GOLDEN AGE OF THE SILUMINA

by ECB Wijeyesinghe

The Lake House Sinhala Weekly is 50 years today (Mar. 30, 1980).

All the blithe spirits that used to haunt Lake House are bound to return from their Elysian fields today to rejoice over a notable birthday anniversary. Fifty years ago, almost to the very day, was born one of the miracles of modern journalism, the Sinhalese newspaper that reaches the crest of its Golden Age today after five decades of glorious effort and endeavour.

In the process it has passed and surpassed all the high-watermarks in circulation touched by any publication in any language east of Suez. It is an achievement of which not only Lake House but Sri Lanka can be proud. To the average Sinhala newspaper reader, a Sunday without the Silumina is inconceivable. It is something he looks forward to for one whole week.

The secret is that it caters to the whole family and husbands, wives and children scramble for their own particular page when the paper appears on the doorstep, sometimes causing minor domestic discords. That is why its publication has strained the resources of the most efficient Rotary presses, and given endless headaches to the Circulation department, who have to obey the inexorable laws of supply and demand.

THE START

But it was not ever thus. D. R. Wijewardene, the Napoleon of the local newspaper world, invaded the Sinhala Sunday paper business with considerable trepidation. He started off at the height of the Great Depression. The year 1930 was perhaps this country’s gloomiest period for the commercial world, with coconuts selling at five cents each, and rubber and tea similarly scraping the barrel. Salaries were cut all round by ten per cent, and everything appeared to be wrong except the stars which had moved into the right places for a great adventure.

Wijewardene, people said, had the devil’s own luck. But he had more than that. He was a man of vision and was a believer in the old adage that anything that goes down must eventually come up. He also had tremendous faith in his staff whom he had chosen with meticulous care. For seven years the idea of a Sinhala Sunday newspaper was simmering in his head.

That is, ever since the phenomenal success of the Sunday Observer which enlivened the day of rest and gave people something better to do than spend their time either playing the card game known as “cutting the baby” or hugging the bottle. At this time the Dinamina was going great guns, with a splendid staff, some of whom were destined to win literary laurels abroad.

When the history of Lake House comes to be re-written, there are two Martins whose names will be remembered. They are Martin the personal peon of D. R. Wijewardene, and Martin Wickremasinghe, the eminent journalist, novelist and philosopher. Martin the peon was always immaculately clad in white and sported a tortoise-shell comb with gleaming points which gave him a Mephistophilean look. He also wore a black belt, like a Karate expert, but that meant nothing because he was a physically harmless man.

It was not his fault, however, that he was paid to be the harbinger of doom to most of the staff who were at the receiving end of the Boss’s wrath. Even Martin Wickremasinghe, the editor of the Dinamina at the time, dreaded the appearance of Martin the peon who stood at the half-open swing-door and with bulging eyes merely nodded his head and said “Katha karanawa”. That meant more than a friendly tete-a-tete with the boss. The demeanour of Martin, the peon was like the barometer that indicated the temperature in the Managing Director’s room.

When the Silumma was started Wijewardene entrusted the new weekly to Martin Wickremasinghe’s able assistant Piyasena Nissanka. The two men were a study in contrast. Martin Wickremasinghe was a mercurial character, an unorthodox Buddhist, a brilliant self taught philosopher and a student of comparative religions. He was born south of the border down Koggala way.

Nissanka was a stolid son of Siyane Korale, a truly rural and conservative product of his village, the gracious Gampaha gamarala whose ambition was to become a Vedamahatmaya. In fact, Nissanka pursued his Ayurvedic studies in Calcutta for some time, until they were cut short by his father’s death. But he had the instincts of a physician and the gift of “ath vasi”, which he applied successfully when he became a journalist, and began to feel the pulse of the nation.

As the first copies of the Silumina rolled off the presses and began to capture the imagination of the masses, Professor C. E. Cooray Bulathsinghala, who was then known as the Astrologer Royal, predicted a fantastic future for the new weekly. The Professor, who was then in and out of Lake House, used to watch the infant publication growing, as the advertisers would say, in vim, vigour and vitality and take most of the credit for its success.

