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Published in Colombo in 1954, J. A. R. Grenier’s Tales of Fish and People of the Ceylon Estuary is a small masterpiece: an angling memoir rich in natural history, practical fishing knowledge and tender observation of the fishing communities whose lives were bound to the sea.
During the Covid lockdowns, my husband’s uncle Nimal Jayawardena began sorting through his extensive collection of books on wildlife, natural history, fishing and hunting. Boxes arrived at our house in batches. Unpacking, reading and cataloguing the books brought welcome pleasure to days otherwise marked by uncertainty, isolation and restrictions on movement.
Fishermen hauling a fishing catamaran ashore after returning through the surf. Photograph by Reg Van Cuylenburg from Image of An Island – A Portrait of Ceylon (1962). Pathfinder Collection
“What Will the Day Bring?” Canoe beside a tranquil estuary. Photograph by Lionel Wendt from Lionel Wendt’s Ceylon (1950). Pathfinder Collection
In one of the boxes, I noticed a slim volume in a plain white dust jacket. Spartan in appearance, its only adornment was a small circular medallion showing two fish swimming in a ring around a rocky estuarine scene. The design was rendered largely in black and white, with a muted greenish-blue wash. At its centre appeared a title that promised far more than the modest artwork: Tales of Fish and People of the Ceylon Estuary . The cover did not even bear the author’s name.
Inscription by J. A. R. Grenier to Nimal Jayawardena, dated 29 July 1975, with Jayawardena’s signature opposite. Pathfinder Collection. Author’s photograph
Detail from the dust jacket of Tales of Fish and People of the Ceylon Estuary (Colombo, 1954), showing the distinctive fish medallion. Pathfinder Collection. Author’s photograph
Out of curiosity, I opened this unassuming book and began to read. Within its weathered pages, a succession of worlds began to unfold: that of the recreational angler, for whom fishing was an absorbing passion; the natural world of Ceylon’s estuaries and their fish; the practical world of tackle, bait and technique; and, finally, the world of the fisherfolk, whose lives depended upon an intimate knowledge of the waters.
Portrait of a fisherman. Photograph by Reg Van Cuylenburg from Image of An Island – A Portrait of Ceylon (1962). Pathfinder Collection.
At only 155 pages, the book is divided into two parts: “Fish,” devoted to the angler, the estuary and the practical knowledge of fishing; and “The People,” in which Grenier turns to the fisherfolk themselves.
Grenier begins with a question that must have been put to anglers in every generation: why devote so much time, money and effort to an occupation involving discomfort, uncertainty and frequent failure?
His book is, among other things, an extended answer to that question.
In this, he belongs to a centuries-old angling tradition, familiar from Izaak Walton’s The Compleat Angler , in which fishing is valued not merely for the catch but for the fellowship it creates and the intimacy with nature it permits. Grenier gives that tradition a distinctly Ceylonese expression.
For him, fishing satisfies the gambling instinct: every cast holds possibility, and every expedition begins with hope.
The appeal also lies in escape. The estuary is usually remote: there, Grenier writes, the river, “tired of being harassed by humanity along its banks, seeks solitude where it meets the ocean.”
Grenier describes the principal fish of the estuary and deep sea, their habits, feeding patterns and preferred habitats, observing how tide, season and weather shape their movements. He also preserves a detailed practical record of fishing: tackle, baits, traditional nets and fishing methods—knowledge accumulated through years of experiment, observation and conversation.
His discussion of angling is often enlivened by the companionship, banter and minor disputes of his fellow anglers. Grenier recalls an episode from A. H. Pertwee’s Ceylon Marine and Estuary Fishing. Notes on a Neglected Pastime , first published as a series of articles in The Times of Ceylon before appearing as a booklet in 1907. To convince doubters of the strength of Ringall bamboo rods, Pertwee staged a “Man versus Fish Competition” at the Calcutta swimming baths. The “fish” was Mr Mason, a powerful swimmer weighing more than ten stone—whom I cannot help imagining with a luxuriant handlebar moustache and a striped bathing costume. Harnessed to the line and given thirty feet of slack, he managed only seventy feet before Pertwee reeled him in foot by foot and finally “gaffed” him with a billiard cue.
Part Two, simply titled “The People,” is more than a change of subject; it alters the meaning of much that has come before.
Grenier opens by confronting the stigma attached at that time to Ceylon’s coastal fishing communities. Those who earn their living from the sea, he observes, are often judged by people who know little of the skill and endurance their work demands, or of the dangers they face. However sympathetic, the “land-encumbered” observer, as Grenier puts it, can never fully comprehend the rigours and terrors of the sea without having faced them.
