Confronting violence

I walked along a footpath on the side of a suburban road in the heart of Colombo. I glanced at my watch and looked up at the sky, splashed with vivid red, orange and yellow, the colours of sunset. At six-thirty, night had begun to elbow out dusk. It wouldn’t take long to complete the job. I returned to my thoughts about home, school, impending adulthood, lost opportunities, all darting, uncontrolled, this way and that in my head.

Two cars skidded to an abrupt halt in front of me. I leapt backwards, surprised at their closeness and also to avoid a lungful of brown, gritty dust. A thuggish boy-man swung out of the driver’s seat of the nearest car. About my age, late teens, indistinguishable from any boy-man in the street, he wore loose-fitting, much worn jeans and a frayed maroon bush shirt, unbuttoned below his chest, exposing a hairy belly. His gnarled, slipper-shod feet, more beaten and buffeted than his face from constant exposure to the hard, grimy surfaces of tropical urban life, flapped up to me.

Although physically strong from regular weightlifting, I possessed not one aggressive cell in my body. I did not know how to fight. I considered it an unnecessary skill for my life’s journey. I exercised with weights because it made my body fit and strong and cleansed my mind. It improved my prowess in cricket and tennis and athletics. My workout that morning left me feeling strong. Hard muscles gave me optimism, fearlessness, eloquence, a spring in my step, the ability to take on the world, be a spokesman for non-aggression, peace, love, and all other such things. I could be anything in my head. Reality now turned a harsh spotlight on me. Could I summon a performance that until then existed only in my imagination.

The young thug grabbed my wrist, not aggressively. It seemed to be his normal, tactile way of striking up a conversation. But in this instance I knew his friendliness was insincere and fleeting. I alerted my senses for a pre-arranged signal to attack me. Outwardly composed but aware of incipient internal churning, I awaited the thug’s opening statement.

He spoke, almost sweetly. ‘I have told you, no, when my brother threatens you, you must not go to the principal, you must tell me and I will sort it out.’

I had never seen this boy-man thug before in my life. I remembered a boy approaching me in school a few weeks earlier with a cryptic warning about the consequences of creating enemies in certain quarters. It must have been him to whom the thug was referring.

‘I ignored your brother all the other times,’ I said, ‘but this time he showed me a knife. I became frightened. What do you expect me to do?’

‘He means no harm. It’s just his way. It makes him think he is a big, powerful man scaring people all the time.’

‘I could not assume that. He threatened to harm my brother too.’

‘So now he’s been expelled from school, and it is your fault.’

‘You don’t think it is his fault for bringing a knife to school and threatening someone with it?’

‘No! You should have come to me.’ The grip on my wrist tightened. The thug looked sideways and jerked his head. The cars began to empty out. I recognised a couple of the occupants, guys from school, including the crony who delivered the message. They loped up, all unsavoury types, some sporting scars of past skirmishes, some clad in sarongs. They assembled behind their leader. I counted eight malevolent souls.

He addressed his retinue. ‘Shall we hit him?’ I detected reluctance. Surely they, anyone really, would find it difficult to bash up a person who was clearly inoffensive. Optimism kicked in. I could still reason with the leader, make him see the futility of aggression and violence. It stopped me from taking flight when I had the chance.

Then the mob began to move, quietly, almost imperceptibly. In a few seconds I was surrounded. One of them hitched up his sarong and secured it at knee length. He probably intended to let fly with a kick. Another one leered at me as he punched a fist into his palm. I couldn’t see weapons but that only meant they were concealed, maybe considered surplus to requirements in the circumstances.

Now unable to make a run for it, I regretted my earlier impulse to put into practice my imagined heroics. I could have outrun most of them, maybe all of them. All I needed to do was make it across the road, leap a fence into an open field and head for the neighbourhood where my aunt lived.

Real, genuine fear began to twist and knot my guts. My chest tightened. I could feel my heart thumping against my ribs. The heat generating inside me crept up my neck and spread across my face, which now, I was sure, had turned red, like the sunset, broadcasting my fear to the thugs. My eyes became strained, my focus blurred.

I had no idea what to do at that moment. I had no idea who would strike the first blow, or the nature of that blow. I had no idea how I’d respond to that blow. I waited. It seemed like they waited too for someone to start proceedings, deliver the first slap or punch or kick. But still, I clung to hope that they would not be able to bring themselves to hit me.

A lone figure approached. The mob stayed their hand. We watched the figure draw near. Relief flooded me as I recognised Jagath, not exactly a friend but someone I knew and someone who I think knew me. Our fathers knew each other too. He walked up. Actually, Jagath, cricket and rugby star, never simply walked. He caressed the earth like a panther.

‘What’s going on?’ he asked me, his eyes taking in the scene. I did not need to say anything. He addressed the thugs. ‘Hey, you guys, please don’t hit him. There must be another way to solve your problem, whatever it is.’

It astonished me how quickly the boy-man thug leader folded. His guilty smile typified that of someone caught with his hand in the till. Without a word, he and his gang piled back into their cars and drove off. Jagath walked with me to the bus stop and waited until my bus arrived.

On the journey home, disturbing thoughts swirled about. I even wondered if, after all, they did not have the stomach to pummel a harmless person, and Jagath gave them a way out. But by the time I alighted I had decided that they, like all who resort to thuggery, were just a bunch of miserable cowards.