like lichens in the middle of the ocean. The focus was survival and taking care of family and friends.

Now let’s see who your parents are. Some of them were child soldiers. Others were displaced a number of times, driven from their comfortable homes into jungles and strange lands. A few would have seen mass murder through their own childhood eyes. Some were tortured themselves. Others would at least know of a close friend or family member who was gruesomely impacted by the long running civil war and its macabre ending.

These are children who saw society as they knew around them break down. They saw fellow human beings who should protect children turn into wild beasts. Most were victims. Others may have been perpetrators of violence themselves. Either way, they won’t talk about these issues. Even if they did,  you as children wouldn’t have the capacity to relate to it. Even as young adults, growing up in safe, comfortable, placid Canada does not prepare one to understand the realities of a country reverting to its sordid elements.

Even if your parents don’t talk about their mental health, its impact is just like the post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) that afflicts returning soldiers from war. PTSD also impacts the children of those who are suffering from it. In fact, it could be a generational malaise if we are not careful in identifying and dealing with it.

What was our culture like before it was brutally torn apart ? We called ourselves Sri Lankan Tamils. Most of us were either physically or emotionally invested in a political struggle and a war fought and lost for Tamilness.

But what are our origins and how similar or different were we to the Tamils of India? If you want to find the roots of our culture, one has to look not just within Sri Lanka but also the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu, where most of our culture’s basic elements were formed.

We also need to look into the lush green of God’s Own Country state of Kerala as well, a place where women once ruled supreme and the Tamil language was widely spoken. It was a matrilineal society where land, property and political power rested with the female line. Brothers managed the ancestral homes and property in the name of their sisters.

We have many vestiges of this female-centric familial system, both in Jaffna and Batticaloa, even to this day. It still survives with Eastern Sri Lankan Tamil society moreso than in the North. Our forefathers were matri-local; after marriage, they settled in their wives household. Such a practice would be an anathema to our more patriarchal Indian Tamil cousins. Just imagine a new husband meekly settling into the household of his wife, which likely belonged to her mother and so forth. Guess who wore the pants in our society?

Sri Lankan society historically accorded high status to women, although colonialism was slowly but steadily eroding those concepts and Eurocentric patriarchy was making inroads. Many of our great grandmothers attended English medium schools and were educated as early as the 1890’s.

Of course, this opportunity was not accorded to all Tamils. Some castes were denied entry to proper schools for many years – for both boys and girls and alike. That’s the dark side of our culture we should be ashamed of.

So a group of refugees from a culture undergoing gender differentiation and violent disintegration finds itself in Western countries that have (at least on principle) radically undone patriarchy. But it must have been strange for them to still see wage disparity for women, and boys not doing as well in school and in life in general. They were and still are dropping out of schools early, with many dying earlier than their parents.

Your parents are men and women whose mental health is suspect. They are not culturally equipped to deal with it other than to lose themselves in work and in the physical (not mental) well-being of their children and family. They don’t know how and when to hit the reset button with respect to their mental health and their relationships with their significant others and their children. Many are now reaching a point of retirement and eventual death. Their best days are long gone, and retirement homes and geriatric wards await them sooner than later.

This leaves their children high and dry. Many don’t understand their culture, don’t have a clue as to why their parents are so unglued from the reality around them. Many develop a contempt for the society they sprang from.

Yet this, too, is normal. The impact of war lasts for generations. A study revealed that genocide lingers in the DNA of survivors permanently. They were not equipped to deal with the complexities of Western society.

You are the children of imperfect parents who came from a society in peril. You are inheriting a world in danger and a society in transition. Please have some empathy and look forward. They did the best they could, and it’s time for you to take charge of your society with the choices you have.

If you want to be parents, try to make yourselves better parents than how their parents and grandparents were to them – and perhaps how your own parents raised you. Leave your children a world from which they don’t have to run away for mere survival. No matter what, the globe will keep on rotating. In 20 years, your own children may, too, complain about you. Or hopefully, they’ll compliment you on how good a job you did in raising them.

-This article was submitted by a TC reader who has requested to remain anonymous. Featured image from Dilani Bala’s ‘Ode to our Parents’.

Love creating and storytelling? Share your work with the world- send your submissions here.

