What’s the Story: The Sri Lanka Podcast
Oct 19, 2026 · 19 min · 11 segments
How the obvious is almost never true – at least on the surface in Sri Lanka.
David SwarbrickHost
Just across the sea from Sri Lanka, a charismatic catwalk beautiful Bengali yogi Sri Aurobindo advised, "Turn all things to honey.
For many island commentators, 1958 came to be seen as the point of no return for the civil war that was to come.
Triggered by Solomon Bandaranaike's singular only Language Act of 1956, the anti-Tamil riots and pogroms that broke out claimed the lives of hundreds, some say well over 1,000 people.
For four days, the Colombo government did nothing, only declaring a state of emergency when the governor general insisted, but by then it was too late.
As bees turn nectar into honey, so too, in Aurobindo's logic, does any seeker extract the spiritual truth from experience, however horrible that experience is.
Decades later, Sri Lanka is still trying to extract truth from that experience and the 25-year-long war that flowed from it.
But as Sri Aurobindo pointed out, "No one can reach heaven who has not passed through hell." One of the very oldest songs ever to be remembered on this island, perhaps the oldest, goes, "The bees from yonder hills at Pal, Talawa, and Kadi suck nectar from the flowers and make the honeycomb.
Just across the sea from Sri Lanka, a charismatic catwalk beautiful Bengali yogi Sri Aurobindo advised, "Turn all things to honey.
For many island commentators, 1958 came to be seen as the point of no return for the civil war that was to come.
Triggered by Solomon Bandaranaike's singular only Language Act of 1956, the anti-Tamil riots and pogroms that broke out claimed the lives of hundreds, some say well over 1,000 people.
For four days, the Colombo government did nothing, only declaring a state of emergency when the governor general insisted, but by then it was too late.
As bees turn nectar into honey, so too, in Aurobindo's logic, does any seeker extract the spiritual truth from experience, however horrible that experience is.
Decades later, Sri Lanka is still trying to extract truth from that experience and the 25-year-long war that flowed from it.
But as Sri Aurobindo pointed out, "No one can reach heaven who has not passed through hell." One of the very oldest songs ever to be remembered on this island, perhaps the oldest, goes, "The bees from yonder hills at Pal, Talawa, and Kadi suck nectar from the flowers and make the honeycomb.
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