The introductory chapter, titled “PRO” in capitals and quotation marks, makes Grenier’s regard for the fishermen unmistakable. They are the true professionals: men he came to admire and respect, and from whom he learned lessons extending far beyond fishing.
For the working fisherman, the sea governs every aspect of life. It provides his livelihood, but may also threaten his boat and his life. Danger, hardship and uncertainty are enduring conditions of his world. The sports angler by contrast chooses temporary discomfort and may return empty-handed but to a secure bed and meal.
Such conditions also help explain the fishermen’s reserve towards recreational anglers, whom they regard as outsiders whose inexperience may hinder the work and even jeopardise a catch. Grenier observes that a newcomer is fortunate if accepted within five years. Some of his happiest moments come when fishermen such as Jemma of the Kalu Ganga, Anthony of Negombo or Manuel of Mannar disclose a favoured fishing ground or allow him to join them in their boats.
Yet fishing can also produce a camaraderie capable of crossing barriers firmly maintained on land. Grenier’s acceptance is never assumed, but gradually earned through patience, shared experience and respect for the fishermen’s knowledge. An invitation into a boat or the disclosure of a closely guarded fishing ground signifies far more than access to better sport. It marks his admission into a fraternity.
From there, Grenier opens a window onto the fishermen and their communities through a succession of miniature biographies.
There is Jemma, whom he calls the “King of estuary fishermen of Ceylon.” For thirty years he has fished at the mouth of the Kalu Ganga and knows every rock, obstruction and hidden danger in the estuary. So accustomed is he to sitting in his small canoe that, even on land, his legs creep beneath him into the same position when he becomes absorbed in conversation.
His tackle is modest but meticulously made. Grenier’s respect for his skill deepens when one of his seemingly fragile handmade lines lands a skate weighing some twenty pounds.
From Mannar comes Soosai, the shark hunter, whom Grenier describes as a “bronzed miracle of a man with limbs like jungle trees and shoulders as thick as a Dutch wall.” He lives amid the bones of his quarry.
Bemiya prefers the company of fish and animals to that of people and speaks only when necessary, yet has lovely names of his own for the fish he catches. His gift lies not so much in fishing with rod and line as in diving. His large, “plate-like” hands and long, double-jointed fingers seem made for work beneath the surface, where he moves with an ease he is denied on land.
Bemiya later disappears during a dangerous attempt to subdue a shark caught by his fellow fishermen. Grenier’s brief farewell to him is among the most affecting passages in the book.
The final and perhaps most powerful portrait is that of Anthony, the wise and kindly fisherman of Negombo who takes Grenier under his wing. Anthony teaches him not only how to fish, but also the fisherman’s code. Behind his patience and wisdom lies a history of personal loss.
The book closes with his account of the storm in which he lost his son. Boats remain at sea while the people on shore watch the horizon with the quiet dread born of bitter experience. Through Anthony’s recollection, Grenier evokes an entire village overtaken by grief, its cries of mourning rising against the gale and the breaking surf. Anthony bears his loss with a sad fatalism.
The sea, he tells Grenier, “makes us and breaks us.”
J. A. R. Grenier—known as Ronald—was born in Ceylon in 1912.
The world he evokes is that of late colonial and early post-independence Ceylon: government service, clubs, sporting friendships, coastal journeys and long-established personal networks, brought through fishing into close contact with communities bound by occupation, poverty and dependence upon the sea.
Moved by the book, I wanted to learn more about its author. My search led me to the website of his son, David Grenier, and to the life that lay behind its pages.
By the late 1950s, Grenier had concluded that his children’s prospects in Ceylon were uncertain. In 1959, his fourteen-year-old son David left for Australia with several family members, including his grandmother and aunts. Grenier followed three years later, in 1962.
The decision was practical and paternal, but came at great personal cost. According to David, his father knew before leaving that he would not be happy in the West and would dearly miss the ocean, the fish and the fishing people of Ceylon.
I had scarcely read those words before thinking, “he will never be happy there.” A few paragraphs later, David wrote that his father was never the same after the move.
Read with that knowledge, the book becomes not merely an account of fish and fisherfolk, but also a record of a landscape, a body of knowledge, and a way of life from which Grenier was soon to be separated.
When I returned to our copy while preparing this article, I noticed that it bore an inscription by Grenier dated 29 July 1975. Puzzled, since I knew he had emigrated to Australia more than a decade earlier, I telephoned my husband’s uncle Nimal to ask about its circumstances.
