Sri Lanka Classics up to date: Nari Bena

Nari Béna or Hivala Saha Gama Duwa

Honey! Our son-in-law is a Jackal!

Another Srilankan folk tale updated!

by

Gyan Fernando

Illustrated by Kumaran

 Introduction: This story appeared in the Kumarodaya 5, a Sinhala text for the sixth grade in 1952 and can be found in later editions (Gunasena Publishers). It has been made into a play ("Nari Béna"). Our version has been modernised and jazzed up! The Gamarala in this story is a different one from the one that appears in other stories...

Once upon a time in a village just off Avissawella (in Sri Lanka) lived a family consisting of an elderly Gamarala (village elder), Mrs Gamarala and their teenage tearaway daughter.

McMalupaan: We took on the Big Mac!

The McMalupaan Corp

On the 22nd of April 2001, feeling rather militant and anti-American, we decided to take the mickey out of McDonalds and launch our own McMalupaan Corporation. This was largely to make fun out the Colombo 7 types who queued up for miles to get into the first McDonalds in Srilanka, mostly just to be seen. 

So we said:

"The philosophy of McDonald's is simple.....

Serve food that can be eaten with fingers. Cook fast and serve fast. (The food itself is only of minor importance). Bung it in an attractive wrapper with an eye-catching logo. Make your employees wear backward facing baseball caps. 

Teach them how to say "Can I Help You". Diversify into ethnic foods, especially when people go off traditional beefburgers because of Mad Cow Disease.

Thinking on the same lines, the Mad PageTM decided to introduce McMALUPAAN before our competition (i.e. The McDonald's Corporation) thinks of it!"

We gave our location as Punchi Borella and a lot of people fell for it! 

View the original article 

We went on to market McMalupaan, McMalupaan with Cheese Big McMalupaan McDelfries McVaddai and McPortello

We stopped short of marketing McKoththuroti 

For example we said: 

The Daily Ranil

The Daily Ranil

At the height (or bottom) of his career, we ran a one-off spoof newspaper titled "The Daily Ranil", making fun of Ranil Wickremesinghe, then the Prime Minister (or Pry Minister, as we called him) of the crazy republic.

            Have a look.

The Daily Ranil 

The Daily Ranil Features 

We also wrote "Ranil's Diary" for him. Have a look!

Ranil's Diary

Archives: Ranil's Diary

Australian Lanka Girl Has 42 Teeth!

TOOTHPASTE

At about the time that Crazylanka got on the web, Sri Lankan Australians started a sickly-sweet, goody-goody website called Ozlanka.

Amongst other things, they carried a glossy web magazine called estyle which basically consisted of a front cover with a picture of a well-fed and obese Sri Lankan-Australian, middle-aged female or a picture of a teenage Sri Lankan-Australian girl with a toothpaste smile.

The latter intrigued us and with a bit of photo manipulation, we did a one off spoof cover of the said magazine, calling it the "Toothpaste". 

It carried a picture of one of their fixed-smile models and it was headed "Australian Lanka Girl Has 42 Teeth".

We hope that the poor girl concerned has lived it down!

The Revised History of Sri Lanka

The Revised History of Sri Lanka 

(Abridged)

When we at Crazylanka first revised the History of Sri Lanka, our idea was to get rid of the boring bits, find the funny bits and jazz them up.

At that time it was received well when Sri Lankans had the ability to laugh at themselves in a self-effacing manner.

I am not sure if the sentiments are still the same. Nationalistic pride is important but so is the ability to see the funny side of things.

Without further commentary, here is the story about the arrival of the Portuguese in Sri Lanka which appeared in Crazylanka on the 24th of February 2001.

It is presented here in a re-formatted and very slightly revised form.

The Best of Crazylanka

Crazylanka.com

Crazylanka.com was first launched on the 1st of August 2002. Before that, it existed as Gyan's Madpage. 

In recent times, Crazylanka has been dormant but we thought that some of the hilarious material was worth another look!

So here we go!