'Annaviyar' Sinnaiah Gnanaseharam of Seelamunai, Batticaloa, Sri Lanka played an important role in the Reformulation of Kooththu(Traditional Theatre of the Thamils of Sri Lanka)
process as an organic form of Community Theatre , which was initiated by S.Jeyasankar in year 2002 for his Masters program in Seelamunai and later developed into a continuous program by the THIRE EYE Local Knowledge and Skill Activists Group in Seelamunai and extended to other villages to counter Global Culture.

INFINITE JUSTICE


In every sky there’s full moon reign
To hide in fear there’s no country foreign

The millennium and the New Year
Ushered in, rejoiced and did not yet wear
The prophecy of Nostradamus did ghost like appear
The major powers attempts to make it truer.

For the people, in the name of people
Under the names of states and institutions
Attempts of power of freakish men-.
Of swollen nerves and numbed muscles.

What name bear will the wisdom and prowess?
That fails to make untrue the prophecy
That revives shape and grimly shines
By sending chill through people’s spines

Will the wisdom of thousand years
Perish in the face of this utter nonsense?
If it does perish are we all still
People primitive and inhumane

Let swollen nerves their swelling dispel
Numbed muscles their numbness dispel
The angry passion its arrogance dispels.

In the heart, let kindness blossom
In the head, let wisdom glow
And with the lives on the earth let human live too.



By: S.Jeyasankar
Translated into English by: T.Kirupakaran
From THIRD EYE Little Magazine.*


*THIRD EYE Little magazine is the publication of the THIRD EYE English Forum.

Annual Temple Rituals and Cultural Programs of the Third Eye

Third Eye Local Knowledge and Skill Activists Group in collaboration with her affiliate groups, “Seelamunai Kalai Kalaham” and “Karunepamkeny Paadum Nila Kali Kalaham”
performed songs and dances (90min.) on 20th June and Kooththu (180min.) on 22nd June respectively at the “Vyravar” Temple, Batticaloa at 9.00 pm (near the Railway Station of Batticaloa) connected with its annual ritual ceremony 2005.

The performance of Songs and Dances with the accompaniment of indigenous instrumentals is the compositions of the affiliates of the Third Eye on different issues ranging from displacement to oppressions and resistance to celebrations!

The performance of third successive Reformulated Kooththu (Traditional Theatre of the Thamils of Sri Lanka) “Seethai Surpanahai Vathai” (“The Torture of Seetahi and Surpanahai”) is totally a rewritten version of the Kooththu Community of Seelamunai Batticaloa. The Kooththu portrays the sufferings and the voiceless ness of women in the epic Ramayanam.

Third Eye
Local Knowledge and Skill Activists Group

Treasure Island

Treasure Island

Forests of materials
Opened to anyone
With dollars in hands
Wealth of resources
Make dollars by the handful

Disaster made avenues
For research and experiments
An open field for practices
Country becomes
An Open University
But not for the natives
Who were caged into a
Disney world of
Academic Institutions
Making people suitable for
World Bank demanded
Wonder land of
Blue colored neo slaves

How to live as subjects
And to be specimens
Under the microscope
Forever in different forms

At least for a change
Shall we resist?
Or be happy
With eternal slavery

S.Jeyasankar
17.02.2005

(Republished from OPTIONS volume: 36, 1st Issue 2005.
OPTIONS is published by Women and Media Collective, Colombo, Sri Lanka.)