Related Articles:

Strangers Under One Roof: A Story of a Tamil Father and Son

Why Tamil Parents Need to be Better Parents

The post Letter from a Father to my Tamil-Canadian Children appeared first on TamilCulture.com.

Born and brought up in Madras, Divya Vivekanandan started her vocal training at the age of 3.

Though she was immersed in Carnatic music as a toddler, and for years to follow, singing without comprehension of the art form kept her from feeling fully connected to the experience. And so she stopped going to classes in high school.

But music would keep coming back to her, in new ways. Whether it was singing with bands, on tracks for composers, in jingles for ads, whole new worlds emerged and converged. Some of these opportunities would include singing with renowned composers and musicians Illayaraja, during a private event, S.P. Balasubramiam on an Indian television show, and K.J. Yesudas.

After completing her undergrad she left for Toronto to pursue her Master’s Degree in Marketing. Music took a backseat while she studied and traveled, immersing herself in a new city and ways of life.

Then as luck would have it a long lost friend, Guruprassad Badrinarayanan, connected via Facebook 2 years ago when he realized he and Divya were in the same city once again. Many years had passed since they’d both lived in Madras, but Guruprassad was still pursuing music and encouraged Divya to dive back in.

One opportunity led to another, and Divya began singing with bands, taking part in productions of covers, and hitting the stage in Toronto and Ottawa.

Today she works as an RJ at Chennai Radio, where she interviews musicians and artists, and chats about all things music.

Reflecting on her path so far, Divya feels that learning the fundamentals and basics of Carnatic music all those years ago is what’s helping her learn more and more without giving up or feeling insecure. What she couldn’t grasp at a young age in the repetition of notes, svarams and lessons from her musical gurus, she feels immense gratitude for today.

Looking ahead she’s excited about developing further as an artist, through vocal training and delving further into content creation to expand the reach of her music. Though she’s always had friends and family in the film industry, becoming a playback singer isn’t a goal of Divya’s. She strongly believes that it’s not just industry involvement or recognition that certifies you as an artist. That can be amazing in its own right, but an artist can be an artist anywhere in the world, taking part in whatever platform they choose; the possibilities with music, especially when collaborating with other artists, are endless.

“I am an extrovert when it comes to my music. I sing anything and everything that is out there. I love to learn and experiment with sounds and rhythms. That’s how I best know to communicate with the universe.”

Catch Divya hit the stage at desiFEST this Saturday, June 3rd in Toronto! Her performance will include tracks produced by Kedar, and she’ll be accompanied by saxophone and violin player, Harini Skantha.

The post How Divya Vivek Went From Paatu Class To Pursuing Music Professionally appeared first on TamilCulture.com.

Every time I visit a temple in the Tamil homeland, I am awestruck to witness a magnificent beast – the elephant. It is there standing humbly inside the temple complex to bless the believers. I am totally afraid to go near it, despite my children being blessed by the elephant.

Tamils were one of the earliest tribes to have mastered the domestication of the elephant. Tholkaapiam (an anthology of ethnolinguistic anthropological work on the Tamil people) explains elephant herding and the taming of the wild beast. It gives the name Pagan to the elephant herder.

A cave painting discovered recently in Dindukal, Tamil Nadu depicting the elephant trapping and taming scenario of the Sangam age lended further enthusiasm to Tamil researchers. This leads to the inference that the domestication of elephants was known in the Tamil world from time immemorial.

The elephant herders’ instrument to control the beast is known as ankus in Indo-European languages. It might have derived from the Tamil root word ankusum meaning curved at the summation (anku = curved/bend/angled, sum = summation/pinnacle/tip).

The relationship between the elephant and its pagan is very personal. The most efficient pagan will never use the pointed end of the ankusum against his elephant. It is simply a symbol of authority to which the elephant submits itself.

Part of the training for the battle elephant is to get used to battlefield bombastics. Getting used to horses in the battlefield is also part of the training required for battlefield elephants. If it happens that the mahout dies in war, the elephant seldom leaves its body.

The West was unaware of elephant brigades until Alexander the Great was intimidated in his Indian campaign by elephants in the cavalry. During the same epoch, there appears to be a Chera King of the Tamil land who held numerous elephants in his elephant brigade. He is called after his elephant brigade in Sangam literature as Palaanai Selkelzhu Kuttuvan (Kuttuvan, who had an elephant brigade “the size of the clouds”).

