An enduring legacy

By Aditha Dissanayake

The boy held onto his father’s hand and bent his head to keep the wind from playing havoc with his already untidy hair. He wanted to raise one hand to sweep back the curls that kept falling into his eyes, but he dared not loosen the grip on the books he clutched tightly to his chest – books he had borrowed a few minutes ago from the Galle Public Library.

When they reached the Colombo road, he peered through the curls to look up at his tall, lean father. “If you finish reading them by next Saturday, we can come and return them and you can borrow two more books,” Father said, sweeping back the bothersome curls from his son’s forehead and peering into the boy’s eyes. The boy nodded and pressed the books even more tightly to his chest. He was certain he would finish reading them long before next Saturday. But he didn’t want to tell this to his father because he knew Thaththa was too busy on week days to take him to the library. But his father seemed to be reading his thoughts. “One day, when you grow up you can buy a lot of books and have a library of your own.” The boy nodded, his lips pursed in determination.

With five siblings at home, his father could not afford to spend money to buy books, but the boy was happy there were so many books in the library, and the walk from home to the library and back every Saturday was the highlight of his life. The second best thing that made the day so special was to sit next to his father on the two chairs in the front patio of their house on Richmond Hill road, each immersed in the books they had borrowed from the library. Every now and then, the boy raised his head from the book in his hand, looked at his father and daydreamed of building a library when he grew up, with all the books in the world so that he and his father need never run out of books to read. Little did he know the precious Saturdays spent with his father would soon come to an end.

The boy’s father passed away when he was 14, and the weekly visits to the library ceased. But he held on to the dream and when he grew up, he built a library, buying any book that interested him, from Richard Bach, to Somerset Maugham to Isac Asimov, to Darwin to Amavatura to the Mahavansa. Now that his father was no longer with him, he did the next best thing possible. He chose a woman who loved to read as his partner, shared his books with her and introduced the amazing, fulfilling world of books to his children. And his grandchildren.

The boy who walked home from the Galle Library, on that long forgotten Saturday is my father. The gentleman who held his hand is Albert Dissanayake, my grandfather, who left us before I ever got to see him or know him, but who continues to make a great impact on my life. It is as if I feel my grandfather’s love reaching across time and space each time I finish reading a book, and each time I hold one of my own published work in my hands. I am proud that the thread he created, by instilling the reading habit into his son, continues in our family, and will live on, in the generations to come with the grandchildren and the great grandchildren he never saw, all becoming not only avid readers but some of them, creative writers, themselves.

Looking at the years gone by, I realize, next to my parents, the books I read have been the most influential force in my life. It is my fascination with the words on the pages of books with the power to conjure brand new worlds that made me pursue a career as a writer, to try my own hand at waving a magic wand to draw readers into an imaginary world; a world that seems more real at times, than the real world we live in, right now.

I learned to uncover the deep psychological meanings behind words from Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Goncharov and Balzac. Gorky showed me the importance of learning from the lessons life offered me, while Les Misérables left my heart in shatters. I learned to be myself and ignore what the world wanted me to be from Jonathan Livingston Seagull, and that life’s rules apply to all of us regardless of our status, our wealth (or our academic qualifications), from King Lear; the strength to suppress our emotions from Ivanhoe and Newman Archer in The Age of Innocence and the beauty of love and passion from Dante, Neruda and Pushkin. Orwell and Hemingway taught me to write simple, clear prose, Michener gave me a free ticket to exotic destinations in Alaska, Hawaii and the South Pacific. Maeve Binchy and James Joyce took me to Ireland, Hardy to the countryside in Dorset, while Narayan introduced me to the aroma of fresh brewed coffee in Chennai. I learned how attorneys solved mysteries from Perry Mason and the power of a good teacher, from E. R. Braithwaite. Jerome K Jerome taught me to laugh at the absurdities in our daily lives, Murakami how not to write a novel and Jean Webster, the art of writing letters. Among a million other things from the trivia (the phrase ‘third time lucky’ from Silas Marner, and how much sailors hate barnacles from Captain Haddock) to the serious (Leonard Woolf’s Ceylon from Christopher Ondaatje, about pearls and spices of Sri Lanka from Dr. Rohan Pethiyagoda) I also learned how to cut a long story short from the short stories of Jeffrey Archer and Truman Capote.

Which means it is time to cut this long story short. But before I leave I must acknowledge the writers in the Sinhala literary canon who made a great impact on my life, most notably Martin Wickramasinghe with his Aravinda, whose decision not to study medicine influenced my own wish to say no to selecting subjects in the science stream at school. Sarathchandra’s Malagiya Aththo and all the work of Mahagama Sekera are treasure troves of hidden meanings which emerge and submerge depending on the age and the mood I am in whenever I read them while Dr. Gunadasa Amarasekera’s ‘Avuwa’ continues to give me sunstroke whenever I read his words. I also find Batuwangala Rahula Thera’s novels far superior to the works of modern Asian writers in translation which in turn inspired me to become a translator to create a niche for Sinhala literature in the canon of world literature.

I would like to end by dedicating this article to my grandfather. If not for him I would not be writing this today. And also to Old Daniel in Michener’s ‘Fires of Spring’ who taught me a long time ago about the value of books. To quote from memory, Daniel’s words, “Next to people, books are the most important thing in the world.” I am sure you agree.

aditha.dissanayake@gmail.com