Beat Shows and Brylcreem
Beat Shows and Brylcreem
Itwas one of those dry, amber afternoons in Colombo when the streets looked burnished, as though the sun, with nothing better to do, had settled into the dust and made it golden. Ajith and I had taken the 3:15 bus, still half inside the movie we had just watched at Liberty – some dark, western film with macho cowboys and men who smoked and drank like they were trying to erase themselves. We were still whispering lines from it, as boys do when they haven’t yet learned to separate cinema from life.
He boarded the bus just past Borella Junction, though to say he boarded it is to miss the point. He arrived, like someone late to a party who knows he’ll still be noticed. His trousers were a kind of sky blue with a shimmer that caught the light like a fish’s back, and his shirt – deep maroon – flared slightly at the sleeves. He was the sort of lad you don’t expect to see on a CTB bus. He moved as if the world was a stage and the bus, its smallest wing.
He spoke to us as though we were old comrades. “Good film, no?” he said, flashing a smile that seemed rehearsed – too white – like it had been pressed onto his face at a salon in Wellawatte.
Ajith laughed. I nodded. He talked fast – names, places, opportunities, money. A beat show in Moratuwa. A party in some house at Kiribathgoda. Rich friends. Connections. Cars. All of it sounding like a story told too often, now polished into something just believable enough. The kind of thing that left a taste – sweet, but faintly bitter.
Outside, the bus passed tiled houses and dusty shops that looked closed even when they were open. The sea glimmered past the palms. At the back of the bus someone was humming an old song. He talked on, like a radio that had learned to mimic human enthusiasm.
He got off near 7th Mile Post, walking tall, waving once. His trousers swayed like they had a rhythm of their own.
Ajith leaned in. “You think he’s real?”
I didn’t answer. The road ahead looked long – the kind of road where boys become stories.
For a while, he became a kind of game between us. Ajith would mimic his voice, dragging out the word opportunity until we were both doubled over in laughter. But even as we laughed, I wondered – what if he was telling the truth?
And then one afternoon, a Saturday thick with the smell of tar and jackfruit, we saw him again. He was outside a narrow building on Kandy Road, near the milk bar with the broken freezer. He was speaking to another boy, using the same words, same tones, same maroon shirt. The performance had not changed. Only the audience. He was like a royalty with a following.
He spotted us. Called out. “There you are! Come – don’t stand like lost”
We followed. His grandfather’s house was just up the lane, the paint peeling from the gate. Inside, it smelled of mothballs, old wood, and something else – hope, maybe. Or its imitation. A calendar with Mother Mary smiled beatifically. On the wall, a poster showed two suited men shaking hands: “Your Future Starts Here.”
He poured us Necto – warm, flat, and sugary – and handed us crisp hundred-rupee notes. “Don’t decide now,” he said, as though he were offering us a rare gift. “Talk. Or don’t. The world doesn’t wait.”
The breeze outside had turned sharp. A newspaper drifted along the gutter like a lazy fish.
Ajith said, “You think he’s for real?”
“Maybe,” I said.
“But what if he’s not?”
That night I lay in bed, listening to the dogs bark and the radio sing old Hindi songs. I thought of dreams – not just ours, or his, but the kind sold by men in maroon shirts. And I began to wonder whether the truth of a dream mattered as much as how much you needed to believe in it.
We did become friends. In a way. He paid for beat shows, for movies, even Ajith’s tuition at Pembrock. Ajith stepped deeper in. I hesitated. Something about the way his kindness came – soft, and without strings, but never quite free – made me cautious. It felt like accepting a debt you couldn’t see the terms of.
So I stepped away. Quietly. Like someone folding a letter he never intends to send.
And one day I realised I was no longer in the picture. But I felt no loss. Only a strange, clean relief. Like standing alone at dusk, unsure of what lies ahead, but knowing the choice is yours.
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