In the years gone by...

Donald Nugawela

On a brief visit to my village after I had joined Lake House I met some village elders who had come to see my father. When they saw me they were all smiles meeting me after a long time. After the greetings were over they asked me where I was employed and when I told them Lake House they seemed puzzled. Correcting myself hastily I said I was employed at the Dinamina Kanthoruwa. They almost looked at me in awe and then repeated Dinamina Kanthoruwa as if remembering some sacred place.

Lake House was not known to the simple farming people of those times. For them the Dinamina reached their homes from the Dinamina Kanthoruwa and from nowhere else.

They, like their fathers had been patrons of the Dinamina even long before the radio found a niche in their homes. The morning crowd that gathered at the tea kiosk for their morning cup of plain tea with jaggery would listen avidly and lap up every item of news read to them by an elder.

They would listen in silence, then put every item of news under their microscopes and then express their views. It was a daily ritual before going their ways and to their chores. The Dinamina I was told would change hands and go from one house to another and then returned looking limp and soiled.

It was not everyone who could buy the Dinamina in those times at the princely price of cents ten. Yet, the entire community had by evening read the news sent from the Dinamina Kanthoruwa. Such was the impact the pioneer Sinhala National Daily made on the rural community.

I cut my production teeth on the floor reserved for the Dinamina. It was on this floor that I first met the now doyen of journalists, D.F. Kariyakarawana who was Chief Sub then. It was also here that I met and made friends with those young and hardworking subs who were part of the Dinamina.

It was also from here that subs like G.S. Perera and Siri Ranasinghe went on to edit the Dinamina and Lankadeepa in their later careers. It was also here that I too became a part of the Dinamina with the intensity of work and coordination put in, to bring out the Dinamina for yet another new day.

In my rush of duties, I took time to wonder whether all those people back in my village would have ever understood the amount of sweat that hundreds of people expelled to bring to them the Dinamina to be read and re-read over and over again.

And nostalgically it was yet here again that I met Ajantha Ranasinghe, dreamy eyed soft spoken and charming. And I would always sit and wonder in those times why Ajantha should have ever stained his sensitive fingers with printing ink rather than taking care of them to write more of those lyrics that had already begun to sate our senses.

Night work in a newspaper office was never easy. When one section went to sleep after 4.30 p.m. the other section came awake and carried on till the wee hours of the morning, and it always brought in its wake problems for which instant solutions had to be found. One could not have disturbed any of the managers after 10.00 p.m. without being roundly cursed and rightly too.

On this particular night, the Transport Night Supervisor had in his wisdom topped up a diesel van with petrol and created chaos and confusion on this Sunday morning as early as 2 .00 a.m.

This vehicle was due to carry the Sunday Observer and Silumina and when I came on the scene the Dispatch Superintendent was well nigh shedding tears in anger and frustration and was roundly cursing the supervisor for his idiocy.

We could not have possibly disturbed Nanda Senewiratne the genial Transport Manager at such an unearthly hour and asked for instructions. The backup vehicle available was an Austin van, which could have hardly carried the entire load.

We divided the load into two equal groups and one load went into the Austin and the other to the Hillman Husky wagon which actually was ready to take me home.

Nevertheless, we saved our blushes and the News Agents had no cause to complain. And I found my way home by public transport at daybreak.