Every Sri Lankan, and almost every visitor to Sri Lanka, carries a longing for the place in some small form - hiraeth, the Welsh call it - wherever they go and whatever their background. It binds them however much the war and politics might try to divide them.
Interpretation
The quote expresses a deep, universal longing for one's homeland that transcends background and challenges.
Romesh Gunesekera's quote emphasizes the profound connection that individuals have with their homeland, Sri Lanka, regardless of their personal experiences or the political turmoil affecting it. The term 'hiraeth,' a Welsh word for a deep-seated homesickness, encapsulates this sentiment, suggesting that this longing creates a bond among the people, uniting them through their shared love and nostalgia for their home despite external conflicts.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech about the importance of cultural heritage.
In the sense that writing is to retrieve the past and stop the passing of time, all writing is about loss. It's not nostalgia in the sense of yearning to bring back the past, but recognition of the erosion of things as you live.
History or custom or social utility or some compelling sense of justice or sometimes perhaps a semi-intuitive apprehension of the pervading spirit of our law must come to the rescue of the anxious judge and tell him where to go.
Disease increases in proportion to the increase in the number of doctors in a place.
In all our associations; in all our agreements let us never lose sight of this fundamental maxim - that all power was originally lodged in, and consequently is derived from, the people.
Though it is true we are the highest and smartest animals, ospreys have eyes we have calculated to be sixty times more powerful and sophisticated than our own and that blindness, often caused by microscopic parasites that are themselves miracles of ingenuity, is one of the oldest and most tragic disorders known to man. And why award the superior eye (or in the case of cat or bat, also the ear) to the inferior species.
One of the reasons why fundamentalists are so aggressive in trying to promote fundamentalism is because deep down they know it's arbitrary. If you're comfortable with your belief you don't need to convince other people to agree with you.
The existing liberties and the existing gratifications are tied to the requirements of repression: they themselves become instruments of repression.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.