The Red Line
The Red Line
Onthe 138 — that long, asthmatic contraption that objected audibly to every incline — it took nearly an hour to reach Duke Street. The bus did not so much travel as negotiate with the road. An hour is ample time for dread to mature properly. I would sit by the window and watch Colombo assembling itself for commerce — shutters lifting, tea kettles steaming, bicycles wobbling into purpose — while imagining the Instruments Room already awake and alert, its supervisors poised like minor deities awaiting sacrifice.
My shifts began at 8 a.m., 2 p.m., or — with moral offence — 8 p.m. The 2 a.m. to 8 a.m. shift I avoided with quiet determination. I was not built for sanctity. I preferred being home early, sitting cross-legged with friends, discussing matters of enormous irrelevance before adulthood imposed its disciplines. Some men pursued rank. I pursued conversation.
Most mornings I arrived precisely on time. Occasionally — catastrophically — a minute late. That minute possessed constitutional significance. As I entered, one of the supervisors would remove the attendance book with theatrical calm, as though tidying up before contamination. Then came the ritual: a straight red line drawn with bureaucratic satisfaction. I would sign beneath it. It was less acknowledgement than surrender.
That red line had authority. It declared, without appeal, “This fellow cannot be trusted with seconds.”
All of them, except Pandithakoralge — dear Pandi — regarded me as a boy who required correction. Pandi at least possessed the elasticity of kindness. I knew his sons at St. Joseph’s College; they were only a few years younger than I was. The knowledge complicated the hierarchy. The others specialised in posture.
Wijemanne arrived each day in immaculate white, smiling the smile of a man who had discovered virtue in punctuality. His grin never consulted his eyes. Candappa moved about in rubber slippers, coconut oil announcing him before his shadow did. Brian Lutersz wore long sleeves in defiance of tropical logic, concealing a stubborn skin condition with dignified persistence. Gamlathge seemed permanently carved from disapproval; joy had never applied for entry to his face. Farouk, when acting supervisor, appeared as though temporarily mistaken for someone more senior.
But it was Wijemanne — the cheerful executioner — who perfected the art. To be reprimanded sternly is comprehensible. To be disciplined with enthusiasm is unsettling.
Once the shift began, personality evaporated. Three hours of punching — Baudot tapes fed through the machine, my fingers tapping out commerce and diplomacy in obedient rhythm. It was mechanical, hypnotic, almost musical, if one ignored the fact that it was also surveillance disguised as labour. Then three hours at the circuits: London, Aden, Singapore, Rangoon, Tokyo, Karachi, Bombay. The globe arrived in coded fragments.
Europe and North America passed through London. The Middle East flowed via Aden. Singapore managed South Asia with brisk competence. Tokyo handled the northern hemisphere of anxieties. Karachi and Bombay maintained direct circuits, preferring political pride to technical efficiency. They could have routed traffic through one another, but geopolitics had travelled all the way to the International Telecommunication Union, and once pride acquires a conference badge, it becomes irreversible.
Burma permitted traffic in one direction only — Colombo to Rangoon. Even telegrams obeyed ideology. Messages, like citizens, understood limits.
In that fluorescent-lit room, beneath red lines and regulated minutes, I learned a small but durable truth. My English, my modest social advantages, my freedom from chasing overtime — none of it erased perception. To them I was the “yacko bugger,” insufficiently deferential, mildly unmanageable. A young man who did not stand quite straight enough for comfort.
The 138 did not merely transport me to Duke Street. It delivered me daily into a minor republic of authority, where discipline was measured in minutes and identity in ink. And there, under the steady hum of machines and grievance, I discovered that a straight red line could function both as ruler and prophecy.
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