පවුල් දෙකක් සමග දීගකෑම ( රාවයේ 25 වැනි සංවත්සර කලාපය වෙනුවෙන් ලියූ ලිපියකි.)
Written for Ravaya’s 25th-anniversary issue, this personal essay describes how Ivan’s family says he has two families: his wife and three children, and Ravaya. Gandhi, his lifelong hero, failed as a father, as did Mandela and King, and Ivan resolved not to. He recalls weekends at home in Galle, his family’s refusal to exploit Ravaya, and his son’s reply to taunts after President Kumaratunga attacked Ivan on television and a fake Ravaya was circulated. But Ravaya was not always sensitive in return: reports on a school principal led to reprisals that drove his son, a six-time national chess champion, out of school; attacks on Dian Gomes cost the boy his sponsor; and the paper wounded friends such as Suranjith, Hemasiri Fernando, Susanthika Jayasinghe and Vimukthi Jayasundara. Critics, he says, must remember who their friends are.
ජනතා විමුක්ති පෙරමුණේ දෙකඩවීම
Prompted by a 71-year-old reader in Kandy who hoped the JVP’s breakaway ‘people’s struggle’ group might revive Marxism, Ivan reflects on Marxism as a secular religion whose paradise collapsed with the socialist world, leaving devoted followers stranded. He remembers his lawyer and friend Suranjith, who gave years to the Communist Party, and the short story he wrote in prison after 1971 predicting that Mao’s own people would one day strike his statue. He recalls Leslie Goonewardene’s view that the LSSP split merely scattered a brilliant young generation — a warning for the new group — and argues that the old Left’s intellectual, liberal-democratic tradition deserves respect, that Wijeweera’s rejection of it was wrong, and that the dissidents stop their self-criticism short of Wijeweera and the two insurrections.