Sybil : the colourful nonconformist-by Randima Attygalle

Source:Island

Sybil Wettasinghe was not merely an example of an imaginative, quality illustrator of her generation, but much more. A journalist, a creative artist, a woman of many roles, she was a trendsetting global-Lankan. As the first death anniversary of this well known writer/illustrator approaches, we remember her life and times.

The six-year-old Sybil de Silva who left Gintota for her English convent education in Colombo with a head full of ‘aththamma’s folk tales’ and memories of Seedakka’s hopper-making and Yakdehi Muththa’s devil dancing found wrestling with forks and spoons in her convent refectory a futile effort. She wouldn’t compromise the flavour of her favourite lunch of rice with prawns and murunga and would wait till the nuns left the dining room and relish the meal, eating with her fingers amid protests from her schoolmates who would threaten to report her! During art class, she would horrify the Irish nuns at Holy Family Convent, Bambalapitiya, replicating her sculptor-grandfather’s female figures.

Despite resistance from school, teachers and her mother, Sybil continued to defend her dream of becoming a professional painter. She was not impressed by her mother’s efforts to make her an architect. Her father who encouraged his daughter’s art, submitted her work for an exhibition at the Colombo Art Gallery. The 15-year-old’s work impressed H.D. Sugathapala, Headmaster of the Royal Primary School, who handpicked Sybil to illustrate his Nava Maga Standard 5 Reader. The book which launched her artistic career was also the first book to be printed in colour here in Sri Lanka.

‘Sybil’ was a prophetess in Greek mythology – a woman who claimed to be able to interpret the wishes of the gods through their oracles. But this Sybil Wettasinghe was her own prophet. She was a rebel too. At 19, she knew she was ready for much more than pottering around with paint and brushes. Journalism was her next calling. It was on April 1, 1948 that draped in a new saree her mother had bought for the occasion, her hair in a formal konde, the 19-year-old was presented to D.B.Dhanapala, the Chief Editor of Lankadeepa.

The youngest and the only female staffer then at Lankadeepa, she was assigned a weekly ‘Saturday Strip’, giving life to characters and tales from her Gintota childhood. “Most readers believed the creator of this 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,” she once recounted.

The visits ended when Dhanapala ran a newspaper account of his gifted new recruit with her photograph. Turning a deaf ear to those who urged the editor to ‘drill some sense’ to the girl who was sketching ‘gibberish, nonsensical figures’, he cheered her on to discover her own metier, never altering her style to please the masses. “Some even proposed Heywood mentoring for me and Mr. Dhanapala wouldn’t hear any of it,” the self-taught artist would say.

Bored with just her weekly Lankadeepa strip and with enough time to spare to buy books with her monthly salary of Rs. 60, Sybil one day boldly strode into the offices of Sita Jayawardena 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 Sinhala evening paper of the Lake House Group in 1952 was a turning point for Sybil both personally and professionally. While the Chief Editor Denzil Peiris gave her free rein, young Chief Sub Editor, Dharmapala Wettasinghe implored her to write a children’s story for his sake! Not only was a story born which still keeps girdling the globe, but a romance too bloomed culminating in the nuptial knot between Dharmapala Wettasinghe and Sybil de Silva in 1955. “He was my best fan and my best critic,” Sybil would often say and credit 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, became a book which is now translated into several languages. In Japan it was once judged the best foreign book published there and also the most popular children’s book. At a time when Sinhala literature for children meant direct translations of European children’s stories and school texts with a ‘scattering of illustrations’, Kuda Hora with its unforgettable antics of the mischievous monkey ushered a new era in children’s literature. Critic Regi Siriwardena once remarked that, ‘Kuda Hora was the first Sinhala book to completely marry words and pictures.’

‘Kosgama kuda ne, minissu kuda dekalawath ne’

(Kosgama people don’t have umbrellas nor have they ever seen any) set the scene for Kuda Hora. From Habarala leaves which served as umbrellas, a half eaten bunch of bananas in the village tea kiosk, the bulath heppuwa, hiramanaya to the cat on the Sinhala ulu-tiled roof, all her work breathed and celebrated the Sri Lankan flavour at its best. She often lamented that these ‘roots’ were missing in most contemporary Sri Lankan children’s literature.

Challenging the West-aping, servile mentality, the writer who defined the shape and form of Sri Lanka’s children’s literature for nearly 70 years, was bold enough to question, “why glorify apple trees and snow-capped mountains when we are part of a rich heritage.” In all her scores of much loved books including Hoity the Fox, Weniyan kalu weniyan, Sooththara Puncha, Runaway Beard, Poddai-Poddi and Meti gedara lamai, the authentic Sri Lankan flavour had been her credo. In a digital era where aththamma’s kitchen is only an image from the past, ‘googled’ and found, her documentation of an era gone by is priceless. Moreover her work impel a generation living in a cultural vacuum to revisit a value system fast eroding.

