Writers begin as scribblers. They scribble as the mood moves them – or when they are moved by another’s scribbling. And so it was with me.
My class teacher in the Fifth Standard at Anuruddha College, Nawalapitiya, started a class newspaper: a big cardboard hung on the wall with a banner proclaiming it “Standard Five News”. We had to handwrite our contributions and paste them wherever there was space. I was captivated, hooked, and determined to educate the people at home by starting my own newspaper at home called – what else? – “HOME NEWS”
It flourished for some years, becoming the HOME WRITER, capturing non-family contributors, poems, drawings and even a foreign correspondent (my Irish pen-friend). It went the way of all flesh (and paper), but I had been infected by the scribbler’s bug and got into the habit of writing things down as they made an impact on me. Often it was in letters to my siblings, in those pre-email days. Years later, long after the flowering of my brother and younger sister as published writers (they had both honed their skills in the pages of the HOME WRITER), I decided that I, too, would put whatever I had written into one book, enjoying seeing my name on the cover. And to not plan another.
And that is the story behind
which you can read by clicking on the title above. Happy reading!
My next book was in a different mould. We had persuaded my father to write – for the sake of our own children – his memories of an early 20th.century rural childhood. He did so: but kept the mss without showing it to us. We only discovered it among his papers after he was no more. I realized that what he had written had opened a window for those outside the family as well and so, having edited it, I published it as
OPEN WIDE THE WINDOWS OF THE MIND
It makes for thoughtful reading (even if I say so myself) and you can access it be clicking on the title.
But scribbling, like scratching, is something you cannot stop and I’ve written bits and pieces about my family, friends and people in no particular order. Some of them are in story form, some as recitations or monologues. These questionable pieces are now included under
Click to read. Have fun!