Running Beside a Train
Running Beside a Train
I have always believed that the smallest journeys often leave us with the most lasting memories. A train missed, a conversation overheard, a chance encounter on a platform — such things linger long after the grand adventures are forgotten.
This is a little tale about a boy, fifteen years old at the time, who set out one morning to visit a friend in Moratuwa. Nothing extraordinary was meant to happen, but on the crowded platform at Maradana he found himself running beside a moving train, urged on by a smiling guard. What followed was not so much about catching a train as it was about learning when to let one go.
Itwas still early when Denzil stepped off at Kelaniya, the sun just beginning to gild the corrugated iron roof of the station. He had left home with a simple plan — reach Moratuwa before ten, spend the whole day with Ajit, his closest friend, and return with enough stories to last another week.
By the time he reached Maradana, the city was fully awake. The platform had become a restless tide of travellers — men in pressed office pants rubbing shoulders with others in crumpled sarongs, women bent under the weight of their market bags, children darting between legs like fish in a crowded stream, and old men and women moving steadily but with the quiet dignity of trees weathering a storm.
The trains arrived with long metallic sighs, as if they too were weary of this daily ritual. From the tea stall came the hiss of boiling milk and the fragrance of cardamom, almost lost beneath the shouts of coolies competing for luggage and passengers. Above all this, a loudspeaker crackled into life, its announcement so garbled it could have been in Sanskrit or Pali — or perhaps a private joke played on commuters. Only one phrase reached Denzil’s ears clearly:
“Train to Panadura leaving now!”
He knew at once it would be from platform number four. He darted up the staircase, pushing through the throng, the wooden steps echoing under his hurried Bata shoes. From the top he could already see the train pulling away, carriages swaying gently like reluctant dancers.
“Wait!” Denzil shouted, though he knew trains did not wait for schoolboys in khaki shorts.
For a moment, the world seemed to pause — the platform noise dimmed, the clatter of feet softened, and all he could hear was the steady rhythm of his own breath and the iron wheels gathering speed.
Then the guard at the rear cabin, a neat figure in spotless white, spotted him at once. Waving his green flag, he called out cheerfully, “Come on, boy! Run! You can make it!”
And so Denzil ran, his long legs keeping pace with the accelerating carriages. His satchel bounced against his side, his shirt sticking to his back.
“That’s it! Faster!” the guard encouraged, leaning dangerously far from his compartment. “Jump in — I’ll catch your hand!”
For a few moments it seemed possible — the guard’s arm stretched out, his voice urging, “Just one more stride!”
But in that instant, another voice rose inside Denzil’s head. What if I miss? What if I fall under the wheels? What if my shoe slips into the gap?
He slowed, then stopped altogether, letting the carriages slide away. The guard looked back, disappointment on his face. “You nearly had it!” he shouted, shaking his head with a smile, before vanishing around the curve of the track.
Denzil sat on a bench, panting, watching the pigeons pick at biscuit crumbs on the platform. Ten minutes later another train bound for Panadura arrived — slower, almost lazy in its approach. He climbed aboard without a scramble, found a seat by the window, and let the warm breeze wash over him.
As the train gathered pace past Wellawatte, he heard a familiar voice. The guard, the very same man in white, was strolling through the carriage with his flag tucked neatly under his arm. He stopped beside Denzil, his eyes twinkling.
“So, you made it after all!” he said with a grin. “I changed trains at Fort — and here you are, safe and sound.”
Denzil grinned back, a little shyly. “I thought I could do it… but then I imagined falling. I didn’t want my mother to hear that her fifteen-year-old son had been run over trying to be clever.”
The guard chuckled, patting him lightly on the shoulder. “Better to miss a train than break your neck for one. Good sense, lad. And remember — there will always be another train. On the platform, and in life.”
He moved on, and Denzil leaned back in his seat, the words echoing gently inside him.
As the train rattled on toward Moratuwa, Denzil realised that sometimes the bravest choice was not to leap, but to wait.
For in life, as on the railway, a missed train is rarely the last one.
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