Once upon a time we had that rare privilege. We revelled in her stories. She fed us with her visual extravagance and thematic elegance. Sybil Nenda was an oft-heard title eponymous with juvenile literature. And now, we come to the saddest part of the story: we are left to our own devices with Sybil Nenda gone forever.
Sybil Wettasinghe was born in 1927. She shares the year of birth with Sri Lanka’s music maestro, W.D. Amaradeva though Sybil is five months and 19 days older. She introduced a fresh episode of children’s literature perhaps owing to the first six years of her childhood spent in Gintota, situated in the suburbs of Galle, in southern Sri Lanka. As her family moved to Colombo, Sybil entered Holy Family Convent, Bambalapitiya. At 17, Wettasinghe joined the Lankadeepa newspaper. In 1952, Wettasinghe moved to Lake House where she became the main illustrator of the Janatha newspaper. In 1955, she married DharmapalaWettasinghe, a former Chief Editor of the Daily News.
Throughout her illustrious career, Sybil Wettasinghe earned much international acclaim. Her children’s stories secured awards both in Europe and Asia. In 1965, her story Vesak Lantern won an Isabel Hutton Prize for Asian Women writers for Children. Her first book Kuda Hora was chosen for the Best Foreign Book Award in Japan in 1986 and 1987 it won the Japanese Library Association Award as the most popular children’s book. Kuda Hora was translated into seven languages (English, Norwegian, Danish, Japanese, Chinese, Korean and Swedish). Wettasinghe has held exhibitions of her work in Japan and Czechoslovakia and in 2003, she was invited to Norway for a book festival for well-known authors.
Behind every child’s book lies a large renaissance garden of enchanting beauty. Sybil Wettasinghe leaves us as someone extraordinary you can name in Sri Lankan children’s literature: book writer, illustrator perhaps fused with a few ground-breaking achievements. Until yesterday Sybil Nenda must have been the oldest surviving children’s author with the largest number of books written under the genre. Achievements, accolades and records were nothing new for this amazing illustrator who had already cast her spell.
It is not so long ago that we happened to stumble upon her most wonderful crystal. Sybil Nenda’s children’s storybook Wonder Crystal earned the Guinness Book recognition as the work with the most number of alternative endings.
The news made waves on Twitter with the Guinness World Records announcement followed by a happy-face emoticon.
The 1,250 endings were shortlisted from around 20,000 endings received from various school children across Sri Lanka. Ninety-two-year-old Sybil Wettasinghe told the audience at that event that achieving the record was the happiest moment of her life.
The event coincided with the World Book Day UK.
“One little thing is enough to kindle my imagination,” mused Sybil Nenda at her home perched in the middle of much humdrum of the city.
During our last encounter, Sybil Nenda was seated in the living room with her gaze fixed on the kitchen. The much-admired artiste recalled how she once imagined the kitchen to be flooded. The vegetables caught in the flood made a trip to the outside world.
She is a veteran in her art. Most artistes give up the job as they reach the pinnacle of their veteran status. Approaching nineties, they would usually continue the legacy in a society based on their celebrated works. But Sybil Nenda was not the one to give up or give in her legacy that easily.
Writing and painting are two different jobs. Writers hardly illustrate while painters are not so interested in writing. But she played both roles in an ambidextrous style. How did she strike a balance? Her ‘veterancy’ did fit right in here.
“A lot of people inquire about me writing and illustrating simultaneously. When I think of a story, I think it up in pictures. I imagine a lot of pictures. Then I ‘write’ down the pictures first. I write it better later on. That will be easy because I have planned the whole book in pictures. Children like to read in pictures. In Japan, they concentrate more on pictures. Children read through pictures. When Umbrella Thief was first published in the 1960s, it was the only book with text as well as pictures. Now, a child who cannot read can grasp the story through pictures,” Sybil Nenda enunciated her strategy not so long ago.
Crystal Wonder is the result of the collective works of several children who submitted their imagining of the book’s ending. It is them, 1,250 in all, who finished the book for their long-loved Sybil Nenda. More than securing a Guinness entry, the author aimed to motivate young writers to explore deep into their imagination.
Sybil Nenda’s grandson received a little red car as a birthday gift when he was little. His Grandma remembered the joyful look the little one had in his face. He would drive it in the garden. Everybody told him that he must learn to take the car inside the home, but he would never do it. When his Grandma reminded him that the car would be stolen one day, he responded to her. “Listen to me. This is what happens. The little red car is in the garden.”
And our heroine would go on narrating the story:
And when it gets dark, he yells: “I am afraid of the dark. Please come and help me. I am afraid of the dark.”
Then Uncle Mango Tree asks: “Who is crying?”
“I am the little red car. I am afraid of the dark.”
Then Uncle Mango Tree brought its branches down and lifted the car. When night-time dawned, the birds came and watched over him. In the morning, the boy came out and found out that the car is missing. He began to cry. “Amma my car is lost. I love him.” Then the little red car came down and said: “I know you love me. We are friends, and don’t forget to take me in at night.”
That impression of her grandson’s creativity inspired Sybil Nenda to author another book. “But children are naturally mischievous,” Sybil Nenda recalled, “And you know what happened when I published the book? There is a little mistake in this, he said. I asked what it is. “I am the one who told you the story,” he pointed out my mistake, “but you have mentioned story and illustrations by Sybil Wettasinghe.”
“So what should I do,” Sybil Nenda asked.
The little one had a set of instructions for his Grandmother. In the first place, she was to draw a squirrel grandma and a squirrel grandson. And then she has to mention that this story was told to Grandma by so and so.
“So this is the child’s mentality. I got it printed and asked him to show it to his teacher. You know, he came home teary-eyed. “Teacher aunty told me that I am a silly little boy. She asked me how a mango tree can put down branches.”
Sybil Nenda added that children see life in everything in the surrounding. When you are creative, you think in pictures. A lot of writers think of stories in pictures. Roald Dahl is a classic example. Wind in the Willows is another. Writer and illustrator must think alike. In this country, the writer sends a manuscript to the publisher. The publisher passes it to the illustrator and he paints something poles apart. Both of them should think together. You cannot think from an adult’s point of view and write.
“So we need to arouse the creativity in the child. They have a nice imagination. It is their first experience of storytelling.”
She continued to be the much-adored Sybil Nenda. Things have moved on since her times. Today’s children, or the Alpha generation kids, are more at home with sophisticated gadgetry. But Sybil Nenda thought otherwise.
“Painting on the computer is not acceptable for me. A child can draw on the computer and see their creativity on screen. But they can see the machine drawing too. In Japan, they do not accept pictures drawn on computers. There are some lines which you cannot paint on the computer.”
When she writes, Sybil Nenda would reflect on the beauty of the words. She put in a lot of thinking before actually writing on the paper. She was fond of the age-old long-hand writing method.
They say the machine is easier and faster. But Sybil Nenda had other plans. She wanted time to think and write.
Sachitra Mahendra