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Kala Korner - by Dee Cee

Master journalist's pen portraits
The much-respected journalist D. B. Dhanapala was best known among English newspaper readers as a brilliant columnist. He wrote under the pen name 'Janus' in the Ceylon Daily News after he returned from Allahabad University armed with a Master's degree. Sinhala readers recognise him as the Editor who revolutionised Sinhala newspapers first with the 'Lankadipa' and then with the 'Dawasa'. Not many may remember him as the author of some well-written books.

Those who have read them found them to be interesting because of his lucid style and simple presentation. Quite by chance, the other day I came across two of his early works - 'Eminent Indians' published in 1947 and 'The Story of Sinhalese Painting' (1957). He introduces 'Eminent Indians' as "sketches written in the course of a journalistic career as routine tasks". Starting with Mahatma Gandhi, he covers 15 prominent Indians of the day. There are two more in the collection - Ven Walpola Rahula and Ananda K Coomaraswamy.

Let's sample his style. The opening paragraph on Gandhi reads: "There was a time when it could be safely said that next to the Taj Mahal at Agra, Mahatma Gandhi was the greatest advertisement that India ever had. In fact there is a story of how a confused English woman on her return from India had boasted of having seen Mahatma Gandhi by moonlight! Anyway that certainly would have been a better sight than the spectacle of beholding the Taj Mahal in a loin cloth!"

He begins the narrative of Jawaharlal Nehru thus: "Tall in stature -like a father's secret ambition for his son. Dignified but not stilted in bearing -like a song that has roused a nation. Simple and yet vigorous in manner -like the prose style of a modern master. Brave, vibrant eyes which remind one vaguely of momentous moments. A sad, tired smile. A face quivering with impatience -like a prophecy awaiting fulfillment. And a scintilating personality every pore alive with character".

To author Dhanapala, Sir Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan was "the twentieth century equivalent of the ancient Hindu Rishi; the inspired philosopher at whose feet the temples lose their guile". He compares the glance of "the nightingale of India", Sarojini Naidu, to "a newspaper headline-brief and impressive and sums up all her feelings". Vallabhbhai Patel was "the Chief of Staff of Satyagraha", who had an index card mind.

Though to many at the time, Venerable Walpola Rahula was "a frightening young monk", Dhanapala describes him as "a mild mannered monk, precise as a dictionary definition, thin as a slice of bacon, with thick lenses on his nose, a nervous shy smile on his lips and winning words on his tongue with which he put everybody at ease in a minute". On Dr. Ananda Kentish Coomarasawamy he wrote: "While a whole world from China to Chile has bowed in rapt veneration for over quarter of a century before his mighty giant only Ceylon has been vaguely unconscious that such a person even exists, let alone realizing that he is a Ceylonese".

As the other veteran journalist, H. A. J. Hulugalle described him, Dhanapala was a master of the art of writing biographical sketches and was very knowledgeable on all matters relating to Eastern art and culture.

Sinhalese painting
Dhanapala introduced his work 'The Story of Sinhalese Painting' as "merely an outline of a vast subject which has been neglected hitherto both by the scholar and the layman - nothing but a journalist's impressions of art work in Ceylon". He refers to fragments of paintings found in 'Kurandaka Lena', identified as the Karambagala, a cave near Ridiyagama, a village six miles from Ambalantota as possibly the earliest bit of painting of which there is actual evidence. Another fragment of two figures, a male and a female, was found on a rock boulder at Gonagolla near Ampara. These are believed to have been done in the 3rd Century A.C.

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