Always the Railway Tracks
Always the Railway Tracks
Set in Ceylon, the early 1970s
“Always the railway tracks,” muttered the man beside the tea stall, adjusting his bundle as he waited. “As if that’s the only place left to die in peace. No thought at all for the rest of us — just passengers trying to get home, or reach the pola before it shuts. Suicides, accidents, murders… all on the line. Delay the trains, upset the day. Why not a quiet bottle of poison, or a discreet knife under a coconut tree? Must they always trouble the trains?”
The train had been delayed for nearly an hour. There were murmurs, crossed arms, women fanning themselves with the ends of their sarees, and children whining for a drink. No announcements. Just heat and impatience and a restlessness that hung in the air like railway dust.
In the distance, a temple bell rang out softly — its chime floating above the chatter and heat like a half-forgotten prayer.
Then, at last, the long-anticipated rumble stirred through the compartments, and the train shivered softly along its spine. A visible easing passed over the passengers’ faces — relief, resignation, the familiar rhythm returning. As the carriages creaked past the level crossing, everyone craned their necks to glimpse the cause of the delay.
There, by the gravel siding, stood two policemen in dull khaki, and the station master in a crisp white uniform, gathered around a body hastily covered with a sheet. It lay near the tracks, a limp suggestion of human form under the cloth, awaiting its final, bureaucratic journey to the morgue.
A few passengers touched their foreheads in quiet reverence. One or two whispered, “Nivan suva labewa.” Someone muttered, “Imagine if it had happened while we were passing through the paddy fields near the Kelani River…”
Another voice, more anxious than unkind, said, “Then the train would’ve had to carry the body to the next station. We’d be stuck for hours — maybe longer.”
And just like that, the train moved on, leaving behind a body, a prayer, and the folded shadow of a tragedy. It vanished behind us, swallowed by the curve of the track and the clicking of wheels.
I watched the white sheet until it slipped out of sight.
It was strange how everything seemed to return to normal so quickly — the clatter of steel wheels, the soft snoring of the uncle beside me, the card game resuming in the berth ahead with muffled laughter and the occasional slap of a winning hand. It was as though the body we’d left behind had never really been there at all.
But I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
I had never seen death up close before. Not even in our village, where old people grew slower each year, their skin turning like dried leaves, and then one day they were simply gone, and the house got quieter. But this was different. Sudden. Shocking. Like someone had stopped time for a moment, and no one had known what to do.
“Why the tracks?” someone had asked. I didn’t know. Maybe because it was loud. Or quick. Or because it didn’t need anyone’s permission.
I rested my chin on the window frame and let the wind push against my face. The sun had softened now, lowering itself behind the trees and brick sheds, and far in the distance, I saw children flying kites — scraps of bright cloth tugging gently at the pale sky.
And I thought of Sarath Ayya.
He had jumped too — off the railway crossing near Kelaniya, not far from our village. But he didn’t die. The train missed his chest and took his leg.
He was in love. Girlie was his girlfriend, and her mother had disapproved of their relationship. In those days, no one ever said the words “mental health.” No one talked of sadness that stayed too long. Sarath had jumped in sheer desperation. A whole village knew his story — my mother took me to see him when I was still too young to understand all of it.
But he recovered. And Girlie didn’t leave him. She wheeled him around for a year, fed him, and stood by him. They married anyway and later had two boys of their own. Sarath lost his job — his injury was permanent, a disability that changed everything. But with his wife’s help, he opened a small shop at the front of their house and made do. They survived. They loved.
It was tragic, yes — but also beautiful.
Now, Sarath walks with crutches. He laughs sometimes, from his shop, or at church fairs. But there’s a heaviness in his eyes — like he still hears the whistle of the train in his dreams. Poor Sarath.
Some old woman in the corner seat was muttering pirith stanzas under her breath — lines I half-recognised from funerals and the radio. The grown-ups had already moved on, talking about markets, the price of onions, or whether the tea at the next stop would be hot enough.
But I stayed quiet. Not sad exactly. Just filled with something I couldn’t name — like carrying a stone in your pocket that wasn’t yours.
The train kept going. And so did we.
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