On The Galle Road

It is 7 p.m., and I am at the seaside town of Bentota, sitting in a tiled-roof bar that is practically empty and that is now playing Akon’s I am so lonely, I have nobody. Over the music you can hear the whirring of a generator running in a building not very far away. It isn’t a generator, though; it’s the sound of the ocean. Presently that sound is drowned by the rattling of the seven o’ clock train that is passing by. The rail track is just a few feet away from the balustrade of the bar. That’s how it is in Sri Lanka. Wherever you go, a rail track always follows you, just like that faithful dog in the Hutch commercial. Even when you go to a local bar. The track, of course, doesn’t follow you inside the bar; it waits for you outside, as is the case now. I look at the passing train. Like many things in Sri Lanka, the rail coaches have something old-world about them...

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