From a historical perspective, most Tamil kings have had a royal elephant and an elephant brigade of various sizes. At the height of Tamil glory, Rajaraja the Great had 60,000 elephants in his brigade. His son, Rajendra I, had the naval capacity to transport this brigade to the Malaysian coast of Kedah and Jawa in Indonesia. This was done to conquer the Sri Vijaya kingdom and gain maritime control of Southeast Asia.

Among the Tamil kings, Thalaiyalanganathu Seruvendra Pandya Nedunchelzhian (Neduchelzhian who conquered the enmity at Thalaiyalanganam) seems to have a unique elephant called Kadumpakattu Yaanai as his royal elephant. This elephant was the alpha male among his elephant brigade. It was known to move swiftly at high speed in the battlefield. It obeyed the command of going knee-down and retrieving backwards as a mark of respect to the mortally wounded enemy king who lost the battle.

This heroic incident was recorded in Sangam literature (Puranaanuru poem 308). Elephants are represented in Sangam literature with 12 different types of names. It is often used as a metaphor to compare its actions to the actions of the protagonist in their epics. In ancient times, elephants were often bestowed by kings to the bards for their academic work.

The tradition of singing the valor of the king in Parani meter was considered the pinnacle of their reign. Parani is considered one of 96 minor literary genres collectively known as Sittrilakkiyam in Tamil literature. The most famous Kaligathuparani was a work done by the Bard Seyamkondaar, and sings the victory of King Kulothunga Cholzhan and his General Karunaakara Thondaimaan which appeared around 1100 CE. To qualify for a Parani, one’s army must have slayed a thousand elephants in the battlefield.

The chief architect Rajaraja Perunthatchan of Thanjai Periakovil (1002 CE) was adorned with the title Kunjaramallan, meaning elephant wrangler. He was a master elephant trainer to have used them in his massive construction project.

In conclusion, Tamils were likely among the first tribes to have domesticated elephants. Tamil civilization and the gentle elephants were in a relationship from time immemorial. Remnants of this symbiotic relationship can still be seen in temples today.

– Dr. Prem Shanmugam

Related articles:

Is Tamil Going Extinct?

Diversity Amongst the Tamil Diaspora: An Ethno-Linguist Population Group

Parai: Mother of All Percussion Instruments and People’s Music to Unify the Tamil Diaspora

The post Elephants, Elephant Brigades, Elephant Wranglers and Tamil Civilization appeared first on TamilCulture.com.

Music is a family affair for the artists behind All Mixedup; one that goes generations deep for brothers Rocky Jeyam, Question416 and their cousin Geerthanan (Geeth). And beyond the influence of their loved ones, each of these artists has a wide range of experiences that has led to the formation of AMU.

Between 2007 to 2009 Rocky, through his collective Meditating Minds Entertainment, produced the albums The Beginning, The Harmony and Project Freedom. His younger brother and burgeoning emcee, Question became one of MME’s flagship artists and got his first tastes of rapping and performing during this time.

Geeth, meanwhile, had always had an aptitude for the arts, training in percussion, completing his arangetram, and then touring around the world performing.

For well over a decade they’ve been working on their individual art forms, and supporting one another; but it was in February while Geeth and Question were on a trip in Europe, that inspiration struck for AMU.

Wasting no time when they got back to Toronto, they recorded 3 songs in their home studio and shared them with Rocky, for whom music had taken a bit of a backseat. Now a full-time Marketing Manager, and new dad, his time was wrapped up in other commitments. But the moment he heard the songs Question and Geeth had worked on he was ready to go all in again.

Insisting that they put the best they had into launching AMU, he got Question and Geeth into a professional studio to record.

Their days soon transformed into heading into the studio, after full days of work. Driven by their passion to create music that’s universal and unique (think folk Tamil, meets the beats and sounds of Toronto) days, weeks and months melted into one another. And for the ability to be this dedicated to their music, Rocky credits the support of their families.

The payoff has been the mixing and mastering of some incredible new music, bringing together Question’s creative and intricate wordplay and Geeth’s melodic voice.

If you’re in Toronto this weekend you’ll get to hear All Mixedup perform live at the 10^th annual desiFest at Yonge and Dundas Square!