Nimal recalled that Grenier had returned to Sri Lanka that year for a fishing journey “down memory lane” along the East Coast with their mutual friend Frank Kelly, who had also migrated to Australia.
In his younger days, Nimal had been an avid angler, deep-sea fisherman and sportsman who knew the eastern coastline and its jungles particularly well. Frank called at his house to borrow camping equipment for the expedition, and Grenier accompanied him.
By coincidence, Nimal was reading Tales of Fish and People of the Ceylon Estuary at the time. He brought the book downstairs and asked Grenier to sign it. The three men spent some time reminiscing about earlier days of fishing before Grenier and Kelly continued on their journey.
Nimal also knew Willie Obeysekera and Peter Jayawardena, fellow anglers whom Grenier thanks in the acknowledgements. After retiring, Peter worked as a guide for one of the family companies, based in Inginiyagala.
These connections place the book once again among the friendships and shared experiences from which it emerged. The inscription transforms our copy into a record of Grenier’s return—to waters, friendships and memories that had endured the years abroad.
In later life, Grenier developed a rare and incurable illness that severely affected his health and wellbeing. He died in Queensland in 1988, aged seventy-five.
When I learnt of Grenier’s death, my thoughts returned to the hope he had once expressed for Bemiya: “I hope there are fish in the place he has gone to, for without them, he, like you and I, will never be happy.”
David later worked to preserve his father’s literary legacy, personally publishing Isle of Eden and Isle of Eden Revisited .
Grenier’s work defies easy classification. It is a rare conjunction of fishing manual, angling memoir, natural history and social record. Within little more than 150 pages, he preserves an extraordinary body of knowledge about Ceylon’s estuaries: their fish, habitats, fishing methods, language and communities. It is, in effect, a compact cultural archive written in the form of an angling memoir, distinguished throughout by tenderness, restraint and quiet humanity.
Its appeal extends far beyond anglers. More than seventy years after its publication, there is still nothing quite like it. The book deserves to be read again.
Old Politics returns via Writ Applications, New Politics emerges over Judicial Independence
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The 2026 US midterm elections may have been the most globally watched American elections. The results have exceeded all expectations in America and in the world. The vote is a resounding slap to the American President, louder than the defeat of Viktor Orban in Hungary or that of Aleksander Vucic in Serbia. While Orban and Vucic were able to manipulate their political systems and stay in power for well over a decade, the US system has seen to it that Trump will be kept within his term limits. Yet the same system allows Trump to continue in office for two more hectic years. In a parliamentary system, Trump would have had to leave the White House the day after the vote. In any event, he will be gone in two years. What will happen till then is predictably unpredictable like the man himself.
How it matters for the rest of the world is reflected in the comment made by Austria’s Foreign Minister Beate Meinl-Reisinger: “independent of the elections outcome, our security and prosperity in Austria and Europe must not depend on how people in Kansas or Iowa vote.” More than American voters, it may be Trump and Elon Musk who determine the security limits of America’s allies in Europe, through the satellite-based Starshield weapon system that Musk’s Space X company creates and supplies to the US government.
Around mid-October, allegedly at Trump’s behest, Musk is said to have remotely restricted Ukraine’s battlefield use of Starshield that Ukraine receives from the US government. According to Ukraine, the restriction that was done without notice weakened its capacity to ward off Russian drones. The news alarmed NATO allies and created a storm in Washington. Both Republican and Democrat lawmakers have been calling for investigation and accountability. The midterm results are a big impetus to kickstarting such an investigation.
There will be other investigations into the carnival of corruption that the Trump’s presidency has become in its second term. Musk himself will likely be subjected to intense scrutiny. His brutal approach to downsizing government and slashing USAID overseas will be one area that will be investigated. Another would be to find out how Musk’s businesses have benefited from laxed regulations and easy permits at the federal and state levels of government in the last two years.
Hoping to forestall Congress investigations, Musk bankrolled nearly half a billion dollars to protect his Republican guardians in Congress and in State governments. His gamble to control the course of politics has spectacularly backfired. Now it is up to Congress with its new electees to show that they can hold to account America’s powerful and the wealthiest, without burning itself in the process.
The midterm’s implications for the Iran war and its continuing economic havocs are not clear. There have been mixed reports on Trump’s intentions. One report is that a deal with Iran was 80% ready for signing before the midterm. According to another, Trump had advised Gulf States that he will resume a new round of attacks on Iran after the midterm. The midterm results have strengthened the opposition to the war among Republicans in Washington, with Vice President JD Vance, the consummate chameleon of contemporary American politics, squarely blaming the war for the Republican defeat. Not without the quiet concurrence of his boss.
