“I’m still a child at heart”
Snapshot from Times past: The young Sybil (in saree) with Sita Jayawardene
It was 1948. Blissfully oblivious to the new political landscape in the country, 19-year-old Sybil de Silva, in a blue pinafore, appeared before the management of the Times of Ceylon Group. Having bid adieu to school – Holy Family Convent, Bambalapitiya she wanted to be a journalist.
“Once a journalist, always a journalist,” Sybil Wettasinghe who has defined the shape and form of Lankan children’s literature says with a smile: Loved as ‘Sybil nenda’ by generations of readers- the young who continue to be hypnotized by her mischievous “Umbrella thief” and the ‘older’ who are never allowed to forget the child in them among her pages of ‘The Child in Me’, Sybil is turning the 90th page of her book of life, and readying for an exhibition of her work.
The six-year-old who left Gintota for Colombo with a heart full of ‘aththamma’s folk tales’ found wrestling with ‘cutlery’ and ‘social decorum’ championed by convent education, a futile exercise. When her lunch of prawns and murunga arrived, “I simply couldn’t compromise the taste of my favourite dishes with cutlery, so I waited till the nuns took off and relished them with my fingers amidst protests from fellow girls who vowed that they’d report me,” she chuckles.
Still creating: Sybil at work. Pic by Indika Handuwala
Turning down a career in architecture, she was handpicked by the Headmaster of the Royal Primary School, H.D. Sugathapala to illustrate his Navamaga Standard Five Reader. He had spotted the 15-year-old’s drawings at an exhibition at the Colombo Art Gallery.
April 1, 1948 was a red letter day. Draped in a new saree her mother had bought for the occasion from Pettah, her hair in a formal ‘konde’ the 19-year-old was presented to the doyen of journalism, D.B.Dhanapala, the Editor-in-Chief of Lankadeepa. The youngest and the only female scribe at Lankadeepa, she took on the weekly ‘Saturday Strip’, giving life to characters and tales from her Gintota childhood. “Most readers believed the creator of this Saturday strip of folk poems and illustrations was a man, misreading my name and when news spread that it was a young girl, there were inquisitive visitors to the Lankadeepa office.” The visits, as Sybil recollects today, came to a halt when Mr. Dhanapala ran a newspaper account of his gifted new recruit with her photograph! Turning a deaf ear to those who urged Mr. Dhanapala to ‘drill some sense’ to the girl who was sketching ‘nonsensical figures’, he encouraged her to discover her own forte. “Some even proposed Heywood mentoring for me and Mr. Dhanapala wouldn’t hear any of it,” reminisces Sybil.
Best fan and critic: Sybil with husband Dharmapala Wettasinghe
Bored with just her weekly Lankadeepa strip, and with enough time to spare to collect books with her monthly journalistic salary of Rs.60, Sybil one day boldly strode into the offices of Sita Jayawardene who compiled the then Times of Ceylon Women’s Page and asked for additional work. Soon she was illustrating Sooty Banda’s caricatures of Colombo socialites for The Times.
Moving to the newly launched Janatha paper of the Lake House Group in 1952 was a turning point for Sybil both personally and professionally. While the Chief Editor Denzil Peiris fed her imagination, young Chief Sub Editor, Dharmapala Wettasinghe implored her to write a children’s story for his sake! Not only was born a story which still keeps travelling across the globe, but a romance too bloomed culminating in the nuptial knot between DharmapalaWettasinghe and Sybil de Silva in 1955. “He was my best fan and my best critic,” recollects Sybil who owes her fame as a globally acclaimed writer to her late husband.
The children’s story Kuda Hora (Umbrella Thief) which Sybil initially wrote and illustrated for ‘his sake’ in the Janatha paper, became a book which is now translated into several languages. At a time when Sinhala literature for children constituted direct translations of European children’s stories and schools texts with a ‘scattering of illustrations’ as Regi Siriwardena once noted, Kuda Hora ushered a new era in children’s literature. “Kuda Hora was the first Sinhala book to completely marry words and pictures.”
A mother of four, Sybil is a grandmother to an entire nation of children. Daughter Kusala, a writer herself, finds simplicity of syntax and unique choice of language the best part of her mother’s work. “Above all, she writes from the heart,” says Kusala.
Together with brother Vinod who steers Adith Publishers, the main publisher of their mother’s books, Kusala is hosting an exhibition of Sybil’s latest illustrations at the Lionel Wendt Art Gallery on Sybil’s 90th birthday on October 31 at the Lionel Wendt Art Gallery. The exhibition will feature her latest works- The Magic Silver Tree which is translated into Japanese and the Story of Siddhartha.
Despite the ‘longer’ breaks she is forced to take to rest her eyes today, Sybil is busy at her desk every day immersed in the child’s world, surrounded by her pots of ink and birds who chirp outside her window. Coveted titles and international accolades which have crowned her, have only made this iconic writer humble. Sharing her watchword of life, Sybil says: “Be your best friend and love yourself, you will succeed.”
“I’m still a child in heart,” Sybil adds…
The exhibition, Celebrating Sybil at 90, will open at the Lionel Wendt Art Gallery on October 31 at 4.30 p.m. and will continue on November 1 from 10 a.m. to 7.30 p.m.