Cinnamon Gardens Archives

Australian Tamil author whose first novel wasn’t ‘Australian enough’ wins Miles Franklin Shankari Chandran’s third novel, Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens, has won the prestigious award. Winner of the 2023 Miles Franklin Literary Award Shankari Chandran poses for a portrait with her novel Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens. Source: AAP / Bianca De Marchi Source : sbs KEY POINTS Shankari Chandran’s Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens, has won the prestigious $60,000 Miles Franklin award. The novel, Chandran’s third, explores multicultural Australia and the Sri Lankan civil war. Chandran hopes to adapt Chai Time at Cinnamon Gardens into a television series. When Shankari Chandran got the call to say she had won the Miles Franklin, judge Richard Neville had to repeat the message four times. “My brain just couldn’t quite understand what he was saying to me,” she says. Then she put the call on hold so she could scream a little. Chandran’s third novel, Chai ...

Sri Lankan Baila: Its Roots and Variations – By Dr Michael Roberts Source:thuppahis.com Shihan de Silva Jayasuriya, courtesy of THE CEYLANKAN, Vol XXI, No 3, August 2018 … with highlighting emphasis added by The Editor, Thuppahi The extraordinary love of the Portuguese for music is epitomised at El Ksar el Kabir in Morocco, in 1578, where 10 000 guitars lay on the battlefield, near the dead Portuguese soldiers. The Portuguese took guns and guitars to battlefields! Is it surprising that the Portuguese presence is vibrant through Sri Lankan popular music – Baila? Baila is a ballad in which the poetry is of paramount importance. A ballad is a short poem suitable for singing which was originally intended to accompany a dance. The etymology of ballad is ballare (late Latin/Italian) meaning ‘to dance’. Today the Portuguese word bailar meaning ‘to dance’ is used in the context of a Ball; dançar means ‘to dance’. Meanings of words change over time ...