It was heartening to hear that a reprint of D.B. Dhanapala's 'Among Those Present' is now in the bookstores. The news prompted me to glance through the copy I had bought in June 1962 immediately after it was released as a M.D. Gunasena publication. I had pinned a cutting from the 'Daily News' on it. It is a tribute paid to DBD immediately after his death in March 1971 by J.L.F. (J L Fernando), an old stager at Lake House who, during my time was the Chief Editorial Executive in charge of all administrative matters relating to the editorial staff in the Esmond Wickremasinghe era.
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| The maestro at work |
In a piece titled 'A legend in our time' JLF talked about "the 'gaunt stranger' from India who came to our midst in Lake House in the 1930s chosen by the old Chief ; the young man who spoke with a fascinating drawl but wrote with such lightning speed that his was often phonetic spelling which a colleague had to read through before sending down to the Stone; Churchillian purple patches all the way similes manufactured to suit the Ceylonese – once describing something ludicrously comic he wrote "like seeing Sir Baron Jayatilleka in boy scouts' uniform".
The blue page of the 'Daily News' with his Janus feature articles and sentimental schoolgirls writing to the Editor beseeching photographs of Janus and Mr Hulugalle, our Guru , puckishly suggesting that we send pictures of a muscular, ape-like Sub on whose bald head a coconut fell one day and the coconut broke; Dhanay, the bachelor, living in a flat in Lauries Place with a dainty Kandyan rabana for a knocker; a born artist, who in those days wooed and won another artist, a lissome sculptress for a wife; a gentle man, a 'gentleman' in word and deed. That was Dhanay."
Amongst the treasured items in my little library is a scrap book with cuttings from the 'Daily News' collected by my father who was the head master (in today's terms 'principal') of a bilingual school – as the English schools were called in the colonial era. In the scrap book are many articles written by Janus. Even prior to the feature articles that DBD wrote under his pen name, he had been writing to the Daily News. 'Gandhi – What Will History Make of Him?' is one such article with the by-line 'By D. B. Dhanapala M.A. who writes from Allahabad'. It had appeared on November 28, 1932.
Just as DBD picked well known names for his 1962 publication 'Among Those Present', in 1937 he had selected renowned persons of the day for a series titled 'Men of Ceylon'. The first article was on Sir Don Baron Jayatilaka and the introductory paragraph reads: "Sixty years ago a little lad of ten would tarry a while at a wayside coffee boutique to listen to the wiseacres of Kelaniya on his way back home from the village Pirivena. Often in the conversations of the village gossips there would crop up a glamorous personality of a certain Mr. Brown – a Knight of Hulftsdorp – who had come into public favour by the great legal battles he had won. Whenever the wise ones talked of Mr. Brown they would lower their voices as if to indicate a verbal salaam. Whether at the wayside boutiques or at the feet of the elders at home the little lad listened fascinated to the tales of fabulous wealth Mr. Brown was earning – tales no doubt with no small amount of judicious exaggeration.
"A dream was slowly born in the impressionable mind. The little child would be another Mr Brown."
He then traces how the lad's father brought the shy child over the ferry-bridge across the Kelaniya (river) to Wesley College by which time he was well versed in Buddhist elementary texts and rudiments of Pali grammar. He calls the boy "a scholar in spirit and a monk in manner." Tracing Sir Baron's later life, Janus refers to the first Buddhist Knight who had become "if not a kind of national institution, at least, a national ceremonial fashion in Colombo itself; like the piano or the platinum ring. It was not much of a fashionable wedding if Sir Baron did not drink cold water to the health of the bride. And a committee without him would sound as if it had not much 'body' to recommend it."
He describes an interview he had with Sir Baron who sat in a sarong in the verandah of his home in Horton Place one moonlit night. "It was circumstances that made me a politician," Sir Baron told him and went on to unfold a fairy tale – "a long long climb along a winding road that took a great deal of time to cover".
In his inimitable style, Janus writes about the schoolmaster (at Ananda College) following his Guru Olcott, the political apprentice and social uplifter, agitator for reform of the Constitution, and sums up Sir Baron as "a pundit, a pedagogue, a shrewd editor, burning 'socialite' and servant of the Buddha."
The series covered the Speaker of the State Council -Sir Vaithilingam Duraiswamy, Minister of Agriculture-D.S. Senanayake, the great schoolmaster – L. E. Blaze of Kingswood, Maha Mudaliyar Sir Solomon Dias Bandaranaike, the English 'gamarala' – H.R. Freeman and Minister of Local Administration – S.W. R. D. Bandaranailke whom he called "Man with a future behind him".
It's fascinating reading by a man whose choice of words and style of writing biographies is unique. |
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