About

a random photo of me from Flickr

Indi Samarajiva (CV)
indi@indi.ca

Location: Sri Lanka

This is always out of date

My name is Indrajit Samarajiva. My Montreal friends call me Indi. My parents and people in Ohio call me Jit. People in Sri Lanka call me both, but I think I prefer Indi.

I was born in Vancouver in 1982, while my parents were in Grad School there. My family is Sri Lankan. My dad Rohan (who I call Tha Tha) and mom, Sujata (Amma), grew up in Sri Lanka. They worked really hard and got into University of British Columbia and Simon Fraser, and I got born with a Canadian passport.

We moved to Sri Lanka when I was 3. We lived with my Achi for a while, I forgot English and learned Sinhalese, ate some fruit, stepped on the dog’s tail. When I was 5 me (and me two new sisters, one in Amma’s tummy) moved to the USA – Columbus, Ohio. Thatha taught Communications at Ohio State University and Amma worked in the Chemistry Department for a while, then for the Ohio Board of Regents. I forgot Sinhalese and learned English again.

I grew up in a typical US suburb. Rich, white, and boring. but good schools and safe. As soon as I got the hell out of high school I came to McGill University in Montreal, Quebec – which is my favorite city ever. I still love America, especially the Bill of Rights and the Constitution. And the Ohio State Buckeyes and the Boston Red Sox (for Merit).

I graduated from McGill with a degree in Cognitive Science. I’ve studied Psych, Linguistics, Education, Philosophy, and Computer Science. In my last year I learned about DNA and Brains. I also worked full-time for the McGill Faculty of Education (and took breaks for class). I guess I’d describe that job as Office Geek.

I live in my Colombo. I can be contacted via indi@indi.ca

Recent Comments

Monolithic Islam (5)

tastyjujubes: The Religion of Peace at work again: http://www.guar dian.co.uk/uk/2 013/may/22/wool wich-two-shot-i n-police-incide nt-live-coverag e

sharanga: Racial profiling is not racist if it works. Similarly, identifying groups among people is not wrong if it allows you to predict reality with reasonable accuracy. When you don’t know everything, you play the odds. For example, if I...

Dark Lord: Why is it so hard to buy pork anywhere in Sri Lanka? Most sellers don’t sell pork at all, or sell it only to known customers from a hidden storage at the back of the store, which goes like “don̵ 7;t tell anyone, we are...

40 Under 40 (6)

sharanga: Congratulations !

Malik: Looks like Mara and Co has blocked GossipLanka.com ????? What’s going on here??????????

Diyath: Congratulations Indi!.. All the best for your future tech endeavors!

Anti-Social Marketing (Nibras Bawa) (19)

David Blacker: Who cares, man? you’re still moaning on about a fight you lost months ago. It’s like the kid who gets his ass kicked then talk big later. You lost, you ran away like a whiney ponneya, and now you’re actually...

sharanga: A more accurate description would be I had my penis up your because you were refusing to answer a simple question. Now the fact that you thought I was not just Heshan, but also meechum just shows that you are stupid, and therefore your...

Chi Chi Hits The Scene, And A Referee (5)

sack: Indiz post about Gotabhaya had much more comments. http://indi.ca/ 2012/07/gotas-p uppy-hate/

Liberal One: He he, the article with the least number of comments out of Indi’s recent ones. Looks like no body wants to put their lives at risk by commenting on the wrong article. I’m off as well.

Recent Posts

Monolithic Islam:

Mohsin Hamid, author of How To Get Filthy Rich In Rising Asia, has a nice op-ed in the Guardian. Money quote for me was ‘Individuals are undeniably real. Groups, on the other hand, are assertions of opinion’. If you go buy news reports Muslims or Jews or Sri Lankans or any number of groups can appear monolithic and uniform. When you meet people, however, you find that they’re not. If you meet enough people you hopefully become aware of that tendency and judge people less by group identity in advance. Muslims, however, are quite publicly tarred with the same brush these days, and it really isn’t fair. Or accurate.

40 Under 40:

I’m happy to be featured in Echelon magazine’s 40 Under 40 feature, profiling young people who contribute to the economy in some way, mainly in business but also in terms of innovation and thought leadership. It’s an interesting article not just in that I’m in it (mainly for work on indi.ca and Kottu but also YAMU) but also in that the magazine takes a bit of a critical stance. It’s worth reading the editorial (which I can only find in print) where they describe that only a few women are included and that all of the 40 are from middle to upper middle class backgrounds.

Chi Chi Hits The Scene, And A Referee:

I won’t add too much commentary, but just read I guess. The youngest Rajapaksa, Rohitha (Chi Chi) has given an amazing interview to the Daily Mirror Life section, which is well worth a read. In other news, he also recently slapped a referee around in full public view at a rugby match. At least it seems that his elder brother restrained him.

Anti-Social Marketing (Nibras Bawa):

In 2009 this strange character appeared on the Sri Lankan Internet scene, getting angry, flaming, trolling whatever. Then he started naming anonymous bloggers, posting comments as people’s kids, nasty stuff, for which I removed him from Kottu. He also published some plagiarized stuff on Groundviews. He flamed out a bit more then disappeared. Until now. Now he’s back hosting a rather expensive social media event in Colombo, which is a bit ironic, seeing as he was known for being the most anti-social person the blogosphere had seen at the time.

The Arrest Of Azath Salley:

The chutzpah of this government knows no bounds. Every government since Independence has had to balance placating Sinhala nationalists (AKA racists) while at the same time actually running a sensible, inclusive nation that doesn’t send minority citizens, capital and foreign investment fleeing. Basically, they’ve had to pay lip service to nationalists while at the same time trying to run an actual nation. Every government has also generally failed, SWRD being killed by a nationalist monk and everyone after almost losing the country to various rebellions. In that context Mahinda is actually doing a better job by virtue of not being dead and not losing control of the country. But he’s still not doing a good job.