Bell Bottoms and the Miracle of Television

Denzil, with quiet generosity, bought Vijitha’s first bell bottoms and later took him to OTS, where together they watched France vs Argentina before TV reached Sri Lanka.

4 min read1 day ago

Inearly seventies Colombo, the world was shifting in ways both small and monumental. You could sense it in the cinema posters, in the way boys slicked back their hair, in the sudden defiance of trouser legs flaring wider than reason allowed. Yet our allowances — the coins pressed into our palms by parents — lagged behind. They covered bus fares, a copybook, perhaps a tea bun from the kade. Nothing grander.

Vijitha, with his restless stride and quick grin, was always talking about bell bottoms. He had seen them on the big screen — actors dancing in Technicolor, arm in arm with women in chiffon. To him, they weren’t just trousers but a key to belonging to something greater than our narrow lanes. Whenever we wandered through Pettah, he slowed at the fabric shops, gazing at the rolls of cloth stacked upright — denim, stiff cotton dyed in deep blues and browns — each leaning like a sentinel. He would run a thumb along the grain, then smile at me, as though even that small touch had lifted him beyond himself. Sometimes, he would brush his fingers over my own bell bottoms with the reverence of a sacred thing. It was a wordless message.

I knew his family could not afford such indulgence. That truth hovered between us. One day, without fuss, I stepped into a shop and bargained with the owner. The place smelled of starch and sun-dried cloth, with the faint bite of dye still clinging to the air. I handed over the money, folded the material under my arm, and gave it to Vijitha as though it were nothing. He looked at me, half hesitant, then broke into a grin I still carry with me.

The tailor on Lumubirni Road was a dark, wiry man, cross-legged on a low bench, scissors glinting beside him, chalk lines ghosting across fabric. His tape measure hung like a noose around his neck. He measured Vijitha’s small frame, his bony legs, without ceremony, then grunted at our instructions: flare wide at the ankle, snug at the waist. Days later the trousers emerged — stitched, pressed, magnificent in their absurdity. The flare was outrageous, sweeping like wings. But when Vijitha stepped into them, his pride blazed so brightly no ridicule could reach him. He walked as though each stride carried him into another life.

It was around then that I heard the rumour. At OTS — the Overseas Telecommunication Services office on Lotus Road, where I was an apprentice — they had installed a television set. Television had not yet reached Sri Lanka; for us it was a marvel glimpsed only in foreign magazines. That week a football match was to be shown: France versus Argentina, beamed across oceans, caught by the aerials on OTS’s roof.

I told Vijitha. His eyes widened. When we went, he wore the new bell bottoms, their fabric swishing faintly with each step. In the OTS tele-room a small crowd had gathered: clerks in rolled-up sleeves, technicians with pens clipped to their pockets, a few curious outsiders invited along. At the far end, the television stood, a bulky wooden box with a small glowing screen. When the picture flickered to life — grainy, black and white, shadows chasing across a field — the entire room drew breath.

We were watching men in jerseys sprint and collide thousands of miles away, yet they were here, in front of us. The French moved with clipped precision; the Argentinians flared with bursts of speed. The ball darted across the screen like a blur of light, and the crowd in the hall groaned or cheered as if we ourselves were in Paris or Buenos Aires.

I glanced at Vijitha. His usual mischief had stilled. His eyes burned with wonder. He leaned towards me and whispered, almost reverently, “Can you believe it, Denzil? France and Argentina. Here. In Colombo.”

When the crowd dispersed and the screen went dark, the night air outside felt changed, alive with possibility. Vijitha walked beside me, the hem of his bell bottoms sweeping the dust. Those two things — the cloth I had bought him, now stitched into something of pride, and the ghostly figures of footballers running across a borrowed screen — were not mere indulgences. They were windows. He had glimpsed, however briefly, the vastness beyond our village streets, the promise of something larger, something waiting.

It was late by the time we left. Vijitha came with me to my home. We shared my dinner, two boys huddled over the same plate, me the elder by a few years. Later, we lay side by side, and sleep came easily, without question.