The Charisma of Roshan
The Charisma of Roshan
The Unseen Threads of Roshan’s World
Itwasn’t quite a chance meeting — not in the way stories usually begin with coincidence and surprise. I had seen Roshan many times before, gliding through town like someone from the wrong side of a movie poster — always seen, never spoken to. Ours was a place still half-village, half-modern, where old men sipped tea on verandahs and boys like us looked at the world through cinema posters and bus windows.
Roshan’s bell bottoms flared like sails, catching the sunlight as if stitched from the sky itself. His T-shirts blazed with colours that didn’t quite belong on our village streets, but we nodded at them anyway, as if they made sense in his world. His shirts never creased, even in our sticky heat, and his platform shoes made a hollow thud against the pavement near the Kandy Road — an echo that lingered longer than it should have. A cigarette always dangled from his fingers, not in rebellion, but as an accessory. His hair was a soft bush of curls, and he smiled like someone who had already been told he was destined for something more.
He was shorter than I by a little, perhaps an inch or two, and darker — like polished jack wood after rain. I was fairer, though not by choice or pride. Most boys I knew were darker, weather-worn, as if the sun had left its mark in layers. Only Ajith, my closest friend, shared my complexion. Ajith, who was also the brother of the girl I admired in passing, from the other side of a whitewashed wall.
I didn’t choose my friends for how they looked or what coins they carried in their pockets. That wasn’t how life worked in our household. But I watched Roshan the way a boy watches a distant kite — beautiful, unreachable, a little dangerous. I knew he went for tuition — the kind taken by boys who failed their exams but came from homes with land and cars and names people knew. Those classes were less about education and more about postponing adulthood, surrounded by fans, sarcasm, and the soft perfume of privilege.
Roshan, I soon learned, wasn’t alone. He had two older brothers and a younger one, Neil. They lived in our town by choice, though their parents were in Dankotuwa, some thirty miles north. Their maternal grandfather lived here — an old man who ran the canteen at the technical college and did well enough to make generosity his hobby. He spoiled his grandsons like a man trying to outdo time.
Ajith was quietly taken in. He didn’t say much, but I could see the way his eyes lit up when Roshan bought him a drink or paid for a ticket. I had been helping Ajith with his tuition — he, too, had stumbled in school. Still, I never held it against him. We were both navigating the same cracked road, perhaps at different speeds.
One Sunday afternoon, after a Western matinee in Colombo — something with horses, shootouts, and galloping dust — we boarded the 154 bus. The CTB rattle-box groaned as it pulled into Pettah. There, by the window, was Roshan, flipping through a magazine with casual grace.
“Roshan, machan!” Ajith called out. I was surprised. I didn’t know they had met.
Roshan looked up and smiled, like someone flipping a page. “Very hot,” he said, each word spaced with a peculiar rhythm. He spoke like someone imitating Colombo’s language, but something was charming about it. His sentences were peppered with slang, half-borrowed from radio and arrack bars.
He had the seat first. When he saw me standing, he offered it without fuss. I declined, not wanting the gesture to mean more than it did. But then two more seats freed up and, just like that, the three of us sat shoulder to shoulder, rocking to the rhythm of old shocks and tarred roads.
Later, he invited us to his home — a modest but well-kept house in a leafy lane. There, the story unfolded. His parents in Dankotuwa, his grandfather’s influence, and the cash that came freely and often. He was frank about it, and why shouldn’t he be? He had grown into generosity like a coat that fit just right.
But it wasn’t just Ajith and me. There were others — Herbie, Nimal, Rienzie, Merril and a few older boys who hovered around Roshan like moths around a porch light. They fetched cigarettes, carried liquor bottles, and ran errands. Roshan was generous — he paid for their tickets, drinks, and even an odd trinket from the fair. He drank every evening, more than any boy should, and Neil, his younger brother, was worse.
Something about it all made me uneasy. I could see the shadow behind the glamour. I didn’t want to be one of them — one of the hangers-on. I didn’t want to be owned by kindness, even if it came dressed in bell-bottoms and American cologne.
So I began to drift. Slowly, without a word, I became a friend from a distance. Not out of pride, but self-preservation. I stayed on the safer shore, watching as the tide rolled in and out around Roshan.
Sometimes, even now, I wonder if he noticed. But I think he did. Some boys see everything.
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