 “ Sunday Times” columnist Thalif Deen and his Inter Press Service (IPS) colleagues were the centre of attention at the “glass house” last week (May 12) when journalists, diplomats, UN officials and other well wishers celebrated the 45th anniversary of IPS and the 30th anniversary of its UN Bureau. Deen is a key figure in both. Two visionaries, an Italian-Argentinean economist Roberto Savio, and an Argentinean political scientist Pablo Piacentini, launched IPS as a source of “alternative news” dispatched by regular mail to media outlets in Europe and Latin America.
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A few weeks before he died in a Singapore hospital on May 18th last year, Manik Sandrasagra, the mercurial former impresario and film director reborn as a heritage guru, phoned and said he’d come over and buy two copies of my book Sindbad in Serendib, one for himself, one for his brother. We had an affable chat, unusually revisited our sketchy cinematic past, and he referred in particular to one project we never made, “Bloody Mary”, urging me to at least resurrect the story.