Recently, I travelled from Colombo to Jaffna by train. Between August 1984 and October 2010, I did not visit Jaffna, largely because of the war and because all my family members, including extended family, had left. Since October 2010, I have returned several times by hired car or bus. This journey was special because it was my first train trip to Jaffna since August 1984.
Booking the Journey
I asked a
friend who was visiting Jaffna to book a train seat for me. She told me I could
now book directly through a website, so I did. The site acts as an intermediary
between Sri Lanka Railways and passengers living outside Sri Lanka, adding a
service charge to the railway fare. Bookings must be made within 30 days of travel.
After about two days, the website sends a confirmation that a seat has been
reserved. Passengers then print the confirmation and take it to the station,
where the ticket is issued.
At Fort Station
My train
was scheduled to leave at 5:45 a.m., so I arrived at Fort Railway Station at
4:45 a.m. Fort Station has long had a reputation for theft, especially at odd
hours, and the auto-rickshaw driver who dropped me off also warned me to be
careful. As I moved from one counter to another looking for where to collect my
ticket, I felt someone was following me. Was he a thief, or was I unnecessarily
worried? I am not sure. After asking at
two counters, I finally found the right place, only to be told that the
confirmation email itself was sufficient.
I entered
the station, found a seat on the platform, and waited. A uniformed ticket
checker approached and asked to see my ticket. After examining it, he said I
was on the correct platform and that my carriage would be the first one after
the engine, about 100 meters away. I still had time, so I remained seated for a
while, then walked towards the top of the platform. The same ticket checker
smiled and gestured for me to go further. South Asian trains can be very long
compared with suburban trains in Sydney, which usually have up to eight
carriages and, in some rural cases, only four.
Another
checker asked for my ticket in Sinhalese, and the first one helpfully said that
I would not understand the language. I replied in Sinhala that I could speak
Sinhala, and we both smiled. He then showed me where I could place my luggage
inside the cabin. Since my suitcase weighed 25 kg, lifting it onto the overhead
shelf was not an option. I thanked him with a gesture; we rely on that kind of
body language often, everywhere.
On the
platform were two young men with hair buns, long beards, jeans, and backpacks.
They reminded me of Hindu saints in Tamil films, except that they were dressed
for modern travel. I asked them in English to help load my suitcase into the
cabin, and they nodded. The bag had to be lifted about a meter because the train
doors and platform were at different levels. This reminded me of a dispute in
Sydney, where the Railways union had protested that the gap between the train
and platform was unsafe for passengers. It was a striking contrast in
expectations between developed and developing transport systems.
Fort
Station has an unusual platform layout: passengers can board trains from both
sides. It was probably built long ago, before cost-saving designs such as single-sided
access became standard.
Settling into the Carriage
My seat was
44A in first class, Cabin A, by the window, exactly what I wanted. I hoped to
enjoy the views and test how well I remembered the route. The cabin had 52
seats and was nearly full. One group included a Sri Lankan guide, a middle-aged
Australian man, and about a dozen adolescent children. Later, I learned they
were from Melbourne. They were dressed in white, perhaps because they were visiting
a Buddhist temple where devotees traditionally wear white. The second group was
more internationally mixed, and I came to know them better because one member
sat beside me.
Earlier Train Journeys
Before returning
to the recent journey, I should mention some memories of train travel from my
younger days. My earliest memory is traveling with my father, who would buy a
meal from the cafeteria car. For some reason, I loved that food. It was served
at a breakfast bar I could barely reach, with cutlery I did not yet know how to
use. My father would cut the food for me. Once, when I could not finish my meal,
he said something to make me turn away; when I looked back, my plate was empty.
He must have quietly swapped it with his own. I also remember him waving at
cars that raced alongside the train.
Years
later, when I joined the University of Peradeniya, I could travel from Jaffna
to Peradeniya either entirely by train or by a combination of train and bus.
For the train-only route, I traveled from Jaffna to Polgahawela and waited
there for the train to Kandy. That train stopped at Sarasavi Uyana, a station
on campus, where I got off. The scenery between Polgahawela and Kandy is very beautiful,
with the train passing through several tunnels and mountain passes. I would try
to hold my breath in the tunnels to avoid inhaling carbon monoxide.
The train-and-bus
route was quicker. I would get off at Kurunegala, take a bus to Kandy, and then
another to Peradeniya. I often chose this route simply to save time. Traveling
in the opposite direction, I would take buses from Peradeniya to Kandy, then to
Kurunegala, where I would board the Colombo-to-Jaffna train. On my way, I would
buy a news paper. By the time the train
from Colombo reached Kurunegala, the train was usually packed. More often than
not, I could barely get inside and had to cling on until the next station,
where some passengers got off. Only then could I squeeze in, crawl under a
seat, spread out my newspaper, and sleep until a proper seat became available. Those
days are behind me now; I can travel first class and reserve a seat a month in
advance.
The Journey North
Returning
to the recent journey, the cabin had been supplied by the Indian government and
made in India. I could not help noticing some shortcomings. In my experience,
some Indian-made products have not always matched the finish or durability of comparable
Chinese or Western products. This cabin, intended for long-distance travelers,
had no proper luggage rack or water fountain, and the toilet was not properly waterproof.
I know one should not look at a gift horse in the mouth, but I offer these
observations as constructive criticism rather than complaint.
