'I enter the dream world to write Children's stories'

I asked for her and repeated the name just to make sure that the person on the other side of the line was who as I wanted. It was the sweetest voice I have heard in my life and I was still not sure I was talking to the right person.

Janaki Sooriyarachchi, the award winning children's story writer says 'My voice can at times be a disadvantage because people take me for granted even when I am trying to say something serious. When I answer the phone at home most people who call my father say, "Baba give the phone to your father".

In my view she is the person most suited to write children's stories because she actually seemed to literally live in the world of children. And it's not just her voice; it's her whole countenance. She says it's because of her writings that she herself has become like this.

She owns a publishing company, named 'Tikiri Publishers', specialised in children's story books. She received the State Literary Award in 2007 in the Children's Literature category in English, the State Literary Awards in 2004 in the category of Children's Literature in both Sinhala and English.

She is a very versatile person, with interests in many diverse areas. She is an artist, a musician as well as a dancer. The illustrations, computer graphics, as well as the music and the lyrics for her children's song books, have also been done by the author herself.

Though a qualified banker by profession, she is involved in varied fields of interest. She thinks that her different abilities and interests helped a great deal for her to become a successful writer.

Different capabilities complement each other, as drawing and literary creativity in her case. Explaining the possible reasons for her versatility, Janaki says "I think the school curriculum has a lot to do with it, although inborn talents do count.'

She started off her literary career at the very early age of eight, with the book A Ballad, and her first publication was at the age of 14. Since then, she has written 135 books for children. Janaki says that although she writes in both Sinhala and English she prefers to deal with local exotic subject matter in Sinhala.

'I can't describe the taste of 'waraka' in English. I find it difficult to describe Sri Lankan culture in English.' Describing her style of writing, Janaki says that she uses nature and animals a lot in her stories.

Janaki sees her ancestral home in Puhulwela, as what initially triggered her imagination. Surrounded by the natural beauty of the village, its paddy fields and the waterfall, she says she learned to become a good observer. "My memories helped me a lot in my writings. It' actually the base of a child's creativity."

She has proved herself by being awarded for both in the English and Sinhala medium "When I received the State Literary Awards, I was amazed. It caught me off guard because it's very rare that the same person gets awarded for writing in both the languages.

For a moment, I thought that they might announce that it was a mistake." There are indeed few who possess the ability like hers to write in both languages so proficiently.

She sees the reason for this as an attitude problem of the English speaking society. "They don't seem to want to write in Sinhala and the Sinhala speakers are not proficient enough in the English language to write in English."

It is clear that she had quite a wild imagination at a very early stage in life. The kind of imagination some parents discourage. 'When I was little I used to believe that there was a bunny on the moon.

Later when I heard that there was no bunny, I still refused to believe it.' She says that she used to have such flights of fantasy that she replanted her sweet potatoes with carrots, when the bunny on the moon didn't turn up at her garden as expected.

When she was finally caught red handed and scolded by her grandmother for stealing the carrots, she has said, "Achchi you have many things to eat, but the bunny only eats carrot."

She says although her parents are quite happy about her success now, they were initially not happy about her passion for the arts. Janaki claims that this passion put fear into her parents.

"I was often in my own private world, eating and drinking nothing, concentrating on nothing else but drawing, writing and arts in general.' Even now she says that she is very family oriented and prefers to stay at home most of the time. She says her parents never encouraged her.

'They were afraid it would affect my studies. But I think my studies actually benefited from my passion for the arts.'

Although she started writing very early in her life, she never dreamt of becoming a writer. Once she wanted to become an astronomer, an acrobat and even a bus conductor, but never a writer. When asked why she hasn't written books other than books for children, she very modestly admitted that she tried to, but found it difficult to achieve due to lack of experience.

'I lack experience in different societies. It's easy to write children's books because they don't require much experience, but writing books for adults is much different. I need to gather more experience.

It's not like living in a dream.' Talking about dreams, Janaki claims that most people think that she lives in a dream. She asserts that she only visits the world of dreams when she's writing her stories.

She claims that when she first started writing she didn't have an objective as such, but her main objective now is to inspire children to be sensitive to the needs of the others. To teach them compassion so that they would one day become better husbands, wives and parents. Winding up she said that an author should be born and not made.

The people surrounding a child such as family members, can sharpen the child's talents by encouraging him or her, but they can't make him or her talented. For that you need desire and creativity.

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