Asked what lies ahead for AMU, beyond their live debut at desiFEST, Rocky shared that they’ll be finishing and sharing new songs, continuing to connect with labels about opportunities, and looking to tour through Europe and Asia.

Thinking about their experiences in music so far, Rocky shared that it can be an exhausting pursuit—one that demands incredible investments of time and resources, in addition to the proof that you can hold your own with the heavy hitters. But the fulfillment that comes with creating something that brings your vision to life is worth everything.

The post Folk Tamil Music Gets A Fresh New Sound In All Mixedup appeared first on TamilCulture.com.

The post A Look at Norway Tamil Film Festival (NTFF) 2017 appeared first on TamilCulture.com.

Talking about climate change is kind of like talking about sex in grade nine; it feels uncomfortable, but the more we bring it up with our friends, the more we realize they’re all thinking about it too.

How could they not be? Even if they’re not keeping up with the science, it’s undeniable that it’s happening all around us.

We feel it in the multiple extended heatwaves of the summer, the erratic warming and cooling of our winters, the no longer recognizable schedules of the seasons.

We are seeing it’s harsher forms take shape more often as well. Last year’s wildfires in Fort McMurray, this year’s historic flooding in Quebec, and the second straight year of deadly mudslides in Sri Lanka are just a few recent emergencies that are tied to climate change.

Scientists and military strategists agree that the rising frequency of such events poses the greatest threat to national security, and is the increasing root of radicalization and global conflict.

Amidst such bleak commentary, it’s natural to try and suppress our anxieties on the issue. Like high school, we opt for the flight response: look the other way, pretend we don’t notice, and give Sandy the silent treatment – only this time she’s a hurricane.

Broadly speaking, however, this tendency to shy away from acknowledging climate change seems particularly pronounced in the Tamil diaspora in Canada. As a community we rarely discuss questions of environmental responsibility – despite Jaffna’s position as cannon fodder to rising tides.

There are individuals among us though that have made it their life work to combat this issue. Dusha Sritharan is one such individual.

Dusha is the Climate Change Campaigner for Toronto Environmental Alliance (TEA), a non-profit advocacy organization that has steered environmental policy in the city for the last 28 years. In this time, TEA has influenced City Hall to implement the Green Bin, ban toxic pesticides, expand the Greenbelt, and shut down incinerators, just to name a few major wins.

As Climate Change Campaigner, Dusha has personally lobbied City Counsellors and served in advisory roles for city planning efforts on sustainability. Most recently, she has been a key member of the Modeling Advisory Group for TransformTO – the City’s ambitious plan to address Climate Change and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by the year 2050.

Though I didn’t meet her until interviewing her for this article, I first learnt about Dusha last fall, when I started getting involved in environmental organizing in Toronto. It seemed I was always at the right place at the wrong time to catch Dusha, but I heard her name being mentioned with admiration all around me.

Whether it was a video of Dusha giving a powerful deputation at City Hall, a forward of a rallying email she had written, or the sharing of instructive resources she had created for others to take action, her work was being referenced at almost every event or meeting I went to in the environmental organizing world. I even noticed leaders from other social justice movements name-dropping Dusha Sritharan in conversation as a way of showing street cred.

It was evident to them, by the breadth of her actions, that she is a local hero. It was evident to me, by the breadth of her name, that she is a local Tamil, and this made me confused.

How could it be that an accomplished Tamil Torontonian woman, who should by all accounts be a source of inspiration for our youth, be unheard of to anyone I knew in the Tamil community? Did our people not consider addressing climate change as a worthwhile endeavour? I reached out to Dusha to hear her thoughts.

“People care about these issues. That’s where I think I get challenged,” Dusha explained. We were sitting in a meeting room at TEA headquarters; maps detailing campaign progress in different city wards covered the walls around us.

“It’s not that they’re denying climate change, I think most people think it’s a real thing. They’re just overwhelmed with it, and they’re like ‘where do I start, it’s a global thing’, and they don’t feel like they can do something here at home.”

This was a refreshingly compassionate outlook. It is easy to interpret the lack of mass mobilization on a threat as serious as climate change as a sign of public indifference. However, that type of thinking is not only self-defeating, it is untrue.

