Observations From a Train in Sri Lanka
This story was shortlisted for Conde Nast Traveller’s Future of Travel Internship 2023.
Through the open window, I could just make out the arched entrance of Colombo’s central train station. Official-looking men in government-issued uniforms, armed and wary-eyed, were rifling through backpacks and suitcases on the platform. A young, clean-shaven man who couldn’t have been much older than me passed by my window, compromising the view and casting a shadow over my face. We locked eyes for a moment, and I tried to smile, but my muscles couldn’t quite muster the expression. He grimaced back and continued walking, checking under the carriages with a small mirror stuck to the end of a long thin rod.
As the train rumbled to life and leisurely chugged out of the station, I watched the platform disappear in a haze of smoke. The tension eased and across the carriage, the passengers let out a collective sigh of relief as we began to pick up speed.
I had been in Sri Lanka for 48 hours. A few days earlier, 253 people had been killed and over 500 injured in the Easter Bombings. On the east coast, the country’s police were invading homes and storming militant strongholds in search of the perpetrators – but on the commuter train from Colombo to Galle, there was no violence.
“Annāsi,” one vendor hollered as he stumbled with practised precision up the aisle, golden pineapple stacked in a bowl on his head.
“Annāsi annāsi annāsi,” he cried, pausing when he saw me.
“Pineapple ma’am?” he said. I politely declined and he continued on his journey down the aisle.
“Annāsi annāsi annāsi!”
I was sitting with a family, two women and a man, who were chatting away too quickly for my poor Sinhalese to understand. The fan above us was broken and rusted and sweat trickled down my spine freely like warm rainwater down a humid drainpipe.
The further we travelled from the station, the less tense the carriage became. The man opposite me purchased a small bag of wade and began to pass it around. His mother pulled a small, wrapped parcel from her carpet bag and began feeding dahl and rice to her thin lips, using her cupped right hand. She sat quietly for a few minutes, spooning the curry into her mouth, before carefully wrapping up the remains of her lunch and tucking them back into her bag.
I offered her a napkin and she smiled at me, speaking to me in Sinhalese as she tucked my token away before resting her arm back on the windowsill, her right-hand dripping with lentils and gravy.
The train ambled past slums, abandoned tractor engines and barren cafes, all the while the vendors persevered up and down the aisles.
“Annāsi annāsi annāsi!”
A few stops later the man sitting opposite me stood and departed our carriage. I watched in confusion, peering from the window at his back as he disappeared into the crowd mingling on the platform. The women continued to chatter between themselves as the train came to life once again. It was at that point another passenger sat down opposite me.
He asked me my name and where I was from. His maroon shirt, stretched thin over his broad belly, was the same colour as the exterior of our carriage and I could just see his mellow smile concealed underneath his thick black moustache.
“I thought they were a family,” I said to the man, gesturing at the women.
The man raised his eyebrows and turned to speak to the women. After a few minutes, they were laughing together as if they were old friends.
“They are not a family,” he said, turning to smile at me.
“They are simply strangers who sat together.”
Sri Lanka was reeling. Stories of raids and casualties, children shot in the onslaught, drifted back through the hostels passed between the few remaining travellers like a grisly game of Chinese Whispers. Death kept coming, yet all across Sri Lanka strangers were friends and friends were like family.
Colombo’s crowded streets had been deserted except for the armed patrols of police and soldiers. Around the corner from where I was staying, the ruins of several hotels had lain silent and cordoned off.
In Galle and along the country’s coastal towns, the seaside restaurants were empty. Stray dogs curled up in the dirt with the street vendors and the taxi drivers who sat on the side of the road waiting for the tourists to come back.
A few weeks later I would return to my flat in Melbourne. When I told a Sri Lankan man who’d recently immigrated to Australia about the profound impact travelling through his country had had on me, he apologised.
“I am so sorry for everything,” he sighed down the phone.
“Sri Lanka will always be my home but I am embarrassed.”
This story was shortlisted for Conde Nast Traveller’s Future of Travel Internship 2023. The winning entry can be read here.