The young woman
seated next to me was part of the second group. She was in her thirties,
Sinhalese, born in Sri Lanka, raised in Australia, educated in the United
Kingdom, married to a Polish man, and now working as an English teacher in a
small town in Poland. She had three daughters, the eldest at least ten years
old, though she herself looked much younger than her age. Her father, a few
years older than me, had settled in Melbourne. He studied mathematics at Jaffna
University and lived very near my parental home during his studies. He said he
had been to Jaffna three times in the past month, making him more of a Jaffna
person than I am. A few Canadian Sri Lankans were also part of her group.
As the
train traveled towards Jaffna, somewhere between Kurunegala and Maho, it hit
something, though I could not tell what was hit. The train had to stop until
the track was cleared. We also had to wait at small stations for oncoming
trains to pass, as both directions shared the same track in most places. These
delays stretched the journey, and I took brief naps from time to time.
The seat beside
me changed hands several times among members of the second group. Each new
occupant began a conversation, usually asking about Jaffna and the causes of
the Civil War. Two passengers were especially curious: a woman, probably in her
sixties, who had been born in Galle, and a man, likely in his seventies, whose father
had worked for Ceylon Government Railways in Jaffna in the 1960s.
One of them
suggested that Tamils had swum across the Palk Strait and settled in northern
Sri Lanka. I was unsure where that idea had come from, so I mentioned examples
such as King Kashyapa and others who brought South Indians to fight against
their own kin. Over time, some members of those invading forces settled in northern
Sri Lanka. I also told them that the suffix “Nayake,” common in many Sri Lankan
surnames, has South Indian origins. I think they appreciated the explanation.
Who were responsible for the Civil War in Sri
Lanka – My Opinion
Before Independence, tensions already existed between Tamil
and Sinhala elites. Both groups were educated, wealthy, and sought power. In
1911, Sir Ponnambalam Ramanathan, a 60-year-old Tamil, won the Educated
Ceylonese seat on the Legislative Council, defeating the Sinhalese physician,
Marcus Fernando. Many Sinhala-educated voters supported Ramanathan, a gifted
speaker. At the time, the British limited voting rights to educated Ceylonese, considering
the wider public unfit to vote. Universal franchise came only in 1931.
After Ceylon gained independence in 1948, Sir Henry
Monck-Mason Moore became Governor General and D.S. Senanayake, the Leader of
the United National Party (UNP), became Prime Minister, with S.W.R.D.
Bandaranaike in his cabinet. A reported gentlemen’s agreement suggested
Senanayake would later become Governor General and Bandaranaike Prime Minister,
but when Moore left in 1949, the British appointed Lord Soulbury instead.
Disappointed, Bandaranaike left the UNP and founded the Sri Lanka Freedom
Party, promising to make Sinhala the official language and Buddhism the state
religion, despite the presence of large non-Sinhala-speaking and non-Buddhist
minorities. Riding a wave of nationalism, he won and enacted these policies,
then faced major opposition.
His 1958 Banda-Chelva Pact with the Tamil leadership partly
reversed course by recognizing Tamil as the official language in two
Tamil-majority provinces. Some Buddhist clergy opposed it, and one monk
assassinated him. Although Bandaranaike died, his racial politics remain
central to Sri Lankan politics, even today.
A constitution should protect people from government
overreach by safeguarding their rights. In my view, S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike
instead promoted policies that denied minority rights and did little to advance
the social or economic welfare of the broader population. Unlike the Indian PM,
Nehru, he lacked wisdom on minority issues, and I therefore hold him
responsible for Sri Lanka's drift toward civil war. That is his sad legacy.
The second person I blame is J.R. Jayawardene, elected
President in 1977. In my view, he sought to be the President, but not for all
Sri Lankans, and he and key ministers believed Tamils could be controlled
through mob violence and military force. After a small Tamil militant group
killed 13 soldiers by blowing up a military truck, he brought the bodies to
Colombo, inflamed public anger, and violence against Tamils followed in
Sinhala-dominated areas. Black July killed an estimated 600 to 3,000 Tamils and
pushed more young Tamil men toward armed struggle. These groups were later financed
and trained by India. When Jayawardene realized the scale of the crisis, he
sought Indian help to negotiate peace, but by then it was too late. I therefore
regard him as the second person responsible for the Civil War.
Arrival at KKS
Along the
way, several views from the train brought back memories of earlier journeys:
the large rock near Polgahawela, cars and bicycles waiting at the level
crossings, and the many Hindu temple towers.
When the
train reached Jaffna, the cabin was empty except for me. I was the only
passenger continuing to Kankesanthurai, commonly known as KKS.
At KKS, the
platform was too short for the full length of the train, so I had to get off
beyond it. I first tried to roll my luggage through the cabins towards the
center to access the platform, but the connectors between them were unfriendly.
Hence, I stepped down onto the pebbled ground beside the track.
I put on my
backpack and then lowered my 25 kg suitcase from about two meters above the
ground. As the stones shifted under my feet, I worried that I might slip and
have the suitcase fall on me. Fortunately, that did not happen.
The station
was opposite the resort where I was staying, so I could walk there.
[1] If this title evoked memories of the famous book and
film, The Train to Pakistan, it was not accidental. The book was based on what
I think is probably the worst human tragedy the world has ever witnessed, even
worse than the nuclear bombing of Japan by the Americans. I am also a big fan
of Khushwant Singh, who authored the book Trip to Pakistan. But this blog is
about my nostalgia for the days when I travelled by train in Sri Lanka, mostly
from Jaffna, where I grew up.