Psychologists refer to this phenomenon as pluralistic ignorance, or more colloquially as the spiral of silence. It concludes that, though the majority of individuals are deeply disturbed by climate change, they do not talk about it openly because nobody else in their social circles is doing so. The only possible reason for this – we convince ourselves – is that others don’t believe climate change is as serious as I think it is, so they’ll judge me negatively if I voice my concerns.

Ironically, the self-silencing that stems from this reasoning is the greatest barrier to addressing climate change.

The good news is that this illusion can easily be shattered. The same study that linked climate change to the spiral of silence theory, also showed that climate change is such a top-of-mind issue for people that they are very likely to initiate discussion on the topic if they believe most people around them are also concerned. Therefore, an upward spiral of engagement can be sparked just from talking about climate change at every opportunity; a culture we must all take responsibility for creating. This level of mass discourse is key to shaping the systemic change that is needed.

Of course to catalyze this shift, the first step is believing that others already care, and approaching conversations from that standpoint.

“Most people are very proud of the fact that they recycle and use the green bin. They’re doing it because they care about the environment and the next generation,” said Dusha.

“When you tell them ‘11% of our emissions in the city is from waste – by just diverting your organic waste and making sure it goes in the green bin you’re doing your part to address climate change,’ they feel good. That’s the kind of stuff you want to pull out first. Not to start with ‘here’s what I think you should do,’ but instead ‘what do you care about?’ and making the connections to climate change.”

Dusha also spoke to the importance of including the elders of the Tamil diaspora in these conversations, and empowering them to be lead voices.

“If you want to talk about the hard hitting impacts of climate change like water scarcity, droughts, floods, I can’t speak to those from personal experience, whereas they’ve dealt with it back home. My parents can talk about severe storms in a way that I can’t.”

Plus, Sri Lanka is at immediate risk she pointed out.

“The impacts of climate change are going to be very hard felt on islands. Sri Lanka can likely go under with sea level rises, so our parents are more invested because they’ve grown up there – they’re attached to this place called home.”

Later, our conversation shifted to the lack of exposure Tamils environmental leaders receive within our own community. Dusha agreed that we need to broaden our definition of success.

She informed me of various local Tamil leaders I hadn’t heard of, including Princely Soundranayagam, a Scarborough condo superintendent who rallied the residents of his building to implement city-leading zero-waste systems. Today his condo diverts more than 85% of waste in his building – a staggering accomplishment given that the average Toronto high-rise only diverts 26%.

 
Princely realized this feat the good old-fashioned way – by going door-to-door and talking with his residents about shared environmental concerns and the solutions he had in mind. Now the 1,000 plus residents use the trash chute solely for disposing organics, leading to trash output being cut to one dumpster every two months from one dumpster every week. Mayor Tory is so impressed with these results, he personally toured the condo himself to get Princely’s advice in replicating the model for other condos in the city.

Dusha’s point in sharing this story was it’s not that environmental leaders don’t exist in the Tamil community, it’s that we often don’t acknowledge them in the way we celebrate other kinds of success, and that’s something that needs to improve. Our young deserve a diversity of role models so that they can strive to be well-rounded leaders, and pursue opportunities that are most in line with what they value. This means highlighting not just the end results of high net worth and social notoriety that some leaders achieve, but also the day-to-day heroics of those that confront our society’s greatest challenges.

Though there is a broad consensus among scientists that we are now living the sixth mass extinction of the earth – one that is being caused by humanity -, they are clear that we can still mitigate the most cataclysmic impacts if sufficient changes are made in the next 20 – 30 years. Against this backdrop, being loud in voicing our climate concerns and celebrating our climate leaders not only increases the chances of our survival – it motivates our young to aspire to solve this problem.

Continuing the Conversation:

There are many groups working in Toronto to advance the cause, each with a unique organizing philosophy, focus and culture. This variety means that you can always find a group where you not only fit in, but importantly have room to add significant value.

The centre of this web is Toronto Climate Action Network (TCAN), where representatives from all the action-oriented groups share what they’re planning and discuss ways to collaborate. For more information on TCAN, please visit their website: http://tcan.ca/our-members-0.

I’m also happy to further discuss and thoughts or questions you may have. Please, feel free to contact me directly at sayan.siv@gmail.com.

