Remembering Dharmasiri Gamage:

The humane journalist

Wijitha NAKKAWITA

It was over three decades back that I had made the acquaintance with the young Lankadeepa journalist Dharmasiri Gamage. Soon it became a company of five or six people who had the common interests, one was the indigenous culture and literature, the other was the abiding interest in music.

Of course in this group there were two well-known musicians, P. V. Nandasiri and Shelton Premaratne and the two lyricists Dharamsiri Gamage and Saman Chandranath Weerasinghe. In addition there was the filmmaker Amaranath Jayatilleke.

It is now five years since Dharmasiri was gone and looking back over the three decades this group though an informal coming together of people with common interests were engaged furthering arts, literature or music. Gamage was a very keen learner and often sought to learn more about English and world literatures and of course our interest in music and films was also not second to other arts.

In the late 1970s he became the editor of the Yovun Janata a weekly tabloid for youth and we were involved in bringing out a series of feature articles on the art of writing, literature, films and a variety of subjects of interest before the Sinhala reading public. The Yovun Janata became a very popular weekly even among the literati and there were a number of seminars held to awaken the dormant talents of young writers, the Yovun Pahan Veta organized by Dharmasiri Gamage. The encouragement given to young Sinhala writers resulted in several among them becoming well-known writers.

The other facet of Dharmasiri's character was that he also became a screenplay writer and his film scripts for Illangaratne's novel Tilaka ha Tilaka made a film and Gamage's own story Siripala ha Ranmenika, or Ammavarune were among the successful films that he either directed or was associated with.

As a lyricist also he had made his mark and a large number of lyrics he had written for films or for radio artistes became popular hits.

He was also a TV presenter on cultural themes and was a very popular journalist among the young writers, singers or filmmakers. He was devoted to his work and a hardworking individual, one of the outstanding journalists of yesteryear.