The Boy on the Bridge
The Boy on the Bridge
Crossing Kelani
The concert ended just after seven, in that soft, blue hour when daylight lingers but doesn’t promise to stay. We stepped out of the school auditorium on the fourth floor, boys in crumpled white uniforms pouring down the steps, our shadows stretching and breaking in the last of the light. It was my final term before the O-levels, and I was fifteen, at that awkward stage when everything — voice, limbs, thoughts — felt a size too big or too small. The music was still in my head. Western pop songs sung in uneven accents, a guitar that sounded almost in tune, and the school band’s march echoing faintly as if from a distant parade.
Outside, the usual scene unfolded. Parents in waiting cars — some glossy black Austins, others dented and rattling — lowered their windows. Boys called out, waving, some hopping eagerly into back seats, others clambering into rickshaws with coins pressed tightly in their fists. Motorbikes roared as they sped away, carrying boys clutching their schoolbags between their knees.
I stood quietly at the edge, already invisible. No one had come for me. I never told my father to pick me.
By the time I reached the bus halt near Sugathadasa Stadium, the light was beginning to soften at the edges. I waited where the 138 bus was supposed to stop. The air smelled of tar and blooming jasmine. Lamplight flickered on, hesitant at first, then more confident. I waited. Ten minutes. Then twenty. Others had already gone. The street grew emptier, the sounds fainter. At thirty minutes, even the stray dog that had lingered sniffed the pole where the route number was nailed, lifted its leg, and moved on without ceremony.
The silence told me all I needed to know. I wouldn’t be getting the 138 that night.
I stepped into a 101 instead, heading toward Wattala. The bus was packed. Men leaned against one another, the backs of their shirts soaked in sweat. Some had betel leaf stains at the corners of their mouths. Others stared out of the window, seeing things that had nothing to do with the present. I stood near the rear door, holding on to the bar, my schoolbag pressed to my chest, trying not to breathe in too deeply.
I got off at Grandpass. People called it Thotalanga. It was already dark, the kind of darkness that doesn’t feel complete because of the breeze rising off the river. There were slums just beyond the road — makeshift homes covered in cadjan, children without clothes darting between shadows. A radio played somewhere. People sat on the steps of their homes, watching the world go by.
I didn’t stop. I began to walk toward the Kelani Bridge.
I had heard the stories — of pickpockets and muggers, of unlucky men thrown into the water after being stripped of their earnings. There was no way around it now. The only way home was forward.
The bridge was long, maybe two hundred yards. Beneath it, the river shimmered faintly, moving in its own rhythm. There were boats, boatmen’s torches glinting like fireflies. A boy passed me on a bicycle, the bell chiming lightly, vanishing almost at once. I walked with deliberate steps, aware of every sound. My brown boots, with their sharp tacks — new, from P.G. Martins — clicked too loudly. I wished I had worn something quieter.
I looked behind me more than once. There were men in sarongs, some knotted up at the knee, walking in the opposite direction. I imagined what might happen — being cornered, pushed, relieved of the two rupees in my pocket, my shoes pulled off, flung into the river. My heart beat faster. I studied the curve of the bridge, the location of the nearest boat, just in case I had to leap, or run.
But no one followed me.
When I reached the other side, I didn’t stop. I ran. Past the rows of small shops, past the broken pavement, until I reached Kandy Road, the new section where the buses from the new Kelani Bridge ran in steady procession. The 193, the 154, the 132. One stopped, and I got in without thinking.
I got off near the church in Dalugama. It was already past eight. The street was quiet, the air thick with the smell of burning wood and distant curry. When I entered our gate, I didn’t say anything. I simply went inside, placed my bag on the stool near the main door, and sat down at the table.
No one asked how I got home. No one knew that I had done something others were too afraid to do: walked the length of the old Kelani Bridge, alone, after dark, and made it back with my money, my shoes, and a story I would never tell aloud.
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