The post Breaking the Spiral of Silence on Climate Change appeared first on TamilCulture.com.

Toronto Life recently profiled the unique and quirky wedding of Lavan Srinarayanadas, a doctor, and Michelle Bigold, who works in advertising. Having little interest in holding a traditional wedding, the couple opted for a low-key, backyard patio wedding at Cold Tea in Kensington Market (where you can get dumplings and drinks). According to the couple “We just wanted a big party with good food and good music.” This of course is a big shift from typical Tamil weddings which are held in lavish banquet halls with hundreds of guests and take months to prepare.

Check out some images from their special day, captured by Tara McMullen:

Single? Check out myTamilDate.com- we’re responsible for multiple marriages, relationships and countless memorable dates.

The post Not Your Typical Tamil Wedding appeared first on TamilCulture.com.

On June 2nd, the Adayaalam Centre for Policy Research (ACPR) launched “Stories of Mullivaikkaal”, the first series in ACPR’s “Stories of Resilience” project.

‘Stories of Mullivaikkaal’ is launched in commemoration of all those who lost their lives in the last phase of the armed conflict. The stories featured present alternative narratives from survivors of Mullivaikkaal which does not narrow their lived experiences to helpless victimhood but rather promotes and accepts their agency.

“We feel that in trying to come to terms with the horrific atrocities committed during the armed conflict and re-shape the collective Tamil identity, it is important for the focus to not be narrowed just to victimhood,” said Senior Researcher for ACPR, Dharsha Jegatheeswaran. “Memorialisation must also include documenting narratives of the conflict that give credit to survivors’ agency and resilience, and the incredible strength exhibited by countless Tamil civilians during the last phase of the war.”

Stories will continue to be added to the ‘Stories of Mullivaikkaal’ series over the next three months, and then a short print volume with the stories will be published at the end of August in English and Tamil.

‘Stories of Mullivaikkaal’ is part of a bigger project ACPR is embarking on entitled ‘Stories of Resilience’ which aims to document and share stories of strength, courage and resilience of Tamil civilians before, during and after the armed conflict.

For any further information please contact the Adayaalam Centre for Policy Research at info@adayaalam.org.

The post Adayaalam’s Stories of Mullivaikkaal, Stories of Resilience appeared first on TamilCulture.com.

Today is a big day in Britain. The 2017 General Election to select a new government is underway to decide if Theresa May, from the Conservative party, or Jeremy Corbyn, from the Labour party, will become the new prime minister.

Many British Tamils, who generally support the Labour party, have taken to social media to show their support for Corbyn with quotes and images like these:

“When I was first elected to parliament – before recorded history began (!) – in 1983, there was a useful rule that any MP could take up any immigration case in the country, wherever it was. So every MP had the power to intervene on behalf of an asylum applicant to make representations to the Home Office. Because of the work of volunteers who did hundreds of cases, as a result of this hard work, a very large number of people were not deported to Sri Lanka in 1983, ’84 and ’85.”

– Jeremy Corbyn (2016).

(Photo credit: Tamil Community Housing Association)

“Unless you actually solve the issue of the rights of people for their cultural identity, their language, their life, their freedom, their ability to organise themselves as a community, then the war is not over, the conflict is not over – the situation will only rear its head again. Thousands have died during that war. Thousands have lost their lives and families have suffered as a result of it. So, do we now just say it’s all over or not? No we don’t!”

“When we had the camp in Parliament Square, during the time that people were taking hunger strikes out there to draw attention to the situation in Sri Lanka, 200,000 people marched through the streets of London. I was one of those who joined that march, and I one of the very few people who were not part of the Tamil community to join that march. And I remember to this day – and am still angry about it – the utter silence of the majority of the British and world’s media to the demonstration as well as the cause, as well as the issue.”

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I would like to start by apologizing to all the people that I may offend with the title of this piece, but this is a subject I feel quite strongly about.

Growing up, I must have heard this sentence over a thousand times, both in English and in Tamil.  This phrase has been on my mind for so long, especially pertaining to why people feel the need to say it. I have never been insecure about the colour of my skin and for those who know me personally, I have never complained about my skin colour either. I am comfortable in my skin, and personally I wouldn’t want to be any other colour.

