Featured portrait
The Sportsman
Nagalingam Ethirveerasingam
On the day Sri Lankan Tamil high jumper Nagalingam Ethirveerasingam won gold at the 1958 Asian Games in Tokyo, communal riots were breaking out in Colombo. “I felt I am not there, and here I am putting Sri Lanka in the sports headlines,” he recalls. Representing Ceylon at the Olympic Games in Helsinki in 1952 and Melbourne in 1956, and winning the country’s first Asian Games gold medal, Ethirveerasingam reflects on a life shaped by both international athletics and political conflict. In later years, he served as a quiet intermediary during ceasefire talks between the Sri Lankan government and the Tamil Tigers.
Interview language: English
More inspirational elders
From a young age, Manikkam set out to emulate M.G. Ramachandran (MGR), the Tamil film star whose image came to define heroism for many in his generation. He became a natami, working among the organised community of cart pullers who move goods through the dense lanes of Pettah, Colombo’s commercial quarter. Dressing in clothes inspired by MGR’s film roles, Manikkam carries that cinematic presence into his daily labour.
Interview language: සිංහල
The Artist
Chandragupta Thenuwara
Chandraguptha Thenuwara is an artist and activist whose work has long confronted political power in Sri Lanka. A witness to the violence of Black July in 1983, he has returned to that moment year after year through a recurring exhibition in Colombo, memorialising the victims of the pogrom and challenging the silence that followed. Once known for more celebratory painting, his practice shifted toward politically charged work shaped by memory and loss. For Thenuwara, art is a form of resistance — a way of insisting that what happened is neither forgotten nor repeated.
Interview language: English
The International Aunty
Mani Pathmarajah
Mani Pathmarajah is a founding member of the Tamil Co-op in Toronto, Canada. She left a life of comfort and community in Kalmunai, Sri Lanka, as the conflict intensified and safety became uncertain. In Canada, she faced an unfamiliar climate, culture and language, but quickly turned her efforts toward helping others. As the first secretary of the Tamil Co-op, she played a key role in creating affordable housing and support for newly arrived Tamil refugees, many of whom were professionals struggling to find stability. Her story reflects both the rupture of displacement and the determination to rebuild community in exile.
Interview language: English
Born in Sainthamaruthu on the Eastern coast of Sri Lanka, Jezima Ismail went on to become an educator, broadcaster, social activist and an advocate for human rights. She served as Principal of Muslim Ladies College, Colombo for 13 years from 1975 to 1988. She was the first woman to be appointed as the head of the Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation where she had worked as a broadcaster. She founded the Muslim Women’s Research and Action Forum in 1976. In 1989, the Government of Sri Lanka conferred on her the title of Deshabandhu, the third highest national honour
Interview language: English
About the I am project
The I am project began in 2010, in the immediate aftermath of war, with a question: was there a time when people did not speak first in ethnic terms?
Through portraits and recorded testimony, elders across Sri Lanka and its diaspora speak in many registers — of place and labour, class and caste, faith, kinship and loss.
Taken together, these voices form an archive of lived memory, revealing how identity is constructed, constrained and contested over time.