Piyasiri Nagahawatta, writer, photographer, storyteller lives on through his books, his visual creations. He taught me, his eldest child, the fundamentals in photography and instilled an insatiable hunger for films in our entire family and beyond. His writing always amazed me for its strong sense of arriving there without effort and creating overall meaning so wonderfully in Sinhala, with all the nuances of a native speaker with innate knowledge of the local idiom.

As part of a generation that had their basic education in English, they were highly proficient in Sinhala too, being truly bilingual. Then while in Brazil working at the Sri Lankan Embassy in Rio De Janeiro, he learnt Portuguese, did some early writing in the language and taught me snippets in later years. He made short films while in Brazil and then in India, shooting with his 16mm camera. In the early 80s before the dominating presence of television in our households, his film projections onto a white wall at home, provided the most amazing experiences for the kids of our neighbourhood. He brought back an enlarger when he returned from India, and turned part of our bathroom and an adjoining space into a dark room – complete with a red safelight, the space was out of bounds on designated nights. It was a wonder to have our own, home-printed black & white photographs.

Traveling once in a ship bound westward, he has told me how he met and talked with Arthur C. Clarke. His first art exhibition was on board the vessel R.M.L. Arlanza, where he also encountered his long-time friend, artist Sarath Surasena, discovering before long that they originated from the same village, Down South. He has also held exhibitions in Galeria Copacabana and Modern Art Museum in Brazil; Madras Art Club & German Cultural Centre in India; and Municipality Centre, Beijing China, apart from an exhibition in December 2023 at the Harold Peiris Gallery, Colombo.

In London he completed a course on cinema at the British Film Institute, where among other prominent figures lecturing in the course, Roman Polanski did a workshop. He told me and Piyal (Kariyawasam), his son-in-law, that Polanski once used a glass surface and drew with toothpaste to illustrate a point about creating a scene. Thaththa also told Piyal, how while in London he did the illustrations for the thesis submitted by Sugathapala De Silva for his Diploma in Theatre. (He said ‘Sugath gave me a copy of the thesis, which should be somewhere.’)

My earliest memories are when thaththa was in India with me and amma, towards the mid 1970s. He worked at that time at the High Commission in Madras. I recall how he always used to paint and sketch and the easel was part of the drawing room. Crayon (Camel brand) was a staple in the household, freely available for me too, (as were the walls, apart from large sheets of white paper of course). He had live drawing sessions and invited friends home to do portraits over several sittings. He had first trained at Haywood (a precursor to the University of the Visual and Performing Arts) and also did oil paintings, following the techniques to the dot, starting with priming the canvas. Linseed oil was a familiar and memorable scent. Some of his larger oil paintings hung at our home also later in Sri Lanka and I grew up with them marking a significant presence in daily life. One of his large sized paintings had me as the main subject matter, a little girl with a bird perched on one hand, in a backdrop of trees. Our house and surroundings at Sivaganga Road are also etched in my memory through his B&W photographs. From those early days, cameras were a dominant part of his outfit, and included a Rolleiflex TLR, a Zenit, and many wide angle and zoom lenses. His camera angles, framing and lighting were always memorable and they fill the mind’s eye so blissfully. He took his time capturing the perfect shot, as that generation of photographers would be trained to, so as not to waste precious negatives.

I recall visiting many art exhibitions including by artist Achuthan Kudallur during the time thaththa worked in India. Among the various portraits thaththa did was one of Achuthan uncle, his good friend and frequent visitor to our household on Sivaganga Road, Calcutta. This was the mid 70s and a time before electronic communication, so I am not sure if they kept in touch after thaththa’s return to Sri Lanka around ‘76. In the aftermath of global restrictions and shutdown, thaththa got to know of Achuthan Kudallur’s demise in 2022, and I noted online, how much of a celebrated modernist artist Kudallur had been.

In India I vaguely remember thaththa went to night-time driving school. And then, as amma and I stayed on at the Sivaganga Road residence, he traveled to Singapore to select a Volkswagen, to be shipped directly to Sri Lanka, to arrive once we got home, at the end of his tenure at the Madras Branch of the High Commission. The Volkswagen was a hallmark of his, for many years. He treasured that brand and only ever drove it. First a light sky-blue 7 Sri and then a very dark blue 3 Sri, old model Beetle. In Sri Lanka he had his group of friends connected together as Volkswagen owners. Also specialized mechanics who became family friends.

From an early age, I was always fascinated by his film analysis especially about local, Sinhala films. They did sometimes, perhaps quite often, go against popular views and I would recall how he would perplex our relatives stating how a film didn’t live upto standard. I guess that was my earliest education on film critiquing, where he would really look at what was available on screen, rather than perceptions about the film maker or any artists involved.

His much-talked-about 1971 book on films, ‘Cinama Satahan’ (tr. Notes on Cinema), was a key text in Sinhala, published when access to material on world cinema was exceedingly limited. As I look at the publication now, I note its bold experimentation in layout design too. He did many book covers himself, possibly a trait I have taken on.

Thaththa was part of Apey Kattiya (tr. Our People), the eclectic mix of writers, artists, filmmakers, dramatists including Sugathapala De Silva, A.D. Ranjith Kumara, Darmasena Pathiraja, Siril B. Perera, Neil I. Perera, Tony Ranasinghe, Ralex Ranasinghe, Ogustus Vinayagarathnam, W. Jayasiri, Motagedara Wanigarathne, Sirisena Vithana and others. They were a loosely knit gathering of artists, with many exits and entrances, who collaborated at times and provided a healthy environment for the upliftment of the arts while critiquing and supporting each other, to raise the bar from within.

With a long term relationship with OCIC Awards (now Signis) he was also part of other film juries including Presidential Awards, Sarasavi, and Sumathi. In recent years he was presented with lifetime awards for his work in film. In the early 1990s, he was the inaugural editor of the National Film Corporation’s Chithrapataya (tr. Cinema) magazine. I recall how the ‘dummy’ was prepared and unique layouts and the centre-spread was compiled by hand, as hard copy. Long before, at the Mahaweli Authority, he was the editor of the Isura (tr. Fortune) magazine.

Having celebrated his 90th birthday in May this year, thaththa managed his activities independently upto the end of last month. He continued to do research on many diverse projects, wrote articles, on any outing had the camera by his side along with a sketchbook and pencil. He was always ready for a conversation and made friends everywhere he went and created lasting impressions. Having long used a portable typewriter, he adapted easily to the computer, benefiting from the ease it offered his increasingly unsteady hand as he aged.

Thaththa, your works will live with us and continue to inspire. Your many conversations and tales of old times, village life and urban space, on art, films, drama, literature and overseas experiences, all of this and more, will light our way.