Even though I have heard this comment so many times before, today I feel the need to write this article because it is time to put a stop to this type of communication.   I am aware that creating this piece alone won’t make a substantial change, but I do hope that the individuals reading this and relate to this will want to put a stop to these kinds of statements by spreading the word.  Or if YOU, yourself have said this to someone, then maybe you would consider restructuring your sentence by simply saying “You are pretty”, “You are beautiful”, rather than “You are pretty for a dark skin girl.” Stop!

Recently I went to visit my family, and on this particular visit, they were all engaging in a myriad of different topics.  The room was made up of mostly women discussing the latest Tamil serial gossip, unreasonable period cycles, new trending saree’s and fashion.  The most prominent topic of the day was how to become fairer. As the conversation flowed, and everyone began to pipe up with the names of creams they were using as well as specific home made therapies, I decided to interrupt and say, “Why aren’t you guys happy in your skin?”.  Some people simply smiled politely at me, while others responded that they were content were but still tried to become fairer.  One particular aunt looked at me pointedly and said  “You don’t need to worry Cathy, even though you have dark skin, you are pretty”.  My first reaction was to retort “Awwh thanks, I must be really lucky then, because imagine, I was dark skin and ugly”.  My aunt smiled at me not knowing how to react. She didn’t understand that I was being sarcastic but she still laughed nervously anyway.

This is just one scenario, and since this type of situation has happened to me so many times, I’ve stopped keeping count. For as long I can remember, I have heard comments like this thrown not just to me, but also many other dark skin girls in my family and within my friends circle.  Luckily, I come from a strong unit of friends and family. Together we have helped each other realize that the problem isn’t US it is THEM.  But it doesn’t stop at comments directly regarding my skin.  People often say to me, “Because you are dark skinned, I don’t think that colour will suit you” or ” you should wear bright colours so that you stand out”. For generations and generations these are the type of comments people feel entitled to direct at dark skin people, whether they are male or a female, and this attitude needs to stop.

On my mum’s side of the family, most of them are all light skinned, except for myself and my aunt. My aunt, who is my mum’s sister, has always been a big inspiration to me from the time I was a little girl. She never placed restrictions on what colours I was allowed to wear and she would always wear bright, bold colours herself. When she was growing up, she was made fun of  and people would make similar comments to her about her skin colour but she told me that she never let it affect her.  She didn’t care what people thought of her skin tone. In fact, because she was the only dark skinned sibling among her brothers and sisters, she wanted my mother to have a dark skinned baby, as this baby would be the first grandchild in their family. She prayed so hard that her prayers were finally answered and a few years later along came me! My sister on the other hand, who is of a fairer skin tone, always gets all the glorified comments such as “Why don’t you act in a movie and become an actress or become a model?”.  However, there have been times when she has also received the odd comment that “For a Tamil girl, you’re really light”.

Because of my Aunt’s influence, I have never been insecure about my colour or felt like I needed to be a different tone.I do not avoid wearing certain colours just because I am dark skin, and I am not scared of being in the sun.  Over the years I have learned to look after my skin, not to become fairer, but to ensure that my skin is healthy. I have never used fairness creams and I have not undergone any treatments to become lighter. I have friends who come from different ethnic groups.  We are all different colours and none us treat each other differently due to our skin tones. I have also been fortunate to have good Tamil friends who don’t recognize someones self worth by the colour of their skin, Coincidentally, most of them are beautifully dark skinned.

Shadeism, social and economic discrimination based on our skin tone is indulged in our culture as well as other South eastern parts of Asia. Colourism and racism are two different things since it can happen among people in the same racial clan, against those of certain ethnicities and castes. People are conditioned into thinking that having a dark skin tone is UGLY. However, so many of powerful people in the world are dark skinned; Suresh Sriskandarajah, Martin Luther King, Nandita Das, Barack Obama and his wife Michelle Obama, AR Rahman, and even Super Star Rajnikanth.

In all honesty, I just want to share my experience and get this message across. I do not know if my post will make an impact, but for those of who do choose to read this, I hope it does change the way you think about skin tones. If you are dark skinned, like my Aunt taught me, I implore you to always be secure and  proud of what you are wrapped up in.

Yours truly,

Unapologetically a Dark skinned Tamil Girl 

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