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| Sunday, 19 June 2005 |
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Features |  |
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Take 5
Sita de Saram Railway ramble Getting up at four a.m. to catch a train is not exactly my cup of tea, which must be why I was, scrambling out of bed and groping for switches, barely five minutes before I was to be picked up. Too sleepy to shower. I hurriedly threw some cold water on my clothes and grabbed my weekend bag, not a moment too soon. I opened my front door and heard a bright voice coming out of the gloom, "Guten Morgen, you are ready?", it said. It was Loretta, my German friend, here on a holiday. "Of course," I was as cool as a cucumber, through I felt I had just been through a cyclone. It was still dark when we reached the Fort station. The man behind the ticket counter looked groggily at us and mumbled, "Where to?" "Talawakelle. How much?" I asked, as sweetly as I could. "Tchah! That's the Badulla line. Go there" he said in a nasty tone of voice and returned to his chair in the corner. It was obvious we had rudely interrupted his sleep. We bought our tickets and went to the platform. As the day broke, the huddled masses on the benches began to take shape. We could see there was quite a crowd of people surrounded by various odd-shaped bags and parcels. It was Sunday morning and they looked like they were going home for the long weekend. What was I doing there? I was taking my foreign friend to an estate to give her a taste of up-country life. Expecting to see an empty train waiting at the platform, I asked a porter who came by pushing a trolley. "Isn't the train starting from here?" He shook his head. "Oh, no! It starts in Maradana, and it will be crowded already. You'll never get a seat." He had a sadistic gleam in his eye and the dismay on our faces must have given the blighter intense satisfaction. We looked at each other and shrugged, just to show him we didn't care. True enough, the train steamed in and seemed to be pretty full up. People jostled each other and rushed to get themselves and their carriages in through the narrow doorways. We walked past several bogyes and the situation seemed hopeless. We could see the guard looking up and down the platform, so there was no other way for it but to climb into one at random. It was the height of absurdity to even think of a window-seat. The place was crawling with bleary-eyed women feeding their children with biscuits and bread. We stepped carefully over banana skins and toffee wrappers and put our luggage in the overhead rack. Loretta perched herself on the arm of a seat while I squeezed myself between two fat women munching on their breakfast of vadays. Loretta was looking around with great interest. This was a totally new experience for her, but for me it was pure hell. I thought of the halcyon days when we travelled up in the privacy of a first-class sleeperette, lulled to sleep by the rumble of the wheels. At the risk of sounding elitist, I must say this proletarian business of classes travel gets me down. You see, the best part of any train journey is watching the changing view through the window. But in this set-up? No such luck. The fat woman was now guzzling water from a bottle and burping away with satisfaction. Not even, if I craned my neck could I see through a window. My sole occupation now was trying to keep myself from sliding off the seat. The train rumbled on its way, stopping at some stations and whizzing past others. At every stop, shoals of vendors would get in. Squeezing themselves past the passengers, they would shout out their wares. It was either, "Kadalay, Kadalay, vaday, vaday, or topee topee? I tried to console myself by looking at the people around me. Most of them seemed to be in a stupor, rocked into an uneasy state of semi-consciousness by the rhythm of the wheels. At last we reached Peradeniya, where a huge exodus took place. Amid a volley of banging and clattering and a chattering in fifty different languages, bags were pulled down, paper bags gathered together and children pushed onto the platform. We couldn't believe it - the compartment was nearly empty! Immediately Loretta and I planted ourselves firmly in the window seats, before the next batch of passengers arrived. In a moment they started clambering in - more families, more children and more paper bags. Two estate women in brightly coloured sarees, with all their dowry hanging on their necks and ears, eased themselves on to the seat next to us. They were on their way to a wedding, I gathered from their conversation, and the mother must have planned to find a suitor for the young thing who sat with downcast eyes, twisting her bangles and changing them from one arm to the other. Further on, were two men discussing the deterioration in their respective estates. Constant shakings of the head and nods of agreement seemed to say the situation was pretty bad. The train was slowing and one of them said poking his friend in the ribs with the handle of his umbrella, "Next time you come to my house and I will give you my wife's good chapatties". His friend rolled his head as only a Sri Lankan can and said as he got off, "Righto, righto". The view outside was nothing short of glorious, and made up for all sun glinting on the treetops in the valley below and the hills were clothed in shades of blue and green. The air was getting cooler and Loretta, with her head and shoulders out of the window was looking out rapturously. As the train pulled into the Talawakelle station, she got up and said with a note of regret in her voice, "I wish I could see more of your country. It is so beautiful." I felt a surge of pride. How true it was. But this, so beautiful country is being abused and polluted with our brutish ways, with never a thought that it should be nurtured and preserved. Stuck in the city we forget, until perhaps a foreigner reminds us of this wonderful gift we have, or we are lucky enough to be receptive to its beauty. I thought of the hordes that travelled up with us. Hordes that were only concerned with how many vadays they should buy or with the trivialities that awaited them at their destination. Trying to educate them in this matter would be a huge problem too big for me. I gave it up and took my bag down from the rack. At the station we could see our friends waving to us. We stepped down onto the platform, stretched our limbs and started walking towards them. Our holiday had begun. Loretta's introduction to up-country life is another story. |
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