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Tikiri & Co

Sri Lankan folk tales and legends, featuring hand crafted art dolls and stop motion puppets.

03/05/2026

It's the international Leopard day today- 3rd May.
My leopards... still trying to get to Lenama.

13/03/2026

Sigiri apsaras- animated.

06/03/2026

Megha Latha

The Cloud-Vine of Sigiriya

Megha Latha is inspired by the same ethereal women of the Sigiriya frescoes, created during the reign of King Kashyapa I in the 5th century CE. These paintings, once numbering in the hundreds, were part of a grand artistic vision that transformed Sigiriya into both fortress and dreamscape.

Her name weaves together ‘Megha’ (මේඝ), meaning dark/rain cloud, and ‘Latha’ (ලතා), meaning vine. Together, they suggest softness, movement, and continuity - qualities long associated with the Sigiriya women, whom some historians describe as “cloud maidens” descending from the heavens with floral offerings.

Megha Latha’s darker skin tone, blue-and-gold attire, and the blue water lily (nil manel) that she cradles reinforce this celestial reading.

The Sigiri graffiti, composed by anonymous admirers centuries after the paintings were made, offers rare intimate reactions to these figures. One translated sentiment declares:
“Like flames of gold on the rock, they speak without words.”
Though informal and personal, these verses reveal how deeply the women of Sigiriya moved those who encountered them.

Megha Latha reflects that quiet power—serene, contemplative, and timeless. She is not named in history, yet she carries the weight of many interpretations: goddess, royal lady, ritual bearer, or living cloud. In her stillness, the ancient mystery of Sigiriya continues to breathe.

27/02/2026

Vijju Latha
The Lightning-Vine of Sigiriya

Vijju Latha draws her spirit from the famed Sigiriya Apsara frescoes of Sri Lanka- paintings that still glow across the western rock face of the Sigiriya fortress nearly fifteen centuries after their creation.

Sigiriya was transformed into a royal citadel in the 5th century CE by King Kashyapa I (477–495 CE), who crowned the monolithic rock with palaces, gardens, and walls alive with colour. Along a sheltered gallery, he commissioned paintings of unnamed women—bare-breasted, bejewelled, and floating against cloud-like backdrops—figures that continue to inspire debate and wonder. Scholars have proposed they are celestial Apsaras, royal consorts & priestesses performing ritual offerings, or even personifications of clouds and lightning, drifting between heaven and earth.

Vijju-Latha embodies the latter vision. Her name combines ‘Vijju’ (විජ්ජු), meaning lightning, and ‘Latha’ (ලතා), meaning a graceful vine or creeper—a symbol of swift brilliance entwined with feminine elegance. Her pale complexion, red-orange hued attire, and the Sapu flower she bears evoke warmth, movement, and sudden radiance, echoing the fiery pigments still visible in the ancient frescoes.

Centuries after Kashyapa’s reign, visitors etched their responses into the mirror wall of Sigiriya. One famous Sigiri graffiti verse (8th–10th century), paraphrased in English, reads in essence:

“These golden-hued ladies have stolen my thoughts; my mind no longer belongs to me.”
Such lines remind us that these women were never merely painted—they were felt.

Vijju Latha stands as an homage to that enduring spell: a fleeting flash of beauty, forever suspended between rock, sky, and imagination.

10/02/2026

Time flies... 5 years young

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