Congress Republicans are also riling up to impeach Pete Hegseth, Trump’s handpicked and self-named Secretary of War, likely for incompetence and potential war crimes. Unless Hegseth resigns soon, the present House Republicans want him impeached before the end of the year and steal a political march on the new Congress led by Democrats that will take over in January. All of this puts President Trump in a bind and will force him to take a diplomatic route to end the war. For the rest of the world and for all Americans, the end of the war and the opening of the Strait of Hormuz cannot come any sooner. To their credit, American voters have made it clear that they do not want a resumption of attacks in the Middle East.
The midterm results are revelatory at multiple levels. They show American electoral democracy at work, in a country of 350 million people, synthesizing myriads of local variations and conflicts of age, gender, race, religion, education, employment and income into representational outcomes at the State and national levels. The spread and depth of electoral losses came as a shock to Republicans who were resigned to getting the usual midterm knuckle-rap against an incumbent president. Equally shocked are Democrats, not only by their majority margins in the House and in the Senate but also by their victories in States and Districts that they have not won in 30 to 100 years. Even where they lost, Democrats were only inches away, in American Football parlance, from scoring more touchdowns.
At the aggregate level, Democrats have outperformed to historic proportions, reaching the largest popular vote, and the largest House and Senate majorities, since the first post-Watergate election in 1974. Pundits are calling Trump’s midterm punishment as another watershed moment like the Watergate. The vote total for the House elections in all the States corresponds to 400 (out of 538) Electoral College votes in a hypothetical presidential election. The scale of defeat has stopped Trump from making baseless allegations about stolen elections and fraudulent voting. The magnitude of victory presents a new challenge to Democrats as they have to demonstrate to a restive electorate how different and better they will be in comparison to Trump’s Republicans.
Democrats have 215 seats and Republicans 220 seats in the current Congress and had to capture three Republican seats for a bare minimum majority of 218 (out of 435) seats in the next Congress. The tally now is Democrats 253 and Republicans 157, with 25 seats yet to be decided. So far, Democrats have flipped 43 Republican held seats. In the current Senate, there are 53 Republicans and 47 Democrats. With Senate elections held every two years for a third of the Senators every two years, Senate elections were held in 35 States, and Democrats had to win four new Senate seats for a majority of 51. They have captured seven so far, while prevailing in all the 13 States they now hold. The Senate tally is 54 Democrats and 44 Republicans with Alaska and Mississippi yet to be called. Democrats are leading in both and will likely have a comfortable majority of 56 Senators.
In both the House and Senate victories, Democrats made extensive inroads into hitherto Republican territories. Trump had won six of the seven flipped States in his three presidential runs in 2016, 2020 and 2024: Iowa and Ohio in the Midwest; and Kansas, Texas, North Carolina and South Carolina in the South. Democrats have not won statewide election since 1988 in Texas, and not since 1932 in Kansas. In addition to the House and the Senate, Democrats have also won a majority of the Governors’ elections in individual States along with elections to the State legislative bodies and local agencies.
Trump won the 2024 presidential election by attracting young male voters in very large numbers and significantly increasing the traditionally low Republican shares of white working class as well as Black and Latino voters. He won them over by vehemently promising to lower prices and make life affordable again; to take control of immigration and the borders; and to end the wars in Gaza and in Ukraine. Nothing has gone according Trump’s promises or plan, and the midterm results are comeuppance.
His Liberation Day tariffs have taken a toll on American consumers and caused trade precarities for the rest of the world. The war in Iran which he started on a whim has led to price increases in fuel and fertilizers everywhere, and they have hit rural Republican Americans harder than others in America. No one liked the violent crackdown on immigrants, especially Latin Americans who voted for him heavily in 2024. The indiscriminate apprehension of immigrants has created labour shortages in businesses, particularly in the construction industry. Americans across the board finally got disgusted with the level of corruption in the Trump Administration.
While rebuking and restraining the President, the midterm wave is also sending a new cross-section of representatives to Washington and to the State Capitals. The results show quite a number of historic firsts reflecting the diverse American society and rejecting the MAGA aversion to diversity. The most remarkable first is the election of a Muslim American as the US Senator from Michigan. Abdul El-Sayed, the American-born son of Egyptian American parents and highly accomplished Doctor of Medicine, convincingly won the Senate race in Michigan after withstanding a barrage of Islamophobic attacks from the US President at the top to every Republican hack below. According to Alvin Tillery of Northwestern University, “the simplest explanation is that the electorate finally caught up with the country.” In that sense, Trump and MAGA have been trying to fly in the face of the American reality. The midterm has stopped that in midflight.
