Life of Silibiris 27

Kanthi waited at her doorstep.
She waited for Silibiris to come around the corner after getting away from Lokuhamuduruwo.
What was taking him so long?
Why did Lokuhamuduruwo put his hota into her affairs? Her father was right, she thought. The chief monk is a busy body. Always wanting to know what the Pelihouse inhabitants are up to or why they don’t come take sil on Poya days.
Kanthi did attend the Daham Pasela until 2 years ago. She stopped attending the day Lokuhamuduruwo admonished her to refrain from encouraging boys in her class. See, he was putting his hota into her affairs even then.
Night fell. Silibiris never came.
Kanthi was seething with anger. She picked up a few rocks and began hurling them over the parapet wall at the temple roof. She heard the sound of the rocks hitting the galvanized sheet roof. She felt happy. She had taken revenge, the Pelihouse way.
Sitting across the doorway, knees drawn up to her chin, Kanthi aimlessly gazed at the Pelihouse people going about in the dark alleyway.
Her mind drifted.
She missed her father, Pachcha Sira. Kanthi loved the massive tattoos on his shoulder. She could not remember the last time she visited him in jail. For a rough and tumble type of a guy, he was always tender with her. He never scolded her let alone hit her. However, he did beat up her mother regularly. That was accepted as part of the household routine.
Kanthi’s cousin Vije was 2 years older to her.
He too had been implicated in the same robbery Sira was charged with and ended up in the same prison.
Kanthi knew Vije treated her like his girlfriend, like he owned her.
She didn’t like him much but she did accept whatever the gifts he would bring her, God knows from where.
Vije started his career as a pickpocket when he was barely 12. He had his own Boy Gang even then. For some unknown reason, he hated a boy they called Potta Buwa at school. Potta Buwa too had a Boy Gang of his own in Dematagoda. The two gangs clashed in the school yard almost daily. After a particularly vicious gang fight in the school yard involving pen knives, both Vije and Potta Buwa were expelled from school.
Vije managed to keep his sudden departure from school as a secret from his parents for a while. He pretended to go to school every morning but roamed the streets, eventually becoming a pickpocket with deft hands. Nobody suspected the little kid standing behind them at the bus stop as the one who hafted their wallets.
Vije graduated from picking pockets to day time robberies, promoting certain ladies services to gentlemen he befriended, transporting kassippu from one spot to another in his school bag, selling ganja to his erstwhile school mates or anyone he knew would not dob him into the Police.
Vije did come under the Police radar eventually.
He picked the pocket of an off duty policeman. The cop acted with lightning speed, grabbing Vije’s wrist, tackling him down to the ground and kicked Vije in the ribs for good measure. Vije didn’t know what hit him. A crowd gathered. Vije tried to get up and run but the cop grabbed him again and dragged Vije to the Police Station where he was soundly beaten. When promises to not thieve again failed to impress the cops he changed tack and mentioned some ladies who might offer services that the uniformed gentlemen might be interested in.
That was the beginning of a special kind of a relationship between the Police and Vije who eventually earned the title of “Kolonnawe Vije”.