BY RANDIMA ATTYGALLE
My husband and I would drop my daughter in school and park on top of the Flower Road near the kade at the turn to Ananda Coomaraswamy Mawatha to pick a newspaper. From newspapers to seeni sambol paan, Palm Super Stall would have everything. On one such day, a newspaper man sporting a Nalanda College cap amused us. His Nalanda College cap, a hand-me-down probably, was a double-amusement with many Nalanda-Attygalle boys in the family! A rare sight today when the print has gone digital and the newspaper man is no longer a daily visitor, the sight of the old uncle kindled memories of yesteryear…
Plain tea and Daily News
Newspaper man on flower road which kindled memories
Athamma would sip her cup of mid-day plain tea gently swaying in her rocking chair. The ritual would take hours sometimes and her hot plain tea would eventually turn into iced tea… Her gaze is fixed at the entry of our compound with its winding path which would lead to the house on the hillock. Athamma’s eyes sparkle as she spots the newspaper man peddling up. On a weekday if we happened to be at home, I would trail behind her as the paper man (whose name sadly I never found out) would pull out the Daily News from his neatly packed wooden box and handover the day’s copy to athamma with reverence. I would be in awe of the neatly stacked box of papers. I would marvel at his skill for packing… Then I would breathe in the whiff of the fresh ink, the scent which would linger with me for the rest of my life…
Athamma would read the entire day.
On a rare occasion if the newspaper man didn’t turn up, she would sulk saying “paththare nethuwa kewe ne wage” (going without the paper is like having no meal) To my eight or ten-year-old ears, it sounded exaggeration then… When atha was there, if at all he was up from his mid-day nap when we returned from school, he would look over the Daily News and acknowledge our arrival. On Sunday mornings when we would hop across to see atha, he would be seeing immersed in a Sunday paper, occupying his special chair in our patio.
Then there were Sun days- the memory of which is quite bleak to me as I was around six years when aththamma would flip the pages of the now defunct pale-looking newsprint. The pages looked very kana-patai or dull looking and I was wondering what on earth she found interesting among those unexciting pages. Her Wednesdays were marked by Lanka Woman, old copies of which were hardly discarded by aththamma.
Wijeya and Mihira days
Then there were Wijeya, Mihira, Surathala and Bindu days dedicated to young readers. Amma would make a bundle of them, bound with strong twine rope. In an era long before the internet and even photocopying, amma’s wisdom would save the day- when paper cuttings, pictures etc. were needed for our baby classes, it was our bundles of Wijeya, Mihira, Surathala and Bindu that would come to our rescue.
Growing paper romance
Come Friday when we were nearing adolescence, Ravaya for its then off-the-beaten track journalism in the vernacular was a sure find on our dining table. On Saturday evenings, our long dining table would be ready for a feast of Sinhala papers (as the Sunday Sinhala print would come out by Saturday evening). Divaina, Irida Lankadeepa, Silumina would compete with each other as they were literally from three different newspaper companies!
I would savour Kasuri’s wata rawuma in Divaina particularly. Silumina ran a series of famous murder cases in Sri Lanka to which I looked forward to every Saturday. The features which would live and breathe the Sri Lankan sentiments at grassroots would stir me and I would slowly fall in love with the print…
Daily News was too high-brow for the eight-year-old me. But its Children’s Page struck a chord. I would make by debut as a ‘writer’ with the four-lined verse of mine:
“ It rains on cats
It rains on dogs
I make paper boats
And see them sail”
When it appeared in print, I was on cloud number nine! Amma kept the cutting for a long time. Little did I know that my four-lined verse would take me on a long poetic- journey. For my 21st Birthday amma and thaththa made an unusual gift of a poetry book in print for me. Born to a family of kavi and poetry lovers, I still indulge in my passion privately.