Sybil’s proficiency in English, her convent education and her exposure to English speaking circles of Colombo did not drive her to become yet another Anglo-Sri Lankan, a trait she shared with her journalist-husband. On the contrary, she would be skeptical of elaborate hats, gowns and parasols. Her social satire built around the character of Kusumalatha which she wrote and illustrated for the Sarasaviya paper was an index of this. In taking the authentic Sri Lankan landscape in which a distinct value system thrived, to the global platform, she would not compromise her style for any affinity with a particular ideology. For this, she was lauded by the world. She was one of the earliest Lankan writers and illustrators to go international long before ‘international citizenry’ became a buzz word.

Besides several state literary awards, and honorary titles, her work won a number of coveted international awards including the Nikkei Asia Prize for Culture 2012, Isabel Hutton Prize for Asian Women Writers, the Best Foreign Book Award in Japan in 1986 (for Kuda Hora). Her documentation of her childhood- Child in Me won the Gratiaen Prize for the most Creative English Book in 1995. She also won a Guinness world record in 2020 with her book Wonder Crystal a few months before her death at the age of 92, for having the most number of alternative endings which were solicited from young readers.

Accepting the Nikkei Asia Prize 2012 in Tokyo in recognition of her ‘magnificent contribution to enrich people’s lives in the region’ and first time bestowed on a Sri Lankan, Sybil remarked that although she had five grandchildren of her own, she considered all the world’s children hers. “Children are the spice of my life,” she remarked. Deeply moved by her love for children, Nikkei Inc. President & CEO Tsuneo Kita noted that her presence ‘bestowed a magical atmosphere’ at the event.

A woman with a fiercely independent mind who called herself her own ‘best friend’, Sybil did not bend the rules by which she lived. This was true of her artistic style as well. While most of her contemporaries would align themselves with a particular ‘school’, Sybil remained unaware of ‘current trends’ as she hardly stepped into Colombo’s galleries. She was never an understudy. “It never bothered me not to belong to any school or group,” she would say. With only her artistic DNA in her, the gene passed down by her sculptor-grandfather, Sybil went on to evolve her style of ‘talking pictures’ enthused by the fine nuances of a childhood spent in the South and people and places of her everyday life. A strong promoter of nurturing the inherent talent of children and allowing it to evolve naturally, she believed that ‘green skies’ and ‘blue trees’ were very much a part of this process.

Knowing Aunty Sybil or Sybil nenda as a nation of children called her, was a journey of discovery. Her cozy little home was my sanctuary. With each passing hour in her wise, wonderful company I rediscovered a phenomenal woman of iron will living in a slight frame. Seated at her weathered kitchen-table, I would spend many happy hours with her. “If only this table could talk,” she would often gleefully tell me. From the cat family which she lured with her ‘magical recipe’ of milk, sprats and bread to floating saucepans in her flooded drawing room (as a result of a tap left running throughout the night) her mischievous wit offered me constant amusement. Neither of us had any inkling that the breakfast of kiribath, lunumiris, ginger-tea and hakuru she treated me to a few weeks before her death was to be our last shared meal.

There were ‘story times’ too when the child in me would surface true to her mantra that ‘there is a wonder child living in all of us’. I would sit at her feet, she in her rocking chair telling me stories in her beautifully modulated story-teller voice. The one of the mermaid living six lives and realizing she is made only to be a mermaid remains one of my favourites. “A child is like that, we cannot make them live the lives we want, we have no right to realize our unrealized dreams through them, for they have their own destined paths,” she would tell me in the end. Then there were stories to which I was treated beyond her illustrated pages; trials and tribulations of a mother and a career woman, her measure of hurt and betrayal and so much more.

Long before ‘work-life balance’ for women was heard of, at a time when most of her contemporaries would abandon their vocations to raise a family, Sybil juggled both. To use a present day cliché, she ‘shattered the glass ceiling’ unconsciously. She was among the pioneering professional Sri Lankan women to have pioneered a path that generations of young women could follow. When her husband, the famous editor, Dharmapala Wettasinghe, became a political victim and lost his job, it was Sybil, then a mother of four young children, who kept the home fires burning. The batik business she set up during their dark hour not only helped her make ends meet but eventually rose to be an enterprise in which many took delight.

Sybil herself was a chronicle of history, her life intersecting with almost a century of changing socio-political and cultural milieu of the nation. Soon to turn 93, Sybil nenda kept herself busy at her desk everyday immersed in the child’s world, surrounded by her pots of ink and birds who would chirp outside her window. A verse from her popular book Child in Me would resonate;

A child and a grown up

Live as one

In perfect, perfect harmony

Within me.

She remained the six-year-old ‘Gintota girl’ until the very end…..