The buff masters

Hindi films share pretty much equal space in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, and you won't have a hard time striking up a conversation about them. Whereas the language (Hindi or Urdu) is the common denominator in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh (to a lesser extent, though some people will understand you a little), in Sri Lanka it is impossible to strike up a conversation in that form. If you speak Tamil it's not that difficult, but there is not a trace of Hindi spoken anywhere.

Hindi films aren't as popular in Sri Lanka as in the rest of the subcontinent, but they are shown in select theatres. Wasantha, who works at a barbershop, said the fashionable clothes, beautiful leading men and women and catchy music are among the reasons he and his friends watch the odd Hindi film, even though they don't understand what is happening on screen.

Images of Hindi stars are prevalent in smaller sectors of Colombo, and you can find pirated and original DVDs fairly easily. Posters of Indian actresses are plastered across stores here that sell pirated DVDs, and over the back windows of tuk-tuks and commuter vans.

Take the scenic drive from Colombo to Galle, dotted with palm trees and white breakers, and you see countless pictures of Hindi film star mugs atop grocery markets, unisex salons and canteens. These are all unsolicited, but that's the norm in the subcontinent.

It's not as noticeable on the drive to Dambulla – Hillary Duff and Maroon Five frontman Adam Levine dominate this 205km stretch, oddly enough – but Hindi film songs blared regularly from the bar television and at the front desk of my hotel there. The bartender was keen to know if Bombay was really a fantasy world called Bollywood. I had to assure him it was not. He didn't believe me.

Sitting at a restaurant in Galle I couldn't help notice a Mithun Chakraborty potboiler from the 80s dubbed in Sinhalese. On a tuk-tuk drive to the Dambulla stadium, I heard a Sri Lankan pop song interspersed with lyrics from the old Hindi song 'Dil sachcha aur chehra jhoota' ('The heart is true, the face a lie'). The driver couldn't tell me why, but knew all the words and hummed along enthusiastically. Another time, it was Himesh Reshammiya's tracks which blared, and the driver seemed very knowledgeable about the music superstar's 'inspired' tracks (read: directly lifted from Arabic tunes). Yet no one could understand what these lyrics meant. I had to translate on a few occasions. But every one of these individuals loved the music.

Out for dinner with two friends during the third Test in Colombo, we were approached by two young college students and joined in a game of darts. As the conversation progressed and they found out the three of us were from India, one of them started asking about the overdose of melodrama in Hindi films. He had seen a few films, and wanted to know why so many of them had the line 'Mujhe maaf kardo, pitaji' ('Please forgive me, father') and what it meant. His friend wanted to know why Shah Rukh Khan is so popular. They both liked the leading ladies, needless to say.

When I say that I'm from India and here to cover the cricket, the conversation starts to flow. From the tuk-tuk driver to the hotel concierge to waiters and convenient store clerks, the first two questions are almost always 'why is Yuvraj Singh not in the Test team' and 'do you know Shah Rukh Khan?'.

To the first, my answer is often open for debate, and since I've met Shah Rukh twice, I'm asked a dozen questions about his attitude and stardom and choice of roles. Even a member of the Sri Lankan team, when he heard I had grown up in India, asked me if I'd met the Indian cine star. These conversations can last from 20 seconds to 20 minutes, depending on where I am and what my time constraints are.

None of them have been dull, however.