PREDICTION

He seemed to suggest that he was responsible not only for giving the auspicious time for its start, but also for the lucky sound of its title. It appears that Bulathsinghala had said that any name beginning with “Sil” should hit the jackpot, but it was the Boss himself who completed the title in order to make it rhyme with Dinamina and thus make it bear a family resemblance to the daily paper that was already a power in the land.

Nissanka, the first Editor of the Silumina, was a sound thinker, though he did not have the flair of Martin Wickremasinghe. It was an amusing experience for other inhabitants of Lake House to hear Nissanka composing an editorial. He would write a paragraph or two and recite them in a loud voice in order to test their effect on the aural sensibilities of his listeners. Generally the audience consisted of a couple of junior journalists. From the reactions on their faces, Nissanka knew whether his shots had hit the target.

FICTION

Nissanka’s modus operandi reminded me very much of the methods of a trio of Vedamahatmayas, who treated me for typhoid long long ago. One of them would hum a Sanskrit verse and if the diagnosis was right and the going was good, the others would take up the refrain and continue chanting with zest until a junior acolyte took down the drugs and wrote the prescription. The result was a “kasaya” or decoction which, when distilled into one cup, seemed to put the Witch’s brew in “Macbeth” in the shade. It is a curious thing that a large number of journalists have made their name writing fiction. Cynics may say that it is nothing to crow over, because that is what they have been doing all their lives.

Martin Wickremasinghe and Piyasena Nissanka excelled in writing stories with a rural background. Some of Martin’s work has passed the linguistic borders into the international realm of literature and translations have appeared in English, Russian, Chinese, Rumanian and Czechoslovakian journals. Nissanka’s vignettes of village life such as the “Oya Badda Gedera” (The House by the Stream), are still sought after, especially the cameo of the sprightly damsel who has been described by the author as the “Magul Kadana Baba Noni”.

To the uninitiated, I must explain that it concerns the life-story of a woman oozing with sex-appeal whom that perspicacious reviewer, Edwin Ariyadasa, once referred to as a one-woman demolition squad who could be depended upon to break up not only made-marriages, but marriages in the making. There is supposed to be a Baba Noni in almost every village and the name of Nissanka’s fictitious character has passed into the language as a term of opprobrium.

Besides Martin Wickremasinghe and Nissanka there was one other unforgettable character who bore the slings and arrows of the Boss in order to keep the Silumina well ahead of its rivals. He was Srilal Liyanage. He succeeded the two giants in the editorial chair but managed to quit it just in time in order to enjoy his retirement.

On Saturday night, in my time, he used to be the sole occupant of the Silumina office. With his gaunt figure, his unkempt hair and dishevelled clothes one could easily mistake him for an apparition. His only redeeming features were an infectious smile and a razor-sharp mind which he utilized to give cutting double-edged headlines. Liyanage is still going strong and lives on his little estate in Nugegoda where his jak trees are thriving like the Biblical palms and producing enough kos to feed half of Colombo.

Today, while kavun, kokis and kiri bath flow out of the Silumina’s sanctum and the Golden Jubilee celebrations reach their climax there will be one thought uppermost in everybody’s mind. That will be how on earth Edmund Ranasinghe the present Editor, manages to do two things: –

Firstly, to maintain the momentum generated 50 years ago by its founder, the dynamic D. R. Wijewardene;

Secondly, to retain the goodwill of the cultured classes of the Sinhala people created by such stalwarts of the Press as Martin Wickremasinghe, Piyasena Nissanka, Srilal Liyanage, Meemana Prematilaka, Denzil Peiris, S. Subasinghe, D. D. Wettasinghe, Wimalasiri Perera, Ben Dodampegama, and several others who kept the Silumina circulation moving ever upward, regardless of the effect it had on their own blood pressure.

(Excerpted from The Good At Their Best first published in 1980)