I would become a childhood celebrity in school through Daily News Children’s Page. Later amma would get me to become a member of Funday Times– children’s section of Sunday Times. My friends would comment that they read a poem or an essay of mine and my English teachers in school would encourage me further. My Grade 9 English Teacher- Mrs. Rohini Weerasinghe would cut them out and put them up on our class noticeboard- a gesture which moved me deeply. I was fortunate enough to be blessed by her having clinched journalism awards many years later.
Sunday lunch and newspapers
Sunday Times which launched me as a journalist
Sunday was marked by not just a feast of a lunch, but also by English newspaper reading. Thaththa would buy every paper available in the market. I can hardly recollect a Sunday without Sunday Observer, Sunday Island and Sunday Times. As the editions got thicker over time with supplements added to them, thaththa, known for his perfectionism would ‘staple’ the paper, as he could not tolerate pages going missing!
In a family of avid newspaper readers, my brother was an exception. While he would toss aside any paper that would come his way, I would envy the professional ‘bylines’ in the papers, mine confined only to the Youth Page of the Sunday Island and the Mirror Magazine of Sunday Times still… Years later when I shared my first teenage write up which appeared in the Sunday Island with its Editor Mr. Manik de Silva who became my mentor, he was quite amused.
ABC’s of Journalism
Having done my A/Ls and awaiting University admission and following Law Entrance Classes, I was utterly bored. I wanted to do something productive than another course of studies. From nowhere our family friend, Aunty Sunita (Sunita Jayasinghe Shanthakumar) called one Saturday morning to ask amma if I would be interested in trying my hands on ‘subbing’(editing) at Sunday Times as one of her journalist friends working there has told of opportunities available for promising young journalists. I was perplexed. I was excited and nervous at the same time. To be part of the one of the most respected newspapers in the country was too tempting to resist.
I can hardly recollect a day my father was ever late to pick me up from school. Thaththa who stood at the school gate even before the bell rang for 14 years of my school life, thaththa who never permitted me to stay at a friend’s birthday party beyond 10 o’clock in the night, thaththa who never let us go galivanting, dropped his 19-year-old daughter, who was barely out of school, at the gates of Wijeya Newspapers on one bright October morning in 1999.
Rest is history….
A whole new world
It is now as a matured woman, a seasoned journalist and a mother of a 17-year-old myself, I marvel at the bold decision my parents made. If amma taught me my first words and unearthed the journalist to be, thaththa gave me the wings to fly. When I recollect my sheltered girlhood, I still marvel at thaththa’s bold nod to allow me to fly from his nest to a grown-up world of enormous freedom and unlimited opportunities with no reservations.
The Bohemian world of journalists with its trappings could be that of a space to take advantage of. For a young 19-year-old it was a new world of liberties. I’m ever grateful to my parents for that faith they had in me that ‘letting go’ would not be exploited by me.
Call of the print
Upali Newspapers which brought out the best in me
Having completed my legal education and qualified as a lawyer, when I opted to turn down fortunes offered on a platter to eat the humble pie at the offices of Sunday Times once more, it raised many eyebrows, even those of my editors. When most parents would have been aghast or perhaps even heartbroken, amma and thaththa simply accepted it as the most natural thing… They took pride in every story of mine, they would continue to nurture my first love.. Each time I would clinch an award, they would beam, more proud as parents than the day I donned the lawyer’s cloak…
At the beginning I was hurt and even bitter that my brother never followed my work. Todate he may have read just a handful of stories of mine! But over the years, I came to accept that although he had no patience to read, he was and is still proud of his sister in his own inimitable way…
Later, when my better half Sumedha, with his wisdom beyond years, guided me into the wings of Sunday Island’s Chief, Mr. Manik de Silva, my career took a u-turn. There was no looking back.
If the cake was baked at the Sunday Times and later at the now defunct Nation, the final icing on it was made possible at the Sunday Island where my best version came out.
Today I have diversified myself- my career has grown beyond journalism.
Our dining table is no longer heaped up with Sunday newspapers. My parents too have become tech-savvy and read the papers online- that too not as the ritual they used to. Print has changed its face, yet the good old paththara kole still continues to stir something deep in me- it will forever remain my first love…
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