Going Local in Jaffna

A Tamil-fluent Indian imposter tries to go local in northern Sri Lanka. What happens next?

- AJAY KAMALAKARAN

Everything about the Colombo Fort railway station suggests that we are in another country, in another era. The neat maroon-brown trains, the wooden staircases, the dim lighting and a reclining chair coach (called a sleeper in Sri Lanka) also remind a traveller of an early 20thcentury ride in British India, or at least as it has been depicted in cinema. The 4089 Night Mail leaves Colombo at 9 p.m. and my Sinhalese friend Pavithra and I are off to Jaffna, on the northern fringe of the island. The train, which stopped functioning during the country’s civil war between 1983-2009, snakes through the lush countryside. For entire swathes, we see nothing but silhouettes of village houses and halo-shaped neon lights that frame towering Buddha statues. This night journey is meant to ensure that we get some good sleep. It is not for glancing at the enormous stupas of Anuradhapura, nor observing how shop signs that changing the language once we enter northern Sri Lanka’s Tamil-majority turf. It is not for marvelling at the Elephant Pass, that stunning and strategically vital piece of land on the isthmus connecting the Jaffna Peninsula to the rest of Sri Lanka—but we go renegade and choose to grab at stray sights and sounds along the way. By 5 a.m., we are in Jaffna, 30 minutes ahead of schedule. If we’d been blessed with sound slumber, there’s every chance we’d have travelled further to Kankesanthurai, a port on the northern tip of Sri Lanka.