Continue Reading Features The Sunset Years! Published
Staying away from elderly parents, being overseas or in a different city in India itself, gives rise to that familiar worrisome feeling, a constant sense of anxiety lurking at the back of the mind, along with a lingering sense of guilt for having left them behind in the first place.
Shrinking families, vanishing support systems and busy careers, often result in parents being left to fend for themselves in large houses that pose a security threat, or in apartments with temperamental neighbors and cantankerous housing societies. Thousands of young Indians, either emigrating or changing cities each year for higher education, lucrative jobs or a better lifestyle, are forced to leave behind their greatest treasure – their elderly parents with broad smiles and cheerful exteriors, who hide behind their moist eyes untold stories of loneliness, anxiety, fear and uncertainty that they would rather not share with their children.
Apart from loneliness and the anxiety of being separated, times of illness and emergencies make even simple chores like going to the bank, standing in a queue for a gas cylinder or paying a bill a big challenge, going to the doctor or a dentist becomes an ordeal. Suffering from painful separation, lacking emotional support coupled with physical insecurity, both parents and children live on the hope of reuniting in the foreseeable future, only to find it more and more difficult as the years go by.
However, some children choose to return and do come back to stay with their parents either on a different floor of the same house or in an adjoining floor of a block of flats in the same building. This not only gives elderly parents a facade of independent living yet enables keeping an eye on them to assist them as and when required .
Life rolls on, time flies and very soon, since parents normally do not outlive their children, you have the reverse of the “empty nest ” syndrome. With the passing of the parents it is the children’s turn now to be left alone and face that peculiar emptiness in their lives! They face a void, the anchors that influenced their lives are now gone, their ample presence had been felt on numerous occasions in different ways, actually their proximity had been enough for they knew parents were always there for them. With the parent’s house verily becoming a shrine, simply going back to the house gives rise to a strange indescribable yet painful vacuum, a feeling of emptiness and a realization that they now need to pick up the threads and face the world with fortitude, all by themselves.
While we often hear of elderly parents being left alone and pining for company, there are countless loving and dutiful children who change countries, even cities, sacrificing lucrative careers in the process, to support their parents in their sunset years. Now its the children who have become alone, and got left behind with the burden of memories, an empty shrine to cater to and for a comparatively longer time then the period they joyfully enjoyed with their elderly parents. These children too deserve empathy, do spare a thought for them!
(Priyan R Naik is an author, columnist and independent journalist based in Bengaluru, India and regularly writes columns for Indian, Laotian, Bangladeshi and Malaysian newspapers.)
Floral artistry will lend its beauty to a charitable cause when Ikebana International Sri Lanka Chapter No. 262 holds its annual exhibition, “Blossoms of Hope”, on November 14 and 15 at the Duke’s Rooms, Cinnamon Lakeside.
The exhibition will feature arrangements individually created by members, showcasing their talent in the ancient Japanese art of ikebana. Part of the proceeds will go towards purchasing medication for the Children’s Ward at Apeksha Cancer Hospital, Maharagama.
This year’s exhibits will be grouped by flower type, allowing visitors to discover the different ways members interpret their chosen blooms. Each arrangement will reflect its creator’s approach to composition, bringing together the character of the flowers and the expressive possibilities of ikebana.
With careful attention to line, balance and space, ikebana encourages an appreciation of each element in an arrangement. A branch’s curve, a flower’s angle or the placement of a leaf can all contribute to the overall effect. There will be demonstrations by members held on both days at 4.00 p.m.
The tradition traces its roots to floral offerings at Buddhist altars after Buddhism was introduced to Japan in the sixth century. Over time, these offerings developed into an independent art form. Today, ikebana embraces both established forms and contemporary interpretations.
“Blossoms of Hope” will offer visitors an opportunity to experience this living tradition through the work of the chapter’s members. Its charitable purpose adds a further dimension to the exhibition, connecting the pleasure of viewing flowers with support for children receiving care at Apeksha Cancer Hospital.
The exhibition will be open on November 14 from 11.00 a.m. to 7.00 p.m. and on November 15 from 10.00 a.m. to 6.00 p.m., at the Duke’s Rooms, Cinnamon Lakeside
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